If your job lays you off bc cuts to govt funding, people spending less for fear of recession, or tariffs cutting into profits, please don’t expect the govt to bail you out and don’t look to billionaires bc they worked hard and are graciously spending on lux items that are fueling the economy. 😵‍💫

TurboTax makers Intuit have lobbied the government for years to block free public tax-filing. Now Trump has terminated the free IRS Direct File program, nearly a year after Intuit gave his inauguration $1M. Money in politics is the root of our dysfunction.

This book looks sooooo good!

“To get to any of us,you will have to get through all of us.” - Zohran Mamdani, 2025. Good job, NYC, and thank you.

Dear Lord. Armed ICE agents STOLE A BABY. Both the baby and the dad were US Citizens. www.latimes.com/0000019a-51e...

Mary Sheffield will become the first woman elected mayor of Detroit, CNN projects. Follow live updates. https://cnn.it/4oRiL7z

Repro wins so far: - Virginia protected its status as the last abortion access haven in the South - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court retained the three Democratic justices needed to protect abortion - New Jersey elected a Dem governor (vital as one of the few states w/zero abortion restrictions)

Trump confirms he is weaponizing hunger

I want to put this out there: I’m becoming obsessed with launch of South End Press in 1976 (my birth year). My neighborhood gave the socialist press its name, though it would leave within a few years. Fascinating in terms of Boston / nat’l / urban / ‘hood / publishing / political history. DMs open!

👀

Hearing Mamdani casually talk about the benefits of socialism without apology, with confidence, is both simple and really keeping me sane in these awful times for America.

We’re fighting over crumbs from their hoarded cakes. It’s truly unethical. Thanks for report, @oxfamamerica.bsky.social.

Two years ago, Nick Fuentes was so toxic that, after I reported on a secret meet he had with a top Texas GOP donor, the party was engulfed in scandal and voted to explicitly ban Holocaust deniers/Neo Nazis. Today, Heritage Foundation effectively said that "no enemies to our right" includes Fuentes.

Simple and to the point.

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Pssst…. Spread the word.

In case any other alum from @utaustin.bsky.social want to sign a petition against the system’s support for the Trump administration… @texasexes.org

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about once a day I think about Omar El Akkad saying, at a panel over the summer, "the world makes perfect sense if you don't give a shit about anyone but yourself" this is possibly lightly paraphrased but that is what I wrote in my notebook. and now I think about it. all the time.

“The Defense Department has confiscated the badges of the Pentagon reporters from virtually every major media organization in America,” the Pentagon Press Association said

This, which is making many of us, I imagine, make our own connections, and long for people we’ve known and loved to have safety they are being denied by these cruel institutions.

Just finished Such Times, a ‘90s AIDS novel by Christopher Coe, just published anew by @archwayeditions.bsky.social. It’s a sweet, tragic story and worth a read. I continue to be interested in the book history of AIDS and nyc publishing. Who were these editors taking a chance on such stories?

How are most Americans making sense of the WH using the shutdown to fire federal employees even while spending billions of $$s bailing out the govt in Argentina??

It’s impossible to understand how this novel, The Two Roberts by Damian Barr, doesn’t yet have a US publisher after listening to this fascinating episode of @talkart.bsky.social. Get moving, US fiction editors!

Anyone else run to see the lucky indie or university publisher when #NobelPrize for Literature is announced? Congrats to László Krasznahorkai and to New Directions (who don’t seem to be on here)! #publishing

If you can stand it, follow link for video of incident. It’s dramatic and powerful, and I don’t know how Christians can accept it and side with this militarization.

Like many others, I did some searching for what “plenary authority” means this morning, and a UK paper provided the answer rather than US media.

The cuts at the National Endowment for the Humanities go far deeper than any of these agencies - almost 70% of 179 people were terminated, despite no change to the agency's budget. There were no savings here - only idealogical destruction. #NEH

🕵🏻‍♂️ (it is a good idea and I appreciate when scholars do this, it’s generous!)

FYI happening this Thursday—free and open to all. Just click the link to register. Featuring @dwcongdon.com, @dawnd.bsky.social, and Alyssa Napier talking all things diss to book—what’s the diff b/w them, how to find a press/approach an editor, tips for proposal writing. Join us & spread the word!

Great job to all the fantastic university presses who won #lammies - @ugapress.bsky.social, @uwiscpress.bsky.social, @dukepress.bsky.social, and U of Nebraska Press. @lambdaliterary.org

I may be late to this particular title, but I’m so glad I found it anyways, and I urge anyone who hasn’t to read it. Immediately. @aaknopf.bsky.social

We at @umasspress.bsky.social are doing a fundraising campaign for our Regional Books Fund. See what authors are saying, and click on "donate" at end of page if you can spare anything. Feel free to share. Thanks! #NewEngland #books #publishing

We’re offering free vaccine clinics in Boston. Vaccines are safe, effective, and protect against serious illness. Getting vaccinated keeps you healthy and helps protect your family, friends, and community. Learn more at boston.gov/vaccine-clinics.

I grew up in this “dark red part of Texas,” and I really appreciate this good work happening there now. As an angry teen, I would have loved to see these folks on the street corner protesting.

They keep saying the quiet part (they say to each other in private) out loud.

Great overview of how these cuts will make it harder for local governments to implement traffic calming and promote car-free transportation. Drivers have always been a protected class in the U.S. but this administration is taking it to the extreme.

Heading to @asalh-bhm.bsky.social conference this week, representing @umasspress.bsky.social. Stop by the Press table and say hello, and come to our #publishing panel on Thursday at noon!

Coming off a celebration of #books at the #Provincetown Book Fest, where @umasspress.bsky.social author Cynthia Blakeley, author of a beautiful memoir on growing up in #Wellfleet on Cape, did a great job on a panel and sold fully out of her book! Get yours for a great read now. #CapeCod

I grew up in a house that supported public media and now seems a really good time to remember and emulate that. @pbs.org and @npr.org, here I come. (For a year in college, I worked driving the lil red truck (no radio, no a/c) for UT Austin’s pbs station which said on the side, “KLRU JOIN US.”)

Say this!

“I want to write down everything I know about being afraid, but I’d probably never have enough time to write anything else. Afraid is a country where they issue us passports at birth and hope we never seek citizenship in any other country.“ -Audre Lorde, in “A Burst of Light” (2/18/84)

“What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic.” -Karen Attiah

Because I’m proud to have written this up, and will forever be proud to be her son.

I am rather belatedly discovering poet and writer Fanny Howe, and really looking forward to the journey. Owe thanks to Devin Kelly for referencing her in his weekly poetry email today on Simic and other poets. #poetry

Huge congrats to @dorothyproject.bsky.social for getting a title on the @nationalbook.bsky.social NBA non-fiction longlist - The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam by Lana Lin. #publishing

Reading the selected writings of LGBTQ+ activist Urvashi Vaid, Dream of a Common Movement, & I'm struck by how prescient her term "virtual equality" ("conditional equality based on the appearance of acceptance") is proving to be in the aggressively regressive authoritarianism of the present moment.

Come to @asalh-bhm.bsky.social in Atlanta next month! I’ll be at the @umasspress.bsky.social table and will also moderate a #publishing round table on Thursday at noon with Stephanie Williams of Wayne State Uni Press and Gianna Mosser of Vanderbilt UP. See you there!

“A sign I saw in a few places in coastal Maine seems relevant here: “More Gardens, Less Fascism.” … a call to retreat into the garden, to find a refuge in roses and vegetable plots, to be healed and renewed somewhere outside the political fight.” -Ross Douthat in @nytimes.com on #bookstores