WaPo: Why smaller houses can lead to happier lives. Fascinating article draws on experts in Mexico, Colombia & Europe. Free link: wapo.st/49qfhDa

Health Dept. to Freeze $10 Billion in Funding to 5 Democratic States www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/u...

Let's be clear: The Trump administration is punishing children, families, and hardworking child care providers because of a racist and fraudulent conspiracy theory posted by a bigoted YouTube account. This is not how a democracy should run.

The childcare voucher program POTUS trying to freeze serves 1.4 million children with low-income, working parents GOP has supported bcz parents must work (or do related activity) & care market based, not publicly produced. Grew from 1990s welfare reform Freeze'd destroy jobs & destabilize families

The chemical and engineers union merged with the paper union who merged with the forest union then steel union who had previously merged with the rubber union, then they started organizing service workers Now the chemical and engineer journalists are joining the news guild For those keeping tabs.

"the pro-low-income worker tilt of wage gains during the Biden recovery was something we haven’t seen since the “Great Compression” of the 1940s." paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-new-k-in...

Compare and contrast how the media covered the Minnesota daycare story to how they covered the estimated $64B of fraud in Trump's PPP program

News. Trump to personally oversee the reconstruction of the presidential palace in Caracas.

Daycare centers were also the primary target of the Satanic panic, because fundamentally American religious conservatism is opposed to women having jobs outside the home.

NBC’s survey of social media attacks on Somali child care providers in MN, Ohio & WA.

Why was our lovely dog barking at 4:35 this morning? Package delivery. WTF Amazon.

You can’t report illegal acts because you don’t want to compromise them being carried out is an interesting take, if true

So the people who don’t want any gun laws in the US charged a president of a foreign country with illegal gun possession in his foreign country? Stop looking for the hypocrisy; it’s their point.

How are voters meant to understand how serious things are if in lieu of shouting fire AND going into building with hoses, you're simply posting fire safety suggestions on social media? Not introducing articles of impeachment is a message that Trump hasn't committed impeachable offenses.

Unbelievable: Washpost Opinion editors were in such a rush to publish this editorial, and then they realize they need to water down that headline (new version on the right) (h/t @north-easton.bsky.social)

We join the international labor community in condemning President Trump’s unconstitutional actions in Venezuela. www.ituc-csi.org/ituc-tuca-ve...

If Trump lives beyond his term, he will never again be able to travel outside the US.

fwiw it’s been about six weeks since Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras who had been convicted of trafficking drugs into the US

The demonization of Somalis is no different than the demonization of Haitians before the election. It's a political attack and has to be actively fought—not through half-measures or expressions of tepid concern but by demanding decency from society and respect for all of humanity.

I wonder if Edward Tufte will be available to make some beautiful graphs to commemorate the trump administration's greatest screwups.

They'll probably try to ban Minnesotans from wearing face masks and gloves: "How the hell can we racially profile you if we can't see your skin?"

Calling all Edward Tufte fans!

Find me the conservative parents with kids in daycare who would be okay with a group of anonymous men, some masked, some with cameras, being allowed without their permission into their kid’s daycare in the middle of the day to *film their kids*. Find me one.

Shirley took footage outside 9 MN daycare centers, claiming they weren't caring for kids. (He went when they weren't open, or to the wrong door, or providers didn't answer b/c of the 8 or 9 guys - some masked - outside.) Harms his dogwhistle caused: 🧵1/4 www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

Please read. www.startribune.com/mn-daycare-f...

According to the new rules, if you and a few friends go to a defense contractor’s testing facility and you say “where are the missiles” and they don’t let you in then all federal funds for defense contractors will be frozen

Mamdani: "The cost of childcare will no longer discourage young adults from starting a family, because we will deliver universal childcare for the many by taxing the wealthiest few"

2026 is getting Albany to tax the rich to pay for universal childcare. Get in where you can. There are a number of groups currently organizing for this so you won't need to reinvent the wheel.

With the holidays in full swing, we’re sharing our wish list: fair compensation, AI protections, work-life balance, better benefits, and layoff protections. We’ll need solidarity from both the public and our fellow union members to make it happen. Happy holidays, from the Hearst Union! ❤️

Happy 2026! To start the year, here's a tree ring chiton, a 5cm ocean mollusk that sticks to rocks. Instead of having obvious eyes on a head, it's got 100s of tiny eyes embedded in the hard plates on its back, each with a rock crystal to focus light. Its top is one big eye spying on the world above

BREAKING: Explosions felt across New York City as full socialism begins

Within hours of arriving in war-ravaged Portland, hundreds of National Guard troops are reportedly already lost at Powell’s Books: tinyurl.com/4mw4n9h2

ICE confirmed today that its agents are in fact now waiting at the base of trees to zip-tie leaves in bags the moment they turn brown and then carry them away in unmarked vans to unknown locations: tinyurl.com/ysx95cct

No NYC political article is complete without a Hank Sheinkopf quote (and a good one).

New: Cop City RICO Cases Dismissed Years After 61 Activists Charged as Criminal Conspiracy Racketeering charges against dozens indicted as co-conspirators in the Stop Cop City movement were dismissed yesterday marking a legal victory for the movement unicornriot.ninja/2025/cop-cit...

5 million-plus kindergartners now live in counties where schools don’t have “herd immunity” for measles, Washington Post reporters found. WaPo also built a tool to look up your own county. Exceptional, and alarming work by @laurenweberhp.bsky.social @caitlingilbert.bsky.social et al. (Gift link.)

come for the sewer facts and stay for the incredible showing of humanity. thank you for the kindness you bring to the skyline and life @neorsd.org

together? in solidarity? is there anything we can't do: for those suffering in an increasingly inhuman justice system; for our trans kin targeted by this wretched government; for immigrants scapegoated by the callous and the cruel? for, in and through all this, ourselves?

we in this country (and, I'd argue, the world, but I'm not here to argue tonight) are challenged to make of our present situation something better. it's a tall order

snakes leave behind whole skins. all manner of flying creatures, not just butterflies, do them one better, whole new selves from wriggling worms. rocks into gems. mystics die to the flesh to be reborn in the spirit. rebirth is the rule, not the stray exception, if we can grasp it

In a lawless, way-too-online administration, all it takes some fucking weirdo with a camera turning up at daycares to block a federal program abcnews.go.com/US/hhs-freez...

the racism coming from the entire conservative movement targeting the somali community is so goddam disgusting and its just being completely ignored

The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.

Washington families with income in the bottom 20% pay a whopping 13.8% of their total income in taxes. Those with income in the top 1% pay only 4.1% of their income. That’s untenable. Let's pass a Millionaires’ Tax in 2026.

What’s going on with the daycares in Minneapolis?

T’was the night before New Year’s and all through the town not a creature was stirring and especially not a graphic designer.

The rumors about daycare centers are extremely "fit" for virality: having both novelty & familiarity (drawing on anti-immigrant tropes of criminality & exploitation); making emotional/identity appeals; are *participatory* in that ppl can create their own “evidence” by investigating local centers.

The Trump administration is freezing federal child care funding to all states, not just Minnesota. abcnews.go.com/US/hhs-freezin...