The FSB has been returned the right to operate pretrial detention centers by the legislature, which they were deprived of in 2006. A small step (especially as, per the article, the FSB retained de facto control over some cells) but one that signals an even greater turn to repression ahead.

Russia's Communist Party adopted a resolution condemning Khrushchev's "On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences," also known as the secret speech, as "mistaken," "containing falsified facts and false accusations against Stalin" during its party congress today: meduza.io/news/2025/07...

IU's Slavic, Eastern European, and Central Asian programs were among the best in the world, a gem of American academia that nurtured numerous giants, including Stephen Cohen. Now almost all of them are abolished, including PhD programs. What an unmitigated disaster.

Last words of the Zohran canvasser handing me a flyer around the block from the polling place: "anybody but Cuomo"

It’s really wild how there is no reason to deport anyone, let alone children and US citizens and LPRs and students and people undergoing cancer treatment etc. it’s all a fake solution to a made up problem enacted by violent racists who are stealing from you

Harvard just announced a hiring freeze last week, but they have the space for a failure and a war criminal. "inaugural Kissinger Professor." what a joke

a gold rush triggered by higher prices from trump's tariffs has caused illegal miners to destroy cocoa farmland in ghana, lowering prices and polluting water supplies in what some NGOs are calling "ecocide"

The White House is too pro-Kremlin for the Kremlin: "The Kremlin is increasingly worried that the emerging rift between the U.S. and Ukraine could derail a potential agreement between Washington and Moscow, The Moscow Times’ sources say."

The key here is to understand that for Trump, it's not a "lie" - it's a Sorelian political myth that allows for him to harness anti-trans bigotry in order to create an overarching worldview where teachers must be destroyed to preserve the sacred nature of the family.

There it is: permanent austerity must decimate our way of life so that we can lose an unwinnable war: www.ft.com/content/3705...

the reason this isn't likely is the same reason why the tea party worked: the common factor of both parties is that they're a vehicle for capital and billionaires. capital found the tea party useful; capital is not going to find an AOC-like mass movement useful

hopefully political imagination and political will can be rallied into a new order, not continuing the mistakes that led us here, as the krastev op-ed concluded

in an FT op-ed, krastev recognizes trump ii as a revolutionary government planning to remake the global order into an explicit america-first arrangement, and once agains pleads with europe to display political strength: www.ft.com/content/3507...

More wake up calls, again. To be followed up by another one tomorrow, next week, etc

zelensky's confrontation is made all the more remarkable for how much his country depends on american support. compare with the cowardice of the american press corps and the obsequious groveling of eg Sir Keir

beautiful obit to spassky in the guardian: "In the summer of 1946, Spassky began to visit a chess pavilion in the city’s Central Park and became obsessed with the game: “I used to go at 11am and return home at 11pm. When the pavilion closed in September it was like death, with no chess."

I genuinely think that people who throe a sieg heil should be met with violence up to and including lethal violence, and were I ever on a jury for such a crime I would decline to convict.

Notes from the Underground continues to be a basic explanatory framework for our politics.

The Trump effect in action:

The Trump effect is remarkable. If there were anything to rekindle the Ukrainian fighting spirit after months of flagging morale, thousands of troops going AWOL, and paper brigades, it would exactly be "Zelensky is a dictator, Ukraine started the war. and it owes us $500 billion."

lmfao holy shit we're reaching new levels of "fuck the yanks"

Yet another wake up call for Europe. To be followed up by another one tomorrow, next week, etc

I ask again: is there any professional with honor left in this country? Why are you running an article asking questions about the electoral impacts of annexing Canada without mentioning that it's illegal, a war crime, that it would lead to death, suffering, destruction? Are you insane?

an incredible collection of new york times headlines and articles from the last 24 hours. you know, we're all living a society, including the journalists and editors

the full-scale russian invasion of ukraine 3 years ago wasn't a shock enough? www.ft.com/content/1ee4...

who's driving? #nooneatthewheel

is there a single professional in this country with a sense of honor left?

This administration is busy playing around with as many third rails it can find. They're going to wind up directly touching one sooner or later. For instance, why not shut down the FDIC? www.wsj.com/finance/regu...

I hope DOGE deletes the Library of Congress Russian transliteration guidelines. I︠U︡riĭ instead of Yuri? Ulit︠s︡kai︠a︡, Li︠u︡dmila? This never simplified anything

Adams must be removed. The city cannot sustain being governed for nearly a year by a Mayor who is being coerced by Trump admin in order to escape charges. This corruption poses a real threat to the people of the city. He should have resigned a while ago, but will not. So it’s time for him to go.

why is adam tooze now running a dating service? adamtooze.substack.com/p/calling-th...

Much like the Russian elite, the people in the White House inherited a system they didn't build and don't understand. It enriched them, their power flows through it, and they'll wind up destroying it in the process of enacting their hamfisted projects

The idea that it’s undemocratic to use the powers given to you under state law to remove a corrupt mayor who is essentially being bribed into complying with an administration that’s breaking the law every minute is ridiculous.

they really think there's a vibe shift, that it'll last forever, that people will forget this, or that trump and co. themselves won't go after them

this is the most pro-corruption administration in american history

musk refused to pay rent for twitter offices until the landlords caved, trump refused to pay debt to creditors. the brain trust wants to apply this strategy to the dollar and the US government

the white supremacist, eugenicist, neonazi race science should be pushed front and center. it's not incidental to one doge coder. chris rufo publishes in aporia, owned by emil kirkegaard. emil owns HDF and mankind quarterly. both take thiel money. this gets cited by SSC, many in the admin

One MMT economist is doing more to expose and stop Musk and his Elonsjugend eugenicist coders than legacy media and the opposition party

the reason why they're doing all this is bone-deep tech fascism. it's not just white supremacy, american chauvinism, etc., they simply don't believe anyone unlike them should exist. they think they're tech supermen, and so they don't consider anything in their way like a law is legitimate

Insane that the world's richest man worth $500 billion would say this. But it's more insane that the world's richest man with complete access to the federal government and its computers, IT network, information, and code is saying this

The EU considers retaliatory measures to future Trump tariffs that could unilaterally revoke American IP. I encourage Commissioner von der Leyen not to wait, please fire away immediately www.ft.com/content/7303...

thank you senate minority leader chuck schumer. i really hope someone in congress sees this and takes action soon

Bad enough on its own, but is Musk now unilaterally fiddling with the IRS? Ripping out what he wants and taking all the information for himself? What?

Essential reading by @nathantankus.bsky.social breaking down the nuts and bolts of what the US Treasury does, how it operates, and why Musk's interventions are like a nuclear meltdown for the government. www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wa...

We are in such, such profound danger. They are doing the Reichstag fire to the most crucial and foundational payments layer of the Federal Government.

the people who failed to predict the tariffs trump has been advertising for over a year are now saying they'll end quickly as he posts about keeping the pain going: www.reuters.com/markets/us/t...

Baker pressed the point again, wondering if there would be open conflict between Russia and Ukraine once they separated. Yakovlev, skeptical, responded that there were 12 mill. Russians in Ukraine, “many in mixed marriages,” so “what sort of war could that be?” Baker answered simply: “a normal war.”

This is functionally extraordinarily similar to Zelensky's February 21, 2022 address aimed at Russians