A superb piece rich in naval history with contemporary operational and budgetary implications. If you need to help others understand why committing resources to battleships isn't operationally or financially feasible, point them to this article:

We are far past the stage of permissiveness with white-supremacist violence inside DHS. We are witnessing ICE transition into a death squad. This cannot be reformed. The only question is who will fight to abolish it, and who will accommodate it instead.

This week, two young trans athletes will see their rights debated at the Supreme Court. As last year's Skrmetti decision showed, scientific truth will have no place in the decision by the extremely conservative court. That's our top story leading off the week. www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

Just saying, I spent twenty years in Emerging Markets watching countries pull this sort of thing with their Central Banks and am available for lucrative consulting gigs.

🗃️ Psst, friends at #AHA26 #MLA26 and beyond, please share word of the @susih.bsky.social Community Scholars Program, which unlocks library resources for 3 years (onsite + remote) for #contingent faculty & historians at work beyond the traditional academy, due 2/1 s-usih.org/2025/12/cfp-...

It's all CONTENT and I'm tired of all the CONTENT

god that’s an amazing statistic

We live in a criminal empire run by Trump and the broligarchs. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/u...

quite a lot has happened since the BBG(X) or BBL or whatever was announced. But I forgot this (short) reaction I wrote publishes tonight! On dassembly.substack.com

The Church Committee's investigation into the crimes of the intelligence community is about as good a model as we have for the kind of investigation into the crimes of ICE and other agencies. This is really a must-read for understanding our own moment.

Trump's appellate judges have formed a nearly united phalanx to defend his agenda from legal challenges. How often they ruled for him in 2025: Trump appointees: 92% Other Republican appointees: 68% Democratic appointees: 27% @schwartzesque.bsky.social Emma Schartz www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/u...

Pretty sure the ‘Board of Peace’ will never actually meet. Not seeing a whole lot of implementation here apnews.com/article/isra...

This is the only correct analysis post-Caracas I’ve seen

Since Plato is in the news: What was Plato's status at the Nazified university? This 1934 diagram from the journal "Völkische Kultur" shows one response. It puts Plato in a cosmopolitan lineage of degradation leading to Kant which was, in a common antisemitic trope, portrayed as suspiciously Jewish.

Frey: "I think the initial impetus to come to MN was to arrest & deport a bunch of Somali people. They got here & realized the Somali people that would be deported are all citizens. Then they turned their ire toward our Latino community & others. These are communities that make Mpls a better place."

again - there is no convincing argument for Greenland being “strategically important.” There is no military threat to it or from it. The US can access it and base stuff on it whenever it wants to. Do not let these ppl make it out like some realist imperative.

"The U.S. in Venezuela: Why Is Corporate Media Being So Weird?": @caitlinmoriah.bsky.social and @trentrichardnelson.bsky.social with @marisakabas.bsky.social, on our Half the Answer podcast www.liberalcurrents.com/half-the-ans...

Sodium-ion battery cells already near lithium-ion cost parity, set to get cheaper - www.ess-news.com/2026/01/09/s... @dominikkeiner.bsky.social @aukehoekstra.bsky.social @jeroahola.bsky.social

there is no positive route forward for the United States without mass arrests and trials for DHS employees

I don't think their policy of murdering innocent mothers in the street is having the intended effect.

Agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter in a massive show of force. Authorities said Tren de Aragua “terrorists” had taken over the building. But after the cameras were gone, federal prosecutors did not charge anyone. (Pub. Nov. 2025 w/ @frontlinepbs.bsky.social @blockclubchi.bsky.social)

SHOCK CELL PHONE VIDEO: Renee Good's final words to her murderer: “That’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you.” ICE agent Jonathan Ross after shooting and killing her seconds later: “Fuckin’ bitch.” Via Alpha News

The evidence is increasingly pointing to the probability that an ICE agent killed a woman after misreading her as a threat because he was distracted by his simultaneous effort to record her so he could upload her image to a facial recognition database.

Well, the last opera I'll have seen at the Kennedy Center was an excellent performance in November of the Marriage of Figaro. So for me the tenure of the WNO at the Kennedy Center will end with fond memories. Look forward to following it to friendlier venues. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/a...

Taiwan becomes a super-aged society under UN criteria – Focus Taiwan: ‘with people aged 65 and older now accounting for more than 20 percent of the population’

The man who literally wrote the book on the use of vehicles as ramming weapons says any claim Good used hers as such is false, and that her execution, followed by the false claim, is "death squad behavior."

Scoop: Inside "60 Minutes," it's not just the CECOT story that Bari Weiss has sent back with notes. I'm told an Anderson Cooper piece on South African refugees, in the works for months, has also been subjected to extensive editorial feedback. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/60-minutes...

good that they got coverage away from the politics team (chronic bothsiders) and to visual investigations (consistently excellent)

I’ve heard from multiple friends today about daycares being raided and parents being ripped out of cars (in one case with a child left behind in the backseat). Grim times here.

NEW: Data released by ICE shows that virtually the entire growth of detention in the last few months has been among people with no criminal record at all - no prior convictions (no matter how minor) and no pending criminal charges.

The source that informed me of this said the Border Patrol officer in question claimed the victims were trying to run him over in their car, which is why he shot.

A Turning Point for Trump’s Marauding Secret Police talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-tur...

A few thoughts on this important NYT analysis: First, the officer who killed Good is shown running up the *passenger* side of the car seconds before he killed her. He shot her first from the front, then the driver's side. This means he *put himself* in the path of the vehicle when he shot her.

i firmly believe — like you would have to give me hard evidence to convince me otherwise — that they feed trump a steady diet of AI slop

I keep going back to this. This is a taunt. They're taunting us. There is no other possible interpretation of what they're doing. But media simply ignores this deranged behavior, because if they talk about it, one must conclude that DHS is a rogue agency, of villainous paramilitary thugs.

this has been pretty obviously true since the inauguration

"They carried her body out, just like by her limbs, they didn’t even have a stretcher," a witness says. "She was carried out like a sack of potatoes."

“'The guy, I’m telling him like, "Please step off the school grounds," and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he knocked me down,' an official at Roosevelt High School said. 'They don’t care. They’re just animals. I’ve never seen people behave like this.'"

Scum seek jobs where they can act like scum with authority.

We've analysed this video of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good yesterday in Minneapolis frame-by-frame to highlight the positioning of the gun and phone in the ICE agent's hands. Video: @minnesotareformer.com with annotations by Bellingcat

For those keeping score, Bellingcat, The New York Times Visual Investigation Team, & Washington Post's Visual Forensic team have all published analysis showing the ICE shooter wasn't in the path of Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle when he shot her, contradicting statements by the President & his cronies

his name is Jonathan Ross and he shouldn't get a good night's sleep for the rest of his life www.startribune.com/ice-agent-wh...

My fixed-term contract with the Associated Press has come to an end, which means I’m back to freelancing in 2026. If you’re looking for someone with a way with words who loves digging into global affairs, tech, or both at the same time, feel free to reach out ✨

Remembering the people who, back in 2016 or 2020, wrote things like "run them down!" celebrating vehicular homicide against protestors— and the state laws that formalized that celebration!— because it was so scary to be surrounded by protestors as to trigger the right of self-defense.