This quote below is from Tom Murton, who was hired in the 1960s to reform Arkansas' worst prison. The governor fired him less than a year later after he started excavating unmarked graves of murdered inmates and inviting national media to write about it. Ended up running a duck farm.

For 20+ years I've got my info on Israel-Palestine from academic literature and leading independent civil society orgs. And I can tell you, its not the young pro-Palestine activists who've been radicalised into a dark place by virtue of inhabiting an information bubble. Its the political class.

Yesterday, through a flurry of interviews & phone calls, @tinavasquez.bsky.social wrote this excellent report on the immigration raids in cities across North Carolina. She spoke to community members about the devastation & fear, as well as the love & resistance. prismreports.org/2025/11/19/n...

This opinion reads like an episode of Infowars.

Just one more barrier configuration, bro

The “security risk” aspect of this is absurd, unnecessary, and inhumane. Being pregnant, recovering from birth, and caring for a newborn are all dangerous conditions in lockups that NO ONE deserves to be subjected to

Carry Narcan (naloxone) if you want to save lives from fentanyl but no need to worry if you aren’t using. And If you’re interested in why “fentanyl exposure” is not a real thing or what is really going on in those “fentanyl exposure” reports, I made this video explaining it: youtu.be/215hLEVD9ww?...

I am going to say this only once but fuck these white racists. Fuck them to hell.

This was the plan all along and why people like Thiel have inserted their cronies into key positions in the govt. They HATE the FDA and have for many years because they want to make drugs (mostly longevity ones) that don’t have to go through serious vetting. Here is the inevitable outcome:

Today, Tucson City Council is discussing a proposed ordinance that would create a new offense of "drug-related loitering". Indications that could trigger an arrest for this include officer knowledge of a prior drug conviction, or the so-called "fent fold." tucsonaz.hylandcloud.com/221agendaonl...

I'm struck by this clip of former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz saying Holocaust education has backfired in part because people Palestinians as victims: "They think the lesson of the Holocaust is…you fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people." www.reddit.com/r/JewsOfCons...

EXCLUSIVE: A forced detransition policy had disastrous effects in one Georgia prison, according to the manager of the medical unit there. The policy is on hold due to a court order requiring prisons to re-start hormone treatments for incarcerated people in GA. www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

MAINERS: If you see ICE, call this hotline: (207) 544-9989. It's the Maine Immigrant Rights org, and their website has resources on how to protect yourself and others, what do do if someone is taken, and how to safely film their activity. maineimmigrantrights.org/mirc-resourc... #MEpolitics

Trump trying to figure out how to pardon someone for state criminal charges? www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

No one knows how many people die in Mississippi's jails, in part, because many of the state’s hundreds of local law enforcement agencies find reporting requirements burdensome, state officials say

All of the school policies were enacted after the Trump administration began pressuring Maine last winter to ban transgender athletes from girls sports teams.

I get why it happens but goddamn do I wish anything could hit as hard on the timeline as something that sucks that everyone hates written by or about the worst person you know. I wish something good or interesting was able to get anywhere near the traction some shit that sucks does.

NEW: Chicago must borrow $283.3M to cover the soaring cost of lawsuits alleging CPD officers committed a wide range of misconduct as part of the city’s 2026 budget, Mayor Brandon Johnson said, calling the move "prudent." @wttw.bsky.social

The 9th Circuit’s description of what happened after the government introduced the “metering” policy to block asylum seekers at the border. Incredibly bleak. www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/u...

Note that blocking asylum-seekers at the border—called “metering”—began under Obama. The Trump administration hasn’t said it wants to revive the policy immediately, but it wants SCOTUS to give it the option. (I fear it will, 6–3.) Other Trump policies in place already severely restrict asylum.

The Supreme Court takes up a major immigration case that asks whether the U.S. government can effectively prevent migrants from applying for asylum by blocking them at the border. I am very, very worried about this one. www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-f...

Billionaire-fueled super PAC taps Laurel Libby to run point on an allied federal super PAC as well as a 501(c)4 nonprofit and a state PAC to help Susan Collins. Will be interesting to read the financial disclosures for the PACs. Lots of money gonna be sloshing around in Maine next year. #MEpolitics

The culture of disposability around criminalized people set us up for this moment, and to fight fascism, we are going to have to rage against that culture of disposal. Submitting to it (or hiding behind it) is an egregious form of surrender.

Tacking onto Bolts’s great coverage here: “The GOP leaders are being very candid, very straight up in saying that they are introducing this bill because they have been in communication with ICE.” theintercept.com/2019/04/04/n...

Stop and frisk laid the groundwork for this moment and many many people ignored that stop and frisk was and is a real problem.

To be fair, it is much much easier to create a national police force that uses excessive violence on everyone than it is to get one cop to stop shooting people so.

Remembering when people told me in late 2024 that "Trump couldn't create his own police force because federalism" mmhmm

People who need people, are the luckiest people in the world

There are no appropriate targets.

Humans need other human beings to survive. I'm sorry that this makes some people lose their shit but it's one of the key truths of life.

Please stop using language that suggests that people with criminal records are appropriate targets for this administration's violence. One in three adults has a criminal record. Stop playing sacrifice games with fascists. Stop surrendering entire categories of people in your own mind.

OWNED has been reviewed at NYT, New Republic, FAIR, Times Literary Supplement, Irish Times, and more; I've discussed the themes on numerous podcasts, CNN, and CSPAN. The response is heartening—people want to know more about how Silicon Valley is controlling speech.

Many people dismissed the announcement Catholic hospitals will ban gender-affirming care nationwide under the assumption that there will be other options. In reality, Catholic hospitals make up as much 46% of options in some states. This map is 2020, prior to Trump’s assault on safety net hospitals.

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.”

RIP Alice Wong

This article is from 5 years ago, and I've included an NIH study on the reporting in the comments. The reason I bring this up is ICE was forcibly sterilizing women during Trump's first term. We new this. And then Biden took office. Biden gave ICE $3.4 billion to expand detention efforts in 2024.

Earlier this year, I wrote a guide for Freedom of the Press Foundation about some ways that prison agencies obscure what happens inside their facilities and how to overcome some commonly used obstructions. You can find that resource here. freedom.press/issues/cover...

This week Open AI walked back a call for the govt to backstop financing for its trillion dollar investments in data centers. This was only the tip of the iceberg; a slow bailout for AI firms is already underway. Read more from @ambakak.bsky.social and I in @wsj.com: www.wsj.com/opinion/you-...

Rather than trivializing how much toilet paper Ghislaine Maxwell has access to behind bars, remember that most incarcerated people have little to their name. Toilet paper isn't a luxury – it's a basic necessity.

I think it is definitely a story that Maxwell is getting preferential treatment behind bars, but good luck writing that story without encouraging the dehumanization of incarcerated people.

NEW: Before the recent Epstein disclosures, Larry Summers was poised to lead the economic policy plank for the Democrats' "Project 2029" effort at the Center for American Progress. He signed off on a housing policy paper CAP was prepping for next week. prospect.org/2025/11/14/e...

a lot of people don’t know that prison expansion in the 1950s was largely constrained by the belief that you couldn’t safety operate an institution that held over 1,000 people (CUS is endlessly interesting to me for its points of comparison with carceral history)

I'm seeing that certain pundits have also published things about Jessica Tisch today, and accordingly I feel obligated to note that this article is more detailed and not limited to Substack subscribers 💅

90% of political discourse in 2025 involves navigating words like "identity" to engage material issues. bc they're burying in that term the understanding that theyd rather not defend/represent classes of ppl systematically made vulnerable, marginalized, & disposable in political/social/economic life

Yeah like, someone as evil as Maxwell shouldn’t get any preferential treatment in prison, but its incredibly bleak that “preferential treatment” includes “you are allowed to wipe your ass”

This week, DHS claimed they were responsible for a "historic drop in crime" in Chicago, citing numbers but no sources. @araceligomezaldana.bsky.social and I fact-checked that claim. Our analysis shows the blitz had little impact on an ongoing decline in violent crime. www.wbez.org/data/2025/11...

i know we won't, but we have got to understand that a keystone of the republican project is to both categorize whole classes of people as criminal to justify locking them up, or to make them so broken and desperate that lawbreaking is all but certain to happen.

Justice Sam Alito was v disturbed yesterday by the mere possibility that judges might be using the federal compassionate release statute to *checks notes* grant incarcerated people's requests for compassionate release ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/ferna...

The fastest growing group of incarcerated people are women -- while still numerically less than men, this country incarcerates more women (as a percent of pop) than anywhere else in the world. The focus on "country club" prisons is at least honest in admitting prison is forced suffering.