Bukele’s brother/adviser Ibrajim—the same one who asked @secrubio.govpeeps.us to extradite MS-13 members in exchange for holding U.S. deportees in CECOT—now admits an anonymous cabinet group decides who’s “innocent.” Not the courts—the Bukele family.

"I take umbrage with the idea that because we have fewer resources we’re forced to plagiarize. It undermines the respect for which so many of us have fought for—and continue to fight for— in this industry, and creates a permission structure for cheating." www.thehandbasket.co/p/refusing-t...

In Africa, the race for critical minerals isn’t just about supply chains and industrial strategy. It underscores the need to build democratic institutions to govern the new mineral rush while protecting citizens’ rights.

The US is about to be neck-deep in blood gold in Venezuela A first shipment of $100 million in gold bars almost certainly contained reserves mined with "efective slavery" by criminal armed groups

Ummmm… U.S. Lifts Sanctions on Some Iranian Oil to Get More to Market www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/w...

If the war ends with the dismantling of the regime’s repressive apparatus, the Iranian people will have a rare, if fraught, opportunity. The totalitarian mindset often survives totalitarian regimes.

Political Prisoners in El Salvador. A new report from Cristosal this month details how the capture of the Salvadoran judicial system has led to its use as a tool of political repression. timmuth.substack.com/p/political-...

1% of Mexicans own 40% of country’s wealth. Fortunes of the 22 billionaires doubled in last 5 years, to $219bn, while nearly 19 million people struggle to put food on the table. But the middle class is now larger than the poor class, a first in Mexican history. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

This is ridiculously cliche at this point but the annual US Institute of Peace budget when I worked there was ~$35m. And we were required to justify every dollar.

Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils and paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to detainees and others. After one inspection, the children just “cried and cried and cried,” a mother said. The facility denies the claims.

Since Trump returned to office Bukele has signed up for the Shield of the Americas, the Board of Peace, speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast and to be Trump’s foreign jailer. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Mexico and Colombia owe women a serious debt Despite progressive leaders who have promised progress in the fight against Gender-based violence, conditions for women in both countries continues to deteriorate

In December 2025 I received and reporter about the 911 calls from Camp East Montana. They showed reports of attempted suicide and medical negligence.

🎙️This week: The Inter-American Court condemns Honduras for trying to uproot Caribbean Garifunas. Guatemalan political elites battle over nominations to the tainted top court. Cristosal reports 245 cases of political persecution in El Salvador. beta.elfaro.net/en/elfaro-au...

‘Iron river’: Mexico’s cartel violence fuelled by trafficked firearms from US. Lax American gun laws mean weapons are readily available to buy and smuggle south of the border, contributing to extreme violence by heavily armed drug cartels and criminal groups. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Bukele has focused lobbying on courting MAGA politicians and “positioning narratives” in US media. He’s paying for it through a public electricity company that shields financial information through a private subsidiary. beta.elfaro.net/en/el-salvad...

I roll this perpetually-relevant meme out every once in awhile:

AI-fueled marketing algorithms are becoming increasingly good at influencing our behavior. That raises concern about what governments might do with these tools for propaganda to stir up war fever, explains a security researcher. buff.ly/b0Yn2J8

EXCLUSIVE: A majority of Scots would vote for independence if a referendum were to be held tomorrow, a fresh poll has found 🔗 www.thenational.scot/news/2...

Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion, according to ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis, which found the sepsis rate for women hospitalized as they miscarried in the 2nd trimester shot up by more than 50%. (Published Feb. 2025)

Jesse Jackson, whose impassioned oratory and vision of a “rainbow coalition” of the poor and forgotten made him the nation's most influential Black figure in the years between the civil rights crusades of Martin Luther King Jr. and the election of Barack Obama, died on Tuesday at 84. Follow live.

Used to be that robber barons would give away vast sums of wealth to charitable causes to launder their reputations. Now the billionaires just try to control the narrative by buying up the media companies

Trump goes full racist during Black History Month, refuses to apologize. What the research says about why this matters. www.whitetoolong.net/p/trump-goes...

In order to get Trump to lift the 10% "Liberation Day" tariff which he imposed on El Salvador and many other nations, El Salvador agrees to make it easier for US companies to mine "for critical minerals" Is gold critical? www.reuters.com/world/americ...

More than 200 killed in coltan mine collapse in east Congo, official says reut.rs/4rn3SuY

every epstein file drop underscores how elite power operates through shared socio-economic networks, regardless of people's ideological differences, populist posturing, or public feuds

@cjwade.bsky.social and I are teaching a class this semester called Crafting Resistance, where students learn (the political science of) resistance movements globally and the role of textile artists in them.

The strategy of terror and the many faces of impunity never cease to astonish. Worst of all, the fragile (very fragile) progress toward an international system for the protection of human rights is clearly in retreat (reflections prompted by the reading).

Insight: Sudanese paramilitary force abducting children in Darfur, witnesses say reut.rs/3OcM4nX

Minnesotans don’t want ICE to abduct our neighbors a little differently. We want all of it to stop. And we’ll keep doing everything we can to make that happen. If you’re outside of the state, you should too.

After executing Alex Pretti on Saturday, ICE has shifted to primarily targeting bus stops and elementary schools in my community this week. I cannot overstate how much of the ICE activity in my community is just targeting places where little kids are.

Nicaraguan court finds long-time Ortega adviser guilty of money laundering reut.rs/4bGCh3B

“This is about the election, this is about ending democracy. Let’s stop pretending.”

As #Venezuela skids deeper into a "food emergency," Trump's de facto new alliance with the repressive, corrupt regime there makes the crisis even more deadly. My article @newrepublic.com. @deanbaker13.bsky.social @dceiver.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2056...

Pam Bondi just sent a letter to Minnesota officials saying ICE will leave if the state turns over its voter database to Trump. Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.

State Terror Has Arrived www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/o...

MS NOW EXCLUSIVE: “The deportation flight is scheduled to depart from Arizona on Sunday, these people said, just days after the country’s hardline regime crushed mass protests by killing at least 3,000 demonstrators.” www.ms.now/news/trump-d...

🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional! ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.

The National Science Foundation sign on our Eisenhower Av building is now gone. The NSF mural in the foyer is removed and torn off in sheets. We were supposed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the agency in May 2025. That never happened.

Pew Research Institute (2023): • Red State Texas has about 2.1 million undocumented immigrants • Red State Florida has 1.6 M undocumented immigrants • Blue State Minnesota has 130,000. And yet only Minnesota is being occupied by masked thugs over "immigration." It's *not* about immigration.

CBS reportedly will air a piece tonight on El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison — a story that the network infamously pulled last month

A third immigrant held at Camp East Montana has died, reportedly by suicide. Victor Manuel Díaz was detained in Minnesota. He is the sixth migrant to die since Jan. 1 in ICE detention. My story: www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/i...

The scale and speed of state censorship of campus really is amazing. More than half of America's college students attend institutions in states that have passed laws censoring higher education since 2021. From @penamerica.bsky.social pen.org/report/ameri...

Jesus. www.startribune.com/ice-raids-mi...

🚨WHOA. The El Paso Medical Examiner says it will rule the death of a 55-year-old Cuban man at ICE's "Camp East Montana" tent camp as a homicide. He was allegedly choked to death by a guard during a "struggle" after he refused to enter a housing unit without his medications.

This case illustrates again the nightmarish situations created by the terrible 1996 law IIRIRA, which according to today’s decision means you can be arrested and detained under an unconstitutional law and have no option to challenge it for months and months. Expect today’s decision to go en banc.

Trump: “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT … and quickly put an end to the travesty”

#Venezuela has never been a major cocaine producer – Colombia overwhelmingly is. That makes the arrest of Nicolás Maduro and U.S. efforts to control #Venezuela unlikely to reduce cocaine flows into the U.S., an international relations scholar says. buff.ly/RlX9mDL