“Construction can’t continue”: South Texas builders say ICE arrests have upended industry  www.texastribune.org/2025/12/24/s...

Just a reminder that the holidays may not look the same for everyone this season. Check on your friends and neighbors, please.

Meade Lux Lewis, the uncredited piano player soundtracking Pottersville's meanness in 'It's a Wonderful Life' (1946), was a boogie-woogie pioneer. He died in Minneapolis, in 1964, killed by a speeding driver after a residency at the White House in Golden Valley.

"That impromptu recording session produced one of the most enduring songs of the holiday season." This is a lovely article that I am now going to send to my Vince Guaraldi-loving pals, the ones who have his Charlie Brown Christmas music on vinyl www.npr.org/2025/12/19/n...

Good morning!

Making sure everyone knows that Kate Bush's 1979 Christmas special is available to stream on YouTube and it's VERY worth your time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6BP...

Happy holidays from the Starbucks picket line! We're STILL on ULP strike, and just this week, 19 more stores filed for a union election.✊🔥 DON'T BUY STARBUCKS at ANY location until the company resolves their 100s of outstanding unfair labor practices. NO CONTRACT, NO COFFEE!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays to everyone out there caring for animals today, indoors or outdoors, domestic or wild, rescued or in need of rescue. Thank you! This is our beautiful Caroline. #animals #cats #animalrescue #multispecies #MerryChristmas

Outside an entrance to the Second Avenue subway station in the East Village, street artist Doug Groupp has spray-painted an artwork portraying ICE officers detaining the statue of Liberty.

The poorly thought out ADVENT CALENDAR OF FILM RECOMMENDATIONS continues. Day Twenty-Two: Christmas, Again (2014). Made 11 years ago but getting a well-deserved UK release now. Available from today on Amazon Prime.

What do Racket readers actually read from Racket? Glad you asked.

Here's a Christmas song for everyone who is not where they want to be at Christmas, written by Caetano Veloso in exile in London from the junta that had killed and imprisoned his friends: youtu.be/rvctrCWrjMk?...

I don't think I'm going to read a better year-end review than this one. theculturewedeserve.substack.com/p/culture-di...

Merry Christmas! This is the earliest recorded DJ set I know of. open.substack.com/pub/michaela...

This may interest some of you.

A few years ago, I figured out exactly how many kids Santa would have to visit and when. Gift link: wapo.st/4seQw5d

I wrote a little thing about "Fairytale of New York" and about hope for a better year, but mostly I wanted to share the rendition of the song played at Shane MacGowan's funeral in 2023 because it's so beautiful. Happy Christmas, I love ya baby. dansinker.com/posts/2025-1...

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

This is the sweetest thing and I hope they keep hanging out periodically

If you are feeling helpless and hopeless in the face of the CECOT report, I’d like to suggest donating to HIAS. It’s a Jewish organization that actively protects displaced people and fights for refugee rights everywhere including against the Trump regime. 🧵

Standing outside at 39th and Chicago. Across the street, kids are screaming as they zip down a sledding hill. Down the street, I hear Brass Solidarity playing live outdoor music. This is the Minneapolis I love.

Fine: "I'm talking to my colleagues about whether we want these fake Somali refugees - who come to our country, add no value, suck our resources, defraud our govt - whether we actually want them here. I don't think Ilhan Omar shouldn't be a member of Congress - I think she shouldn't be an American"

White House rebuffs Catholic bishops' appeal for a Christmas pause in immigration enforcement

Complete silence once again from @amyklobuchar.com, our senior senator.

“To be clear, Minnesota law prohibits anyone, including the driver of an unmarked law enforcement vehicle, from displaying a Minnesota license plate other than the license plate assigned to that vehicle by DVS.”

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Tuesday announced he has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture over its demand that the state interview over 100,000 households in person to verify that they are eligible for SNAP benefits.

While others were revisiting nicer old festive films in cinemas, I watched 2014’s Christmas, Again, again. A small film about the things that can and cannot bring us comfort. In a tiny screen, it feels like being in that caravan – cozy, warm and utterly lonely and miserable. What happened to Poekel?

Christmas Again Review – A comforting tale of a hapless Christmas tree salesman with genuine magic | film ✨ Check out this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Film,Drama films,Christmas,Culture,Life and style 💡 Here’s what you’ll learn: TIt's a New York drama so cozy that it…

Feliz Navidad 🎄 We have every indication that ICE will continue their assault even on Christmas Eve. If you're going out AT ALL tonight, 5 minutes to the gas station, or clear across town...please check in. Please stay vigilant. Let's make sure our neighbors wake up at home tomorrow. 🎁

For those who need it!

Beautiful ice lantern protest at the Minnesota state capitol tonight: “ICE out [of] MN.” Got there just in time to sing “Silent Night.”

Happy holidays! Love to you all!

With protesters at ICE headquarters in St. Paul today. Had a good conversation with a Vietnam veteran who stopped his car to ask us what it was all about.

Macedo and Lee misrepresent what actually happened during the pandemic and are unable to confront Covid's actual toll, presumably because it undermines their premise. A longer take here w/my colleague Greg Gibson: joshuasweitz.substack.com/p/revisionis...

Israel is building a new settlement in Beit Sahour, where according to tradition angels brought news of Christ's birth to shepherds. The settlement is called Yatsif ('Stable') in Hebrew. Bulldozers are already at work. www.middleeasteye.net/news/christm...

DHS's handling of the incident raises questions about the department's oversight mechanisms to investigate employee misconduct. n.pr/4jlKsEc

Anti-trans demagogue and fifth place swimmer Riley Gaines earned $470,000+ last year from a conservative non-profit. Notably, $420k was incentive-based. A neat little window into the way the transphobic grift is being compensated. I wonder what the per-post rate is?

So wonderful. Taylor Swift Donates $1 Million to Nonprofit Feeding America variety.com/2025/music/n...

The “free speech” and “cancel culture” panics have led to overt state censorship because that was always their purpose. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

‘Commercial real estate experts say concentrating detainees in warehouses would create its own logistical problems. Such structures are designed for storage and shipping, not human habitation.’

ICE is planning 7 massive human warehouses holding 5,000 to 10,000 people … with a smaller facility holding up to 1,500 people in Woodbury. wapo.st/4axtwZ4

This week at @coyotemedia.org we're doing a couple of roundups for the end of the year! Today is music day, and you can find a playlist of the songs that got us through the last 365ish days.

Fed. judge rules that New York's law prohibiting state authorities from sharing DMV vehicle and address information with federal immigration authorities is not preempted by federal law, nor does it violate the supremacy clause. Link is in this news report --> www.reuters.com/world/us-jud...

my first @theguardian.com: I wrote about this year's "Drag Queen Christmas" tour stop in Pensacola, FL, which from the 1950s-70s hosted America's biggest LGBTQ event; the state AG tried to get the "demonic" show canceled. I talked to Florida drag queens and supporters that refuse to go underground:

Now watching:

Everyone involved in the publication and promotion of this book should be embarrassed. It's not a "harsh truth" that COVID mitigation was a mistake, it's ghoulish and false.

This struck me too. As Anne Applebaum doesn’t mention, she wrote a classic history of the Gulag.

There is some seriously bad shit in these records, and some of it is true. But some of it is not. And if you really want to see the wrongdoers punished, you HAVE to learn to critically figure out which is which.

I admit it—the big kahuna in the Xmas 2025 edition of the Consumer Guide came out circa 1990. So don't put off a quick read. robertchristgau.substack.com/p/consumer-g...

FKA Twigs vs. Madonna, Phish as feh, hail to Joe Boyd, editing classical, and wanking is better than nothing in the Xmas 2025 Xgau Sez robertchristgau.substack.com/p/xgau-sez-d...