Author: sauer@technologists.com

curated citations to news sources

BBC: Trump faces major headache with incidents in Qatar and Poland

Into the two big foreign policy arenas sucking up much of the Trump administration’s time and effort come two major challenges in less than 24 hours.

Israel’s air raid on the offices of Hamas in Doha and a Russian drone incursion deep into Polish airspace represent two massive headaches for the White House.

And, arguably, two major affronts to the president’s authority.

After all, these are conflicts – Ukraine and Gaza – US President Donald Trump said he would deal with swiftly and decisively.

In each case, a leader he sees as a natural, if problematic ally – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – has thrown a massive spanner in the wheels of White House peace-making.
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Wired: US Taxpayers Will Pay Billions in New Fossil Fuel Subsidies Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill

The Trump administration has already added nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2025, a report released Tuesday finds, sending an additional $4 billion out the door each year for fossil fuels over the next decade. That new amount, created with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, adds to $30.8 billion a year in preexisting subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The report finds that the amount of public money the US will now spend on domestic fossil fuels stands at least $34.8 billion a year.
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2024 Derek Hunter: Kamala’s newest lie: Trump will send the army after you

… So now we have another lie: the “enemy within” lie. This is a 33-second clip of an interview Trump did with Maria Bartiromo. It started circulating Monday in left-wing circles with the claim that, were he reelected, he would consider using the military against his political opponents.
(2024 Derek Hunter more…)

Bulwark: Understanding Trump’s Pivot to “Crime”

Where does Kamala Harris go to get her apology?

NY Times: Trump Says Having ‘a Little Fight With the Wife’ Should Not Count as a Crime

President Trump said that offenses that happen at home should not undermine his record of crime reduction in Washington.
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“Just a casual dismissal of domestic violence as a crime,” Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican political strategist, wrote on social media.

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – September 8, 2025

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The administration appears to be in a rush to replace democracy with a dictatorship before the whole administration collapses. On Saturday, Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that 46% of Americans—almost half of them—“strongly disapprove” of the job Trump is doing as president while only 24% “strongly approve, a 22% enthusiasm gap.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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NY Times: Russia Steps Up Disinformation Efforts as Trump Abandons Resistance

The Kremlin has begun a campaign to sway the parliamentary election in Moldova in what could become a new model of election interference online.

Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has dismantled the American government’s efforts to combat foreign disinformation. The problem is that Russia has not stopped spreading it.

How much that matters can now be seen in Moldova, a small but strategic European nation that has since the end of the Cold War looked to Europe and the United States to extract itself from Moscow’s shadow.
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Atlantic: A Massive Vaccine Experiment

In just seven months, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has undone decades of vaccine synchrony.
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The consequences of the current fracturing may not be apparent right away. Immunity takes time to erode. “If we stop vaccinating today, we would not have outbreaks tomorrow,” Orenstein said. When the fallout lands, Kennedy could be long out of the government, and limiting the damage he’s done will be someone else’s problem.
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WSJ: Hiring Stalled in August, With 22,000 New Jobs

Revised figures show a summer slowdown, with 13,000 jobs lost in June

U.S. job growth continued to slow down in August, a sign that the labor market is deteriorating markedly.

The government also revised its numbers from earlier in the summer, and said the economy lost a net 13,000 jobs in June. It was the first such decline since December 2020.
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – September 4, 2025

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Because of Kennedy’s history of repeating debunked lies and breaking promises he made to the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the highest ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked that the committee swear Kennedy in before he began his testimony. Committee chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) declined. Wyden said: “This committee’s unwillingness to swear this witness is basically a message that it is acceptable to lie to the Senate Finance Committee about hugely important questions like vaccines.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)

Al Jazeera: Fact checking Robert F Kennedy’s statements to Senate on COVID, vaccines

WSJ: RFK Jr.’s Operation Warped Memory

The health secretary can’t keep his vaccine story straight.
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Christina Pagel: Trump’s war on his perceived enemies is escalating: faster, broader, harsher

Trump is weaponising the presidency to punish critics, silence dissent, and brand whole states as ‘the enemy’.

Today I want to talk about the dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s attacks on its enemies, using whatever means are at its disposal. To date, I’ve logged 172 actions against perceived enemies since Jan 2025. Over half of these actions have come in just the last two months.
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Ken Klippenstein: Los Angeles Troop Deployment Was Illegal, Judge Says

The battle over troops in America’s streets is just beginning.

When Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, a seasoned Army National Guard officer, questioned the way homeland security was carrying out its operations in Los Angeles earlier this year, Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino questioned his loyalty to the country.

That fascinating nugget is contained in the 52-page ruling by federal judge Charles Breyer, who today said that President Trump violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a 150-year-old law that severely restricts how the military can engage in domestic law enforcement.
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Closer to the Edge: An Interview with Betty Osceola

On the edge of the Florida Everglades, where ancestral lands meet razor wire, a detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz” has become the center of a legal and moral battle. Just days after a federal judge ordered the site shut down, our editor-in-chief, Rook T. Winchester, spoke with Betty Osceola — Miccosukee tribal judge, and longtime protector of this land. What follows is a conversation about resistance, and the deeper currents beneath the headlines.
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Rook: Do you feel like people outside Florida understand what’s happening here?

Betty: No. I don’t think they do. Because if they did, there would be more outrage. There would be more people standing with us. There would be more media coverage. When the media ignores it, when the public ignores it, that’s when they get away with things like this. That’s when they bulldoze the land and say, “Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to.” And it’s too late. There are already environmental laws that are supposed to protect the environment. Those laws need to be upheld.
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