NEW: ICE is planning to build a shadow deportation network in Texas. A proposal outlines a 24/7 transport operation run by armed contractors—turning Texas into the logistical backbone of an industrialized deportation machine. My latest @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/ice-is...

Good morning everyone. It's me again here to ask NYC residents to please send a letter to your City Council person in support of allocating 0.5% of the city expense budget to our local public libraries. Thank you. It will only take you 90 seconds. This time with the correct link:

Excited for this event on Policing and Counterinsurgency ft @chenjerai.bsky.social, @stschrader1.bsky.social, & @cheatherton.bsky.social next Thursday at NYU! Info & RSVP here: as.nyu.edu/research-cen...

Everyone is rightly talking about (un)affordability in NYC, but how did things get so bad in the first place??? Join @lpenyc.bsky.social at CUNY Law on THURSDAY to chart the history of pol econ w @gregorylouis.bsky.social, Mason Williams, & @llchristyll.bsky.social! lpeproject.org/events/nyc-s...

To be clear: these are the exact same folks who have been doxxing & putting people on must-fire lists for simply posting innocuous Charlie Kirk comments… “the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely”

"In a follow-up to his and Brenna Bhandar's "Slumlord Empire", Alberto Toscano writes about the Trump administration's Gaza ceasefire plan's genocidal logic of displacement and accumulation." proteanmag.com/2025/10/13/p...

When President Trump declared that “crime is out of control in the District of Columbia” he echoed the guiding principle of DC policing uttered by Missouri Senator James S. Green back in 1858: “We must protect ourselves.” www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/gove...

Because certainly there's no reason why this history might be terrifyingly relevant right now, here's a link to preorder @stschrader1.bsky.social's "Blue Power" on how police in the US organized to exempt themselves from democratic oversight and control: redemmas.org/titles/48838...

WE WON: "This case -– perhaps the most important ever to fall w/in..this district court squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in US..have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.”"

Now at backgroundbriefing.org | Robert Kuttner - How Trump Will Take Advantage of the Government Shutdown | @stschrader1.bsky.social - Trump Tells Our Admirals and Generals That the Enemy is Within | @michaelemann.bsky.social - Ignorance is the Key Ingredient in MAGAworld

Incarceration has deadly consequences for everyone – even those who are not behind bars:

Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a "battle" rather than what it truly was: a massacre of over 250 Lakotas, mainly women, children, and the elderly. 1/

The second portion of this great convo is now available!

PART 2 of my interview w/ Alberto Toscano & @stschrader1.bsky.social on Trump’s intensification of police, ICE, military repression, what it reveals about MAGA’s fascist/authoritarian project—and about illiberalism already immanent in US carceral/imperialist state www.thedigradio.com/podcast/stat...

New ep: Trump’s intense police, ICE, military repression w/ Alberto Toscano and @stschrader1.bsky.social. What does this reveal about MAGA’s fascist authoritarian project—and about the illiberalism immanent in carceral and imperialist state? FIRST in 2-part series www.thedigradio.com/podcast/fasc...

This was such a great convo with @danieldenvir.bsky.social & @alfatau.bsky.social! Please check it out!

Yesterday's piece from @jamellebouie.net is the only high-profile piece I've seen that specifically discusses the watchlist, its effect on academics, and its effect on public attitudes toward academia as a whole. (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/o...

Bonus - The Global Turn of American Policing w/ @stschrader1.bsky.social Stuart Schrader joins us to talk cops, ICE, and 50+ years of the security state. Link below!

The chance of seeing the National Guard on the streets of yet another U.S. city made me think of @stschrader1.bsky.social and his excellent book Badges without Borders. For this week’s edition of The Tall Rob Report, here’s a slightly revised version of my review of it from a few years ago (2/2)

Join us for the NYU History Marilyn Young Memorial Lecture by Moon-Ho Jung, with comment by @stschrader1.bsky.social. Tues Sept 9, 3pm in NYC. RSVP here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Trials are rare these days, so we should pay attention when a judge holds one. Yet what Judge Charles Breyer held last week was something else—a big chunk of it was a judge wrestling with the reality of a president with no power to set up a permanent, national police force. Me in @newyorker.com.

Trump's 2 innovations in State Capitalism should get far more attention(imagine if left wing US govt did it!) 1 MP Materials: govt takes equity share & guarantees minimum prices & demand for a private company fas.org/publication/... 2 NVIDIA: govt takes cut of revenue www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/t...

policing as content creation, content creation as policing

For all of the educators trying to deal with AI, I did a deep dive in early June and these are the four articles I decided to assign to my students. 1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

Karen Miller on the fight among historians over Gaza, with the establishment taking a very bad position. jacobin.com/2025/08/gaza...

"The Trump administration plans to use its deal with Columbia as a template for other universities, with financial penalties that are now seen as an expectation." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

This was a great convo about one of the absolute best films ever made.

Predictable, but no less shocking or reprehensible: Trump just signed an executive order urging states to forcibly institutionalize homeless people, defund Housing First, criminalize encampments, and cut aid to cities that don't comply.

Unreal. Academic freedom is dead.

So the next President will be able to dismantle Homeland Security without Congressional approval?

‘I believe that damaging and destroying weapons of war is one way of waging peace: I can only conclude that for the British government, the waging of peace is terrorism.’ Huw Lemmey on Palestine Action. Online early from our next issue. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Just sent the completed draft of my 2nd book off for copy edits. Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves will be published by Basic Books in spring 2026!

‪It's interesting that in The City's (nonrandom) poll of 250,000 New Yorkers, the one position supported by a plurality of voters but none of the candidates, was reduced funding for the police. www.thecity.nyc/2025/07/08/m...

Pretty comprehensive article on ICE’s use of face masks, incl. a couple quotes from me, in @latimes.com www.latimes.com/california/s...

Elon Musk casually, and illegally, dismantled USAID. According to a new study in the Lancet, that action will lead to *14 million* premature deaths between 2025 and 2030. Again: Elon Musk is directly responsible for 14 million coming deaths. 4.5 million will be children.

Every Mamdani proposal is met with a chorus of "How are you going to pay for it?" Meanwhile...

Here is the blueprint for how to get rid of the Dept of Homeland Security and actually save lives instead of committing mass murder like these psychopaths have done.

This was the plan the entire time and it was always going to be targeted towards Democratic run cities. It’s not about law and order. It’s about controlling by force the areas where Trump does not control by ideology.

The Trump administration does not control accreditation--the real question is whether the Middle States Commission on Higher Education bows to Trump's pressure or not. (I'd also add that Trump's Ed Dept has never made its "findings" public--no doubt on purpose.) www.cnbc.com/2025/06/04/t...

Once you realize that every public good you want has a cop in the way, then you begin to understand our current predicament.

We talked to two of the organizers of tonight's Critical Mass bike protest about the NYPD's crackdown on cyclists—especially e-bike riders: "They want to deflect from the fact that so many cars are killing people and they don't want to confront the reality of changing all of this public space."

“The records show that Palantir is actively working on the technical infrastructure underpinning the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts which could soon impact U.S. citizens.“ Palantir will be used to identify domestic Trump critics soon enough.

This is exactly right. My new book tells the history of this movement. Out next year!

Monitor: The NYPD Can’t Quit Its Unconstitutional Stop-and-Frisk Habit hellgatenyc.com/nypd-cant-qu...

Instead of starting the police reform clock in 2020, look further back in time: Rodney King (community policing), Michael Brown (body cameras and procedural justice training). We've known for a long time that police reform doesn't address the true mechanism enabling police violence: police power.

staging a show-and-tell about a fake genocide during a real genocide to the government that has done the most to seek justice for that real genocide is designed to break our brains. They know what they are doing. www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/w...

Scientists often hold some of the greatest political clout among faculty (cancer research, anyone?) and yet they often appear to be THE most timid of our colleagues. Why? Speak now or keep forever the silence of your profession's grave

West Point apparently disolved its sociology major and canceled classes on race and gender in response to Trump and Hegseth’s threats. It’s amazing that these supposedly manly men are terrified of ideas. So cowardly. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...