it’s one of those fundamentally cursed hospitality violations that you read about in ancient texts

it’s almost too obvious to say, but the implicit threat of seizure—ownership rather than rental—violates the core principle of the UN’s Charter—a legally binding arrangement the US must uphold as a matter of its own law. Respecting sovereignty is the basic qualification for a US ambassador to the UN

People who were actually enslaved believed that chattel slavery would end one day. I'm sorry but to me that suggests that you [who are not enslaved in 2026] can also imagine an end to the current horrors.

Photo by Pierre Lavie. Yes this is me. And I threw my Leica. It landed on the bass plate with hardly a scratch. Another Photographer grabbed it along with my phone and I was able to track him later. I was held face down tear gas deployed right in front of me and pepper sprayed directly into the eye.

This could be the unified Dem position. It is wildly popular. Puts the regime on defense on two fronts at the same time. Good policy, good politics.

protestors have painted what appears to be a tunnel on the side of the mountain, causing ICE agents to run into the mountain at full speed. disgusting.

I do think there are areas in which yelling DO SOMETHING at Dems is mostly an expression of powerlessness and frustration because there is little they really can do but this is not one of those cases ordinary people are doing extraordinary things right now and they need to see that you’re with them

These people have the worst cases of Stockholm Syndrome! The answer to this should be, "You're a public servant. I expect you to answer my question civilly and without insults. If you can't, find me someone who can." What would happen? He'd get barred from these sham events? And lose what, exactly?

They’re made of solid gold. My favorite story about that is two Danish physicists fleeing Nazi occupation had a colleague dissolve their medals in aqua regia. In the 50’s the chemist who helped them was able to precipitate the gold back out and send it to Sweden where the medals were recast.

“After 48 hours of torture, Dr. Christie wrote a forced confession — ‘the best thing I ever wrote,’ he later told the BBC, noting that he had made sure the confession included ‘all my recommendations to the African National Congress’ about the best way to sabotage Koeberg and other facilities”

one more thing: Americans are used to speaking in the language of civil rights, not human rights, but I do think the human rights framework is powerful in this moment—it’s not that the state grants you the right to live free, it’s that the state can’t take that right from you.

this is a political problem, not a solely legal one. It can and should be legally opposed, obviously, but the only real remedies are political, in the sense that they stem from the distribution of power: removal from office via legal channels; accountability for past crimes; institutional reforms.

big mood

the question to ask about this is, okay, he wants to cancel the midterms. how does he get the VA state board of elections to cancel the midterms? how does he get the georgia board of elections to do it? how does he convince republican house members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?

ICE must be abolished. It has become a lawless, rogue agency. Federal law enforcement agencies must follow the law, if they're going to have any credibility enforcing it. We are demanding justice for Renee Good and the prosecution of ICE agent Jonathan Ross for her murder.

I’ve been carrying my passport since January 2025. I wouldn’t actually expect it to necessarily matter to an ice or CPB agent who stopped me. Even if you accept the state has the right to impede your civil liberties this way (I don’t), a fundamentally lawless administration makes proof incidental

well, it appears they found the conditions that activate a New York vocabulary in a Minnesota man

blessings on this woman and her broiling pan

It’s actually three guys but they’re all Peter Sellers

We really are at a Watergate moment again--if the presidency isn't reined in, it won't be a democracy

the US’s transgression here is so extreme that these diplomats sort of have to talk about the US’s security concerns as though they’re consequential because the alternative is having to concede shared norms about territorial sovereignty and aggression are dead

Having seen several abductions up close, it is really hard to convey how much the thing they’re doing is roaming in military convoys until they see someone who is alone and isn’t white, and then jumping out in large numbers, pulling them into a van, and screeching off, all in 90 seconds or so.

Holding space for Mona Lisa’s biological clock

The history of civilian mass detention on the basis of identity without due process or recourse (which is how I defined concentration camps in my history of them) shows that it invariably leads to permanent harm—and typically significant loss of life as well. The longer it goes on the worse it gets.

1/ I recently wrote about Frances Perkins—FDR’s Labor Secretary and first woman cabinet member. She is best known as the architect of the New Deal but she had a lesser-known achievement: She dismantled her era’s version of ICE.🧵

just to be clear, just because this is the purpose doesn’t mean that’s the effect. if it were working to purpose, we wouldn’t have this video with all these screaming bystanders objecting to it, or schoolchildren walking out in protest, or more unarmed moms going out as legal observers every day

The letter from Bill and Hillary Clinton to James Comer explaining their refusal to testify in his Epstein investigation is really remarkable, not like any letter of this genre I've seen. It's signed by them, not a lawyer, and the arguments are not legal ones. Reprinted from their X account:

this wasn't just fact-finding, it was a form of what @joshchafetz.bsky.social calls "congressional overspeech." the testimony from black americans was dramatic and divisive. it captured the attention of the public and helped build support for aggressive action against the klan (2/?)

this is all to say that should democrats win the house and senate this november, they should hold similarly dramatic — which is to say televised and highly publicized — hearings on the conduct of ICE and CBP, with testimony from victims. we want as much of *this* as possible in the record. (3/?)

over the course of 1871, congress held seven months of hearings on ku klux klan and other white vigilante violence in the south, they took detailed testimony from hundreds of black men and women attesting to klan terror. (1/?)

For those of you who believe the game is lost, this shows it isn't. In Turkey, the guy would be arrested (and probably beaten). In Russia, he'd probably "fall out a window" Trump has authoritarian ambitions. He hasn't won the game. Not by a longshot.

I love this—fidelity to the people you serve

Fun fact: The USG considers perfidy in a non-international armed conflict (which the boat bombing scheme supposedly is) to be a war crime. Notable if the administration is committing criminal violations of its own (bogus) legal framework for the boat strikes. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/u...

Been thinking about this lately: www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-rese...

The hood is buying out tamale carts on strength The yoga mommas are taking every training You got Texas dads doing anti racism at readings on Tik Tok And country singers leading voting drives I may be naive but people are fighting I’m not arguing with folks who just don’t want to

One challenge for me of being an academic on the internet is that you never teach by saying “listen, I know more about this than you do,” because people don’t learn via invocations of authority, but sometimes “look, I know more than you about this” IS actually that right response on the internet

On the killing of Renee Nicole Good, I just published a piece in @foreignpolicy.com arguing the Trump administration is weaponizing the narrative of “vehicular terrorism” as a shortcut to justify an unlawful killing: “death squad logic, adapted to American streets” foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/13/v...

The Hudson Valley is fighting back on the side of justice, accountability, and humanity. Say NO to ICE setting up a mass detention facility in our community. Make your voice heard today.

sorry to all Norms for this autocorrect error

this kind of straightforwardly tyrannical behavior from government officials isn't, of course, unknown in US history, even recently, but it's worth saying again that it fundamentally violates the US's whole system of government, which binds agents of the state and citizens alike to the rule of law

everyone should see this. it's repression, occupation. (doesn't even make the home page of the paper of record ffs)

Another reminder that the power of the purse is the ultimate war power—including w/r/t attempts to wage war on the American people.

"How did Brazil's courts check Bolsonaro when other democracies have let would-be autocrats go unpunished?", ask Luciano Da Ros and @manoelgehrke.bsky.social in @jodemocracy.bsky.social. Answer: because the courts were "Acting largely in self-defense" and "to limit executive aggrandizement".

When one of the Syrian journalists I am honored to work w learned that he and his colleagues had been under surveillance by the regime, he told me, "I like to think that we wasted their time, and that was time when they weren't arresting and torturing others. I'm proud of our little contribution."

People who aren't in Minnesota might not know that if you drive or walk past pretty much any school, there's going to be a group of people, parents and childless, standing guard to make sure the kids are safe from feds. It's pretty remarkable. And very disturbing. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

“At one point, 3 men from [DHS] …told me that they could offer undocumented family members of mine legal protection if I have any (I don't), or money, in exchange for giving them the names of protest organizers, or undocumented persons. I was shocked, and told them no.”

AOC: I want everybody to understand that the cuts to your health care are what’s paying for this. You get screwed over to pay a bunch of thugs in the street that are shooting mothers in the face.

Front of the No Wars No Kings No ICE march today in NYC.

i think powell's response here is a demonstration of the folly of the idea that democratic accountability requires presidential control. what if the president is not acting in the public interest? you want independent agencies to be able to push back and pursue their *congressional mandate*

This is the kind of shit I like about America