curated news excerpts & citations
Borowitz: Trump Claims Pope’s Election was Rigged
Escalating his attacks on Pope Leo XIV, Donald J. Trump claimed on Thursday that the pontiff’s election last year was “totally rigged.”
“There were a lot of ballots cast against him that were just burned,” he said. “You could see the smoke coming from the Vatican.”
Trump blasted Leo as “a terrible person and very ungrateful, quite frankly,” arguing that “he never would have become Pope without my help.”
“It was my idea to send JD to Rome in 2025,” Trump explained. “If he hadn’t gone, Pope Francis would still be alive and Leo would still be a crummy cardinal.”
Curtis M. Wong @ HuffPost: Pete Hegseth Quoted A Bible Verse. Turns Out It Was A Rip-Off Of ‘Pulp Fiction.’
The actual Ezekiel 25:17 passage as it appears in the King James Bible is significantly shorter than both Hegseth’s and Jackson’s, reading simply: “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”
Brian Allen: Speaker Johnson Lectured the Pope on a Doctrine the Pope’s Patron Saint Invented
Adam Kinzinger: Franklin Graham Defends Trump’s Jesus Post. Again.
Ewan Palmer @ DailyBeast: Trump Yanks Millions From Catholic Charities Amid Pope Feud
Robert Reich: The Courage and Clarity of Pope Leo
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Leigh Kimmins @ DailyBeast: Stephen Miller Threatens Horrifying Timeline for Trump’s War
BUCKLE UP
The White House deputy chief of staff dropped the bomb on Fox News.One of President Donald Trump’s top aides, Stephen Miller, has warned that the Iran war could continue “indefinitely.”
(Leigh Kimmins @ DailyBeast more…)Terrence Goggin: TRUMP’S STRATEGIC GAMBLE IN THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ: Will The IRGC Collapse – Can He Win That Gamble? The Odds Are Long, But Not Impossible; History Has It’s Precedents
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IT WORKED BUT IT TOOK FOUR LONG YEARSJennifer Rubin: Trump’s Blockade Is Another Blunder
Lily Kuo and David Pierson @ NY Times: Why China Won’t Lean Hard on Iran
Despite the economic risks from the war, Beijing will likely stick to a hands-off approach. It is wary of being entangled in a conflict it opposed and has little sway over.
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Rook Winchester: SHOWING UP UNANNOUNCED
What They Didn’t Want Debbie to See
… a congresswoman exercising her legal right to oversight, walking into “Alligator Alcatraz” — and seeing it for what it is.
What she found was more than a thousand men packed into cages, beaten by guards, denied lawyers, and fed meals dated two weeks old.
(Rook Winchester more…)Jack Brook @ Independent: French government seeking release of 86-year-old French widow detained by ICE
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 16, 2026
Congress is back in session, and there is a frantic feel in the air. Republicans appear to be assessing the fall of Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán, Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior along with his abysmal job approval numbers, rising prices, and an unpopular war in Iran that currently does not appear to have a solution that will not result in the U.S. losing face.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Max Nesterak @ Minnesota Reformer: First ICE officer charged with assault for threatening people with a gun in Minnesota
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Leslie Kaufman and Zahra Hirji @ Bloomberg: Toxic Gas-Emitting Plants Get Pollution Reprieve Under Trump
The EPA has exempted dozens of medical sterilizing facilities from complying with Biden-era rules for ethylene oxide, a carcinogen. Now it plans to ease those rules permanently.
(Leslie Kaufman and Zahra Hirji @ Bloomberg more…)
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Jacob Rosen, Olivia Gazis @ CBS: Gabbard sends criminal referrals to DOJ for whistleblower and watchdog who helped launch Trump’s first impeachment
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Jason Easley: RFK Jr. Falls Apart In Front Of The Country At House Hearing
A House hearing on health policy showed that Donald Trump isn’t the only person in the Executive Branch whose cognitive health needs to be examined.
…RFK Jr. testified before the House today in his capacity as HHS Secretary, and the results varied from troubling to deeply disturbing.
For instance, the HHS Secretary claimed that Joe Biden created the chronic disease epidemic.
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) said, “The things he’s inherited? He’s increased the deficit by more than any administration in the history of America as part of the big, beautiful bill that’s not something he inherited.”
Sec. Kennedy answered, “This president has done more to protect public health than any president in history. He is the first one. You guys are the ones that gave us the chronic disease epidemic. We’re the unhealthiest population on the face of the earth.”
Suozzi asked, “Did that all happen in the past four years of the Biden administration?”
Kennedy said, “You guys, it happened. It happened all. It was the Clinton administration. You’ve been a politician your entire life.”
(Jason Easley more…)
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James Eagle: The world is learning to live with permanent debt
(James Eagle more…)
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
ICE deaths 2026 – They deserve remembrance and justice.
- March 16: Royer Perez-Jimenez
- March 14: Naseer Paktiawil
- February 25: Nurul Amin Shah Alam
April 1 – Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz @ AP: Death of a refugee left at a Buffalo doughnut shop by Border Patrol is ruled a homicide - 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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