curated news excerpts & citations
Thom Hartmann: From Surveillance State to Kill Machine: Has the Line Already Been Crossed?
Ever think a drone could chase you down the street or fire a bullet through your living room window because you pissed off Trump, Miller, or their ICE thugs? If the answer is “that’s science fiction,” please read on: that reality may be only a few months away, and every single part of the spying and death-dealing infrastructure needed to make it happen has been quietly assembled by the Trump regime over the last fourteen months.
This Tuesday, while America was obsessively watching the latest bizarre twists in Trump’s Iran debacle, Whiskey Pete’s Pentagon rolled out a $1.5 trillion budget request that contained a line item almost nobody’s talking about: a 24,000 percent increase, from $225 million last year to $54.6 billion this year, for an outfit called the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group.
That’s the largest year-over-year jump for any program in the entire defense budget, and it’s earmarked to build out AI-driven autonomous human-killing systems inside the Special Operations Command headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.
USSOCOM “[P]rovides elite, combat-ready forces… Their responsibilities include counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, direct action, special reconnaissance, foreign internal defense, and psychological operations.”
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Ernesto Londoño and Hamed Aleaziz @ NY Times: Justice Dept. Targets Hundreds of Citizens in New Push for Denaturalization
The Trump administration is assigning denaturalization cases to regular prosecutors, which could lead to a surge of people stripped of U.S. citizenship.
(Ernesto Londoño and Hamed Aleaziz @ NY Times more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 24, 2026
On April 25, 1945, delegates from fifty nations met in San Francisco to establish a permanent forum for international cooperation: the United Nations.
Even before the U.S. entered World War II, U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill and their advisors laid out principles for an international system that could prevent future world wars. …
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Karen Attiah: Uxoricide: The Word You Don’t Know Because You’re Not Supposed To
On the Language We Don’t Have for Men Who Kill Their Wives.
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Jess Piper: Stripped for Parts
(Jess Piper more…)Phillip Powell @ Arkansas Times: Protesters express anxiety and outrage over the Little Rock data center coming to a wetland near you
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Beth Mole @ ARStechnica: RFK Jr.’s rejection of germ theory debunked in Senate hearing
Kennedy falsely argues that vaccines did little to lower childhood deaths.
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Carrie Battan @ National Geographic: Billie Eilish on inventing a greener kind of concert: ‘I have to try to make a change’
Appalled by how environmentally destructive the concert business can be, the pop star decided to do things differently. Now, after the biggest tour of her career, a new report shows how she’s creating a fresh blueprint for modern touring.
(Carrie Battan @ National Geographic more…)
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James Eagle: Why the 1970s oil shocks changed the world economy
The most important line here is the break in fossil fuel demand after the oil shocks of the 1970s. Before then, economic growth and fossil fuel consumption moved together. After the embargo and the Iranian Revolution, that link weakened sharply. The world did not stop growing. It became less dependent on burning ever more fossil fuel to do it.
(James Eagle more…)
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Adrian Carrasquillo @ Bulwark: Forget ‘Abolish ICE.’ Tom Steyer Wants to Jail ICE Agents.
And he might just be California’s next governor.
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Menelaos Hadjicostis & Lorne Cook @ Independent: Pentagon floats suspending Spain from Nato and punishing other allies over perceived lack of support in Iran war
Amy Walker @ BBC: Nato says ‘no provision’ to expel members after report US could seek to suspend Spain
Miles Taylor: Trump has plans to “attack” NATO. America is now a bigger threat to the alliance than Russia.
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, Ximena Bustillo, Jasmine Garsd @ NPR: Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump
- April 16: Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt
- March 25: Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano
- 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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