📢New in JBS! 📗“Imperial Politics, the Dominions, and the Irish Question, 1907–21” by John C. Mitcham Open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Loved the newest piece from @bakerdphd.bsky.social's Inside Higher Ed blog today, and appreciated its attention to both historical context and the current power dynamics which make "institutional neutraility" far from neutral.

Next up in the series! 📗"One British Archive: The Weather Extremes in England's Little Ice Age Database" by Madeline Bassnett Open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Over the next few weeks, the NACBS blog will feature a series of pieces on artificial intelligence. Check out the opening essay by @amywb.bsky.social and stay tuned for more! www.nacbs.org/post/the-ai-...

My brilliant spouse just suggested that municipalities name landfills, sewage treatment facilities, and dumpsters after our “dear leader”. I love this idea.

The Strangers Case

I found the first investigative file from the first complainant against Epstein in 2005. There are descriptions from the officer, over several interviews of the girl, of her pulling her knees up on the chair, drawing doodles, & the officer high-fiving her to keep her calm as she speaks of horror.

www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ja... Nailed it with this review, and the taxidermy line!

I wrote this yesterday about the hero city of Minneapolis www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKOW...

"You don't get promoted to Chief Child Catcher without a little expertise!"

At the rate we're going, Larry Ellison is going to have Paramount Pictures put out a prestige drama about the valiant officers who tracked down Anne Frank

The DOJ is more than three weeks late in delivering the Epstein Files. In those three weeks: - Trump declared himself acting President of Venezuela - ICE murdered a woman in Minnesota - Trump is preparing an invasion of a NATO ally - Trump initiated a criminal investigation of Fed Chair Powell

I wrote about some of 2025's big generative AI developments and their implications for historians: multimodal generation, deep research, and handwriting transcription. In short, we need to stop dismissing this as nothing more than "autocomplete on steroids." cblevins.github.io/posts/gen-ai...

This sums things up well. open.substack.com/pub/marcmurp...

Bill Clinton releasing a statement saying 'release the Epstein files, you cowards' was not on my bingo list.

This administration is made up of internet influencers and Fox News mainstays who live for the camera, so I guess it’s not surprising they have no idea how to *hide* something from the media.

There has been no debate here among constitutional scholars, historians, political scientists, anyone with a pulse really. Any telling you that this very straightforward point, one that has been universally accepted for a century and a half, is now an "abstruse" issue is just a liar and a hack.

Just the president of the United States rationalizing that a Washington Post reporter was basically asking to be murdered and cut to pieces with a bone saw because of his reporting. As he sits next to the thug who ordered it.

I love how Rep. Joe Neguse reframed this question.

The President is disgusting and a disgrace. And he’s clearly rattled by yesterday’s turnout. Keep speaking out. The power belongs to the people.

New article out in @jbritishstudies.bsky.social. It's gestation began in late 2021, shortly before I started my current job teaching Black British history. It's the product of my frustrations with the way that the histories of racism & fascism in Britain are written about. doi.org/10.1017/jbr....

Dream PhD opportunity! We are recruiting another doctoral researcher in our @erc.europa.eu synergy project BLOCKADE - this one is on interwar blockades and sanctions. 4 years, fully funded at @uvahumanities.bsky.social and supervised by the amazing and super kind @samuelkruizinga.bsky.social

I hear the President has decreed that it is possibly a crime to refer to Americans as "fascists," but "fascism" is a word that has a relatively clear meaning that's worth understanding. Here's how an official publication of the US Army defined "fascism" in 1945.

FYI. If the Govt shuts down, everyone stays in town including the president but you’re just bored with nothing to do because it’s all messaging and negotiations. GREAT TIME TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES

Trump: "We've got a lot of stupid people in this country running things."

These are precedented times and the precedent is a loud ass warning www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/a...

The @washingtonpost.com has changed its slogan again, from “Democracy Dies In Darkness” to “Know Your Place.”

Without question. Shout out to the women this week. Just…shout out to yall.

Cabinet secretaries, lying on the record

🙌🏽

What Danielle said. According to the Yale Budget Lab, the average effective tariff rate in this economy right now is 18.2% Let me put that another way. President Trump has raised taxes on American businesses and consumers by -- on average -- 18.2%

They want to erase the violence and dispossession of the past, but enact it in the present. The history JANM tells is more important than ever, especially as the full history of Japanese American internment may disappear from national parks sites and the Smithsonian.

📢New in JBS! Two new additions to our One British Archive series, exploring little-known archives of interest to scholars of British Studies. We hope that this series will expand what counts as “British” and what counts as an “archive” at a moment when the field should be adapting and expanding.

It seems like an excellent time for @stephencolbert.bsky.social and the journalists at @60minutes.bsky.social to start talks with @pbs.org fir several new shows. I suspect donations would roll into public broadcasting

The thing about the Epstein disgustingness that strikes me hardest is that hundreds of rich old men raped underage girls and the only person currently in jail for that vile behavior is a woman.

Amazing.

We have decided to ban the use of GenAI for research, writing & creative work at our organization. In fact, we make people sign an agreement saying that their research, analysis, writing, and creative work are *theirs* and not done by GenAI.

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

Read our new book review by Tammy Proctor! Proctor reviews Cormac Ó Gráda’s The Hidden Victims: civilian casualties of the two world wars (Princeton, 2024). www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @usuhistorienne.bsky.social

Congress? You awake?

It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this