Responding to @beaubaumann.bsky.social’s post today, Prof. Wurman deploys the same rhetoric used against every immigrant group in America. Is this racist, he asks? Judging whether one can be part of America based on a culture’s supposed "capacity" for self-governance is the structure of bigotry.

I mean this is just race science stuff. He's right; it was obvious to many people at one point. Specifically, in the decades before the Civil Rights era (and during the Jim Crow period) where they thought the Chinese and Japanese could never assimilate, and many thought the same of Black people.

feels like a real landmark of impunity that major corporations are making federal crimes part of the interview process

We need a War on White Collar Crime

People have become jaded to it, but a President who threatens to outlaw media in a free society should be immediately removed from office. Trump's words are completely antithetical to the core American commitments of free speech and free press.

Every single regulatory grade monitor in the Chicago area is recording over 400 µg/m³ of PM2.5 smoke pollution. This is so far beyond anything in the historical record it’s difficult to communicate how extreme this event really is

Cyclosporiasis Outbreak Linked To Ancient Evil Corrupting The 7 Sacred Diarrhea Crystals https://theonion.com/cyclosporiasis-outbreak-linked-to-ancient-evil-corrupting-the-7-sacred-diarrhea-crystals/

cooked, low energy, things of that nature in all seriousness: I’m not going to say we aren’t in trouble because we are obviously in trouble but whining about the SAVE Act is not the act of someone with a coherent plan to steal the elections and when he tries it’s going to be a haphazard shitshow

Right now he’s talking about how his own administration apparently covered up a massive security breach. Because he was president during all of this!

About two-thirds, or 66 percent, of Americans say they would describe the cost of groceries as unaffordable, up sharply from the 45 percent who said the same thing in February before the conflict started, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.

The most anti-legal immigrant administration ever just made it illegal for international students to transfer schools or change majors or shift any "educational objective" in their 1st year and for graduate students **at any point** ever, at all. There is no legal basis for this

Read our story from July 9 about how an MSG database tracked and categorized hundreds of celebs, famous Knicks superfans, and even some of Taylor Swift’s wedding guests. Labels included “LGBTQIA,” “DO NOT HOST,” and low to high “risk.”

A statement from WIRED leadership.

The smoke in Chicago is so thick you can see and smell it and we all have to stay inside as much as possible. Seems like this ought to be a bigger deal politically. I fear the creeping normalcy of climate destruction.

I watched on Fox, and Hannity is now saying that the "biggest takeaway" is that China acquired publicly available election data. If even Hannity can't spin it for Trump, it's likely this has no legs.

In this section of his speech, Trump is lying about the intelligence community's findings about China's actions in the 2020 election. This is the actual IC finding, declassified in 2021. www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/d...

this clip that CNN obtained of Georgia Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins' son in law, who has participated in Collins' campaign and reportedly lives on Collins' property, using Nazi talking points to suggest the Holocaust actually wasn't that bad is just bonkers

"Fox News has not seen the evidence yet and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president's statement and claims"

getting sued and losing billions for election lies really sharpens the fox’s nose for sour grapes

"The reversals have validated advocates’ earlier fears about Newsom’s decision to let the prison system handle its own reforms, rather than imposing legislative guardrails. They come at a time of reduced judicial oversight, too." Via @psfrench.bsky.social @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/california-d...

When Congress readmitted the South after the Civil War, it imposed conditions on how they'd treat felony disenfranchisement. States immediately disregarded this: boltsmag.org/readmission-... only once did a lawsuit directly sue over this. here's how the Arkansas supreme court handled it:

Feels like one of those events marking the end of an era. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/u...

Trump claimed during the 2024 campaign that he wanted to leave abortion to the states. His pick for Attorney General, and his former personal lawyer, just said a nationwide abortion ban is on the table

NEW: California continues to resist restrictions on solitary confinement. Prison officials had implemented some minor reforms in 2023, as a sort of compromise when Newsom vetoed a bill meant to ban the more torturous aspects of solitary confinement. But they're now dialing even those back.

Twelve states' challenge to the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is compact and simple: if one company controls 27% of all wide-release films & 34% of all cable channels (by viewership), it can bargain with distributors for better terms, which will filter down to higher consumer prices.

Yesterday was the final day of public comment on the Trump-Vought plan to politicize all federal research grants. Bob Kuttner explains why this would fatally damage a U.S. science sector that is the envy of the world: prospect.org/2026/07/14/t...

Silicon Valley’s founders believed they didn’t need government. Then they believed they could demolish it. They are now discovering that the best way to extend their power is to partner with the state—the libertarian’s worst nightmare. Here's Chris Hughes on tech's changing predilections:

The union representing Hollywood screenwriters on Tuesday sued to block Paramount’s $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a day after a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general challenged the transaction.

Wisconsin's election commission found probable cause that Elon Musk broke state law with his promise of $1 million to voters and referred the case for possible prosecution to the Brown County DA's office. www.cnn.com/2026/07/14/p...

Remember back in May, when Hungarian results were coming in, we were watching if the opposition to Prime Minister Viktor Orban would manage to win a supermajority? They did, & they just used it to pass a constitutional amendment to also remove the president from office. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Hungary’s new government also passed this constitutional amendment to “remove Constitutional Court judges who are over the age of 70.”

Is Taco Bell growing their own lettuce? No. They get their lettuce from companies like Taylor Farms (that has 1/3 of the market *including hospitals*). This is deflection on the part of the federal government, which specifically cut funding for food safety screening/testing.

The strangest part of today's Elena Kagan-Amy Coney Barrett double feature on Capitol Hill was how hard they worked to convey the seriousness of the threats to justices, but without mentioning that, you know, Trump is calling them spineless RINO cucks anytime they don't do exactly what he wants

Amy Coney Barrett just told Congress that it would be inappropriate to explain the reasoning behind the Court’s unreasoned shadow docket orders. As if unreasoned judicial orders are a thing. They are not. The reasoning is the whole point.

It is rarely ever framed in these terms but one thing I say often is that if Democratic leadership really wanted to defang one of the issues that has fueled the rise of the insurgent left, they could always moderate on Israel-Palestine and just adopt the median Democratic voter's view.

A White House report has defended the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, pushing back against its characterization by a Smithsonian Institution exhibit that the law was racially motivated. www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

Two men in one week have been killed by ICE agents empowered by a radical Supreme Court intent on rolling back civil rights. Neither man was the target, making it likely that racial profiling ("Kavanaugh stops") played a role in both fatal shootings in Houston and Biddeford. 🧵

Excellent article about what Russ Vought is trying to create w the OMB rule change — “a system of political patronage, or “federalism by extortion”. www.crisesnotes.com/russell-voug...

Reporters got no response from Seth Moulton's campaign when they asked how he felt about privatizing veterans' healthcare.

Lindsey's Graham's death causes a complication for Republicans not many people are talking about. He was Budget Committee chair, which is critical for a proposed third reconciliation bill. Now his replacement is Ron Johnson, who would demand massive cuts in any package. prospect.org/2026/07/13/b...

I feel like we're going to get pundit teeth-gnashing for the next two months about who should have vetted what on Platner, but in Maine focus has apparently turned squarely to Collins, and the next two weeks of organizing to find a replacement has a clear event to tie to.

Reupping from six months ago prospect.org/2026/01/07/i...

A report on the ground from the ICE shooting in Biddeford that should make every parent in this country lose their minds:

Think. About. This. The U.S. Treasury receives the revenue from most of Venezuela’s exports, then disburses it gradually to Venezuela through the country’s private banks…. Mr. Rubio and his team set the conditions on what that money can be spent on, and by whom. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/u...

Re: the ICE killing in Maine today - Maine, unlike most states, does have a Civil Rights Law that may allow the individual federal agents to be sued for their actions. @felipedlh.bsky.social recently wrote about it boltsmag.org/maine-lawsui...

This morning in Biddeford, Maine, a 26-year-old man said goodbye to his wife and daughter and left for work. Moments later he was dead, shot in the head by ICE agents, the second man ICE has killed in six days. ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.

Maine Democrats - "Who do you want to see chosen as the replacement Democratic senate nominee?" Jackson: 40% Shah: 23% Bellows: 14% Wood: 3% Chism / July 10, 2026

A ballot initiative to reverse Idaho’s strict abortion ban qualified for the ballot today. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Idaho is a state where the GOP has tried very hard to decimate the direct democracy process. More on that in this piece I did a few years ago; boltsmag.org/direct-democ...