one of the reasons i am always on about elite persuasion is that i have seen elite persuasion operate in real time. as toby documents here, the radical anti-trans push in the uk didn't come from some "bottom-up backlash," but was orchestrated and organized primarily at the most elite levels

in the guidance on trans people, right where they say transphobia is not transphobia, they felt it necessary to add that homophobia is not homophobia just a little glimpse into the future

This is also a really clear explainer of all the different Trump crypto grifts

“Everyone, especially in South Sudan, wanted to know if the US really had cut off aid. It was easier for them to believe that the aid organizations were lying to them than to think that the United States would do this.”

One of the most psychotic legal proposals I've ever seen

I am just so upset by this. Everyone must read.

Amazing the personal risks people will take to preserve archival material www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Dear god. Very, very serious allegations of mass civil rights violations at the State of Florida's Everglades immigration detention center (officially known as "Alligator Alcatraz").

This is NUTS www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usai...

New, from me: American taxpayers will spend billions of hours and hundreds of billions of dollars — not to pay their taxes, but to report them to the government. Thank Trump, who killed Direct File, a free tax high-quality reporting tool that IRS had built. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/what-the-d...

c'est abominable. et l'europe s'en fout apparemment complètement. www.lorientlejour.com/article/1502...

Been thinking about it since I saw JK Rowling posted this yesterday about the IOC's new policy, calling Imane Khelif a man. Imane Khelif was born female. She was raised as a girl. Her original birth certificate says female. She's always been a woman. But sure. "Men punching women."

Monstrous racist. Still astounds me, even after more than ten years of relentless repetition. Just the worst person imaginable to be president.

The AP's story on the IOC's new policy mentions that it "also restricts" athletes like two-time Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya. That word "also" is doing a lot of work. New piece on who this policy is actually about: www.readtpa.com/p/the-iocs-n...

Yesterday morning I stepped outside on my balcony for coffee with my wife and our neighbor. The drone was as low as it has ever been. We saw it over our heads. Below, our alleyway had turned into a parking lot for displaced people’s cars. A school next door is hosting around 1500 people.

Le niveau d'ignominie de ces journalistes, c'est effarant ! Et bravo au maire qui serait en droit pour bien moins que cela de s'énerver et de porter plainte !

IR people who decry gender studies or arguments are fish refusing to believe the study of water is important.

I have had COUNTLESS convos where reporters ask me “okay but Trump hasn’t actually deported as many people as Biden (or Obama), right?” and what I try to stress in response is “the real story is how hard it is, and getting harder, for us even to know.” Must-read. apnews.com/article/trum...

Israeli forces shot all four members of the Bani Odeh family in the head, including their 5yo and 7yo. The 7yo, Othman, was blind and had special needs. This comes a day after Israeli settlers shot 28yo Amir Moatasem Odeh and stabbed his father.

Will Wilkinson wrote about this a few years ago modelcitizen.substack.com/p/the-densit... @wlknsn.xyz

I'm teaching about early 20th century eugenics today and was reminded that 9 years ago Republican Representative Steve King was stripped of his committee assignments by his GOP colleagues for this post that simply states what is now bog standard GOP policy/rhetoric on immigration and "civilization."

Some children in Dilley were so distraught they cut themselves or talked about suicide, parents told ProPublica. They said kids lost their appetites after finding worms and mold on their food, had trouble sleeping, and were constantly sick.

So the confrontations, violent apprehensions, and general fear bearing down on communities like Minnesota is only the beginning of the nightmare. Behind the scenes, Orwellian anti-judicial antics thwart lawful recourse. And hidden from sight, non-citizens are tortured for being noncitizens. 29/

The government says the people being deported are violent criminals, and they treat them inhumanely. But mostly they are subjecting ordinary people to extraordinary punishments.

We have a Boston Review Forum out today on the Democratic Party in a time of authoritarianism www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

My latest In Gaza, an ‘apocalyptic wasteland’ foretold wapo.st/4rrkWAb

Look at the photos. The thing I heard often working on the USAID Gaza response from our partners in Gaza was the field of dead bodies - men, women, children - that fanned out around IDF checkpoints in the Netzarim corridor. Shot by IDF soldiers for no reason (unless "for fun" counts as a reason).

This is such a good illustration of how the ACA enhanced subsidies worked. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...

“You are good to go.” Good to go?!?! This is what ICE tells a young woman they tossed out into dangerously freezing temperatures after four agonizing days in detention at Whipple. Today’s front page Strib report: www.startribune.com/no-humanity-...

What we are watching is a paramilitary force learning that they can kill with impunity, that the regime will smear the victim and defend them. Unless politicians and the legal system exerts accountability, it will not stop. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/past-the-b...

Stuff like this was obviously at stake in 2024 but received virtually zero coverage in the media, who decided that Tim Walz' trips to China in the 1980s was a more important issue to Americans

Attn news commentators: Trump saying he could use force to obtain Greenland but won’t is not Trump saying he won’t use force to obtain Greenland. It is Trump using force as a threat to obtain Greenland. That is why he mentions it.

If you're only reading headlines and see "Trump Says He Won't Use Force" it will give you a misimpression of both how bellicose this speech is and how dug in he is on Greenland.

On the subject of World Cup boycotts, this is a story which ought to be much better known: why African countries decided not to compete for a place at the 1966 tournament. One of Fifa's most shameful moments, which hardly ever gets a mention. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-a...

So fmr Honduran President Hernandez voluntarily surrendered, and was duly extradited, tried and convicted for drug trafficking, and Trump pardoned him 6w ago. And this morning, Trump illegally attacks Venezuela and abducts its president and his wife purportedly to try them for drug trafficking.

“Delegalization” is IMHO the most undercovered/under-understood story of the first year of Trump 2. But it’s really, really hard to talk about it in a way that breaks through. Some problems:

What's so hilariously stupid about Jain's statement is, if someone takes controversial stands and still manages to win (this isn't moneyball, WAR doesn't matter), that makes them a good politician. They're maximizing the utility of their office, not their electoral success.

we gotta torch the climate so that repeatedly successful Dems in swing districts can win by a larger margin

This is what asylum practice is increasingly looking like; the Trump admin is moving to "pretermit" every single claim (or nearly every single claim) as a move to avoid having to grant anyone asylum.

It’s so wild that “a random online leftist said something I found annoying once” is legitimately a huge driver of modern politics in a way that “online right-wingers with significant sway over powerful people say literal Nazi things” isn’t and likely never will be

Absolutely staggering to consider the deadweight loss that AI has caused educators in terms of burdening them by making cheating easier, and how little our society's elites care

Il faut lire la National Security Strategy publiée par l'administration Trump pour voir à quel point la politique étrangère US est désormais *officiellement* inspirée par le suprémacisme blanc et les positions de l'extrême droite étasunienne, européenne et russe. www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Had not heard about this incident and it’s really very funny

Pure, unmitigated hate.

The official policy of the Trump Administration is ignorant bigotry. We’re asked, under principles including charity, to assume that people support the administration despite that policy, not specifically because of it. I am increasingly unwilling to extend that charity.

there is no legitimate definition of the term "democracy" under which maps like these are "democratic." this level of stovepiping is banana republic shit. this is effectively no different from stuffing a ballot box

yes I don't really see how you can go "oh yikes these people have changed their political views incredibly quickly, mostly because of what Very Online people talk about on social media" and also think that people who went from never talking about gender to calling trans women predators are....normal

Mike Pence wrote an opinion piece for Fox News. Reading the headline, I was like, "Okay, seems like a normal take." Then I read the subheadline and... bro, what?