curated news excerpts & citations
Kareem Abdul Jabbar: “I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs.” – Muhammad Ali
I still remember the first time I met Muhammad Ali. It was 1966 and I was a freshman at UCLA. I was with a couple of friends walking down Hollywood Boulevard when we happened to see him. He was performing magic tricks on the street. That moment stayed with me. It wasn’t the disappearing coins or the crowd, or even the fact that he was already the heavyweight champion of the world when he stopped to entertain a sidewalk full of passersby. It was the way he carried himself: unafraid, unbothered, unbowed. A force of nature, gentle but unstoppable. That was the first time I not only understood but saw that conviction isn’t something you talk about. It’s something you live. Long before I understood all the stakes, I recognized the thing that made him unforgettable: conviction you could see, not just hear.
Within a year, that same certainty would harden into something costlier when he refused the Vietnam draft and paid for it publicly.
(Kareem Abdul Jabbar more…)
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Joyce Vance: An Agenda of Joy
- Spending time with animals
- Movement + Fresh Air
- Escapist reading and comfort TV
- Making things with your hands
- Art, creativity, and learning new skills
- Music as medicine
- Cozy comforts at home
- People, community, and the ‘we’re not alone’ effect
- Doing something purposeful
- Mindfulness, faith, and perspective practices
- News boundaries, rest, and “permission to step back”
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – February 14, 2026
On Valentine’s Day in 1884, Theodore Roosevelt lost both his wife and his mother.
…Roosevelt’s profound personal tragedy turned out to have national significance. The diseases that killed his wife and mother were diseases of filth and crowding—the hallmarks of the growing Gilded Age American cities. Mittie contracted typhoid from either food or water that had been contaminated by sewage, since New York City did not yet treat or manage either sewage or drinking water. Alice’s disease was probably caused by a strep infection, which incubated in the teeming city’s tenements, where immigrants, whose wages barely kept food on the table, crowded together.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Reuters: Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped.
Hundreds of judges around the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Donald Trump’s administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, a Reuters review of court records found.
The decisions amount to a sweeping legal rebuke of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Yet the administration has continued jailing people indefinitely even after courts ruled the policy was illegal.
(Reuters more…)Raw Story: Experts stunned as ICE finally acknowledges its ‘culture of abuse’
NY Times: Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts
The department has sent Google, Meta and other companies hundreds of subpoenas for information on accounts that track or comment on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials and tech workers said.
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Conversation: Martha Washington’s enslaved maid Ona Judge made a daring escape to freedom – but the National Park Service has erased her story from Philadelphia exhibit
On the evening of May 21, 1796, Ona Judge made the daring decision to free herself.
Considering the prominence of her owner, the laws of the time and the dangerous trek to New Hampshire, a place where she could discreetly live freely, the act carried remarkable risk. Nevertheless, she slipped out of the President’s House undetected while the first family dined.
(Conversation more…)
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Steven Beschloss: Is Love More Powerful Than Hate?
I had in mind to write about villainy.
But on this day—Valentine’s Day—I want to turn this over and look at the flip side. …
I’m thinking more about the guidance found in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the topic of love. Let me share four shining examples:
- “Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos.”
- “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”
- “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”
- “I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems.”
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John Pavlovitz: America’s Boys Deserve Better Than MAGA Masculinity
While so many of us here in America are rightly lamenting the devastating emotional effect this repulsive regime is having on girls and young women, we’ve only been getting half the story.
(John Pavlovitz more…)
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Jon Passantino: MAGA’s Hopped Up Outrage
MAGA Media and Republican lawmakers whipped themselves into a frenzy over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show—only for the FCC to quietly determine the outrage was built on lyrics that were never performed.
(Jon Passantino more…)
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Hans Christensen: Merz-Macron: European Nuclear Deterrence
The United States’ culture wars are not ours. And we don’t believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade, says Merz. Still, Even they are not powerful enough to succeed alone
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Heather Delaney Reese: Trump is showing us what comes next
ICE deaths 2026 – They deserve remembrance and justice.- January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
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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