Hoping to check out the only museum in the US dedicated to public housing the next time I’m in Chicago

LA Mayor Karen Bass signed an executive directive today to expedite the hiring process for new LAPD officers. It currently takes a year for applicant to apply and then hired. She wants it cut to 180 days by shortening the psych, background check, and medical exam process.

today we have an author's pitch from @rahimk.bsky.social on his important new @ucpress.bsky.social book on policing and housing in LA, INDEFENSIBLE SPACES carceral-history.ghost.io/authors-pitc...

Two years after Georgia AG Chris Carr issued a sprawling RICO indictment targeting the #StopCopCity movement, a judge found the AG's office missed a basic procedural requirement to even be able to bring a RICO case:

It’s stunning how badly all the other outlets soft-pedaled the body-cam footage, missing virtually every important detail in their stories about the it. Now that it has been ruled a homicide, I hope other outlets pay better attention. Grateful to be able to cover this for the Beat.

"Deepest darkest Africa" is a real tell for the way these people see the world

NEW: Wearing masks, no ID, unmarked & blacked out cars, refusing to say what agency they’re from and using profanity with any press & public nearby. This was at 14th & R in Washington DC, this morning (Sunday). What the hell is happening to the US? (🎥 Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Washington Post)

ICE documents reveal plan to double immigrant detention space this year

Police have set up a checkpoint and appear to be stopping every single car on 14th st NW, between W+V, here in northwest DC. Some cars are being pulled over after being stopped. Some police are wearing “HSI police” vests (Homeland Security Investigations)

Here are resources to teach about history of policing including lessons, the Empire City podcast by @chenjerai.bsky.social, Police Against the Movement by @joshuaclarkdavis.bsky.social, interview with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, on "The Condemnation of Blackness: Lies We’re Told About Crime" & more. ⬇️

Jeff Bezos: "We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets." Today's Washington Post opinion page:

Disappearing people to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act, sending the National Guard into U.S. cities, and laying the groundwork for military action against cartels are all elements of the Trump administration’s efforts to militarize policy and frame issues in terms of “war.”

AI thinks the postwar presidents mated with each other to birth future presidents.

Nice piece by @mguariglia.bsky.social on Amazon's efforts to collaborate more with police on surveillance!

I wrote about John “Ozzy” Osbourne—a working class lad made good, who rose from a slaughterhouse killing floor to the highest echelons of rock stardom in spite of himself, who gave us heavy metal and left a more complex legacy than many realize—for @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Johns Hopkins University Press has licensed its books for training AI models. Authors have until the end of August to opt out.

It is fucking insane that we had a decade of people complaining about the dangers of cancel culture, and now literally hundreds of thousands of people are being purged from government jobs for ideological reasons, but that is not cancel culture.

Really sad news

Are police foundations subject to public records laws? A judge just ruled that they are in a case brought by Cop City plaintiffs, potentially opening the door for release of police foundation records in other cities.

Amazon Ring is re-pivoting back to surveillance, including introducing a new tool to let police request footage from Ring users again. The reason they pivoted away was like...4 years of horrendously bad press, atrocious brand recognition, and hard pressure by activists around the country!

This morning, dozens of US Customs and Border Enforcement vehicles assembled at Carver High School in southeast Atlanta. School administration says that the federal officers are training Atlanta police K9 units at the low income school. Cop City has been open just a few months.

On June 20, protesters seeking justice following the BPD killing of Bilal Abdullah reported seeking a drone hovering overhead before it flew back to BPD officers nearby. If BPD used a drone for surveillance of the protest, that was a significant breach of their own policy and promises. 🧵

Avelo Airlines to close US West Coast base amid backlash over deportation flights reut.rs/4eKM08a

So the next President will be able to dismantle Homeland Security without Congressional approval?

ICE’s acting director has instructed officers to hold people charged with entering the country illegally “for the duration of their removal proceedings”—which can take months or years.

“For more than 60 years, the CIA claimed it had little or no knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. That wasn’t true, new documents unearthed by a House task force prove.”

Our feeds are flooded with what’s broken and going wrong. But to care for our mental health and our communities we need stories about how to build something better. Grateful to @oscarthinks.bsky.social for this powerful book, and to @redemmas.org for hosting such a timely conversation.

if we had scandals anymore, it seems like this would be one

The UFW can confirm farm workers were critically injured yesterday during chaotic raids in Ventura County, CA. Other workers, including US citizens, remain unaccounted for. UFW staff is on the ground supporting impacted families. Our full statement below. ⬇️ 1/

the times is reporting that fema let call center operator contracts expire on july 5, the day after the texas flood, and calls answered went from 99.7% that day to 36% the next to 16% the next www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/c...

“SEIU California members call for the immediate release of our brother Jonathan Caravello, PhD, a U.S. citizen and union member, who was brutally assaulted and detained by federal agents as he peacefully observed ICE’s militarized invasion of the agricultural community of Ventura County yesterday.”

“Not since the McCarthy era have immigrants been the target of such intense repression for lawful political speech.”

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... Really look forward to this new book from @joshuaclarkdavis.bsky.social. Will be an important addition to the growing historiography on police and the movements of the ‘60s. 🗃️

Ayla King’s trial has been declared a mistrial in Atlanta. King is the first of 61 defendants indicted under Georgia’s RICO statute for their alleged actions related to Stop Cop City.

While adding billions in funding for police, the Senate budget bill also eliminates taxes on police overtime—likely fueling further abuses of overtime pay in departments across the country. theintercept.com/2025/07/01/b...

Abrego is the *only* prisoner ever released from CECOT, so this is the sole account we have of the horrifying conditions in the prison in El Salvador where Trump has sent over 260 people from the US.

"Chicago Police officers have secretly pulled over as many as 20,000 more drivers per month in the past year than they have reported publicly, in violation of a 2003 law requiring them to document every traffic stop."

Zohran Mamdani recalling how his father was brutalized and arrested by Montgomery police at a SNCC protest against segregationists in 1965.

Damn. RIP to the great Dave Parker; the first baseball player to sign for one million a year. He had the numbers to be in the Hall a long time ago, but also should’ve been in on the strength of this picture.

CNN: Do you like capitalism? ZOHRAN MAMDANI: No. I have many critiques of capitalism. In the words of Dr. King decades ago, he said, 'Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism; there must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God's children in this country.'

If the GOP reconciliation bill passes, ICE gets through FY2029: - $45 billion for detention, on top of the current annual budget of $3.4 billion - $14.4 billion for transportation and removal, on top of the current annual budget of $750 million - $8 billion for hiring/retention - Billions more.

Another point: Many know the Dred Scott decision but aren't as familiar with the aftermath and how states, courts, and politicians responded. 5 examples: 1) Many Northern/Midwest states just ignored the decision. 2) Maine’s high court said Black Americans could vote in state/federal elections. /1

I’ll go ahead and add one more: At the end of the 12-minute-ish part, she says she’s working on protecting houses of worship. Temples. Churches. Synagogues. Notice anything missing? Off the cuff or not, this is bad stuff.

There are a couple of really troubling points in this interview; the most relevant parts are at 12 minutes and 22 minutes. The first is that she tacitly accepts a caller’s premise that Mamdani is sympathetic to Hamas, despite Lehrer noting they have no such evidence and asking her if she does

Jeff Bezos: "We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets." Today's Washington Post opinion page:

"For each target, Homeland Security Investigation agents used surveillance tools to build a dossier, which was then passed to the State Department to confirm that the target was, in the eyes of the U.S. government, sufficiently antisemitic to be deported."