This is rather special. Marc Bloch was a titan of modern historiography, and a big influence on me as a young history student. He was a brilliant French medievalist murdered by the Gestapo for both his Jewishness and his contribution to French resistance, but they couldn’t kill his work

Published a day before the WaPo story below. The Onion remains unmatched. theonion.com/trump-defend...

The colonial imperialist west shouldn’t be forgiven for a lot of things, and the crimes against Haiti and her people are one of them.

There are honestly far worse Dems than Rosa DeLauro. But there are also far better ones, and they still have time to register for primaries. If a member of Congress can't get Renee Good's name right, and their response to clergy talking about morality is defensiveness...maybe it's time to retire.

DeLauro crystallizes the Democratic Party gerontocracy in a single quote. Responding to clergy telling her she must demand ICE abolition on the grounds of basic morality, she replies: “It’s not doable."

Haven't seen this angle mentioned, but it's an extraordinary national security risk to have an anonymous "staffer" impersonating the president of the United States, posting racist memes, from his personal accounts, at 10 PM.

Was driving my kids to school and the first thing on the radio was reporting about Trump's video depicting the Obamas as apes and I think many people still don't fully appreciate what it means to have to raise Black children in a country where the president is so brazenly and consistently racist

What the hell is the New York Times doing? In its article on Trump posting a video that included a clip of the Obamas as apes, NYT tries to help him come up with an excuse: "It was unclear if Mr. Trump was aware that the clip had been included in the video before he shared it." WTF.

👀 Apparently, Ross Douthat invited Seth Harp to debate him on Douthat's "Interesting Times" NYT podcast. Harp says that the episode was recorded, Douthat got crushed, and RD/NYT decided not to publish it. What? x.com/sethharpesq/...

Expanding upon this, something I’m not yet seeing discussed about today’s Post news is how it further consolidates the power of the New York Times to set the national narrative. I hope you trust Joe Kahn’s editorial judgment because it is as close to monoculture in news as you can get now.

"We’re striking so that nurses and patients alike can be safe." Gift link www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/o...

With access link, because despite all of the efforts by ownership to reduce the scope of coverage and breadth of opinions in WPost, there are still many many good reporters doing really really good work (and hopefully that continues): wapo.st/4rtfCw8

Kansas rescinding trans people’s drivers’ licenses is happening at the same time the federal govt is canceling legal immigrants’ TPS status and visas. They’re demanding papers from random people on the street, while also taking papers away from the most vulnerable populations.

Everyone - "Wow, that's like the definition of fascism, right here" Informed commentators - "No this is not actually fascism, you see, because historical fascism of the 1930s and 1940s blah blah blah blah blah"

Heute in den USA (links). Vor 100 Jahren in Deutschland (rechts).

Thousands of people filled the streets of downtown Minneapolis in protest of federal immigration enforcement for the second consecutive Friday. 📷️: Aaron Lavinsky

momentary exception to not posting to amplify how beautiful & powerful this Providence protest is #ICEout

In 2021 I was telling people in my field of art history to stop legitimizing the use of image recognition, to stop applying for grants to use AI in identifying the subjects of portraiture bc this was what such work was being used to further. All this was obvious. theconversation.com/how-ai-is-hi...

Look, an elected official who treats constituents with respect.

Tonight!

An open letter to @theguardian.com about their article last week about the Crown’s Silence, requesting that the Black scholar of Caribbean heritage who did the years of archival research behind this claim, and published it in 1979, Roger Norman Buckley, be acknowledged as the source of this reveal:

We’re just not a free country. Any American watching this play out between regime forces and journalists overseas would recognize it for what it is.

I will believe that ICE enforcement has changed on the ground when I stop getting daily notices that armed, masked goons are circling my kids’ schools and trying to sow fear in the parent patrols.

In the first draft I had Homan speaking these words, but at the moment Bovino was the more visible face of the occupation so I swapped him out

"If you are uncomfortable with what the Border Patrol is doing in Minneapolis, you are uncomfortable with the Border Patrol, full stop." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/o...

The crackdown will continue until Gleichschaltung improves.

This is so deeply horrifying. It’s also very clear that these camps deliberately withhold medical care both as a form of torture as well as a method to cause mass suffering that doesn’t have to be recorded as an active murder or injury.

I will simply never recover from reading this sentence: "Since Georgia implemented work requirements in 2020, they have spent twice as much on Deloitte consultants and administrative costs as on healthcare for people."

again, if you are hearing about an empathetic, soulful, new-tone trump pivot calming things down in Minnesota, the people who are telling you this are trying to trap your mind inside a false, alternate reality. please consider why exactly they are doing this.

remember what JD Vance said of the ICE agents that arrested this little boy: “what did you expect them to do?”

Fascism encourages you to think it’s a spectator sport and when it’s too late you realize you’re also on the playing field and always have been.

I'm calling bullshit on the media narrative that Trump is "pivoting" and "deescalating" on his ICE raids. The threshold is this: As long as the military occupations and the treatment of US cities as enemy territory continue, there's no pivot. ICE out. 1/ (New piece) newrepublic.com/article/2057...

This is unconscionable. Evil. But it happened in May 2023, when Biden was president. So no, we don’t “reform immigration detention,” we destroy ICE, CBP, and DHS. We can’t reform this soul sickness.

This is what letting RFK jr go wild on health looks like

I am always obligated when Niall Ferguson is mentioned to point out that he encouraged some of his students to go after another student whose politics he didn't like. One of the most unethical things I've ever seen an "educator" do. www.theguardian.com/media/2018/j...

I was always told that one of the central lessons of the Shoah is that legal, juridical regimes can still be immoral. The claim that Anne Frank was in Amsterdam "legally" is false, but more than that, the question "Was Anne Frank an illegal?" is so grossly missing the point of Holocaust remembrance.

To avoid the possibility Holocaust remembrance might lead to empathy for migrants, Trump's antisemitism envoy claims Anne Frank "was in Amsterdam legally." In reality, Margot Frank received a summons to go to a labor camp on July 5, 1942. After ignoring this call, they were in Amsterdam illegally.

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

If Dems are squeamish about "abolish," fine, the demand is still simple: zero funding for ICE and CBP. Pretend you just want a "pause" to "sort it out." Whatever. But, yeah, "do not vote to fund murder and other rampant lawbreaking by Trump's gestapo" is indeed a "purity test" you must pass.

"moderate" Republican, Mike Lawler (NY-17), characterizing ICE's open racial profiling, wanton brutality, vehicular assault, kidnapping, torture, ethnic cleansing, murder, etc., in the pages of the New York Times on January 27, 2026: "forceful operations" www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/o...

Just like the Jews in Nazi Europe. Most registered.

A good story to share with anyone left in your family or social circle who thinks that, sure, ICE is an imperfect organization, but they're just trying to ensure that all migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers play by the rules. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/u...

Following the Kent State massacre in May 1970, a Gallup poll showed that 58% of Americans thought the shootings were justified. The night *before* the killings, Ohio's GOP governor described the student protesters this way: "They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America."

A big part of the story here is that women like Renee Good are braver and stronger than they could have ever imagined and that just doesn't fit with what MAGA men tell themselves about how gender works. It just does not compute.

I am just gonna say it, these guys are completely emasculated by the knowledge that they have been out-organized by a group that is significantly made up of women, and all the bullshit call of duty nonsense is cope for their wounded egos bsky.app/profile/jeet...

The specter haunting the U.S. right is Minnesota Nice.

1. Wasn’t at a protest 2. Was disarmed when they shot him while he was face down 3. New gun rights rule: the second amendment is when conservatives can carry guns everywhere, but if anyone else has a gun we can kill him on sight bsky.app/profile/atru...

The story is not that there are two conflicting versions of what happened. The story is that the federal government is lying about what happened. There is plenty of evidence. Your job, our job, is to sift that evidence and describe what actually happened ffs.

There is no “immigration crisis,” there is only a fascism crisis.