Below was me 48 hours ago in response to someone’s “wow I am more upset about the East Wing and the ‘ballroom’ than I expected” and the feeling continues to intensify. We’re not going back and, at the moment, it doesn’t feel like we’re going forward. No past, no future, just the ghastly now.

Donald Trump's masked agents believe that their actions are immune from investigation or accountability — they're not. I've signed an Executive Order today establishing the Illinois Accountability Commission to create a public record and capture the impact on our communities.

Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has broken his political silence to oppose Republican redistricting efforts in the state.

Gov. Pritzker: "They literally did a military attack on a building with a Black Hawk helicopter...You don't arrest an entire building, detain everybody, zip tie children, hold elderly people in a U-Haul for house — U.S. citizens!"

I am learning a lot of US legal & labor history this morning (via William Forbath's work). It's both exhilarating to be on such a steep learning curve (and to feel that at this point in my life, I know how to learn such material quickly) and maddening to see New Deal/Great Society as brief anomalies

"What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the furry critter) in one place?" On Mole Day, enjoy @xkcd.com's classic what-if: A Mole of moles 🔗: what-if.xkcd.com/4/ "If these moles were released onto the Earth’s surface, they’d fill it up to 80 km deep" 🤔🤓

New poll: UNH finds that November’s ballot measure in Maine that would greatly restrict mail voting, and impose voter ID, is *very* tight. It’s 49% no, 48% yes. scholars.unh.edu/survey_cente... One of the most suspenseful elections on November 4.

Historic preservation be damned— Trump wants a new ballroom (note: Hitler did too). But it’s privately funded! Is that extortion? Pay to play? Why don’t those same corporations help support federal workers who aren’t getting paid? Even better, why not just have them pay a fair share of taxes?

Before last year’s election, my wife and I took our grandsons on a tour of the nation’s capital, realizing it might become quite different if Trump won. I kept thinking the symbols of democracy might turn into symbols of tyranny. We toured the White House’s East Wing. It’s being demolished now.

I’ve been in the East Wing. It’s amazingly beautiful. If you were visiting the White House, this was where you’d probably come in. Trump just totally destroyed it. Knocked it down like a dilapidated garage. Without any approval or oversight. This is the People’s House. He has NO right to do this.

Below was me 48 hours ago in response to someone’s “wow I am more upset about the East Wing and the ‘ballroom’ than I expected” and the feeling continues to intensify. We’re not going back and, at the moment, it doesn’t feel like we’re going forward. No past, no future, just the ghastly now.

All room, no balls

ok who did this? ☹️

I was wondering when someone would mention how, after promising to give them to the Metropolitan, he destroyed the art deco treasures when he demolished the Bonwit Teller building. He takes joy in destroying what others value.

For a cavernous building that would be used only a few times a year. At least the royal palaces that have ballrooms were actualy built in a time when they held many balls. This is just a testament to bad taste and ostentatious waste.

Undoing the authoritarian project is the single most important job of the next Democratic administration. And that includes undoing the symbols of the authoritarian project. www.thebulwark.com/p/we-will-te...

WashU in STL just announced, in a university-wide email, that we will NOT be signing The Compact. This statement, I believe, exists thanks to the tremendous energy generated w/in our community by, among others, the Faculty Senate, the revived AAUP, and student journalists. I'm proud of everybody.

The fact that Starbucks is abruptly scaling back its expansion plans is obviously significant as a recession indicator. But what I find fascinating about this story is that they don’t build or own their own stores, specialized businesses develop them and outside investors own them. on.ft.com/4oxw6BZ

And in additional local news www.idsnews.com/article/2025...

Somebody else suggested an analogy with Secretariat but I think I like this one just as well.

Maine has the oldest average population in the country. (And the youngest farmers.)

They got Claudine Gay out of the Harvard presidency over a footnote.

Latest on the IU Bloomington student newspaper/press freedom story: strongly worded lawyer's letter, a "task force," and local NPR reporting without naming the reporter (I assume from fear of retribution though maybe EVERYBODY at WFIU/TIU contributed) www.ipm.org/news/2025-10...

THE BUILDING’S FAÇADE IS GONE THIS MORNING—an ugly gash reminiscent of the smoldering Pentagon on 9/11. This disfigurement is not the act of terrorists or foreign foes. It’s the work of our president...

this really gets to the issue. the government is supposed to belong to all of us and it's getting co-opted for personal and political gain at a rate impossible to fully respond to

Matewan, West Virginia Pop: 424 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matewan,_West_Virginia Images: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61252139 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1871584 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91263256

The White House is asking people not to share pictures of the East Wing because it’s even worse today.

And in further local news…

Wow. Harvard nuking its PhD programs - Science PhD admissions reduced by more than 75% - Arts & Humanities reduced by about 60% - Social Sciences by 50–70% - History by 60% - Biology by 75% - The German department will lose all PhD seats - Sociology from six PhD students to zero

Latest on the IU Bloomington student newspaper/press freedom story: strongly worded lawyer's letter, a "task force," and local NPR reporting without naming the reporter (I assume from fear of retribution though maybe EVERYBODY at WFIU/TIU contributed) www.ipm.org/news/2025-10...

ICYMI last Friday's FT investigation into money, corruption, etc. in the current regime ..."ethics experts say the sheer number of cases of potential conflict of interest" on.ft.com/3JfMbgC

He has never paid for anything he has done and that is why we are here today.

🚨CFP🚨 The Midwestern History Association invites proposals for the 12th Midwestern History Conference, Thursday, April 30–Friday, May 1, 2026, hosted by Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, in conjunction with its annual Altman Symposium in the humanities. Submission Deadline: Monday, December 8, 2025.

Yiddish lullaby “Unter Beymer” performed by Isle of Klezbos (Melissa Fogarty sings) at Joe’s Pub NYC on June 24, 2025. This melody by Alexander Olshanetsky is back-engineered to resemble an aria from “Halka”: Both songs from Moishe Oysher’s 1940 Yiddish film “Overture to Glory” youtu.be/_f0DwUswAvw

This observation (and thread) had me going “yup, yup, yup.” Much is described and explained

I cannot recommend you enough to install the Wikipedia app on your devices and use it like you would any search engine. Nowadays they even have tabs so you can open many articles at once. And, if you can, please donate to the foundation. It has survived the internet enshittification that way.

Good piece re: Graham Platner campaign, recent fallout/support, by @lauren-egan.bsky.social in @thebulwark.com “If we want to have younger people in the next generation run for office, we need to pair that with a recognition that our entire lives have been online.” ~ Jordan Wood #Maine #MEpolitics

Trump bringing real War of 1812 energy to the White House

I'm old enough to remember when David Broder said of Bill Clinton, "He came in here and he trashed the place, and it's not his place." Every day, in ways both literal and figurative, we now can see what trashing the place truly means. wapo.st/4hqBNiU

Oct. 20, 1925: “One of the new smart automobiles shown at the exposition building in Paris.” Both the car and the clothes of the model standing by it are designed by Sonia Delaunay, who uses “simultanism,” or interlocking color contrasts, as the basis of her patterns.

Always take sentences using “the Cloud” or “the Internet” and try replacing those phrases with “A shed in Virginia” to see how they hold up. “Our service is fully based in a shed in Virginia”; “All my files are in a shed in Virginia”; “A shed in Virginia was designed to survive a nuclear war”, etc.

Oct. 20, 1775: The congressional committee led by Benjamin Franklin agrees in talks with Gen. Washington that his Army should be supplied by the New England colonies, with cattle and hogs to be driven in at regular intervals. The general will have authority to impress wagons at “reasonable rates.”

Brazil's bar, restaurant sales fall amid beverage poisoning cases, survey finds reut.rs/43unpA5

At the #NoKings demonstration I attended, there was a man in a clerical collar with a large sign reading "My king is a brown carpenter not an orange monarch."

"That pattern is playing out across the economy. The housing market is stalled, but sales of million-dollar homes remain strong. And while lower-income car buyers have been shut out of the market, the wealthy are still snapping up pricey models." www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

In case this was TLDR: Distinguished Professor (co editor of Cambridge History of the Holocaust) and exemplary colleague abruptly replaced with an Associate Professor without consultation.

We’re always in the middle of the story. But the actions we take help determine what kind of story it turns out to be.

Hi all. A little clarification: the Purdue student journalists did OFFER to do this but "Unfortunately and understandably, the IDS declined the offer, fearing expulsion of its student leaders and more firings of its professional staff." They printed and delivered a statement of solidarity instead

A Paris, un nouveau restaurant israélo-palestinien promeut la paix par l’assiette

Trump's literal AI slop shitpost is, if nothing else, an attempt to push the wonderful and encouraging images of millions of protesters out of the feeds and timelines. Flooding the zone with shit also means burying everything beautiful and hopeful under the flood. We should not support him in this