curated news excerpts & citations
Atlantic: Hitler’s Greenland Obsession
After creating an economic mess with ill-advised tariffs, Hitler looked north in pursuit of resources and national security.
Greenland appears to have been a lifelong preoccupation of Adolf Hitler’s. According to stenographic notes from a lunchtime conversation dated May 21, 1942, Hitler recalled that hardly anyone “interested him more in his youth” than Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who in 1888 led the first team to cross Greenland’s interior. …
By April 1934, Hitler’s government had inventoried Greenland: 13,500 Eskimos, 3,500 Danes, and 8,000 sheep, as well as the world’s largest deposit of a strategic natural resource—cryolite, a mineral essential to American aluminum production. In 1938, Hermann Göring dispatched an expedition to Greenland, ostensibly to explore the island’s flora and fauna. However, Hitler’s true intent may have been not scientific, but economic—the expedition was headed by a mining engineer, Kurt Herdemerten, who had been a member of the ill-fated Wegener expedition. Hitler had inflicted countless economic wounds on his country over his five years as chancellor, and this foray into the Arctic was part of a broader effort to remedy one of them.
In a drive to move Germany toward economic self-sufficiency, Hitler had imposed draconian tariffs, refused to honor foreign-debt obligations, and sought to wean the nation off Norwegian whale-oil consumption. The problem was that Germany used whale oil not only for margarine, a staple of the German diet, but also in the production of nitroglycerin, a key component for the munitions industry. …
(Atlantic more…)
NPR: Danish military evacuates U.S. submariner who needed urgent medical care off Greenland
truthout: The Black Anti-Fascist Tradition Recognized Fascism Didn’t Begin in Europe
Black anti-fascists have long warned about creeping fascism, from slavery to mass incarceration to ICE terror.
Back in 2016, I was asked what I thought about Donald Trump. Even back then, I saw him as an aspiring fascist, and I responded:
Simply put. He is a conduit through which white America expresses its most vile desire for white purity. An apocalyptically dangerous white man who sees himself as the center of the world. That kind of hubris bespeaks realities of genocide.
Amnesty International: USA: Release Detained Protester
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Leqaa Kordia has been held in ICE detention for 337 days. On February 7, Leqaa collapsed, suffered a head injury, and experienced a seizure. She was hospitalized for three days, during which ICE provided no information to her family or attorneys about her condition or whereabouts. She was returned to detention on February 9.
(Amnesty International more…)
Heather Delaney Reese: Is Trump’s plan to target legal citizens?
Al Jazeera: US envoy Huckabee tries to deny saying he would support Israel expansionism
Rights advocate warns that failure to sack Huckabee ‘will be read by the world as an endorsement of his views’ by Trump.
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Rebecca Solnit: Welcoming the Stranger and Fighting the Power: A Roundup
Resistance is happening in a thousand ways from people destroying Flock cameras to judges upholding the Constitution to the pope once again spurning JD Vance’s advances. Resistance in solidarity with immigrants and others under attack, resistance against surveillance, cruelty, lawlessness.
(Rebecca Solnit more…)
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NPR: The faces behind the Epstein files
It’s so easy to get caught up in the idea of the Epstein files.
We all want to hold powerful people to account. I get it, I’ve read many of the documents. The details are horrifying.
But in our mad dash to point fingers, sometimes we run the risk of losing sight of the women at the center of these documents. They are real people who are no longer the teenage girls that Epstein abused. After talking to one of them, I realized their perspective can never be overlooked in our reporting.
i’ve spent the last few weeks working with my colleague Scott Neuman to dig deeper into one thread of the Department of Justice documents – Interlochen Center for the Arts. The prestigious art school pops up hundreds of times in the Epstein files. Epstein was a camper in the summer of 1967 and would go on to donate more than $400,000 from 1990 to 2003.
I attended a summer camp growing up, and it felt like the safest place in the world. So, as Scott and I sifted through the documents referencing Interlochen I was hoping to understand for myself: How did Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell gain access to an idyllic, well-known, and beloved camp?
(NPR more…)AP: Ghislaine Maxwell fights release of more Epstein documents, calling disclosure law unconstitutional
NY Times: The Price of Admission to Epstein’s World: Silence
There were plenty of signs that something wasn’t right with Jeffrey Epstein. Why didn’t anyone say something?
WSJ: How the Epstein Files Frustrated Trump’s White House
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The problems for the White House began when Bondi met with social-media influencers in February last year, promising new information and handing out binders of information the White House hadn’t reviewed. White House aides now refer to it privately as the “original sin.”
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Washington Post: CIA withdraws nearly 20 intelligence reports, citing bias
Unusual step includes reports on hot-button issues such as white nationalism, LGBTQ activism and family planning.
(Washington Post more…)Independent: Trump’s CIA pulls 19 intelligence reports, including analyses of white nationalism and LGBT+ issues
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Hans Christensen: EU Invests Millions in Next-Gen Vaccines
Speed up the development of next generation influenza vaccines that could be produced in rapidly scalable manufacturing platforms, oral/nasal administration, rapidly adapted to pandemic influenza A.
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Thom Hartmann: Chapter 13: The Empathy Deficit
Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: “The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink”
(Thom Hartmann more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – February 22, 2026
On February 6, four direct descendants of President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to United States senators to ask them to vote against a measure that opens up the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in Minnesota to the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta Plc and its subsidiary Twin Metals Minnesota. Antofagasta wants to build a copper-nickel mine just outside the BWCAW on national forest land.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Inside Climate News: Border Wall Closes in on Big Bend
Residents and elected officials are speaking out against a proposed border barrier through Texas’ biggest state park and one of the jewels of the national park system.
(Inside Climate News more…)BBC Mundo: How a simple brick from a house helped save a girl after years of abuse
Crooks & Liars: ‘John Barron’ Calls Into C-SPAN To Whine About Tariff Ruling
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Ruth Ann Crystal MD: COVID, Flu, and Health News 2/22/26
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Pratt Cates Remmel Jr.: What’s become of ‘United We Stand’?
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The New York Times, Feb. 12: “President Trump announced that he was officially erasing the scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten human life by warming the planet.” My heart sank reading this. Will the president and his powerful friends “erase” democracy, too? It is totally up to us to keep our democracy alive.
(Pratt Cates Remmel Jr. more…)
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
Suffering Under President Obama
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
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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