if the ICE officer is not swiftly arrested and charged with homicide, it will mean that American institutions have accepted that ICE can operate death squads on American soil

The FBI sniper at Ruby Ridge was prosecuted by Idaho. The federal district court initially dismissed the charges but was overruled by the Ninth Circuit, allowing it to proceed. The case only ended when a new district attorney was elected and decided to drop it.

"safe, proper, and judicious transition"

kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

Our leadership remains laser focused on the details

The oil will pay for it. Also, the taxpayers will pay the oil people to build the infrastructure to take the oil that's supposed to pay for it. Also, nobody's going to be paying for it

they ran on no more wars and are now pitching global conquest. they ran on protecting kids and are now paid subscribers to a deep fake kiddie porn generator. a competent opposition party would find a way to use this to their advantage

Friends, I hope you’ll share this widely. The @jcblibrary.bsky.social is hiring 2 3-yr research associates for collaborative work on religions and freedoms in the early Americas. Info is here and I’m happy to take questions offline: brown.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/staff-...

Don't let this Jan 6th point get lost: Jack Smith testified to Congress he had "proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election." In other words, he could prove in court that Trump attempted a coup.

far from disrupting power structures, in balance the advance of and spread of consumer tech over the last 30 years has on balance done more to make power easier to grow, concentrate, and defend

Imperialist bluster of "OUR hemisphere" and "WE are going to run Venezuela" is nonsense. Less than 6% of Americans believe what Trump is saying with 'DONROE doctrine'. When polled, 94% of Americans think the Venezuelan ppl should decide the future leadership of the country bsky.app/profile/waja...

In the months before the US raid in Venezuela, people tied to international oil execs and investors made the case for Delcy Rodríguez to succeed Maduro, citing her skill navigating sanctions and economic pressures. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This is like an old fashioned Gawker blog but somehow British and high-brow. I'll take it. www.ft.com/content/ad94...

it is fairly amazing how clear it was, at the time, what was happening. so much chaff has been thrown into the air since then, of course, that most coverage takes a "whomst amongst us can say what happened that day?" approach (stole this image from @joshsternberg.com's post)

Things can always get stupider

Best take I’ve heard, IRL: “This operation looks like it was designed by the same people who did the East Wing.”

Literally a publication for eight-year olds 40 years ago

“Lebensraum: is it prudent fiscal policy?” 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️ Again, one thing I was completely wrong about is that I believed there was a baseline level of professional pride & integrity below which supposedly serious journalists would not sink in the face of the far right authoritarianism.

Great Value Satan

Blows my mind that some of the same journalists who see Trump as a want-to-be dictator at home are earnestly discussing the "challenges" for this same man to "bring democracy" to a country it just illegal invaded. Please grow up.

It’s sobering to look back on the run-up to the Iraq war—a period of unceasing chattering-class debate, elaborate official lies, media complicity, unavailing global protest, in the end a giant stitch-up—and have it seem like some sort of paradise of public deliberation compared to these gangsters.

A God Given opportunity for Diosdado, no doubt.

there's just something morbidly funny about how he just throws everyone who sucks up to him under the bus.

He would still be trying to say Roosevelt Corollary so they skipped that bit.

When officials in first Trump admin war-gamed the ousting Maduro, they predicted "chaos for a sustained period of time with no possibility of ending it.' www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/u...

gulp

The last time Trump tried to change the government of Venezuela, it lead to economic collapse, a 7 million person exodus, and a hemispheric refugee crisis, without actually changing the government. But I'm sure that now that Maduro is gone, everything with go swimmingly.

A great day overall for fossil capital. Trump is less worried about who exactly will lead the Venezuelan government, even saying Machado won’t have the respect to govern Venezuela. What matters is that US oil companies get to drill and sell oil to other countries too.

Tulsi Gabbard in 2019: "The United States needs to keep our hands off Venezuela... end these destructive and wasteful regime change wars... proven to cause more problems, increase suffering, increase instability for the people in the countries where we wage these wars. In Latin America especially".

Do you think the Slack app is going to change its icon to the colors of the Venezuelan flag in support of that country’s people being unjustly attacked by a rogue country, like they did for Ukraine?

By pure coincidence- a piece I wrote for @irishexaminer.bsky.social was published this morning www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

Noticias de ayer.

NYT appropriately hoists this from the archives www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/u...

weird this would happen in a country that has never produced one (1) single material consequence for the crimes of their political leaders

“Remove justice and what are states but gangs of bandits on a large scale?” Augustine of Hippo, The City of God (Book IV, Chapter 4)

Never gets old.

Striking how the same bad actors keep showing up, along with the unexploded ordinance they left lying around.

This is the most extreme, irresponsible, and un-Constitutional sentence Trump has yet uttered in office. "We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition." WE'RE GOING TO RUN THE COUNTRY.

Yes, if there's one word that characterizes everything this administration does, it's "judicious"

[machine translation] "So Maduro should be prosecuted by US courts. Therefore, the US administration's position is that US courts can prosecute the crimes of foreign presidents, but not those of the President of the United States. Okay."

A deluge of work on regime change after the 2003 invasion of Iraq yielded strong (and rare) agreement in IR: it doesn't work & has terrible consequences. @profdownes.bsky.social's book Catastrophic Success lays it out, but it's right there in the title. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Hate it when I wake up in a wider gyre than the one I went to sleep in

I’ve long maintained that it was a mistake for Congress to have abolished itself.

"But Wiles conceded that attacking targets on Venezuela’s mainland would force Trump to get congressional approval. 'If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then [we’d need] Congress.'" - WH Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Nov 2, 2025 interview www.vanityfair.com/news/story/t...

There is no such immunity from criminal prosecution in American domestic law unless the country you're the president of is the United States.

Best thing I’ve read this morning, from a human rights lawyer in Mexico. Translation is in the ALT-text.

One cannot help but wonder if the attack on Venezuela is an attempt to distract from this devastating testimony about Trump’s culpability for 1/6 as well as a reminder about his ability to act with apparent impunity.