In his interview with Ross Douthat — a conversation evidently recorded before the ICE killing in Minnesota — Elliott Abrams argued that if Venezuela starts to shoot demonstrators in the streets, the Trump administration will push harder for democratic reform. Sure, that will really move them.

Neocon and former Reagan administration official Elliott Abram’s can’t fathom why Marco Rubio hasn’t called for releasing all political prisoners in Venezuela. Yes, truly baffling in light of Trump’s distaste for democracy at home & America’s record in the region. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

What ICE was up to in Minnesota before they murdered a woman

“One woman said that her husband… had shouted in celebration shortly after Mr. Maduro’s capture…Two days later, two national police officers were waiting for him at his produce stall.He was arrested, and the police told the family to pay them $1,000 for his release.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/w...

Wrote a thing: The carnage associated with fossil fuel is why speeding the transition to renewables is good for international stability as well as everything else. Fossil fuel is inseparable from violence, and dependence on it it has created a brutal world order....

Officials from “top hedge funds” already planning trip to scope out “investment prospects under new leadership.” www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

“One of the most precise attacks on sovereignty”…

A good time to remember this foolishness and all the useful idiots who fell for the BS. www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/o...

Context: @brian-goldstone.bsky.social is author of a powerful 2025 book about the human face of "homelessness": 'There is no place for us.' Hampton Inn (and others) should change their policy. Everyone should read Brian's book.

So this is what he meant by “we are doing well”…

"He took every Advanced Placement class he could, earned a scholarship to Brown and worked at Wawa over the summer to make enough money to buy a laptop, according to his two sisters."

Extraordinary courage from Ahmed al Ahmed, a Muslim, 43-year-old father of two, who bravely risked his life to save his neighbors celebrating Hanukkah. Praying for his full & speedy recovery. And so deeply inspired by his example.

Oops. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/u...

Excellent reporting from @charliesavage.bsky.social and @julianbarnes.bsky.social starting with the "plain reality" that there was no warship, and no fighting going on, in the Sept. 2 strike, or any of them: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/u... 1/2

Re-upping this moving piece by Helen Ouyang in light of the government’s appalling decision to stop recommending the Hepatitis B vaccine, a victory for RFK Jr. that will likely cause untold suffering for countless families and kids. Read it and weep. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/o...

First boat strike in 19 days, coinciding with a big congressional briefing today. 11 of the past 15 strikes have occurred in the eastern Pacific. Sheer unadulterated horror. www.wola.org/2025/11/us-m...

“The people of Honduras” did not push for the pardon of this narco-trafficker, as Trump has claimed. Prominent MAGA figures, most notably Matt Gaetz and Roger Stone, did. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

I swear maybe once a decade in public, and this is the moment. This fucking racist and all the gibbering racists nodding along behind him are the ruination of our country. Our fucking job for the next fucking year is to fucking destroy them in the next election. Fuck them.

Wall Street Journal reports that Admiral Alvin Holsey, who was concerned about the legality of the Pentagon’s lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, did not voluntarily retire — Hegseth ousted him. www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

A 6-year-old boy is missing after ICE arrested him and his dad in NYC last week and shipped them off to separate facilities. www.thecity.nyc/2025/12/02/i... @thecity.nyc @gwynnefitz.bsky.social

Absolutely stunned and honored to see THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US on this list. I'm grateful beyond words to the five families who trusted me with their stories and allowed me to witness their struggle to secure a home.

Moving piece by Helen Ouyang, a physician whose father died of liver cancer that could have been prevented by the hepatitis B vaccine, which RFK Jr. has falsely linked to autism and which the CDC advisory committee may soon prevent vulnerable children from accessing. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/o...

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Meanwhile, Trump is planning to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras who had been convicted in the U.S. of drug trafficking.

Three experts conclude that members of the armed forces had a “duty to refuse” Hesgeth’s “no quarter” order to kill shipwrecked survivors. www.justsecurity.org/125948/illeg...

Worth remembering now Protest by the United States Against Attacks by Japanese Naval Forces on Survivors of Torpedoed American Merchant Vessels June 1944 "The United States Government protests most emphatically against this inhuman form of warfare ..."

"Homelessness today isn't just the person sleeping outside a Walmart. It's often the cashier or worker stocking the shelves inside." I joined @pbsnews.org to talk about There Is No Place for Us and the staggering rise of the "working homeless": www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

It's not just that the United States has stopped trying to promote liberal democratic ideas internationally. It's that the United States is actively trying to promote the contrary. It's trying to turn more countries into Hungary. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...

A Thanksgiving Thank You for Those Working on the Holiday jordanbarab.com/confinedspac...

Route 14, Vermont - 1937 https://botfrens.com/collections/173/contents/3104292

This notion of human rights violations is very consistent with the idea that nooses and swastikas are fine. www.forbes.com/sites/maryro...

Some news: tomorrow at 9am, Ted Koppel + CBS Sunday Morning will air a two-part story on the devastating surge of full-time workers being pushed into homelessness. I'll be interviewed along with two families from There Is No Place for Us. It would mean a lot if you'd watch and help spread the word.

This is far worse than anyone expected. Trump's HUD plan would cut *two-thirds* of permanent housing and push as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people back onto the street—redirecting funds to work mandates, forced treatment, and encampment sweeps. All as mass internment camps are being built.

This was BEFORE he caved... Hard to win elections when you voters despise your leader.

Our grotesque split-screen: starving the poor / gorging the ultrarich "With little public scrutiny, the Trump administration is handing out hundreds of billions of dollars to giant private-equity firms, crypto companies, foreign real-estate investors, and a variety of multinational corporations."

“Loyalty to Trump has helped the president elude political consequences for felony convictions…Now many of his supporters have extended similar grace during a government shutdown that is emptying the pantries and refrigerators of the most vulnerable Americans.” www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Every article about Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package should highlight his other major accomplishment this year — destroying USAID, which has led to 600,000 deaths thus far, more than half of them children. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

#BREAKING: Senate Republicans nixed an attempt by Democrats to fully fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits after those monies dried up over the weekend amid the government shutdown.

Hold on let me prepare a frivolous $1 billion lawsuit

“All I see right now is wreckage and short-term gain at the expense of long-term health.” The destruction of CDC. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/h...

Gotta log off for a while after this one. Just too much.

A good, heartbreaking piece from @epress.bsky.social on the human cost of Trump's gutting of civil rights enforcement at the Department of Education: www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

The administration’s fixation on DEI programs has been exhaustively covered. Its abandonment of civil rights law enforcement — which has effectively transported parents and students back in time, to the era before the 1964 Civil Rights Act — has not been. My piece: www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

To be clear: LA County has declared a state of emergency BECAUSE OF the federal government. The Feds, LA County is (correctly) saying, have CAUSED the emergency. This is a striking political moment of internal collapse. Local govts feeling compelled to protect their ppl from … their own govt.

But Trump gets a ballroom and Argentina gets a $40 billion bailout

The peace president who would keep us out of foreign wars!

Shocking that Trump’s favorite ‘chainsaw capitalist’ is not complaining about the $20 billion bailout Argentina is getting & that the billionaires who stand to benefit are also not displeased. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/o...

This both-sides’ing would not be applied to any other country carrying out such a lawless campaign.

“The group chat members spoke freely about… the love of Nazis within their party’s right wing.” www.politico.com/news/2025/10...