Democracy • Executive Power • Financial

Andy Kroll — ProPublica (Oct. 17, 2025)

What You Should Know About Russ Vought, Trump’s Shadow President

From the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russell Vought has drawn the road map for Trump’s second term. Vought has consolidated power to an extent that insiders say they feel like “he is the commander in chief.”

Corruption • Executive Power • Global • Violence

Chris Hedges — The Chris Hedges Report

America’s Suez Crisis

Amidst the US-Iran negotiations, Alastair Crooke says, Iran is not incentivized to end the war. Instead, it seeks to upend America's hegemonic dominance of the region — and "break the paradigm."

Corruption • Executive Power • Human Rights • ICE • Legal

Julie K Brown — The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown

Could a former Brazilian model be the whistleblower Melania is afraid of?

The First Lady’s unprecedented public statement about Jeffrey Epstein yesterday raised a lot of questions about what, if anything, is about to be revealed about Donald and Melania Trump’s relationship with the late sex trafficker.

Executive Power • Fascism • Human Rights • ICE • Legal • Violence

Mica Rosenberg — ProPublica (February, 9, 2026)

The Children of Dilley

ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.

Executive Power • Fascism • Human Rights • ICE • Resistance • Violence • White Supremacy

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Vanity Fair

The Blood-and-Soil Nationalism That Killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good

Pretti and Good were labeled “domestic terrorists” of The Homeland—rhetoric employed by the administration to justify the state taking life, by associating the dead with national villainy.

Executive Power • Fascism • Legal • Resistance • Violence

Christopher Armitage — The Existentialist Republic

Increasing Calls From the Public Saying “Fight or Resign”

Elected officials who refuse to use their power should lose it.

Executive Power • Journalism • Legal • Press Freedom • Threat Management

Margaret Sullivan — The Guardian

The loss of editorial freedom at 60 Minutes is a sorry milestone

As with so many of the red alerts – lawsuits, threats, changes in long-held practices that protect the public’s right to know – the problem involves Donald Trump’s overweening desire to control the media.

Democracy • Democratic Party • Disinformation • Elections • Executive Power

Jay Kuo — The Status Kuo

Trump’s “Meet the Press” Tantrum Also Revealed His Midterm Plans

His attacks on California’s ongoing vote count are really about challenging the November midterms results.

Democracy • Economy • Executive Power • Fascism • Resistance • Social Justice and Equity

Thom Hartmann — The Hartmann Report

What Happens If "They" Win?

The generations that defeated fascism in the 1770s, 1860s, and 1940s understood something simple but profound: democracy survives only if ordinary people are willing to defend it. Are we today?

Culture • Democracy • Elections • Executive Power • Fascism • Resistance • White Supremacy

Richard Schrader — Bad Energy

Orban Turns to Dust

What a world, what a world.

Corruption • Democracy • Disinformation • Executive Power • Fascism • Press Freedom • Technology

Gil Duran — The Nerd Reich (04/21/2026)

How to Purge Palantir

And how I got permanently banned from X.

Democracy • Disinformation • Elections • Executive Power • Health

The Big Picture and Jay Kuo — The Big Picture

The MAHA-MAGA Breakup

The political marriage brokered by RFK Jr. was doomed from the get-go. And Republicans may pay a steep electoral price in November.

Corruption • Democracy • Executive Power • Fascism • Violence

Henry A. Giroux — LA Progressive (04/24/2026)

When Gangster Capitalism Becomes Government

Socialism or barbarism, democracy or gangster rule, shared futures or organized cruelty. History opened the question. What remains is whether people will answer it.

Corruption • Democracy • Executive Power • Legal

Christopher Armitage — The Existentialist Republic (04/22/2026)

The Chief Justice and His Wife Took $20 Million From Firms He Rules On. I'm Filing for His Disbarment Today.

The men and women running this system built their careers on the assumption that nobody was paying attention. We noticed.

Corruption • Democracy • Economy • Executive Power • Financial

Mitch Jackson — Uncensored Objection. Law. Facts. No Spin.

Minutes Before Trump Speaks, Someone Gets Rich: The BBC Just Exposed The Insider Trading Operation The White House Wants Buried

The evidence shows a consistent pattern of trading spikes minutes and hours before Donald Trump moves the markets with his mouth. The evidence is not complicated. The evidence is in the timestamps.

Corruption • Democracy • Disinformation • Executive Power • Journalism

Judd Legum — Popular Information

The media blackout of Jared Kushner’s historic, ongoing corruption scandal

As Trump's son-in-law returns to Pakistan for more talks with Iran, major news outlets are largely ignoring an egregious conflict of interest.

Democracy • Disinformation • Executive Power • Fascism • Russia

Jim Stewartson — MindWar: The Psychological War on Democracy

The Enemies He Created: Trump’s Paranoia Spiral

Paranoia metabolizes humiliation into persecution—and shame into grandiosity.

Democracy • Executive Power • Global • Legal

Cristina Stassis — Military Times

Automatic registration for US military draft-eligible men to begin in December

Automatic registration into the U.S. military draft pool for eligible men is slated to begin in December 2026.

Democracy • Executive Power • Impacts • Safety • Violence

Judd Legum and Noel Sims — Popular Information

The $1.7 trillion military budget includes a massive slush fund for Trump’s political allies

Last week, President Donald Trump declared that the federal government cannot afford to spend “any money for day care” because “we’re fighting wars.”

Artificial Intelligence • Executive Power • Surveillance • Technology

Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz — The New Yorker

Sam Altman May Control Our Future - Can He Be Trusted?

New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI.

Corruption • Disinformation • Executive Power • Violence

Nick Turse — The Intercept

Casualty Cover-Up: The Pentagon Is Hiding U.S. Losses Under Trump in the Middle East

The Pentagon has sent outdated statements on the number of U.S. troops killed or wounded during the Iran war, resulting in undercounts.

Corruption • Democracy • Executive Power • Legal • Surveillance

Kait Justice — Downwind of Truth with Kait Justice

Is the Barr Family Blocking The Epstein Investigation Because It Would Expose What's Being Built Right Now?

Three threads, fifty years, a 1973 Sci-Fi novel and the architecture of a sovereign class that answers to no one.

Corruption • Democracy • Disinformation • Executive Power • Fascism

Timothy Snyder — Timothy Snyder (04/04/2026)

The Next Coup Attempt

As the war lengthens, the chance that it will be exploited for a coup attempt increases.

Democracy • Executive Power • Fascism • Human Rights • ICE • Violence

Thom Hartmann — The Hartmann Report

“ICE Was My Idea”: The Kind of Moment History Writes About Later

The shift to fascism isn’t loud or obvious; it’s gradual, justified, and dangerously easy to accept...

Democracy • Disinformation • Elections • Executive Power • Fascism

Doug Bock Clark — ProPublica

Trump Officials Attended a Summit of Election Deniers Who Want the President to Take Over the Midterms

“The meeting shows that the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only grown better organized and are now embedded in the machinery of government.”

Democracy • Disinformation • Economy • Executive Power • Financial

Thom Hartmann — The Hartmann Report

The National Debt Is the Evidence of the Crime: Who Pocketed the $38 Trillion?

The national debt isn’t the cause of our problems: it’s the receipt. It’s the paper trail of the largest upward transfer of wealth in 250 years of American history…

Corruption • Democracy • Disinformation • Executive Power • Journalism • Press Freedom

Matt Gertz — Media Matters

Paramount is mangling CBS — and CNN may be next

Trump’s corruption makes capitulation a media business plan.

Democracy • Executive Power • Human Rights

Media Benjamin — Counterpunch

Suffocating an Island: What the U.S. Blockade Is Doing to Cuba

Who will win this demonic game Trump and Rubio are playing with the lives of eleven million Cubans?

Democracy • Disinformation • Elections • Executive Power • Fascism • Journalism • Social Media

Parker Molloy — The New Republic

The Media Malpractice That Sent America Tumbling Into Trumpism

Political journalists need to stop pretending they don’t know what Republicans are going to do.

Democracy • Disinformation • Elections • Executive Power • Fascism • Legal

Marc Elias — Democracy Docket

The DOJ's Fulton County Raid to Seize Ballots is Really About Future Elections

The department has demanded this highly sensitive data from all 50 states and has already sued 23 states, including DC, for refusing to comply. Pam Bondi even attempted to leverage the tragic killing of Alex Pretti to obtain this data from Minnesota.

Democracy • Executive Power • Fascism • ICE • Journalism • Press Freedom

Committee to Protect Journalists — CPJ

CPJ condemns arrests of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort over Minnesota protests coverage

It is highly unusual for a journalist to be charged with a felony in relation to their reporting.

Democracy • Executive Power • Fascism • ICE • Violence • White Supremacy

Isaac Stanley-Becker — The Atlantic (Gift)

Tim Walz Fears a Fort Sumter Moment in Minneapolis

The Minnesota governor warns of a national unraveling.

Corruption • Democracy • Democratic Party • Elections • Executive Power • Fascism • Social Justice and Equity • Threat Management

Chris Hedges — The Chris Hedges Report

The Last Election

The presidential election in 2024 may be the last free vote taken in the United States. Dictatorships only hold elections with predetermined outcomes or do not hold them at all. Trump is no exception.

Democracy • Economy • Europe • Executive Power • Global

Garrett M. Graff — Wired

We Are Witnessing the Self-Immolation of a Superpower

With Donald Trump’s actions in Greenland, Minneapolis, and Venezuela, a foreign enemy could not invent a better chain of events to wreck the standing of the United States.

Democracy • Executive Power • Fascism • Human Rights • ICE • Legal • Violence

Whistleblower Aid

Hidden DHS Policy Encourages ICE Agents to Break into Homes without Warrants

“This administration’s secretive policy advocates conduct that the Supreme Court has described as ‘the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed’ – that is the warrantless physical entry of a home.’

Corruption • Cyber Security • Democracy • Disinformation • Elections • Executive Power • Fascism • Legal

The Big Picture and Jay Kuo — The Big Picture

Trump Is Screwing with the Midterms. Will He Succeed?

Will Trump screw with the midterms? Will they be free and fair? Will we even have them?

Democracy • Executive Power • Fascism • Human Rights • Violence • White Supremacy

Thom Hartmann — The Hartmann Report

Why Has ICE Turned Minneapolis Into a Battlefield?

Why the largest-ever ICE operation isn’t just about immigration, but about who gets to walk freely in America’s cities and who pays with their lives…

Democracy • Executive Power • Journalism • Legal • Press Freedom • Threat Management

Seth Stern and Chip Gibbons — The Guardian

The FBI’s raid of journalist’s home was the product of decades of backsliding

The trend of invading newsrooms, in violation of federal law, has now spread to the highest levels of the federal government

Democracy • Executive Power • Global • Human Rights • Violence

Anne Applebaum — Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum

Spheres of Influence

This is a criminally short-sighted policy. For seventy years, American prosperity and influence have been based on a network of allies who worked with us, not because they were coerced, but because they shared our values.

Executive Power • Fascism • Global • Violence

Jonah Valadez — The Intercept

The List of Countries Trump is Threatening With War Keeps Growing

President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of getting out of foreign wars. He keeps talking about starting more of them.

Democracy • Disinformation • Executive Power • Fascism • Legal • Russia • Violence

Julian Borger — The Guardian

The ‘Putinization’ of US foreign policy has arrived in Venezuela

Trump is no longer bending the rules – he is demolishing them, with consequences far beyond Caracas.

Corruption • Democracy • Disinformation • Elections • Executive Power • Resistance

George A. Polisner — Leadership Matters

The Disappearing Thin Red Line

For decades, Republicans have relied on a rebranded cycle of political marketing—Silent Majority, Reagan Revolution, Moral Majority, Tea Party, MAGA—all designed to divide voters along emotional fault lines while stealthily consolidating wealth and power at the top.

Corruption • Democracy • Executive Power • Legal • Resistance • Threat Management

Christopher Armitage — The Existentialist Republic

The 2026 Election Has Already Been Rigged and I Can Prove It

What would you do if watching an election be cancelled or stolen in real time?

Democracy • Executive Power • Fascism • Legal • Safety • Threat Management • Violence

Nick Turse — The Intercept

U..S. Military Willing to Attack "Designated Terrorist Organizations" Within America, General Says

“If I had no concerns and I was confident in the lawful order, I would definitely execute that order.”

Corruption • Democracy • Executive Power • Fascism • Financial • Global • Human Rights

The Big Picture and Todd Beeton — The Big Picture

The Disturbing Return Of The Prodigal Son-In-Law

Jared Kushner is so back, and what he's up to should concern us all.

Executive Power • Fascism • Human Rights • Safety • Threat Management

Jim Naureckas — FAIR

FBI Is Making an Enemies List—and Most Corporate Media Didn’t Even Check It Once

Congratulations—you may be headed for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism.”

Corruption • Democracy • Executive Power

Paul Waldman — Public Notice

Why MAGA is coming apart at the seams

Turns out they're not in it for Trump, they're in it for themselves.

Corruption • Disinformation • Executive Power • Human Rights • Legal

Hafiz Rashid — The New Republic

Trump’s FBI Spent Nearly $1 Million on Redacting Epstein Files

A new report reveals the FBI’s frantic “special redaction project” when they thought the Epstein files would be released.

Democracy • Executive Power • Resistance • Social Justice and Equity

Rebecca Solnit — Meditations in an Emergency

Revolutionary Weather (and the Baboon in the Ruins)

Many Republicans saw that Trump was in decline, possibly rapid decline, and that their future lay not in the slavish deference we've seen for nine years but in separating themselves from him.

Disinformation • Elections • Executive Power

Anna Merlan — Mother Jones

Majorie Taylor Greene No Longer Trusts the Plan

After feuding with Trump, the congresswoman resigns and casts doubt on the QAnon conspiracy theory she once promoted on her way out the door.

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