a youtube conspiracy theorist spreading racist panic, that helped push the governor to drop his re-election bid, that has been the excuse for randos to harass immigrants, is now backed up by ICE and CBP agents unleashed to target more immigrants, and an agent has already shot and killed a person

“Maybe tomorrow.”

It's good to use the resources at hand to fight because sometimes you win. Also, I keep thinking of the period after this man was killed and how a group of people tried to impose a new social reality. It didn't work. This too is a lesson.

I was thinking my New Year's resolution would be try to move as much news consumption as I can to an RSS Feed Reader but could news slow down so I could do that

New: the Berwyn/Cicero Rapid Response team is reporting that several dozen federal agents arrived in the Chicago area today, warning community members of a possible uptick in ICE/CBP activity in the coming days.

in "in case you missed it I'm a PIC abolitionist news" when an audience member at the immigration panel asked what they could do even in red states, I said "close detention centers" and "fight 287g agreements"—I don't think it's news that I believe we should do that, but felt worth underlining

running in Florida's 19th, this slightly tranquilized RETVRN to social studies guy also says "We need soldiers to support President Trump in '26"

I'll be talking about my new feature on resistance to ICE, part of the special immigration issue of The New Republic, at 4p ET today—RSVP here to join this online event: www.eventbrite.com/e/this-is-no...

lots of cop hagiography today, while this is also a big part of the story of police and J6:

in their new story on Lia Smith, the Times comes as close as it has to printing in the paper that someone thinks the "argument" they helped spread like wildfire might be responsible for Lia's death

I wrote a kind of January 6 piece for 2026: newrepublic.com/article/2049...

extremely wild to be watching a NYPD press conference with Zohran Mamdani up there

I wrote a kind of January 6 piece for 2026: newrepublic.com/article/2049...

I wrote a book about January 6 and what I called the "slow civil war" in which it was a battle, called The Undertow. In 2022 Vanity Fair published an excerpt of the in-progress called "January 6 Was Only the Beginning." I think we really nailed that headline... www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06...

The worst part though was the aftermath. The insurrectionists were in our own workplace. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz would be walking around as if nothing ever happened. I had to go through a military checkpoint to get to work. What difference did it make if the perpetrators were in the building?

cathartic, clear, on “coup”: “Why am I harping on about this? First, because it is important that we tell the truth, and second, because the words we use to describe things matter… The more this sort of stuff is allowed to go unchallenged, the more it becomes the settled version of events.”

I don’t think it’s that contradictory or confusing, that this administration says some laws are real but breaks others, regards their national borders as real but violates others…?

When a news outlet writes of January 6, “The political parties refuse to agree to a shared history of the event”—as the AP did here—but not that Trump’s supporters are lying about an event we all watched happen live, how is that not going along with Trump’s lies

The Hilton Hotel that refused reservations from DHS officials has now backpedalled and said it will accommodate them. Came after DHS X account posted emails. For years the right coalesced around businesses being able to refuse customers of certain demographics www.404media.co/hilton-hotel...

couldn’t figure out why I was feeling pretty good all day despite the January 5th of it all, but then just obliterated at six, and remembered I still had covid ten days ago

On the other side of this, afaik every hotel ICE/CBP was confirmed to have stayed at in the Chicago area was a Marriott property.

have been thinking all weekend about how journalism contains some writers with a deep understanding of what historians do and how what journalists do is different even if sometimes complementary—and many of the writers most utterly dismissive of history even existing

Lot of disorienting happenings in contemporary immigration enforcement and politics. Join me, @melissagiragrant.com, and AIC Deputy Legal Director Raul Pinto to talk about what's happening and what can be done about it, in a conversation moderated by @gregsargent.bsky.social. Tomorrow at 4pm ET!

(is it possible what’s going on is so obviously state violence and undeniably documented and discussed that people have dropped the whole “trump is gaslighting us” thing)

there are only three “hits” here worth saving sorry but some of the 90s was very bad on the radio

sunday before the first monday in january is a void

Dan Bongino’s departure leaves Comstock Act-loving, gender-affirming care-hating former Missouri AG Andrew Bailey as deputy director of the FBI. Does not bode well, especially with fetal personhood lover Josh Craddock in the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel

You would be shocked how many times I had to point out to people in 2023 and 2024 that the pro-Palestine protests were an antiwar movement

admittedly people are still posting through this, but it is wild, after having lived through the 1990s and 2000s, to see there are people saying that there is no organized left or no anti-war movement in the US

vibes-based international chaos

The ignorance of folks who are flailing in their efforts to make sense of this moment does not make them the enemy, and verbally slapping them around won't make you feel better for very long. They are poor stand-ins for your actual enemies.

None of us knows exactly what's going to happen next. Too much is being decided by chaotic buffoons. Even if you accurately map what major players would do to best serve their own interests, that's not a reliable map. Uncertainty is difficult and also a real condition.

The kidnapping of Maduro inaugurates a highly dangerous era of U.S. empire that for perhaps the first time in an era of mass media is not pretending to be anything other than a violent, extractive enterprise of domination.

earlier:

MS NOW confirms that Maduro will be taken to Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), the same facility—with horrific conditions—that held prominent prisoners like El Chapo, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Sean Combs, as well as ICE detainees.

I know a lot of people in the US (myself included) are posting through it right now, but I am sure even very smart people are not privy to some inside info about this “actually” being about the Epstein files

the president reserves the right to indict any foreign head of state in US courts in order to take control of their country, wants credit for men taking their wives and daughters to dinner in Washington, and complains about Democratic mayors ungrateful for “saving” their cities

the important marble and onyx shopping seems to have bled into the president’s available energy to announce his kidnapping of a head of state

real question, are they going to end up at MDC? www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

The World Policeman, now with qualified immunity

all I’ve got is that the idea that you can commit any act of violence and say you were just executing a warrant is chilling and also common to US police

what

I’m no longer Catholic but I’m sure I was for a lot longer than these crusadecore losers

lingered long enough on a garden youtuber to get to the videos about how she realized “self-sufficiency” wasn’t individuals raising their own dozens of llamas and goats or each homesteader having their own raw milk dairy and maybe they need to work communally, to share, to help others

like much of what’s been done to the media in this era: deeply embarrassing and also dangerous

always read @natashalennard.bsky.social: "It’s high time that Democratic leaders treat the assault on trans youth for what it is: the attempted eradication of an entire category of persons, against which committed political opposition should be the baseline."

Seems like there's a line to be drawn from Occupy Wall Street to Bernie as national figure to AOC to Mamdani. Many other factors, of course! But maybe messy, beautiful 2011, crushed so brutally by Bloomberg & countless other mayors, forgotten in the Trump years since, was a turning point after all.

congratulations to the anti-porn and anti-sex work groups for helping create an internet where independent adult sex workers have been exploited, ripped off, and then run off and are now being replaced by on-demand CSAM

Mamdani’s first act as mayor? Announcing the city as an interested party in my slumlord landlord Pinnacle’s bankruptcy auction. (And a slew of executive orders addressing housing!)