Wish you could do more? Not sure what to do to help?here are 5 practical steps to take now - beyond marches. Marches energize people and make us feel not alone but the energies they inspire need to be stored and expended over time, doing things like this:

“The issue is: Not whether those who violate the law shall be deported, for we are deporting them… but whether those who have not violated the law shall be deported” Louis Post, asst Sec of Labor, at his impeachment hearing over 100 years ago (quoted in Emergency Politics, Princeton 2009)

I am really curious about this too, especially the New York tax authority part!

💯! Tiny step from BS “gender ideology” to this: “the past ten days represent a push for a terrifying new escalation of state surveillance and policing of transgender people on the thinnest of bases when the political project for our rights is more isolated and endangered than its been in decades.”

Arendt: under “Hitler, the whole state machinery enforced what [are] normally criminal activities…there was hardly an act of state which according to normal standards was not criminal…[M]en who did wrong…acted under conditions in which every moral act was illegal & every legal act was a crime”

Bigger than “new” Coke.

Wonderful. Reclamation as refusal

an amazing personal, political & courageous op ed. Gift link. I note this: “The price of admission to Trump’s America is aggressive compliance” - it resonates with prior observations I’ve made re compliance with the sex/gender binary, which now requires steroids, hormones or surgery for straights

More Arendt for the moment re Disney/ABC et al: “It was precisely the members of respectable society, who had not been touched by the intellectual and moral upheaval in the early stages of the Nazi period, who were the first to yield. They simply exchanged one system of values against another”

“That the Trump administration and the MAGA movement are less interested in deliberation and governance than they are in domination and obedience should shape and structure our sense of this political moment.”

Also, that they want to charge her with the exact same crime she prosecuted against him is a way to cement the notion that “everybody does it” which is meant to say it is no crime at all. Except when she does it, of course - which she hasn’t.

“A temptation where one’s life is at stake [eg to kill a friend as commanded by someone with a gun to your own head] may be a legal excuse for a crime, it certainly is not a moral justification.” Arendt’s words resonate as R’s say privately they fear TrXmp & D’s say they’re afraid of death threats.

Representative Jason Crow (D-CO) on this moment. Not just the transcript but the video of a floor speech yesterday. A rallying cry:

What to expect when he’s expecting?

Thank you Deva Woodly for saying what needed saying!! @devawo.bsky.social !!

Thrilled to know about this book. I’ve been lecturing since 2015 on the pineapple in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and had built an archive for it. I am giving that lecture this Monday & I was just reviewing it when this popped up! VERY eager to see what these contributors have found.

Not for lack of trying

They love investigations

THE best thing I’ve read regarding American Jews and Palestine, protesting from experience — of the heart and mind — the harmful effects of adopting of IHRA definition of antisemitism. Read the open letter:

In “the late 19th century and much of the 20th, this country’s most storied intellectuals transfigured hate-mongers into heroes and ignored their words—just as, right now, some are ignoring Kirk’s”

Memphis is 63% Black, but not one Black person was with Trump today when he signed his presidential memorandum to send the National Guard to the largest Black city in America. The Black mayor of Memphis, the Black mayor of Shelby County, and the Black police chief, were not involved.

no more King’s 2 Bodies in US presidency. This king has 1 - the mortal/partisan body. No mystical body body (tho they will try to sanctify him Dems SHOULD adjust. “other presidents have typically tried to lower the temperature in moments of national crisis, Mr. Trump turns up the flames” NYT

Their people are sacred; the other side’s? Detritus to be given not a moment’s thought. And the coverage accepts these as the terms of engagement.

One trick pony Trump Threatens to Sue The Times Over Reporting on Epstein Drawing www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/b...

CBS = Cash for BullShit “The new owner of CBS News is weighing giving Ms. Weiss the job of editor in chief or co-president of the network, as part of a broader deal to buy The Free Press, according to two people with knowledge of the deal”

‘“If someone is retreating, where’s the ‘imminent threat’ then?” said Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter, a retired top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2000 to 2002. “Where’s the ‘self-defense’? They are gone if they ever existed — which I don’t think they did.”

Certainly looks like we scared the President away from Chicago. Fighting like hell works.

Lie back and think of England.

"a little fight with his wife" -- Without Consent looks like a great book. let's all read it and drain this guy out.

Read NYT article about Epstein & his bankers and this, about his personal banker’s responses to those arguing to drop Epstein, was striking: “despite his status as a sex offender, he was ‘still clearly well-respected and trusted by some of the richest people in the world.’” DESPITE? not because of?

The article was pretty mocking of the Hamptons elite but this is truly next level

I guess it was smart of the Supreme Court to release its most racist decision since Plessy on the same day it was confirmed that Trump used his signature in the place of a vagina in his pedophile love letter/birthday card. I'll admit, I can't top that.

Yes. Maximal use of (even) minimal power is what the moment calls for. On this, people all across the political spectrum agree. Here is the much vaunted center the Dems think is the North on their political compass.

I’ll be in the classroom. But for those who can be there - in person or online — this is important

Arendt on free universities offers rationale for UBI: "give them all a modest living even those who don’t need it." NO "stigma of charity & everything that goes along with it, like proof of need, inquiry into family finances, etc. That just poisons the atmosphere and takes the starch out of people"

This. 👇👇👇 JB Pritzker: "Any rational person who has spent even the most minimal amount of time studying human history has to ask themselves one important question: Once they get the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law, what comes next?”

Can’t get “tepid legality” out of my head. Legality can be heroic; requiring great strength of will/character. It means demonstrated self discipline. It is self restraint. They want to be unrestrained, I get it, & to cast their betters as “tepid” but there’s 0️⃣ tepid about legality. Ask Robert Cover

Omg! Somebody finish this. Somebody who knows what they’re doing, preferably…

US Ambassador to Turkey?

this game is now fun

100%.

Second now-known murder of people in boats this week. Calling it killing, even using the word civilians, dresses it up as a (failed, attempted, misguided, sad..?) military operation. But these are murders — no different from a shooting on 5th Avenue. A MUST: trials and consequences for ALL involved.

Wow. EXCELLENT

Mediocre white lady cannot hide her contempt for her smarter black woman co-worker… Supreme Court Justices, they’re just like us!

Haha! 🎯

Important

In 2027 Gov Mills will be 80 years old.

I search for a cite: Cavell on Phaedra. Google refers to my (unpublished) work on Cavell & I find this pile of slop: "Fatal forgiveness" is a term associated with political theorist Bonnie Honig's work, particularly her book Fatal Fictions: The Fate of the Diplomatic in the "Post-Truth" World

Sorry the book was not written. It has all the hallmarks of a great story that matters…