Thank God for the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership.

This week is Laudato Si' Week (May 17-24), celebrating Pope Francis' call to protect our common home. Learn more: https://ow.ly/Pe3R50Z1E5K

St. Louis menace Mark McCloskey may benefit from Trump Family & Friends Grift Inc $1.8 Billion Dollar Theft from public treasury. Surprise! Says no one.

For those folks shocked by the idea of private companies wanting to radically alter public infrastructure to force their product on you--AI and data centers--may I introduce you to the history of the automobile and the interstate? Consequences 2.0

So many “academia out of touch with Republicans” pieces, so few “Republicans out of touch with highly educated people” pieces

This article, which is just wrenching, is a great illustration of the damage that funding interruptions do to research, even if the funding is eventually restored.

evidently the kids are starting to say "that's AI" as slang for "that's bullshit" and I could not be happier

The next administration should just wipe the student loans from the databases and burn the servers and when people complain laugh at them and move on.

BREAKING: The judge in the $1.7B slush fund suit has dismissed the case, but she says THERE IS NO SETTLEMENT OF RECORD. As I said earlier, the media must stop reporting that this slush fund is a settlement. It's just plain THEFT. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

What are you reading and/or listening to these days? I've got a class textbook, an airplane trip book, and a listening while in the workshop building a bookshelf book.

Unprecedented corruption right in front of us

Doing "look how much these teachers make" union busting but from the center.

There was a famed Jesuit historian who mostly worked on other Jesuit history and so folks assumed he was honest. There are a number of made up items that took me weeks to track down actual info. In one case, it led to me correcting a preeminent historian (more material available). Which is scary.

Today I'm publicly releasing a paper that answers that question (download link in the comments) using data on 5.4 million local businesses across the US: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... During the first year of the current administration, ICE raids caused serious economic damage in seven ways:

This is outright theft from the U.S. Treasury by MAGA fascist criminals.

This is fascinating. Even the relocation of a small, tight-knit community went off the rails. I wrote about a now abandoned effort to move an entire town to higher ground that was also supposed to be a model for the country: www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2026-...

“There's no possible way you could survive off what they feed you,” said Bailey, who is currently incarcerated in Georgia. He and other people behind bars in the state recount seeing rats in the kitchen and insects in the food, and being served meals on trays caked with mold.

I am a Catholic with too many theology degrees, so I was going to be excited about Leo’s first encyclical whatever its topic, but I think some secular Bluesky people need to take a breath and look up what an encyclical is & does.

"Just because a vast majority of Black voters support Democrats doesn’t make partisan gerrymandering a proxy for deliberate racial discrimination. Besides, saying that Republicans don’t represent Black voters simply isn’t true. The Senate has plenty of Black Republican."

Today would be Coretta Scott King’s 99th birthday. CSK was a lifelong freedom fighter & more of an activist than MLK when they met. As a student she’d supported the Progressive Party’s 3rd party challenge for president opposing US militarism, racism & economic inequality. We need to know her.

It's strange to me that this crowd & speakers include Catholics who say Catholics can't work w/ certain orgs b/c they're too woke or un-Catholic but they can share a stage & platform w/ speakers & orgs not only whose social beliefs contradict ours, but who are wholly anti-Catholic. Makes no sense.

There’s a long-standing, congressionally chartered organization responsible for the semiquincentennial. Trump abandoned that, created his own thing, and is using it as another vector of bribery etc. Below are the corporations that have signed onto do some bribin’.

It is right and just.

just open contempt for the united states as a pluralist and secular democracy. and a reminder that the function of the fiction that the united states was founded as a fundamentalist christian nation is to establish a hierarchy of human worth with white christians at the top

I love how James poses a problem that has such an obvious solution: that coauthor tracks that shit down. the feigned helplessness is truly pathetic.

After Charlie Kirk's memorial in September, Erika Kirk and pastor Lucas Miles believed they were on the precipice of a nationwide religious revival. Months later, TPUSA's "Make Heaven Crowded" tour is a whiff. An analysis. www.salon.com/2026/05/17/t...

Zocalo Health, a clinic in Los Angeles, screens all its patients for depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. It documented a marked increase in those conditions since ICE enforcement actions began. n.pr/49Bmm4u

Two things should be true in a democracy: 1. Being rich should not help you get elected. 2. Getting elected should not help you get rich. How’s your country doing on these criteria?

I think some folks get befuddled and ask "How can it still be that high!?" because they're unwilling to admit that 1/3rd of the US is virulently racist and/or Christian nationalist. Our present model tries to accommodate their views. Then folks are caught in a denial loop about their enablement.

What? His approval is still at 37%? Who could have predicted this? 🤡 But people don't like his views on the economy, and the war is unpopular? I was told that this was all about the price of eggs? Gasoline? Inflation? It's almost like his popularity is driven by something else entirely! 🤔

You'll never see the New York Times write an article like this talking about Palantir and Lockheed Martin.

Really need ghosts to be real and angry at times like this.

SATURDAY: We’re joining Black-led civil and voting rights organizations for a national day of action. In Alabama, there will be a big rally at the state capitol in Montgomery. We will not stand by while Republicans rip away representation from Black communities: blackpowerwarroom.com/dayofaction/

Sneaking a giant screen into the flagshagger march is one of the funniest things @ledbydonkeys.org have ever done. "STAY HYDRATED" 😂🤣😂

"Our parents and grandparents marched, organized, bled, and won. The Voting Rights Act was theirs. The fight to keep it is ours."

Fantastic reporting on this important issue. www.koco.com/article/ponc...

On the left is an Onion headline from March. On the right is Reuters, today.

Some of the greatest threats to higher education in this country are boards of trustees.

I'd be curious, what's the furthest north or strangest place you've ever seen a Confederate flag? I once saw one painted on the roof of a van in Toronto.

Hot Labor Summer is already here.

BOLIVIA: General Strike Continues, Social Movements Call for President’s Resignation orinocotribune.com/bolivia-gene...

Real bummer to see @us.theguardian.com -- a newspaper that often supports labor -- encouraging folks to cross the @reiunion.bsky.social picket line in the name of mediocre deals. Hoping the paper does a little more self-reflection.

Incredible organizing in Wisconsin. Check out this story.

Fifth star: Chicago Pope Isn’t it obvious?

Folks look at you like you’re crazy when you say we’re in the midst of the worst, most unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis in American history, & then the Speaker of the House literally gets up & tells you that We Have Never Been At War with Eastasia

You don't need a massive charger system for eBikes. You can make 53 eBikes for the same amount of materials as 1 Tesla Model 3. You can make 151 eBike batteries from one Model 3 battery. Ebikes are better for the planet and better for you.

really insightful and horrifying stuff from @thefarce.org

Post-Dispatch photographers show how things look a year after the May 16 tornado struck St. Louis.

I was looking at our shared family calendar to schedule a few things and I saw my nephew gets to go to a large animal veterinary summer camp. Dang, man--I got to go to gluing dried noodles to construction paper camp.