My first book is coming out this year! It analyzes Revelation as a divinatory performance, situated within the broader spectrum of divinatory performances in Roman Asia and Achaia (in oracles, mysteries, and associational settings). edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-revelat...

Nero Redivivus

Americans have a habit of trying to compare all authoritarianism to Nazi Germany. I think in some ways i think it is comforting to view authoritarianism as a foreign ideology. If you want to understand our current authoritarian moment, you need to look to our own past, not to Europe 1/x

Since July, I've tracked at least 2,300 cases in which federal judges have ruled ICE has illegally detained people without bond or due process. This is one that stands out: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Alex was disarmed, pinned, and then executed.

You and your wife drop your 6-year-old off at school. You just moved here. You see ICE terrorizing your new neighbors. You film them, as is your legal right. Your wife complies with orders. She is then shot in the head. You still have to pick up your child later today. This could be you.

“The revolution conquers the folk and public life, it stamps its mark on culture, the economy, politics, and private life. It would be naive to believe that art could be spared this …” — Joseph Goebbels, 1933 Photo by Jacquelyn Martin

So Democrats get: 1. A CR that will prevent the GOP from facing the wrath of Americans for a shutdown over the holidays 2. A coupon for one (1) meaningless ACA vote that will fail 3. An end to the illegal RIF/SNAP moves that are already before the courts Those all seem like wins for the GOP.

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

"Well, I don't think we're gonna necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We're gonna kill them. You know, they're gonna be, like, dead. Okay? Yeah." Trump has abandoned even the pretext of following the law.

That would be Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, in the Oval Office for a meeting btwn the U.S. president and the NATO Secretary-General in the middle of a brutal war in Europe, staring at plans for a ballroom that will replace the now-demolished East Wing of the White House.

Over and over again, establishment journalists just refuse to describe Republican policies and beliefs in plain language to mislead the public. The GOP says it is purging liberals from academia and journalists reframe it as “rebuilding trust.” That is not journalism, it is regime propaganda.

God, Slavery, and Early Christianity is out in the real world with @universitypress.cambridge.org! I have some extra, so retweet this by the end of Oct. 19 if you’re interested in receiving a copy! Book info here: www.cambridge.org/core/books/g...

New — Video shared with me shows ICE officers in DC detaining a man on Friday. Bystander filming asks man for his name. ICE agent lies and says he’s not allowed to speak to him “by law” and another says “We’ve arrested American citizens for being too close…If he gets any closer, put him in cuffs.”

They're talking about killing leftist activists. They're talking about murdering people organizing in defense of immigrant communities, doing mutual aid work, and protesting their violence. They are talking about murdering people like me and my friends. We must do more than acknowledge it's fascism.

Conservatives at Harvard: "we need a diversity of views on campus." The diversity of views in question: www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

1. AG Ken Paxton of Texas has announced undercover operations into left leaning groups, citing "transgenderism" and "antifa." It is the latest in a series of moves that indicates LGBTQ+ people and left-leaning orgs may be targets for domestic surveillance. Subscribe to support our journalism.

@govpritzker.illinois.gov 37 and Kedzie, East Garfield, Illinois. This is assault.

Hi, I served in Afghanistan: this is an obscenity and a perversion against both Christianity and America. Fuck this shit forever. Thanks.

Brian Kilmeade endorses euthanizing homeless people: "Involuntary lethal injection, or something. Just kill them."

“Someday, I hope, we’re going to have a reckoning over the horrors of this moment, but I don’t think we can do it without a clearer understanding of how this fits into U.S. history. There’s a tendency to say, “This isn’t who we are,” and I get the impulse, but history is never that simple.”

Happening right in front of us

NEW: McCarthyism returns to immigration law, as @USCIS announces that it will begin screening applicants for immigration benefits for "Anti-America ideologies or activities." The term has no prior precedent in immigration law and its definition is entirely up to the Trump admin.

300,000 Black women have been pushed out of their employment in the last three months. This resegregation isn't just racial, it's also heavily gendered.

"He walked 8 km to get there. No shoes. Probably hadn't eaten in days... he set down his bags and he put his hands on my face and he kissed me... he left and the IDF opened up with machine gun fire... There were dead Palestinians. He was one of them." A five-year-old child.

"Jonathan Caravello...was reportedly “piled on by multiple agents all at once” as “he tried to help a man in a wheelchair” who was having difficulty moving after...[ICE] agents threw canisters of tear gas" our colleague is still missing as of the last info I got dailynous.com/2025/07/12/p...

No one in this country—documented, undocumented—should be taken this way. That they snatched a disabled military veteran who’s a citizen gives up the whole game: they took a young man for fitting their color profile, not because he was any of the categories of people they claim they’re looking for.

NEW: the Trump admin has moved to terminate TPS for Honduras and Nicaragua, covering over 50,000 people Both of these designations date back to 1999, meaning Trump wants to strip legal status from people here legally who have had a background check every 18 months for the last 26 years.

With all the news demonstrating how stupid this administration is, we should not lose sight of the fact that they’re certainly the most evil in American history. Just eliminating USAID is going to kill 14,000,000 more people over the next 5 years.

The people they kidnapped are from Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba, Myanmar, and just one is from South Sudan.

Trump on undocumented immigrant workers: "We gotta work with the farmers and people that have hotels and leisure properties too. We're gonna work with them and we're gonna put you in charge. We're gonna make you responsible ... let the farmers be responsible."

JFC! This needs to go straight to the Hague and we need arrest warrants for Trump and Bukele.

The White House has ordered the US Dept. of Justice to prioritize denaturalization: voiding the citizenship of US citizens. Who will it denaturalize? "Any" case that it "determines to be sufficiently important". Point 10 leaves the criteria opaque and arbitrary. substack.com/redirect/169...

IDF soldiers have now themselves admitted they have been ordered to murder aid-seekers in Gaza. Truly an atrocity built on atrocity. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

If the GOP reconciliation bill passes, ICE gets through FY2029: - $45 billion for detention, on top of the current annual budget of $3.4 billion - $14.4 billion for transportation and removal, on top of the current annual budget of $750 million - $8 billion for hiring/retention - Billions more.

for the record, just over 12 percent of students at uva are black or hispanic. 12 percent are asian. 5 percent identify as "multi-ethnic." about 57 percent of students are white. this is what Trump considers to be "DEI" run amok.

🚨NEW: The Trump admin moves to terminate Temporary Protected Status for HALF A MILLION Haitians, claiming despite all reality that Haiti is a safe country to return to — even though large portions of the country are ruled by vicious gangs and civil governance has collapsed.

Today's Supreme Court decision does not opine on the constitutionality of Trump's assault on birthright citizenship. It is limited to the question of universal injunctions. But its ruling on that front is MASSIVE—a huge blow to plaintiffs and judges trying to block Trump's most lawless policies.

The upshot of this decision, for now, seems to be exactly the crazy patchwork scenario we were warned about: - the lower-court injunctions continue to protect the parties (immigrant orgs, individuals and 22 states) from Trump's EO - the EO can (and will) be enforced in the other 28 states

"ICE holding a record 59,000 immigrant detainees, nearly half with no criminal record, internal data show," "Stephen Miller Has Financial Stake in Company Helping ICE With Deportations: Report," "Marine veteran defends gardener father seen being hit by immigration agents in video," & must-read news.

A breakthrough preventive drug that offers total protection from HIV was to be rolled out across parts of Africa this year. But the Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts derailed those plans.

Since May: Federal district courts have ruled against Trump admin 94% of the time. Supreme Court has sided with the Trump admin 94% of the time. A judiciary at war with itself.

Houston police called ICE on a woman who called 911 to report domestic abuse by her ex-husband. The only reason she didn't get deported is because ICE said there was no one to take custody of her kids, according to the police report. www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

New data show that ICE is pulling record numbers of people off the streets who have no criminal convictions of any kind. This is not just a change from the Biden admin. This is a radical tactical shift compared to Trump 1.0. These arrests are up over 1,000% from 2017. www.cato.org/blog/ice-arr...

A U.S. citizen on their way to work abducted by ICE then locked in a basement, with federal government employees refusing to consider indisputable proof of citizenship. Congress endorses it. SCOTUS keeps thwarting judges from even slowing it. What more is there to say? We live under fascism now.

I spent most of today seeking to meet with one of the many victims of ICE raids currently jailed in Downtown LA. While @chrclla.bsky.social focuses its efforts on impact litigation, my team boosts efforts on the ground whenever possible. What I saw speaks to the crisis in LA & beyond.

🚨ICE is detaining a record 59,000 people, an increase of 10,000 people in a single month — with detention centers massively overcrowded and people being forced into squalid conditions as the admin pushes to hit Stephen Miller's dangerous quotas of 3,000 arrests a day. www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-rec...