Monday, May 4, 2026
Monday, April 27, 2026
Reading archive 2026-04-27
Trump officials hire ‘deportation judges’ with less training, experience: The president is remaking courts to clear a backlog of asylum cases. Hires include an attorney for Jan. 6 rioters and a lawyer who championed Minneapolis ICE raids. - "Asylum rejections more than doubled to 82,371 last fiscal year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025. The percentage of asylum cases granted by judges plummeted to less than 5 percent in February, compared with 48 percent in the same month in 2024 under Biden, according to TRAC."
Trump steps up a campaign against teaching English to immigrant kids The administration plans to dissolve the office that supports English instruction. - "Regardless of your opinion on illegal immigration, it’s a good idea to help these kids become as proficient in English as possible. Particularly if you support President Donald Trump’s executive order designating English 'the official language of the United States.'" [ed. note: from Jim Geraghty of the National Review]
The Trump-class battleships are a waste of time and money: The firing of Navy Secretary John Phelan reflects Pentagon tensions. - "It’s unfortunate that the administration is misallocating so many defense resources because U.S. defense needs are urgent — and deserve more funding, if not necessarily 50 percent more."
D.C. aims to counter rise in domestic violence amid spate of high-profile cases: Mayor Muriel Bowser and U.S. Attorney Janine Pirro introduced a bill that would boost penalties as women are more likely to experience domestic abuse in D.C. than in any state. - "Experts point to massive amounts of job loss in the region — D.C. has had the highest unemployment rate in the country for months, according to federal data. Intensifying federal immigration enforcement that has contributed to a climate of fear and stress in immigrant communities has also been a factor, with prevalence of guns in the city making matters worse for those already living with abuse."
Walking near a D.C. school raises the chance of being hit by a car, data shows: A Washington Post analysis of accident data shows pedestrians near schools are 24 percent more likely to be hit than elsewhere in the city. - "'We want safe streets across the District of Columbia,' McDuffie said during a recent interview with the 'Dream City' podcast.
"But, he said, he would eliminate 'predatory' traffic cameras in some lower-income areas that lead to repetitive fines levied against local residents.'"
How Netanyahu Hurt America’s Jews: The Israeli prime minister’s focus is, as always, on himself and his near-term political needs. The plight of American Jews is simply not his concern. - "Beyond Netanyahu's overt interference in American politics, he's also impeded repeated U.S. diplomatic efforts to resolve the Israel-Palestine question. Although Israeli recalcitrance on moving toward a viable two-state solution has often been matched or exceeded by the Palestinian Authority, there is no question that Netanyahu's continued support for expanding settlements in the West Bank and his lack of serious engagement in peace talks have further alienated Democrats. In the past, even when Israeli leaders disagreed with the United States, they would try to avoid open provocations. Bibi, it seems, goes out of his way to frustrate the U.S. Not surprisingly, every Democratic president who has dealt with Netanyahu directly-Clinton, Obama, Biden-appears to loathe him."
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Reading archive 2026-02-10
Trump is making voters uneasy. Democrats are pushing them away.: Punishing the wealthy might make Democrats feel good, but it won’t convince many voters. [ed. note: shill from libertarian think tank]
Don’t Let Climate Fatalism Become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The idea that it’s “too late” to reduce emissions fuels cynicism and despair, putting us on an even worse trajectory. - "And finally, stress less about the small stuff — recycling, plastic bags and food wrappers, food miles, turning the lights off, leaving devices on standby — especially if it comes at the expense of the big things listed above. This is a concept called 'moral licensing,' in which people feel they’ve contributed to the small stuff and therefore ignore their more carbon-intensive behaviors. People will often feel proud about bringing their plastic bag to a supermarket (which has a tiny carbon footprint) and then fill it with meat and dairy (which has a much bigger impact)."
Two men were paid by D.C. to stop violence. Both are charged with homicide.: Frank Johnson is the second violence interrupter in the city to face charges in the fatal shooting of a former college basketball star. - "Johnson previously worked for Life Deeds, according to documents The Post obtained through a records request. He was terminated from Life Deeds in December 2023, three months after the fatal shooting of Bozeman, after he was charged with an unrelated felony gun possession offense. Johnson was convicted — only to be rehired as a violence interrupter last year for a different organization receiving D.C. government grant funds. Now, he has been fired again following the murder charge, according to the Rev. Judie Shepherd-Gore, the executive director of InnerCity Collaborative Community Development Corporation, where Johnson had worked as a violence interrupter since last year.
...
"It was the second time in five years that Wynn, who was well known in the violence intervention space, was charged with murder. He was also accused of committing a homicide in 2020. Prosecutors dropped that case for lack of evidence, and Wynn was allowed to continue working as a violence interrupter."
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: Moderation used to help Democrats win, but its advantages now have been greatly exaggerated. - "This brings us back to a crucial point: successful anti-authoritarian movements don’t win by moderating their positions on a traditional left-right axis but by creating an entirely new one. They mobilize previously disengaged citizens by framing the struggle not as a contest over policy, but as a fight for the fundamental fairness of the system itself.
...
"Scholars of democratic breakdown know that moments like this demand institutional coordination, civil society mobilization, and the political courage to name and confront the authoritarian threat on its weakest flank. Every democracy facing this challenge has learned you don’t defeat authoritarians by being more reasonable. You defeat them by being more determined and by uniting the country against their most visible vulnerability: their corruption."
Forum How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: Moderation helps when margins are small. - "But, of course, [an ideologically dogmatic party] runs the risk of empowering fascists, threatening the foundations of American electoral democracy, costing millions of people their health insurance, subjecting the country to a terrifying new regime of internal immigration enforcement, making less-than-zero progress on climate change, and depriving millions of women of their basic rights. To me, that makes “shoot the moon” a bad bet—Democrats have been trying a version of shoot-the-moon since Obama’s reelection, it has hurt, and the solution is to stop doing it. But it would be an intellectually stimulating debate. Highly ideological leftists are aware, I think, that the mood in the Democratic Party is very alarmed by Trump and Trumpism and that if we had square argument about the benefits and risks of shooting the moon, their side would lose."
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: Trans rights aren’t tanking the Democrats.
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: We need reconstruction, not restoration—as FDR knew.
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: Democrats must rebuild in rural America. - "Each of the last six times Republicans won majority control of the Senate, they were elected by a group of states in which less than half the county’s population resides. Moreover, because the Senate is tasked with confirming nominees to the Supreme Court, this electoral bias translates into outsized power to shape the judiciary and, in turn, the rulings it hands down. Four of the six sitting conservative justices were confirmed by senators from states that are home to less than 50 percent of the U.S. population. In short, the rural-urban divide helps facilitate minoritarian rule."
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: Macroeconomics is the driver, not median voters. - "Unless Democrats offer a message far stronger than anything they have in a long time—unless, in Warren’s words, they 'aggressively challenge the status quo' and 'chart a clear path for big, structural change,' especially on the economic front—they will remain easy targets for caricature. Promoting a Whig revival around democracy and Obamacare tweaks, supply-side tinkering and free trade, or abundance-by-deregulation, jobs, AI wonders, and all the rest risks cementing their status as a permanent minority party."
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: The focus should be fighting plutocracy.
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: The antidote to cynicism is going big. - "The notion that moderation would serve as a corrective to this perception is wildly off base. The millions of Biden voters who sat out crave more differentiation, not less, and a grander vision of an economic and political system that they could thrive within. None of them were in the mood to tinker around the edges. The antidote to cynicism isn’t to get small but to go big."
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: Jesse Jackson’s campaigns point the way. - "The path is clear: seek out an authentic candidate with an agenda that expands our ideas of what is politically possible, someone who can lead a diverse coalition united by a renewed sense of justice and collective purpose."
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: Public opinion is only partly malleable.
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: We have no choice but to fight.
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: Voters don’t think like strategists. - "Bonica and Grumbach are correct that the empirical case for moderation has largely collapsed. But the more significant lesson from our collective work is that the entire moderate-progressive debate constitutes an elite construction—one that projects the strategist’s hyperideological conception of politics onto an electorate that predominantly does not reason in those terms. When one abandons the pretense of optimizing one’s way to electoral victory, something clarifying emerges: the necessity of determining what one actually believes, and campaigning accordingly. That, after all, is what democratic politics is supposed to entail."
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism: Democrats can’t simply react to polls. They must lead.
Friday, January 31, 2025
Reading archive 2025-01-31 pt 1
An MPD Squad Seized Illegal Guns Without Making Arrests. Now Two Officers Could Soon Be Fired.: The department (and federal prosecutors) spent years investigating the Seventh District crime suppression team for alleged misconduct and potential crimes. - "Sarah Mancuso, the IAD investigator handling this case, described several incidents where she believed CST officers improperly used the threat of gun charges to coerce men caught with illegal firearms into becoming informants, a clear violation of department procedures. In one instance, she said the officers let a man walk free in order to convince him not to file a complaint against the department for injuries he suffered as he scuffled with police; in another, MPD believes the officers didn’t make an arrest to avoid a complaint of an improper use of force as they scuffled with a man in a wheelchair."
What America can learn from Miami’s trash nightmare: Miami-Dade County officials are considering building the country’s biggest trash incinerator. Nobody wants it. - "But, in general, incinerators probably create less planet-warming pollution than landfills, according to Townsend, who wrote a meta-analysis reviewing a dozen conflicting studies on the subject."
FBI agents who worked on January 6 and Trump investigations are expected to be fired Friday
Polar bear fur could hold the secret to replacing ‘forever chemicals’: In a new study, scientists solve a mystery hiding in polar bear fur. The answer might help us all. - "A chemical analysis revealed that the grease on the bears’ fur — a substance scientists call sebum — contains a concoction of cholesterol and other lipids that distinguish it from the sebum found on other mammals."
Trump launched air controller diversity program that he now decries: At news conference, Trump read a list of disabilities he calls disqualifying, but his administration started such hiring in 2019 - "'FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,' the agency announced on April 11, 2019. The pilot program, the announcement said, would 'identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.'"
FDA approves new, non-opioid painkiller Journavx: The drug represents the first new class of pain medication in decades. - "Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which makes the drug, has billed it as an effective alternative to opioids that isn’t addictive. Journavx works by intercepting pain signals before they reach the spinal cord, rather than acting directly on the brain."
Several senior FBI leaders told to leave agency or be fired, people familiar with matter say: The ultimatum was unusual for the FBI and suggested that President Donald Trump is purging leadership at an agency he has harshly criticized. - "'All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,' Patel told lawmakers."
Monday, December 16, 2024
Reading archive 2024-12-16
Trump is filling his Cabinet fast. But can he fulfill his promises?: The president-elect’s personnel decisions raise questions about whether his true priorities square with the people who voted for him. - "Mass deportations would mean sending many undocumented migrant agricultural workers back to their home countries. Asked in that same Time interview if doing so would raise food prices sharply, he replied, 'No, because we’re going to let people in, but we have to let them in legally.' That non sequitur is an example of the disconnect between Trump’s rhetorical flourishes and reality."
Kamala Harris grapples with her future in a wounded Democratic Party: As questions loom about a run for president or governor, many Democrats do not blame Harris for her loss, but that doesn’t mean they want her to run again - "Her husband, Doug Emhoff, plans to return to his career as an entertainment lawyer, and shortly after the election, the couple decamped to Hawaii with a small coterie of aides to decompress and relax." [ed. note: MUST BE NICE]
A low, low point for ABC News: ABC News not only settled a defamation suit with Trump. It paid out $15 million. What? - "The posture of ABC News progressed from unreasonably dismissive (rejecting legitimate demands for correction) to unreasonably accommodating (giving away the store to Trump via $15 million, a note of contrition and so on)."
Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses: Trump feuded with the mail agency in his first term. Privatizing it could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains. - "Cuts to the Postal Service could upend the trillion-dollar e-commerce industry, hitting small businesses and rural consumers whose businesses and budgets make the agency the shipper of choice. Amazon, the Postal Service’s largest customer, uses the agency for 'last-mile' delivery between its hulking product fulfillment centers and consumers’ homes and businesses. And the agency’s 'universal service obligation' — which requires it to deliver mail or parcels regardless of distance or profitability concerns — means it is often the only carrier that will deliver to far-flung reaches of the country."
Turkey exploits post-9/11 counterterrorism model to target critics in exile: Turkey has drawn extensively from the U.S. counterterrorism post-9/11 playbook to go after exiled political enemies, in particular the Gulen movement. - "'Twenty-plus years after 9/11, you would anticipate a diminished' reliance on the terms and tactics associated with the war on terror, said Fionnuala Ni Aolain, who served as special rapporteur to the United Nations on counterterrorism and human rights from 2017 until last year. 'Instead, what we find is a repurposing, reappropriation and acceleration of those methods by backsliding democracies and authoritarian regimes.'"
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Reading archive 2024-06-25
‘Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss: There is a deepening sense of fear as population loss accelerates in rural America. The decline of small-town life is expected to be a looming topic in the presidential election. - "As the presidential election approaches, many residents in this deeply Republican town say they view Trump as having a better vision for salvaging rural America, even though Biden has steered billions of dollars to initiatives that support rural America." [ed. note: then let it die, the morons]
Opinion New weapons will eclipse atomic bombs. Their builders ask themselves this question.: Autonomous weapons will be built. The only questions are who will build them and for what purpose. - "The engineering elite of our country rush to raise capital for video-sharing apps and social media platforms, advertising algorithms and shopping websites. They don’t hesitate to track and monetize people’s every movement online, burrowing their way into our lives. But many balk when it comes to working with the military. The rush is simply to build. Too few ask what ought to be built and why.
...
"For its part, the foreign policy establishment has repeatedly miscalculated when dealing with China, Russia and others, believing that economic integration can be sufficient to undercut their leaders’ domestic support and diminish their interest in military escalation abroad. The failure of the Davos consensus was to abandon the stick in favor of the carrot alone. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping of China and other authoritarian leaders have wielded power in a way that political leaders in the West might never understand.
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"Our broader reluctance to proceed with the development of effective autonomous weapons systems for military use might stem from a justified skepticism of power itself. Pacifism satisfies our instinctive empathy for the powerless. It also relieves us of the need to navigate among the difficult trade-offs that the world presents.
"Chloé Morin, a French author and former adviser to the country’s prime minister, suggested in a recent interview that we should resist the facile urge 'to divide the world into dominants and dominated, oppressors and oppressed.' It would be a mistake, and indeed a form of moral condescension, to systematically equate powerlessness with piousness. The subjugated and subjugators are equally capable of grievous sin."
Monday, May 20, 2024
Monday, December 4, 2023
Reading archive 2023-12-04
Father arrested after missing Idaho baby and pregnant wife are found dead
Howard University renovates affordable-housing ‘jewel’ with Amazon money
What home schooling hides: A boy tortured and starved by his stepmom - "Ginger, the family’s dog, watched the exchange from the living room, wagging her tail as she perched over a Joe Biden chew toy.
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"But Brock, like his brother, still struggles with the memory of the person he did not help. Honesty is a trait Garvin encourages in his rescued sons, and they say the truth is that they bear some responsibility for what happened to Roman." [ed. note: encourages honesty, loves trump. Square that circle for me]
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Reading archive 2022-05-22
In coal country, a new chance to clean up a toxic legacy: Waste from abandoned and bankrupt mines has contaminated more than 12,000 miles of waterways. Now states are looking at how to extract critical elements from those waters to try to offset the high cost of cleanup. - "After decades when coal states struggled to pay for the costs of cleaning up contaminated rivers and lakes, recent scientific advances and new technology make it far more feasible to recycle the highly acidic and mineral-rich liquid coal waste known as acid mine drainage (AMD), these researchers say.
...
"Across the country, waste from abandoned and bankrupt coal and metal mines has contaminated more than 12,000 miles of waterways. This legacy pollution — the toxic byproduct from over half a century of mining — threatens drinking water, corrodes infrastructure and devastates aquatic life."
Living With The Far-Right Insurgency: In Idaho A radical GOP faction, in open alliance with extremists, is seizing power and targeting its opponents with cruelty. Some wonder: Is it time to leave? - "'The message at the heart of the Seder is 'don’t oppress the stranger because you know the heart of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt,'' he said. 'So if you want to talk about the core message of the holiday, it would be naive to not look around you. The Hebrew word for Egypt, used in the Torah, is Mitzrayim, and it means a 'narrow place,' a place that’s narrow-minded, narrow and small in spirits, and dangerous, narrow and pressing, and that’s what these folks would have this state be.”
"'We’re in real danger of that here,' he said. 'Serious danger of it.'"
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
Thursday, June 4, 2020
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Reading archive 2017-07-15
Trump campaign paid firm of lawyer representing Trump Jr. before emails were made public
Activision Blizzard’s ‘Overwatch’ eSports League Lands Owners From NBA, NFL, MLB
Quit Your Job for a Better One? Not if You Live in Idaho