Kansas is sending letters to trans people telling them that their licenses will be revoked as of tomorrow and that they risk arrest for driving on a suspended license. This is pure cruelty. www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sen...

As real world wins against authoritarianism (abroad & our own history) show, it nearly always requires sustained non-violent collective action - in other words, we need people to alter their behavior & that comes of them believing conditions are altered & won't right themselves via usual means.

This is the only summary of tonight you need

1. FACT: Trump’s new tariffs are just as illegal as his old tariffs But numerous media outlets are spreading false information about the law — and Trump is benefiting. Let's break it down.

"Always, always, always concentration camps are an end run around the existing legal system. These people that are getting rounded up because whoever’s in power wants to do something that they can’t do using the letter of the law..." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/o...

So you can keep the Super PACs straight: IL-02: AIPAC (pro-Donna Miller), AI (pro-Jesse Jackson Jr.), crypto (anti-Robert Peters) IL-07: AIPAC (pro-Melissa Conyears-Ervin), crypto (anti-LaShawn Ford) IL-08: AIPAC (pro-Melissa Bean), AI (pro-Bean) IL-09: AIPAC (pro-Laura Fine)

🚨We are calling out the corruption. We cannot allow shady right-wing groups to buy Democratic seats in Illinois.

Candidate debate for IL-2 congressional race tonight at CPS HS Kenwood Academy — not a lot of love for “school choice” on the stage tonight. No one is for vouchers & only Sen Willie Preston says something positive about charters.

Workers have begun restoring the slavery exhibit in Philadelphia that was removed by the Trump administration

So much more to say, but the thing I most want to say is: the country would be so much better if the Democratic Party had honored used more instead of constantly shitting on him.

New — This was projected on the US Institute of Peace building this evening ahead of the first meeting tomorrow of Trump’s farcically-named “Board of Peace.” Photo taken by person who was over there tonight. Unclear who’s behind the projection.

I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland. And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.

The first time I was even aware of Brendan Reilly came in 2014 when he was the sole alderman to vote to allow Chicago pet stores to continue sourcing animals from abusive and inhumane puppy mills. I'm sure there are better reasons to dislike Reilly, but this was my Reilly-hater origin story.

A reader asked Curious Philly: Why does Philly have so many chicken bones lying around? Well, two architects appear to be behind Philadelphia’s chicken bone temple.

The burbs are trying to reinstate parking minimums near Metra stations and busy Pace routes. Don’t let them. Submit an “opponent” witness slip below.

Morgan said given the America First Policy Institute’s connection to Trump administration officials, it’s likely that the regulations’ final language will match or closely resemble those proposals."

"Morgan also took issue with the institute (America First Policy Institute) suggesting that the scholarship granting organizations 'should have discretion to award scholarships to students receiving educational services from specific providers or attending specific schools,...

According to multiple NYT sources, it wasn’t even military personnel at Fort Bliss that fired an anti-drone laser at alleged cartel drones. It was CBP who used the weapon on loan from DoD against a child’s party balloon they mistook for a drone. The Pentagon gave CBP an anti-aircraft weapon.

More than 400 people, including hundreds of citizens, were “sorted” at gun point into racial and ethnic groups by 200 ICE agents who fired flash-bang grenades into cars with people inside, pointed guns at children & demanded their zip tied parents not comfort them. apple.news/Ausdx6kWtT0e...

a chicago public schools principal is limiting student protest by telling students they can't do a walkout lasting longer than 30 minutes "As a reminder, student walkouts should not exceed 30 minutes per CPS guidelines."

Legal status doesn’t matter: if you exceed ICE’s melanin threshold, you get snatched. It is ethnic cleansing. There is no other word for it. The news has shown you video of these often violent detentions. What you don’t see is what happens to these individuals after. I’ve had a front row seat. 7/

And here is my story: ‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

Worth watching this in full. The statement is more powerful than this quote alone. Here is is from USA Today, with alt text. Also! Rich Ruohonen is a personal injury lawyer and the oldest athlete to ever represent the United States in a Winter Games at 54 years old.

The Heritage Foundation has released a 250-year roadmap to “save America.” The document is a how-to guide for subjugating girls & young women: a detailed plan to push them out of college, funnel them into early marriage and motherhood, and then trap them there. jessica.substack.com/p/theyre-com...

In one 30-minute stretch, three legal observers were arrested — as Trump’s Border czar Tom Homan calls on locals to “end the resistance.”

#ClosetheCamps #AbolishICE “‘I feel like I’ll never get out of here. I just ask that you don’t forget about us.’” www.propublica.org/article/life...

I'm hardly the first person to note this, but it's enormously instructive that our President and his followers saw the message "THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE" and understood it, correctly, as an attack on them

"They are building a massive concentration camp apparatus, and they will not abandon the objective of filling those camps." Always essential @mskellymhayes.bsky.social on the situation and how to fight it. organizingmythoughts.org/when-the-hea...

Illinois folks, check to see if this nonsense is on your ballot. I saw it on mine when looking at my sample ballot and immediately knew it was going to confuse the hell out of people.

74% of Democrats support abolishing ICE, with 53% *strongly* supporting it, according to YouGov polling from last month. Weak calls for "reform" are coming from *elected* Democrats like Chuck, not the average Democratic voter.

Seems real bad that the end point of ~25 years of War on Terror architecture is an agency of thin-skinned goons who will send armed men to your house if you email the government asking for compassion on behalf of someone else. newrepublic.com/post/206088/...

“‘I think that level of empathy and that level of care is like the peak of humanity, and the peak of who we could be as a people’” chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

just worth emphasizing that Trump and Vance specifically promised to commit a pogrom and unleash horrific atrocities against Haitians in Springfield. people voted for this, and knew they did, even if they were lying to themselves about it. 1

BREAKING: The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

They have radicalized the indie nail polish community. I keep seeing people posting “I made an anti-ICE fundraiser nail polish to help” and then it’s their highest selling polish of all time. They have radicalized the lady who is TikTok famous for spinning on the turtle ride at the Mall of America.

Nicholas Christakis is yet another person who's talked about the dangers of trans rights for the youth who just happens to be in cahoots with a transnational child abuse ring

Abolishing ICE is not enough, says Illinois Congressmember Delia Ramirez. "The entire agency of DHS needs to be dismantled."

“It’s little wonder that many teens are at home on their phone if they get the message that they are not welcome in public. ‘What kind of society does this?’” www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/...

I don't like to talk about stories before they are fully reported, but I am writing on ICE in a Minnesota town that isn't Minneapolis. However bad you think it is, it is worse. It is a campaign of pure terror whose only strategic goal is more terror. There is no strategy other than to break people.

Two things can be true: we’re a competitive authoritarian state with all sorts of efforts to put a thumb on the scale of who has power AND we have sufficiently free and sufficiently fair elections that every month we see the party in power lose.

The very well-accepted term for "stripping the legal protections of a minority group and then sending a paramilitary force to carry them away" is "ethnic cleansing." They are planning to ethnically cleanse Springfield, Ohio.

It's near-white out conditions in Chicago as the snow comes down, and tonight's anti-ICE/CBP rally is wrapping up in front of city hall. But not before the crowd bounces and chants, "I believe that we will win!"

I have to say the media with a way-too-muted reaction to the regime arresting journalists for doing journalism

I understand it's hard for some to use the term concentration camp, even for those horrified by what's happening. And there are settings (e.g., court) where it may not be helpful today. The key thing to realize is that there's an arc of how detention regimes tend to go, and we're recognizably on it.

Good afternoon from Daley Plaza in Chicago. An anti-ICE/CBP rally is coalescing in the plaza, joining similar demonstrations today across the country.

“Agents can identify people on the street through facial recognition, trace their movements through license-plate readers and, in some cases, use commercially available phone-location data to reconstruct daily routines and associations.” All surveillance tools people have pushed back on for ages…

One reason you can't just tinker with ICE/CBP is the whole thing is facially illegitimate. The intent is rotten. It's run by a white supremacist maniac and will continue producing white supremacist maniac results

Opposition party doing so good that they’re gonna pass a law that exists already and tell us it’s a win 🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️

DHS has a whole citizen detainment system set up in Minnesota. They snatch citizens off the street (often with proof they are citizens), detain them for a few hours, steal their phones, then release them into the cold. It ain’t about deporting citizens; it’s about terrorizing a whole population.

Today's newsletter: there's a new video from 11 days before Alex Pretti was shot to death. Some people refuse to believe it's real. I wrote about why that's going to be a problem moving forward: www.readtpa.com/p/thats-ai-i...