Any headline that’s not “Trump Threatens Genocide” is a failure

This is really all they have left. "We have a pointless and criminal war pushing gas prices through the roof and the global economy to the brink but at least the government isn't treating trans people like they're human beings" will be the entirety of the midterm message.

In my observation, this is the modal Christian right defense of Trump's deranged statements. It's not "Hell yeah! Get 'em Trump!" More often it's an attempt to ease their consciences by framing it as a false choice: "It's either Trump or [imagined persecution of Christianity]. What else could I do?"

100% of the people who claim to be “defending Western civilization” think Western civilization is Christian ethnonationalism

I’m somewhere between the hardcore optimists and pessimists on AI, but I think one thing few people are saying out loud, particularly when it comes to the arts, is that AI is simply not cool

When some people look back on the pandemic, what irks them most is imperfect policy or guidance, or that they were unnecessarily inconvenienced. For me, it’s that millions of people died while Republicans said the whole thing was fake and purposefully spread misinformation

The most true answer in a widespread sense which won’t make anyone here’s list is that Republicans told them so

The US government collected over $1 billion in immigration fees then refused to process the applications. No denials. No refunds. Just silence. This is the largest fee fraud in the history of the American immigration system. Here's what's happening. 🧵

Please join us for this research talk with the brilliant Io Brooks next month www.mercy.edu/news-events/...

This is what ICE has done to journalist Estefany Rodriguez.

OBAA wasn’t my personal pick but I’m pretty shocked to see people on here say it wasn’t worthy. It’s very good!

CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen says black, oil-contaminated rain is falling over Tehran after strikes on oil facilities by U.S./Israeli airstrikes.

In other words Trump-Netanyahu have effectively carried out massive uncontained poison gas attacks on Tehran and its people.

this is a remarkable chart

Asked about the administration’s plan for Iran after the war, that official responded: “Whatever.”

Anybody I know teaching at John Jay this semester?

i wind up tweeting this basically every time there's an article like this, but the fundamental thing to me: ask yourself whether you earnestly believe there's more social pressure to be trans, or more social pressure to be cis. it's actually a super easy one!

Looking at the 2024 crime figures, it's absolutely insane how Trump, tech billionaires, and centrist pundits fooled everyone into thinking Biden had turned the U.S. into some Hobbesian hellscape. 50-year lows for violent crime, armed robbery, property crime. Second-lowest homicide rate.

The way sitting politicians can say this stuff about Muslims while facing zero consequences is an indication of just how entrenched Islamophobia still is in our institutions and culture.

I’m certain that when what remains of Iran’s security forces begins its existential crackdown on civil dissent, we will welcome Iran’s dissident refugees and fast-track their asylum applications

Trump’s 2016 criticism of the Iraq war was the US didn’t do enough war crimes. He argued that the US should’ve stolen oil and killed insurgents’ innocent family members. That’s what some prominent media figures presented to the public as isolationist, anti-intervention, anti-war, “Donald the Dove.”

Here is his justification and his examples. Surely if one candidate is lying through his teeth and likely to take the country into a disastrous war, that is the core message to convey to voters.

Such a perfect example of Pundit Brain at work: Harper says he always knew Trump was lying about being the peace candidate — but still turned that into criticism of Harris.

Two categories of analysts who might take a step back, away from the microphone or keyboard, this weekend: —Those who assured us that Trump was the real anti-war candidate. —Those who assured us that invading Iraq was necessary and would work out great.

a confederacy of clowns

i think this is bad

It is surreal that we are still locked in the never-ending debate over whether military intervention on behalf of democracy and human rights is good, when the current administration has been extremely explicit they are not intervening on behalf of democracy and human rights

Sam Altman picked a hell of a day to basically urge the world to trust the morality and legal restraint of the Department of Defense

In case you’re just waking up, the U.S. has teamed up with Israel overnight to start an illegal war of regime change, apparently on a presidential whim with no involvement of Congress, and they are already committing horrific atrocities.

Mass horror at the killings of Renee Good & Alex Pretti has DHS’s budget at stake. And yet in the past week, agents left a blind refugee to die alone. And lied about it. They pretended to be police looking for a missing child, to detain a college kid. And lied about it. What does this tell you?

NEW: WSJ now confirming my reporting that the DOJ is withholding at least three FBI interviews with a woman who told the FBI that Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a child www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

Anybody in NY, NJ, CT, PA, or FL interested in teaching grad research methods in the fall?

One critique of this Times fact check is that it implies one study found it when actually basically every study finds it. This relates more generally to the idea that journalists should cover literature reviews more and individual studies less

these people treat being called racist like it is a slur, and treat slurs like they're mere differences of opinion

An NPR investigation finds the public database of Epstein files is missing dozens of pages related to sexual abuse accusations against President Trump. n.pr/4qTItsU

krugman fax machine quote vindicated once again

Another jarring finding from the CNN poll: Among noncollege voters Trump is at 41-58

As the guy who wrote the book on zoning abolition, I'd like to go on record as saying: if you can use zoning to stop the concentration camps, fucking go for it.

Oh and they’re still indiscriminately executing random people at sea with no evidence, warrants, trials, or verdicts. And absolutely no one is doing anything about it, I guess.

Incredible opinion. It holds that the common ICE tactic of jumping out of an unidentified rental vehicle and seizing suspected noncitizens while masked violates the Fourth Amendment because the *manner* of the seizure is incompatible with a free society governed by the rule of law.

Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it. Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:

Seventh Immigrant Dies in ICE Custody This Year open.substack.com/pub/austinko...

This, undoubtedly, will be framed as them taking British jobs

The bar is in hell

i wonder if famed investigative journalist matt taibbi will have anything to say about this

ICE officials, under a judge’s order to clean up overcrowded and squalid conditions inside holding cells at 26 Federal Plaza detained migrants on a separate floor where they decided the the ruling didn't apply. The revelation comes in a hearing today: www.thecity.nyc/2026/02/09/2...

The entire anti wokeness nonsense of the past decade was about making this kind of gutter racism broadly acceptable again bsky.app/profile/adam...

It’s official!

The thing that shocks me most is that all of this incriminating stuff was sitting at the DOJ for 4 years and Biden & Garland were not cynical or ruthless enough to use it against Trump & Musk in the run up to 2024. If only they were the evil ‘weaponizers of government’ that MAGA claimed they were!