“These cascading acts of cowardice from the people best positioned to resist Trump’s authoritarian power grabs have made Trump seem exponentially more powerful than he actually is.”

“Demand a meeting?” Pathetic. www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

Not sure Americans fully appreciate what a momentous thing it is for Canada to part ways with the United States on something like this. Yet another sign of the United States’ near-total isolation in the community of nations.

BREAKING: Canada officially recognizes the State of Palestine and is doing so with international partners to preserve the prospect of a two-state solution, according to a statement from PM Mark Carney's office released Sunday morning. #cdnpoli #canpoli www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion. Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

This is the biggest attack on free speech since the McCarthy era but it also has significantly less popular consensus behind it than the second Red Scare. It's being done on behalf of a minority faction led by the most unpopular president in modern history. Organizing against this can win.

“What we’re seeing is an unprecedented attempt to silence disfavored speech by the government,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. “Donald Trump is trying to dictate what Americans can say.” https://to.pbs.org/46AYg7U

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com The Democrats’ priority “now must be to show that the threat of authoritarian rule is real and unfolding every day,” E. J. Dionne Jr. says in his first piece as a contributing writer for Times Opinion. “The economy will always be with us. Our free institutions might not.”

Interesting day to be teaching about the economics of news production & how corporate ownership matters. Two of the slides for today’s lecture:

Come work with us! The Walrus is currently accepting applications for two Editorial Fellows. These are remote, paid 12-month positions, with a November 2025 start date. thewalrus.ca/about/careers/

Interesting day to be teaching about the economics of news production & how corporate ownership matters. Two of the slides for today’s lecture:

Disney suspends Kimmel for saying something that Disney’s ABC News and many others air while reporting on Kimmel’s suspension. The Streisand effect (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisa...) in action, again. abcnews.go.com/amp/US/abc-p...

A good time to remember that a whole bunch of us are getting together to speak out against this authoritarianism -- I used to say creeping, but it's really now just a full gallop -- on October 18. Join us www.nokings.org

The only guy left is the one who played with Trump’s hair. youtu.be/kIGcosb22_Y?...

Yes — and another test is whether the media system is captured by corporate interests that have no stomach for protecting free speech. Disney is always going to Disney, it’s ultimately in the business of business.

"Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself." Ta-Nehisi Coates, with receipts.

Klein+co NEED a Habermasian public of deliberative democracy & rational discourse to be attainable, desirable & superior. Any other image of the public robs them of their power & legitimacy. It’s what they know how to do, it must be right. I wish journalists had deeper understandings of “public.”

I see that Ezra Klein responded to critics by doubling down on being even more Ezra Klein.

The power politics of categories & categorization is about to become fraught, intense, & scary as these people start defining, with consequences, “far left” & “left wing”.

White House Officials Vow Vast Crackdown on Liberal Groups www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09... Open authoritarianism. Happening right in front of us.

🚨 berkeley faculty association hits back against the "wholly unnecessary and legally improper" release of faculty, staff and student information. ucbfa.org/wp-content/u...

That this thread was posted by a sitting U.S. Senator is... notable. This isn't speculation. Miller is being clear about his (and the Trump regime's) intention to use the tragedy in Utah to delegitimize, demoralize, and further disempower the opposition party. The hypocrisy re: free speech is acute.

If *your department head and your dean* can be removed for supporting your colleague in teaching in their area of expertise, then you have no academic freedom. In a functional sense, you don't work at a university at all.

SCOTUS won’t save us / U.S.

The New Yorker asked me “how bad” today’s Supreme Court ruling was. I boiled it down to one paragraph: link.newyorker.com/view/5bda429...

A social sciences and humanities reading list on AI in education 🧵

They forgot to update the logo — definitely the detail-oriented crowd you want in charge of nuclear weapons. www.war.gov/About/Office...

Proud to have signed this letter alongside a pretty amazing set of people & organizations. These are complex issues for sure but it’s very helpful to have such a public, detailed framework agreed to by such a group. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Proud to have signed this letter alongside a pretty amazing set of people & organizations. These are complex issues for sure but it’s very helpful to have such a public, detailed framework agreed to by such a group. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

A lesson for journalism here, too: “The danger, then as now, was that the call for ‘balance’ was rhetorically powerful but intellectually hollow.”

Open corruption: “Witkoff, World Liberty’s chief executive & son of presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, said last week that it is strictly a private business & doesn’t get involved in politics, though ‘clearly President Trump is the greatest president of all time.’” www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

New Mexico has issued a public health order that removes federal restrictions to COVID-19 vaccine access so that pharmacies in New Mexico can vaccinate people of all ages and risk profiles. Every state need to do this!

There are *so many* other ways to cover fascist authoritarianism than platforming officials who lie. Mainstream, celebrity journalists invested in legacy formats like this continue to see their jobs as “indexing” & (sometimes) fact-checking elite officials. These journalists fail this moment.

Pritzker out here giving a master class in countering the right wing propaganda machine’s efforts to justify further federal invasions and occupations of American cities: he’s effectively reframing the discussion (beyond debates re: crime rates) to one of rising authoritarianism & federal overreach.

“many Americans wrongly believe there would be one clear unambiguous moment where we go from ‘democracy’ to ‘authoritarianism.’ Instead, this is exactly how it happens — a blurring here, a norm destroyed there, a presidential diktat unchallenged.” www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

This firefighter arrived in the US at age 4, has been here for 19 years, was on track to legal status, and was on a crew trying to contain a major blaze (in Washington state, vs Oregon, fwiw.) h/t @joshuajfriedman.com www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Don’t do this, Canada. We gotta be on guard against firms like Palantir—*especially* Palantir—worming its way into Canadian public infrastructure under the guise of AI efficiency & competitiveness. Canada needs strong digital regulation yesterday — clock is ticking on multiple vulnerabilities.

Roombanana

85% of Canadians want federal AI regulation! 85%! It’s hard to imagine things that 85% of Canadians agree on. Solomon+Carney should hear this majority as they celebrate & deploy AI. People want thoughtful guardrails & measured pacing, not unfettered tech. www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/1022323...

Great point on strategic sneakiness of scale. The bigger the phenomenon, the smaller the impact any *individual* act seemingly has. A perfect way to devolve responsibility to individual scales & dismiss individual acts as insignificant. It’s scale *creators* who have real power & responsibility.

lol, they banned “The Handmaid’s Tale” & “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”? If they’d actually read those books they might understand the fragility of fear-based politics…and the irony of banning them. But they didn’t, so they don’t.

“extremism never triumphs on its own. It succeeds because others enable it—because of their ambition, because of their fear, or because they misjudge the dangers of small concessions.”

🚨Border Patrol arrested two firefighters who were actively fighting a wildfire at the time. When the other members of the crew asked for a chance to say goodbye, a Border Patrol agent told the crew member “you need to get the f*ck out of here. I’m going to make you leave.”

I continue to be in awe of what @prisonjournalism.bsky.social accomplishes — an incredible network & publication. Check out this series on the impacts of climate change on prisons & incarcerated people. And consider donating if you can: prisonjournalismproject.fundjournalism.org/prisonjourna...

Dear journalists: The President has not fired Lisa Cook. The President is *trying* to illegally fire her. Your words shape people’s reality. Please be accurate in your reporting.

This is all bad, but ICE “monitoring” 2026 elections is most dangerous bit. Voters would be intimidated, ballots would be insecure, the outcome would be illegitimate. It’d be a clear sign that Trump’s private security force (ICE+FBI+National Guard) is running things, a federal takeover of states.

What once was an easy 1-step process for uploading a syllabus to our university system is now a 3-step process, a part of which is broken. But once I navigate all that there is now an animation of exploding confetti & a message congratulating me that I have "zero tasks." Definitely an improvement.

Slow down everyone! “blocked comments…a proxy for incivility, are posted significantly faster than visible comments” “the presence of blocked comments increases the likelihood of subsequent blocked comments, with decreasing time intervals between them” journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Sean’s reporting—along the work of several other indy LA journalists—has been tenacious & rigorous & so enlightening. Just donated; please do so if you can.

“In short: Microsoft will listen to the U.S. government regardless of Canada or and other country’s domestic laws.” Canadian sovereignty depends on (AI) tech infrastructure that’s driven by US companies & US interests, controlled by an unhinged US government. www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science...