They are all failed celebrities who think the job is being a celebrity, exemplified by kash patel who thinks his job is having government jets fly him and his girlfriend from one event to another bsky.app/profile/jkar...

My government has a real “we didn’t know starting a war would cause a war“ vibe going on which I realize I should be outraged about in the abstract but find myself mainly nonplussed by at this point.

The Roberts Court's position is that if you deserved justice or due process you would be rich bsky.app/profile/mjsd...

If you want to stop being surprised at the terrible things our government is doing and saying abroad, or if you are interested in the relationship between a dreadful prose style and unconscionable policies, this new piece may be of interest. Also: the Trump regime on "civilization"!

@prisonculture.bsky.social justice wanted to make sure you knew about this — lots of library folks, including Carla Hayden: globalracialjustice.rutgers.edu/event/networ...

One of the first things we were taught at Quantico was that there is never a moment in which you are not representing the Bureau; but, then again, we earned our place there, and weren’t granted its directorship as a sinecure for partisan malfeasance and a willingness to disregard the constitution.

Perhaps the Constitution can help them out. “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives” “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises . . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations . . .” Just a thought!

Anthropic told defense officials that it did not want its A.I. used for mass surveillance of Americans or deployed in autonomous weapons that had no humans in the loop Mr. Hegseth and others in the Pentagon were furious that Anthropic would resist the military’s using A.I. as it saw fit.

Glad to see a forthcoming piece of mine being hyped at Public Books. Stay tuned! "On the Horizon Jonah Siegel looks at the _National Security Strategy of the United States of America_, arguing that bad faith will always manifest in terrible prose."

The reason we're here is that tens of millions of people will punch a hole in a wall if they hear someone used food stamps to buy soda but they're fine if the right-wing podcaster turned fbi director uses his taxpayer funded private jet to go party whenever he feels like it bsky.app/profile/thed...

This bizarre article came through my media feed today, suggesting the astonishingly rapid decline of the Post. There is nothing here aside from vague MAHA-shaped claims about diet and chemicals. Apparently the prevention they have in mind involves a 3-year cleanse of both parents before conception!

archive.is/2026.02.22-1... (No exception for tape, incest, or non-viability) “I don’t mean to be hard with it,” says the gubernatorial candidate supporting the bill.

“When the state reaches out and “When masked, unidentifiable agents emerge from an unmarked vehicle and take hold of a person on an American highway, the seizure does not announce itself as the people’s authority. It announces only power.” storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

www.politico.com/news/2026/02... “does not fit with our values”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... So weird that tourism to the U.S. has seen such a massive decline. Inexplicable!

Turns out there’s an economic cost to everyone hating us.

👀The federal judges in West Virginia, where ICE has been pulling over and detaining people on the freeway, are literally screaming about ICE's tactics. "It is an assault on the constitutional order," Judge Goodwin says. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

You busy April 9-10? There's going to be an amazing conference at Rutgers celebrating the (beta) rollout of the Black Bibliography Project database. Here's the agenda: globalracialjustice.rutgers.edu/sites/defaul... Registration can be found here: globalracialjustice.rutgers.edu/event/networ...

The chess: it’s 5-dimensional! www.cnbc.com/2026/02/20/s...

Wow.

DHS is holding a 2-month-old BABY at a detention facility in Texas. Last night, Juan Nicolás was rushed to the hospital after choking on his own vomit & being unable to breathe. This demands accountability — not a blank check for more cruelty.

How is it possible that Kristi Noem still has this job. Imagine if you’re a family member or a shipmate of this guardsman. www.nbcnews.com/politics/imm...

Our government protecting us. Seems like a good idea!

“The English classroom is increasingly a kind of special place where it’s still possible to converse without the screen.” —Nancy Yousef yaledailynews.com/articles/eng...

Brutality AND Incompetence

A staggering statement from former Washington Post editor Marty Baron: "This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble . . . The first amendment constrains Congress, not protestors at churches.

Dress warmly!

This is so fucking haunting.

“Almost violently!”

"Almost violently" means nonviolently.

The president encounters a binder clip for the first time, then talks about it for a while. Remember when Joe Biden had a raspy voice and every major news organization created a 10-person Biden Is Old investigative team?

There are of course nearly infinite grounds for criticism of our tech overlords but the thing I find perhaps most vulgar about them as a class is their disinterest in being patrons of the arts. Shallow, insipid people.

Danish Parliament Deputy Speaker Lars-Christian Brask: "If I could come with some advice, it would be for the Senate & House to start to take control of political power in America because with this erratic & mad behaviour, you have to ask the question, is the President capable of running the US?"

👇👇👇👇👇👇 "Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with a group seeking to 'overturn election results in certain states,' and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data..." www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

“Improper ideology” I remember when we mocked governments that tried to enforce its ideology everywhere

great outcome of a good policy that right-wingers reflexively resist

Excellent news. Now, will parents be able to put theirs down?

Not simply alarming. But not not alarming. Bernie Sanders: still thinking of politics as a place in which to try to do good.

www.cnbc.com/2025/12/03/m... What if the mousetrap you build is not particularly better than other mousetraps people already use?

The laughter at the end is chilling. He knows he’s saying something horribly immoral. He’s hoping someone will laugh. And they do.

There’s truly something deeply wrong with these people: all of them.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202... Who could be expected to stay awake through such nonsense! Sleep, old man! Doze!

Fellow Profs: A note of cheer as we prepare Spring syllabi. This term I have been experimenting with having all required writing done in class, and I am impressed with the results. It's not an option in all contexts, I know. Just to say that more writing goals can be met this way than I had thought.

A🧵 This is profoundly irresponsible by AGSulzberger’s NYT, @by-cjewett.bsky.social +eds. The normalization, “view-from-nowhere”, “born-yesterday”, stenography, “both-sides”, irresponsible headline are disgraceful. THE story is the CDC&FDA are being destroyed by antiscience & Americans will die. 1/n

Enten: "This is probably the worst 10 day period for the president in the polls his entire second term. The numbers are just atrocious ... when your best poll has you 14 points underwater, you know it's truly bad and it's as bad as 26 points underwater ... -43 with independents! They despise him."

When I worked in WaPo Opinions in 2017-2018, senior editors specifically told junior editors not to factcheck Marc Thiessen and other MAGA columnists, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to publish anything by them at all, and “we need them for intellectual diversity.”

What a success! Let’s give him 20 billion to celebrate how good his approach to the economy is!