"The secret of Nazism in practice, as Mein Kampf states time and again, is to do the most outrageously secret things quite openly. The Nazi success with this practice has been so great that there is nothing they will not dare." - Bella Fromm, Berlin, 3/20/1938

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

I wrote about the fecklessness of the Democrats ending this shutdown for my newsletter this morning. www.burnsnotice.com/what-was-the...

Democrats successfully backed Trump into a corner where he was on-the-record advocating to starve Americans and let their healthcare costs go up. And now 10 cowards in the Senate are about to bail him out in exchange for NOTHING.

Chris Murphy: "There will be pretty substantial damage to a Dem brand that has been rehabilitated if on the heels of an election in which the people told us to keep fighting, we immediately stop... if we surrender without having gotten anything, I worry it'll be hard to get them back up off the mat"

I don’t know how many times I’ve watched this video. I don’t know how we’ve gotten to the point where men in full balaclavas can abduct daycare teachers while they’re watching children. But I do know that this isn’t sustainable. Abolish ICE. There is no way to reform this.

This is such terrible news. Teen Vogue had the best political reporting around.

I think a lot about the chance we had at the start of COVID to finally become a more compassionate, collectivist nation, and how profoundly we were failed not only by the sociopathic greed of the ruling class but by each other. It doesn’t mean we won’t get there, but the lost opportunity haunts me.

In the quest for "biological truth," the Trump admin discounts the very real biological truth that some men do get breast cancer Now it'll be harder for male veterans diagnosed w/the rare but deadly cancer to get VA coverage always read @ericumansky.bsky.social www.propublica.org/article/vete...

"Morgan County Commissioners approved nearly 400 acres for a data center’s development in February but couldn’t say who the developer was because they signed nondisclosure agreements. Despite resident protests, it approved 158 more acres for the development this month."

MIKE JOHNSON: I've not seen them cross the line yet.

“If the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is the heart.” - former First Lady Betty Ford The East Wing is gone. Over a century of American history, reduced to rubble. All to appease the vanity of a corrupt authoritarian.

Consider how few anecdotes it took for the media to declare a Free Speech on Campus crisis. Every day we get more evidence that the Republican Party is teeming with white supremacists yet elite institutions refuse to frame this as a crisis that needs the nation’s attention.

As I note in this article, Proud Boys are encouraging members to sign up for ICE. This shows that they really are turning to actual gangs for "law enforcement." As noted, this is also very much like the brownshirts being eclipsed by the SS. www.salon.com/2025/10/22/h...

You need to see this… Just so we’re all clear on the gravity and historical significance of what Trump has done to the East Wing of the People’s House.

Start your Saturday with @metavivor.bsky.social at the @americancancersoc.bsky.social walk at Chicago’s Soldier Field! Come on down, rain or shine #cansky

“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “they promptly let the individual go.” Meanwhile, the reality of #KavanaughStop

kids teacher just sent this home as part of an assignment he's doing and i want to smash every computer at the school

In disbelief that Tony Fitzpatrick has died. Almost 10 years ago he messaged me out of the blue to see if I wanted some art of his for the cover of "Rust Belt Chicago," a @beltpublishing.bsky.social anthology I was editing of essays, poetry & short stories about Chicago. His generosity was legend.

On ICE raids and attacks in Chicago, local reporters have consistently shown up the national outlets attempting to report remotely. Locals continue to break story after story even as the nationals are summarizing govt press releases. They've shown physical bravery in very dangerous circumstances.

He was always going to do this. Chicagoans have not rioted, so the administration just lied and said we have. We have not attacked ICE agents, so they just lied and said we did. There was no chaos here, so they created chaotic scenes by attacking people and filmed that shit.

Bridging my current life in Chicago and my past life in D.C., I argue today at @newrepublic.com that Democrats should ~never~ vote to fund this government. Make John Thune blow up Senate rules and Republicans wholly own the U.S. extra-military military doing war crimes against us, funded by us.

Journalism, the job where when someone powerful lies you describe it as "not strictly true" because describing facts would be bias bsky.app/profile/atru...

We need a bigger national spotlight on this building raid, fam. Agents dropped from helicopters onto the roof. Citizens and non-citizens alike were dragged from their homes in the night. People who weren't kidnapped during the raid had their belongings seized after the fact. This is madness.

What DHS pulled in Chicago on Tuesday is wildly unconstitutional. They smashed down almost every door in the building, dragged entire families into the street, and detained people for hours ("Kavanaugh stops"). Ms. Fisher was held for five hours and another senior citizen was held for three hours.

RIP to the great Jane Goodall who had THE AUDACITY to SUGGEST that Trunt's behavior was like a male chimpanzee's....What a LIFE/CAREER...Jane, not Trunt. @drginnymac.bsky.social @gmf1369.bsky.social @misslizzy.bsky.social @judithbolyard.bsky.social @danableedgreen.bsky.social @themrrudy.bsky.social

I was sent this by a Georgian this morning. 2025 premiums vs 2026 premiums for someone making $65k a year. Republicans in Washington did this. This is what I'm fighting to stop. This is what’s at stake in this shutdown fight.

Broadview officials have opened three criminal investigations into actions by ICE agents and the Department of Homeland Security around their facility in the west suburb. www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Broadview Police have opened an investigation into an attack from federal agents on a CBS crew at Broadview, per BPD Chief Mills.

👇🎯 We are where we are as a country because not enough people on the right half of the political spectrum cared about democracy & the rule of law above all the other things the way @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social clearly does. When the chips were down, he stood up. We need more to follow his lead.

🧵 You don't have to ask <if> or <when> American democracy will backslide. All you have to do is look around, every day now, at the things we've totally normalized that would have ended presidencies immediately in years past.

This is the secret the Trump regime tried so hard to keep about the Dallas ICE shooting The names of the dead and wounded Jose Andres Bordones-Molina Miguel Ángel García-Hernandez Norlan Guzman-Fuentes Fight Trump's dehumanization. Say their names. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/dall...

Your eyes can see the truth

“Steve Held, the journalist arrested tonight and taken to a so far undisclosed location, was part of the reporting team that exposed the falsity of ICE’s official narrative on the fatal shooting of Silverio Villegas González. His work speaks for itself.”

“When you feel the very tight hug, that’s where she left off.” — Phyllis. @stringtheoryyarnco #fairisle #kindnessofstrangers #looseends

This was completed by a @looseendsproject.bsky.social artist in my state for my sister. My mom, who died of metastatic breast cancer in 2024, had started it years ago & left it unfinished. #cancer #kindness

Feds just fired a tremendous amount of pepper balls at Reverend David Black, a regular protester here. A number of them hit him in the face and head.

It's been another morning of terror in Chicagoland. ICE is snatching people across burbs + city. More cars abandoned on the side of the road, & more day laborers disappeared. A van rolls into the Broadview "processing facility." After gates close, agents move 3 men in shackles into the building.

This. He was steeped in it and acted according to it.

A visual aid—two of the main sites of DHS/ICE activity OTG in Chicagoland right now are not in Chicago proper*, the end

Just thinking about how the right made up an entirely fictional left wing character that resulted in so many bomb threats and the like and nobody will face consequences. But people on the left who accurately clocked the victim’s life work lost jobs.

I mean. It doesn't matter if people celebrate or not. Fascists are gonna do what fascists do. They never actually need a real reason.

The second this Texas A & M story broke I said to a friend “we’re going to quickly learn that this student is the child of some county GOP chair.” I was close. Of course the entire episode was not spontaneous, but was part of a PR stunt that’s now ruined several people’s lives.

Side effects like pneumonitis, fatigue, diarrhea plague cancer tx. Patient Centered Dosing Initiative (therightdose.org) blew the door off this topic and @fda.gov + @ascocancer.bsky.social are out with further guidelines that make sense w/new classes of drugs #cansky www.raps.org/news-and-art...

I considered writing a long carefully constructed argument laying out the harms and limitations of AI, but instead I wrote about being a hater. Only humans can be haters.