Tonight marked the last broadcast of PBS News Weekend for the foreseeable future. As the show signs off the air, anchor John Yang looks back at some of our top stories and highlights over the years. https://to.pbs.org/4pxYe7W

How it’s going

EXACTLY THIS! Throughout American history, the biggest opportunities for short-term systemic positive change came amidst crises spurred by fascist overreach. When the bad status quo from calm times is completely upended, ordinary people become much more open to systemic democratizing change.

Across the country, Americans are honoring Renee Nicole Good and mourning all the lives ICE has taken and destroyed. Hundreds of marches and vigils are planned this weekend. Please join us to say ICE Out For Good: www.mobilize.us?tag_ids=2913...

Test run for 2026. Here's what I wrote in the NY Times about the federal government potentially interfering with the 2026 elections and what we need to do about it. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/o...

🧵Let's talk about the obvious: Where in the fuck did all the historic artwork and priceless furnishings go, including the gold leaf Steinway piano that was presented to FDR from the Steinway family? Did Trump steal all this when he demolished the East Wing? Why aren't Dems demanding to know?

Pritzker: "People of Illinois, we need your help. Get our your cell phones, record and narrate what you see. Put it on social media. Peacefully ask for badge numbers and identification. Speak up for your neighbors. We need to let the world know that this is happening and that we won't stand for it."

I fully understand how difficult it is to remain focused on any one particular atrocity but this really ought to be a serious scandal and people need to pay heavy prices for this

I was assured these interactions would be “brief” and easily resolved.

Yes

Read this. Seriously, read it. The Trump regime is declaring open season on its critics - NGOs, philanthropists, activists. They will be harassed, arrested, jailed. The silencing effect on others who might speak out will be huge. This is authoritarianism. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Bernard Harcourt with a helpful analysis of different conceptual frameworks and theoretical models trying to make sense of what is happening in the US:

I have approximately zero following on this app, sharing in the hopes it can get in front of the right person. A man I went to college with’s wife was kidnapped by ICE at a green card hearing, and he’s trying to find a reporter who will speak to him about the situation

The South Korean Ministry of Defense has awarded medals of merit to 11 officers for disobeying direct orders of superiors during the martial law fiasco, orders that they deemed to be contrary to the constitution and endangerment to democracy. www.chosun.com/english/nati...

I feel like this needs to be said, as I don’t feel many Americans get this: THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!! No, not even for authoritarian leaders in nominally democratic regimes. In Hungary, Poland, even Turkey*, authoritarian leaders do/did not regularly send the military into its peaceful cities!

Sure seems like the president just instructed the military to use lethal force against US citizens.

the president just said the military should start shooting american civilians if they want to

Who are the political scientists talking most insightfully about Israel/Palestine?

This is, without any exaggeration, exactly how Putin and Orbán proceeded — using antisemitism to discredit the idea of civil society and political opposition, and as an excuse to undo the rule of law. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

You know things are rough when the AAUP's advice on how to use social media is just "set all your accounts to private."

Judith Butler:"It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are..invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal & rising authoritarianism. It is time to resist the injustice that now threatens to be normalized" www.chronicle.com/article/when...

Here's a partial list of university faculty who have been fired or suspended this week. 🧵 How are free speech and academic freedom doing at your university? #academicsky #edusky #aaup #freespeech 1/x 1. A tenured Professor at Florida Atlantic:

new from @emmettmacfarlane.com emmettmacfarlane.substack.com/p/u-of-t-pro...

Post now updated with a note at the top, and with a slightly changed headline, because apparently almost every media outlet also may have gotten the story wrong.

Yeah, you can call it fascism

Full text of the International Association of Genocide Scholars Resolution on the Situation in Gaza: genocidescholars.org/wp-content/u...

Israel committing genocide in Gaza, world’s top scholars on the crime say

Hirsch, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, is now thinking of leaving the classroom: “A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic & threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry … I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.”

Almost a year ago, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, lamented that while “it may be just and moral” to starve Gaza’s two million residents, “no one in the world would let us.” What an incredible shame on us all that he was wrong.

"Much of it is the unspeakable stuff nobody admits to but is clear to anyone who reads or observes: ... that it’s more expedient to be against evil after it’s over; that western countries preach justice and democracy, but act to protect wealth and power."

Former Green Beret officer who was engaged in humanitarian work in Gaza: “I witnessed the Israel Defense Forces fire a main-gun tank round from a Merkava tank into a crowd of people.”

"I was shocked to see one of the nurses who I worked with carrying my daughter... she was dead." This broke me. Dr Khaled Hamouda, Gaza surgeon, in tearful testimony to 'Gaza: Doctors Under Attack,' the film they didn't want you to see. Full film, that the BBC dropped, from Zeteo: gazadoctors.film

Why are no headlines focusing on the unconstitutional and dictatorial nature of this action?

a sitting federal judge — appointed by trump of course — awarded a student for a paper that basically says dred scott was right and should have gone further

A powerful piece by Miko Zeldes-Roth on Arendt, Jewish sovereignty, and the substitution of violence for power.

And here we are.

"the president defied a Supreme Court ruling to return a man mistakenly sent to a gulag... and spoke of sending Americans to foreign concentration camps. This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror, and it has to be identified as such to be stopped" snyder.substack.com/p/state-terror

Harvard redid its whole homepage to push back against the administration’s demands. I mean, this is just a website but I think it’s kind of a great PR move: www.harvard.edu

“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” the letter said. “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.” www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04...

Bridging racial and generational divides, coordinating ad hoc good works into workable systems, and cultivating leadership, mutual aid builds progressive movements for the long haul.

The slope isn't slippery; the frog isn't gradually getting boiled. Within its first hundred days the Trump administration has openly asserted the right/ power to seize and imprison anyone— including political dissidents, including citizens— and deprive them of any legal recourse at all. 5/

Very excited to see this excellent piece in print. This is the part of a special issue of CRISPP dedicated to the political thought of Joseph Carens', which I co-edited with @melissa1008.bsky.social and Kiran Banerjee. More to come!

Great to see so many of the pieces in this special issue in honour of Joe Carens beginning to appear online!

Delighted to see @abizadeh.bsky.social's fantastic piece in (virtual) print!

“It’s the most extraordinary attack on voting rights in American history,” Wilentz said. “This is an attempt to destroy American democracy as we know it. www.democracydocket.com/analysis/the...

Eight people in South Sudan, including five children, died on a three-hour walk to seek medical treatment for cholera after US aid cuts forced local health services to close, the UK-based charity Save the Children said reut.rs/3E9kB27

Thank you to @inthesetimesmag.bsky.social for publishing the text of my letter to Notre Dame after they canceled my speech. inthesetimes.com/article/notr...

solidarity with @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social : inthesetimes.com/article/notr...

so we're here now www.huffpost.com/entry/white-...

Breaking, per NBC News @garygrumbach.bsky.social -- Judge Paula Xinis in the District of Maryland has ruled that the United States Government must return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States by April 7 at 11:59p