ICE is engaged in a very large escalation nationwide, with the agency claiming to be hitting record arrest numbers amid the return of quotas. This has gotten very little attention from the media because ICE learned lessons from the chaotic disasters of Kristi Noem’s tenure. Keep a watch.

Given that ICE just shot and killed a man they were attempting to pull over in Houston, I think ICE will once again be under the microscope. People are outraged here in Houston. www.thebulwark.com/p/he-lived-h...

Early last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis began signing death warrants at a faster rate than ever before. What followed was the most intense period of executions the state has carried out in more than eight decades. with @nytimes.com

This is journalism

Bluesky this morning:

Elyas Abu Safia says his father Hussam can barely breathe or speak after more than 555 days in Israeli prison.

Freaking out about communists in the year of our lord 2026 because the DSA, who are not communists, may send a handful of not-communist representatives to Congress, where they will be the junior-most members of the not communist Democratic Party.

Prime ministers like doing foreign policy because everyone is far nicer to you than they are domestically. For obvious reasons never put it in the magazine, but one diplomat described European Council meetings as “27 politicians violently fellating each other”

Salvaged steel and a slice of countryside: Caro sculptures on show in Oxfordshire fields

Portes "Theres a lot of nonsense talked, including on Sky, about the spiralling welfare bill.. as a proportion of our national income.. its lower than it was 15yrs ago & its pretty much back to what it was under Thatcher.. this idea its out of control is just wrong" Spot on!

New in PN: E. Jean Carroll Beat Trump. Again. "As Republican politicians cower in fear, one incredibly brave woman stood up to the man who assaulted her. She did this with full knowledge that he would use every bit of firepower he could muster to destroy her. *And she won.*"

Strathclyde history represent! Really enjoyed hearing two excellent papers this morning by my colleagues @annalively.bsky.social (on the Women’s Guild of Empire) and Fearghus Roulston (on anti-dampness campaigns in early 80s Britain). #SHS2026 @strathhumanities.bsky.social @socialhistsoc.bsky.social

Clarence Thomas says the 14th Amendment should be read narrowly because it was written for formerly enslaved people. By that logic, the 2nd Amendment was written for muskets, not AR-15s. Funny how that kind of originalism only shows up when it's convenient.

Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. took four months off from Congress, fully paid, to treat depression. Time and again, he’s voted against paid sick leave legislation. What a goddamn hypocrite.

ABK co-founder Peter Ahrends dies aged 93

Also: the unspeakable hypocrisy of these people saying refugees should 'pay their way'. We have spent years, decades actually, begging the Home Office to let asylum seekers work so their could have some meaning and material advantage in their life, to no avail.

Thread (up & down from here). I also don’t know what Mahmood is playing at, but her statements are repulsive. All she’s going to do is divide the Labour Party further between people who hate her, & people who hate her but delude themselves that she might appease the right wing press. She needs to go

a fantastic reflection by @grindrod.bsky.social on Penelope Keith's greatest work as Margo Leadbetter and the personification of a kind of suburban madness open.substack.com/pub/johngrin...

There is no ceasefire. There is genocide.

Times argues that Labour sticking to its plans fro remigration and deportation is the only way to stave off Farage - because that's worked so well so far. There is no appeasing these people, and no point in trying and the sooner govt realises that the better. www.thetimes.com/comment/the-...

Architect-led bid shortlisted for Ladywell Playtower restoration

Tens of thousands celebrated Budapest Pride, the first since Viktor Orbán’s ousting.

Amongst other atrocities www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Ex-Treasury official Sharon White says on BBC One that Britain has "the highest debt, the highest overdraft if you like, across any of the developed countries". Erm, no we don't?

A nice view of the "Walrus Mural" in Forest Hill, recently restored to its former glory. (Pic by @robmcintosh.bsky.social)

"Hey did you finish that 1925 Ordnance Survey map that covers parts of Hertfordshire?" "Yeah, made it real useless just like you asked."

THIS is why the asylum appeal success rate is so high. It’s not a bunch of tree-hugging judges. It’s a bunch of utterly demoralised, very junior, badly-trained, badly-led officials at the Home Office consistently making bad decisions

Paperbacks have arrived and are looking lovely. Buy yours from 16 July. It has been heartily endorsed by both the Financial Times and the Morning Star so its perfect for any Dialectic enthusiasts in your life. See below for some events too:

In its current form, “conservativism” is an ecocidal death cult and humanity’s greatest threat. Media should treat it as such & not get into petty arguments about North Sea oil etc. Record breaking temperatures, storms, fires, and rapid species decline are just the hors d'oeuvres.

Ignore all the hysterical tabloid bullshit. Ed Miliband is a good choice for chancellor inews.co.uk/opinion/ever...

‘We just want to protect the children’ Riiiiiight

Zohran Mamdani says AIPAC's has been supportive of a 'status quo for immorality' in Palestine, wider region.

Andy Burnham is currently under a load of media-driven pressure to "reassure the markets" by appointing a Chancellor whose views are almost entirely out of line with everything he's said so far. How he responds will tell us whether he actually wants to change how Westminster works

Demonstrators chant "Albania is not for sale," challenging coastal projects tied to Kushner amid environmental concerns https://aje.news/q28j7f

The attacks in Edinburgh, in which an armed bare-chested white man terrorised Muslims, leaving five people injured, don't feature on a single newspaper front page this morning. Two tier journalism

Me watching a documentary about psychopaths and how they "prefer to stay at home, don't have many friends and can get very upset over a minor inconvenience"

SNYDER: Ukraine is not member of NATO, but Ukraine is doing all of the work of NATO right now only with its own armed forces. Ukraine is basically fulfilling the entire mission of NATO, with help of course, but not with anybody else's soldiers.

Where’s Andy Burnham going?

I wrote about the war of the modernists in Brussels and how it led to the rise of the heritage movement. www.brusselstimes.com/magazine/212...

One department leaving is good. Now all must follow.

Imagine if Labour was what Allister Heath thinks it is: radical, punchy, efficient, unstoppable. His paranoia is my wishlist

But that is exactly how the suffragettes operated. With a nationwide organisation of sleeper cells of arsonists and bombers. I’m gratefully people have reached out and referenced my work today. I remain (I believe) the only academic expert on the terrorism of the suffragettes. Links below:

The average terror suspect arrested in England and Wales is now a white woman in her 50s as a result of the Palestine Action ban Almost 2,800 arrests were made for supporting the group in 6 months - surpassing the number of terror suspects detained in the previous decade inews.co.uk/news/politic...

There's a far better case for banning social media for people 65+ than for people 16-18

"What do you rebuild in its place?" I don't know, fucking flowers? Wild grass? The overwhelming beauty of literally anything else? It's not just a metaphor, you have to destroy the surveillance palace that doubles as a fascist bunker if you don't want disconnection to be part of American governance.

Bristol City Council has approved Buckley Gray Yeoman’s (BGY) plans to retrofit a 35-year-old Postmodern former Lloyds Bank building, originally designed by Arup

Harry Potter shops raided after London Centric investigation…. HMRC officials seize till receipts… ministers treating now central London gift shops as a tax enforcement issue…. www.londoncentric.media/p/harry-pott...

How architecture helped to topple Viktor Orbán— Prime Minsisted Magyar points to an EU notice on the wall of the ministry acknowledging that EU money was used on the project. “Then the EU stopped…  www.ft.com/content/5f7d... @edwinheathcote.bsky.social @financialtimes.com