Author: sauer@technologists.com

curated news excerpts & citations

Bulwark: Trump Tells Voters: Don’t Believe Your Lying Wallets

From elections to the economy, he keeps denying reality.

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 are learning a hard lesson: A man who refuses to face facts in his own life is also unlikely to face facts about the lives of others. These voters are discovering that Trump’s denial of the election results in 2020 wasn’t a one-off. It was a forewarning of what we’re seeing now: his refusal to acknowledge the affordability crisis.

Five years ago, Trump didn’t just deny that he had lost the presidential election. He proved the severity of his delusion by trying everything, including violence, to block the transfer of power. When he ran for re-election in 2024, he made it clear that he still believed he had won in 2020.

Many people who voted for Trump in 2024 bought this absurd story. But they weren’t enough to elect him. He won because a pivotal segment of the public knew his story was bogus but voted for him anyway.
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USCCB: U.S. Bishops Issue a “Special Message” on Immigration from Plenary Assembly in Baltimore

… In a vote of 216 votes in favor, 5 votes against, and 3 abstentions, the bishops overwhelmingly approved the Special Message, with sustained applause of the body following the vote.

The full text of the bishops’ Special Pastoral Message follows:

As pastors, we the bishops of the United States are bound to our people by ties of communion and compassion in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.
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Washington Post: U.S. troops not liable in boat strikes, classified Justice Dept. memo says

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) stated in a classified opinion drawn up over the summer that personnel taking part in military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in Latin America would not be exposed to future prosecution, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The decision to pursue an opinion, drafted in July, reflects the heightened concerns within the government raised by senior civilian and military lawyers that such strikes would be illegal.

The strikes, now totaling 19 20 with a death toll of 76 80, began in September, though interagency discussions about the use of lethal force to combat drug cartels started early in the Trump administration.
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AP: Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv kills 6 people and injures at least 35

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed a major missile and drone barrage on Kyiv early Friday, killing six people, leaving gaping holes in apartment buildings and starting fires as the sound of explosions boomed across the city and lit up the night sky. A pregnant woman was among at least 35 people wounded, Ukrainian authorities said.

Russia used at least 430 drones and 18 missiles in the nighttime attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
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Rachel Hurley: Start Here: Welcome to The GriftMatrix

Yesterday, the House Oversight Committee released over 20,000 documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. Democrats on the committee cherry-picked three emails to release first, all mentioning Donald Trump. Republicans followed hours later with the full dump.

The White House immediately called it a hoax. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”

Technically, she’s right. These specific emails don’t prove Trump committed a crime.
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But let’s be clear about something else. Even if these three emails that Democrats released don’t prove Trump committed a crime, there are more than 20,000 pages in this document dump. And some of them are far more interesting …
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Your Local Epidemiologist: 5 ways our health care system has become utterly insane

A deep dive into the U.S. health care system: rising costs, corporate takeover, and why reform keeps failing.

We could be on the verge of ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history—though nothing is guaranteed.

While Congress debates whether to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage, Americans with all types of insurance are bracing for higher premiums, narrower networks, and more impossible choices.

So, to me, the debate in Washington is far too small. The real story isn’t just whether subsidies stay or go—it’s how completely insane our health care system has become, and whether there will be a serious effort to address underlying costs in the system.
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Bulwark: THE ACTUAL TRUTH (SOCIAL)

Donald Trump’s Truth Social website has its own AI search tool, which the company debuted a month after Trump signed an executive order to end the use of “Woke AI” in the federal government.

Q: “Do Trump’s Tariffs cost the American people money?”
Truth Search AI: “Yes. Tariffs are taxes on imports that U.S. importers pay and largely pass on through higher prices, so the costs are borne mainly by American businesses and consumers.”

Q: “Did Donald Trump lie about the 2020 election being ‘rigged’ and ‘stolen?’”
Truth Search AI: “Yes. Courts, Trump’s own advisers, and official investigations found no evidence that the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ or ‘stolen,’ despite his repeated claims.”

Q: “Did people storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020, because of Donald Trump?”
Truth Search AI: “Yes. Multiple official and contemporaneous records attribute the January 6, 2021, Capitol breach to a pro‑Trump crowd mobilized around his false election‑fraud claims and pressure campaign to stop certification.”

Q: “How many wars has Trump ended since taking office in 2025?”
Truth Search AI: “None. There is no verified instance of President Trump formally ending a war since taking office in January 2025.”

Q: “Have grocery prices gone down since Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025?”
Truth Search AI: “Short answer: No. As of 2025, grocery prices have not fallen since Jan. 20, 2025; they have continued to rise modestly on net.”
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Mother Jones: Trump’s anti-climate agenda is making it more expensive to own a car

The president hates EVs. But his policies are making gas cars more expensive too.
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And they aren’t just getting more expensive to buy; cars are getting more expensive to own. For most Americans, gasoline is their single-largest energy expenditure, around $2,930 per household each year on average.

While a more efficient dishwasher, light bulb, or faucet may have a higher sticker price up front—especially as manufacturers adjust to new rules—cars, appliances, solar panels, and electronics can more than pay for themselves with lower operating costs over their lifetimes. And Trump’s agenda of suddenly rolling back efficiency rules has simultaneously made it harder for many industries to do business while raising costs for ordinary Americans.
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Anne Applebaum: The Biggest Tent

To defeat autocracy in America, we need as many different people campaigning in as many different places as possible
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Ezra Klein has argued this week that the Democratic party should embrace the Spanberger and Sherill victories, not in opposition to the victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayor race, but alongside it. In his New York Times video essay, Klein argues that winning back the House or even Congress in the midterms next year—and the White House in 2028—is not about moving left or right, but about expanding the party’s tent to make room for radically different candidates who can win in both urban America and rural America.

I agree. In fact, I would add that when countries have successfully beaten back authoritarianism, they have often done so by building wide coalitions. …
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Marisa Kabas: The voices of SNAP

Recipients have become political pawns. They explained, in their own words, what Trump withholding funds has been like.

Stephanie boarded a city bus Monday morning to make the 90 minute trek from one end of Mesa, Arizona to the other. It was a long journey just for groceries, but they didn’t see any other choice: They’re a current recipient of SNAP benefits, and because the Trump administration has refused to fund the essential food program during the government shutdown, they were willing to travel wherever necessary to access fresh fruits and vegetables. A few farmers markets were participating in a program called Food Bucks, and for $30 she was able to stock up for now. “So even if it’s stressful to navigate and took all morning, I’m grateful for it,” Stephanie said. “But it shouldn’t have to be like this, of course.”
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