curated news excerpts & citations
Borowitz: MLK’s Final Message
The following is [excerpted] from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final essay, A Testament of Hope:
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This is why I remain an optimist, though I am also a realist, about the barriers before us. Why is the issue of equality still so far from solution in America, a nation that professes itself to be democratic, inventive, hospitable to new ideas, rich, productive and awesomely powerful?
The problem is so tenacious because, despite its virtues and attributes, America is deeply racist and its democracy is flawed both economically and socially. All too many Americans believe justice will unfold painlessly or that its absence for black people will be tolerated tranquilly. Justice for black people will not flow into society merely from court decisions nor from fountains of political oratory. Nor will a few token changes quell all the tempestuous yearnings of millions of disadvantaged black people.
White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.
(Borowitz more…)
Jennifer Rubin: Americans Should Understand MLK, Jr.’s True Legacy
The Voting Rights Act was King’s greatest achievement
Conversation: Building ‘beloved community’: Remembering the friendship between Martin Luther King Jr. and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh
Jay Kuo: Letter from a Jail, Lessons in Minneapolis
The teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. can help guide us forward in our own troubled times.
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It was against this backdrop that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. struggled, preached and overcame. While he’s perhaps best known for his “I Have a Dream” speech delivered in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963, his writings, particularly his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” written that same year, carry enduring salience and invaluable wisdom for our own struggle against MAGA fascism today.
I want to highlight three parts of that letter in light of what we’re seeing coming out of Minneapolis in 2026 on our own screens across the country. Once again, the government has turned its power upon peaceful protesters seeking to bring attention to brutal racist practices.
- Nonviolence as power
“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
- White folks are not sitting on the sidelines
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is… the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
- The strategy forward
“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Sherrilyn Ifill: It’s King Day!
Don’t Allow Them to Memory Hole What It Means
Joyce Vance: Bull Connor’s Ghost
Engadget: Dr. Gladys West, whose mathematical models inspired GPS, dies at 95
Elizabeth Peratrovich
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – January 19, 2026
International affairs journalist Anne Applebaum noted in The Atlantic the childish grammar in the message, and pointed out—again—that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is not the same thing as the Norwegian government, and neither of them is Denmark, a different country. She also noted that Trump did not, in fact, end eight wars, that Greenland has been Danish for centuries, that many “written documents” establish Danish sovereignty there, that Trump has done nothing for NATO, and that European NATO members increased defense spending out of concern over Russia’s increasing threat.
This note, she writes, “should be the last straw.” It proves that “Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize.” Applebaum implored Republicans in Congress “to stop Trump from acting out his fantasy in Greenland and doing permanent damage to American interests.” “They owe it to the American people,” she writes, “and to the world.”
Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s doctor Jonathan Reiner agreed: “This letter, and the fact that the president directed that it be distributed to other European countries, should trigger a bipartisan congressional inquiry into presidential fitness.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
WSJ: The U.S. easily won the 2026 Battle of Greenland, but the consequences proved convulsive for all.
Historians differ about the real origins of World War III. Some think its roots lay in the disastrous U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s, which weakened American authority in the world, emboldened rivals, and sapped domestic support for assertive military projection overseas. Some cite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the first major land offensive in Europe since World War II, breaking an 80-year taboo on armed conflict for territorial advantage. Some argue that the rise of China from the 1990s onward made conflict more or less inevitable, the world falling again into the Thucydides Trap of an emerging power posing an existential threat to the strategic hegemon.
But there’s general agreement about the crucial precipitating factor that led to the third global conflict in a little over a century: the brief and—or so it seemed initially—stunningly successful U.S. victory in the Battle of Greenland in early 2026.
It wasn’t much of a battle, to be sure. President Trump, fresh off his swift and effective intervention in early January to topple and bring to trial in the U.S. Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and his wife (who were later pardoned by President JD Vance and now run a chain of retail cocaine stores based in Palm Beach, Fla.), doubled down on his “Donroe corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.
(WSJ more…)Al Jazeera: Denmark sends more troops to Greenland amid tensions with Trump
USA Today: Trump blames Nobel snub for Greenland demand in text with Norwegian PM
Hans Christensen: Norway Puzzled by Attack on Peace Prize
Fortune: America’s ‘Achilles Heel’ of national debt is exposed by Trump’s Greenland tariff threat, warns Deutsche Bank
Atlantic: America vs. the World
President Trump wants to return to the 19th century’s international order. He will leave America less prosperous—and the whole world less secure.
BBC: ‘Europe is at a total loss’: Russia gloats over Greenland tensions
Gil Duran: ‘Committee of Vultures’: Tech Billionaires Circle Greenland
Sarah Matthews: Trump’s Greenland Letter, Annotated
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zeteo: What Ceasefire? There Have Been 1,244 Israeli Violations Since the So-Called Peace Deal
Check out these stats that show how the genocide is anything but over, despite Trump announcing phase two of the ‘ceasefire.’
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Wired: The Campaign to Destroy Renee Nicole Good
After an ICE agent shot and killed the Minneapolis mother, conservative media launched an all-out attack on her reputation. Her identity as a queer woman was central to it.
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404 Media: ICE’s Facial Recognition App Misidentified a Woman. Twice
In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman’s face during an immigration raid. ICE has said the app’s results are a “definitive” determination of someone’s immigration status.
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ReligiousLiberty.TV: Protesters Interrupt Minnesota Church Service Over ICE Allegations, Raising Legal Questions
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Democracy Docket: The DOJ offers only excuses as the Epstein Files remain secret
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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