Zohran Mamdani in August 14, 2020 interview: “I think Bernie was great. I mean, Bernie is a big part of the reason that I am where I am. But I think that, you know, we kind of only had Bernie. I don’t know how to put it but he had to put the whole team on his back.” 🥹

Mi familia! We just love to party!

a big runoff last night, in New Orleans: Calvin Duncan was exonerated after spending *28 years* in prison; he tried to get his own case records from the New Orleans city clerk—but the office dragged its feet. So Duncan ran to become city clerk himself, and yesterday ousted the incumbent.

Tell me you don’t understand risk pools without telling me you don’t understand risk pools

Reductions in Force not required by shutdowns, have never happened in any previous shutdown, and a judge has ruled they are illegal. The shutdown is an excuse, not a reason, for them to do what they wanted to do: destroy government.

It's publication day for Read This When Things Fall Apart! So grateful to our contributors and to @akpress.org for making this book a reality. This is a strange time to be promoting a book, but I believe it's a text that has the potential to help us right now. Please get yourself a copy. ❤️

There’s only one way to explain why questions like “who do NYC voters like for mayor,” and “what do San Franciscans think about George Washington,” become national issues that define the Democratic Party, while genuine Republican extremism with national implications is glossed over as a local issue.

I saw a Cuomo ad last night that was basically "if there's another 9/11, we need a mayor with experience like Andrew Cuomo," and it made me wonder, wait, what was Andrew Cuomo doing on 9/11? Well, he was probably preoccupied with damage control for this: nypost.com/2001/09/10/p...

Throwback to my favorite Halloween mishap from 2023. My daughter has recovered.

At least 3,000 people who have been detained in Chicago ICE raids are missing from official DHS records. We still don’t know what happened to the 1200 people who went missing from the Everglades facility. They’re disappearing people. No due process. No accountability.

In the past, Gov. Hochul has called raising most taxes, even on the wealthy, a hard "no." She softened the stance today. "I have a lot of calculations to do," Hochul says. "There's a lot of popular phrases out there... But I am open to trying to help people who are struggling"

Is there a bigger sign of an authoritarian government?

I just want a four way split screen on election night Mamdani, Sliwa, Cuomo and Bill Ackman

In 2005, I wrote an article called "Inventing Akromiya" about how the government of Uzbekistan made up a group called Akromiya to justify a massacre of civilian protesters. Twenty years later, the US is more like Uzbekistan, and I wrote "Inventing Antifa": sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/inventing-...

Sure, sure, Hitler rose to power with disinformation and propaganda. But it also took capture of the courts and paramilitary in the streets.

Because he can: Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/u...

TFW you see @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social standing right in the same spot you were a few days ago. 😭 Come join a canvas and meet your neighbors! www.zohranfornyc.com/volunteer/si...

Justice Anthony Kennedy tells @npr.org's @ninatotenberg.bsky.social "very worried" about our country, and that "Democracy is not guaranteed to survive." Kennedy wrote Citizens United and was the fifth vote in the rest of the Roberts Court's anti-democratic decisions. www.npr.org/2025/09/27/n...

a person at Treasury gave Defector a rundown of how this process—which appears to be against the law—was expedited in order to avoid public scrutiny defector.com/treasury-dep...

Zohran’s Golden Bachelor ad is great but it’s just a rip-off of an ad someone made for Valentine’s Day where they sang “Will You Be My Democrat?” ❤️ Now that guy had RIZZZZZZ!

A drug that provides near-perfect protection against HIV with shots just twice a year will be made available at $40 per patient annually in low- and middle-income countries, offering new hope for ending the epidemic.

NEW: Air Force jets are doing ICE flights to Africa with transponders turned off, making them nearly un-trackable. This includes the third-country removal to Ghana and another secret flight. We figured out where it landed. From me for @rollingstone.com: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Congrats to the happy couple!!! 🎉

The most quoted stat re expiration of the enhanced ACA subsidies is from KFF - that avg enrollee costs will rise 75%. But that analysis is from 2024, and the actual increase, per the IRS's setting of the % of income enrollees will pay in 2026, is higher. xpostfactoid.substack.com/p/worse-than...

Suggestion: A strike of musicians, writers, hosts, actors, lighting, electricians--everyone, shutting down all TV studios, until Jimmy Kimmel is reinstated. This is the kind of action we need, instead of sitting around just waiting to be gutted.

Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.

reading a book about china. apparently the government there has sent federal forces into cities, taken shares of major private enterprises, slapped tariffs on industries, and pressured media outlets to fire people they politically disagreed with. didn’t know this.

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.

Lawless authoritarians trying to bring politically motivated charges against their opponents abcnews.go.com/US/trump-off... The rule of law is in danger

Not a headline that can appear in an actual democracy. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09...

The MSNBC commentator saying that most political violence has historically come from the left just once again showed how we suffer from failing to learn history. Lynching, pogroms, race riots, the political violence that ended Reconstruction, and against the Civil Rights Movement. Come on.

Horrors of Trump detention centre: Lisburn man tells his story after arrest for 'looking like a Mexican' Lee Stinton was lifted by US immigration police on an American street — in an incident he compared to a kidnapping. Here, he tells us his story.

A scary sentiment. It’s the scene in the dystopian book, play, film where a leader in a world gone awry is exposed to be completely overtaken by monstrous forces.

Yes, rents were affordable. Senior year at NYU - sublet an apartment on West 78th St between Broadway and Amsterdam (UWS) for $500/month total, split among 3 roommates. 2 years later, split 2BR in Park Slope for $800/month total rent (split with roommate, so I paid about $333 for smaller bedroom).

Trump admin: We’re prosecuting war on American cities, violating rights, and hurting the economy too, laws mean nothing, it makes us giddy. Majority of US public: We hate it. Way too many US elites: He’s all powerful, the people love it, this is forever, let’s capitulate, that’s just being smart.

The market-first consensus has collapsed—leaving stagnant wages, rising costs, and hollowed-out communities. CEO @elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social in Democracy Journal argues: the choice ahead is authoritarian decline or a democratic economy that delivers. democracyjournal.org/magazine/78/...

Great story by my colleagues on the constant political realignment of Grok, the generative AI chatbot over on the other site. This change to Grok’s answer about the greatest threat to Western civilization is particularly ironic/meta. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/t...

Zohran Mamdani is funny on the fly. From his AMA today:

Re-reading the report of the Social Security whistleblower, it is striking how many times good people within SSA tried to keep DOGE from committing crimes. Here's my understanding of the timeline 🧵

One of the biggest cultural issues we have is that no major media or journalistic institutions have been reinforcing norms of what things *should* look like. That corruption isn’t normal, that cronyism isn’t normal, that lies and scandals should be punished, that incompetence is disqualifying.

The White House's memes about imprisonment, deportation, and death by alligator are designed to radicalize and desensitize. “What you have is this desire to get people to buy into the fun of sadism,” says Jason Stanley, an author who’s leaving the US because of “concerns over fascism.”

Some good news today:

Fascism is here. We are not “getting closer” or “in danger of.” This matters because it frames our discussion: We aren’t trying to prevent it, we’re trying to defeat it. It’s not taking over our institutions, it’s taken them over. Otherwise, we’re always behind, fighting a past we’ve already lost.

Is Cuomo soliciting voter fraud? nypost.com/2025/08/09/u...

So it turns out that Cuomo's slam at Mamdani's lodgings wasn't just a know-nothing misrepresentation of homelessness, rent control, and rent stabilization, it was also a stealth boosting of the landlord lobby's coming messaging on why rent stabilization should be gutted.

Andrew Cuomo’s crash out. If you don’t know the difference between “rent stabilized” and “rent controlled,” you should not be Mayor of NYC. Even more so if you are an infamous Governor who slashed homeless funding vouchers, gave away money to the rich, and was appointed to HUD as a favor to his dad