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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 1d

He has…sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people…

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

—Declaration of Independence, 1776

David Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 3d

ICE agents to US citizen: Turn around or you're getting the dog.

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Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social · 1d

The idea that world events and life-or-death political decisions should turn on what one elderly US citizen sees on a TV sounds like the premise for a 1970s dystopian satire written by the most hysterical Marxist novelist seeking to magnify the moral rot and decadence of a declining American empire…

Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social · 1d

“One former senior Trump administration official from the first term tells Zeteo that…when Trump was publicly dangling the idea of attacking Iranian cultural sites…the president indeed… asked…aides what they thought of striking the specific targets offered up by the likes of Hegseth &…Sean Hannity.”

Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social · 1d

For my piece today at @zeteo.com i wanted to truly underscore how punishingly stupid american fascism is now. Like, my original proposed headline for this was:

Our Democracy Is Imperiled Because One Old Man Won’t Stop ‘Yelling’ At His TV. zeteo.com/p/trump-addi...

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Ann Monster Lipton @annmlipton.bsky.social · 1d

"Before their departure dates came and went, they had made preparations to leave — turning over the keys to their apartments, pulling their children from school, shipping their belongings to Venezuela. And they have sunk deeper into poverty as the weeks and months pass"

ProPublica @propublica.org · 1d

Trump promised free plane tickets and $1,000 “exit bonuses” to immigrants who opted to self-deport.

ProPublica spoke to a dozen Venezuelan immigrants who said they followed the president’s instructions, yet never received the promised assistance.

“I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore”: They Tried to Self-Deport, Then Got Stranded in Trump’s America

Venezuelan immigrants signed up for a Trump-promoted app called CBP Home, which promised a safe and easy way to leave the country, and prepared to leave on their given departure dates. Those dates hav...

www.propublica.org

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 1d

The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion.

The entire bottom 50% of America is worth just $4.2 trillion.

Read that back.

When 400 people control more wealth than half a country’s population, we have a very serious problem.

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David Wallace-Wells @dwallacewells.bsky.social · 1d

“The earth has reached its first catastrophic tipping point linked to greenhouse gas emissions, with warm water coral reefs now facing a long-term decline and risking the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, according to a new report.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’

Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

www.theguardian.com

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

federal agents stealing children and sending them south. where have i heard about that before?

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 1d

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Alfie Kohn @alfiekohn.bsky.social · 1d

Read this thread about Russell Vought, whose power is comparable to Stephen Miller's. He believes he's "fighting a noble war to defend his 'real America' of white Christian patriarchal rule" by "bending the entire government machine to Trump's will" - while mainstream media whitewashes his evil.

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 1d

Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:

We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly

Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy

steady.page

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Democracy Docket @democracydocket.com · 1d

Pro-voting groups warn that if the Supreme Court rules to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, it could give the GOP at least 19 more U.S. House seats — seats that were directly created by the provision. https://bit.ly/4q7aQ7D

GOP Could Lock in House Control for a Generation if SCOTUS Ends Key VRA Protection, Report Warns

Read more here.

www.democracydocket.com

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Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 1d

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

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Joe Sudbay @joesudbay.bsky.social · 1d

Team Trump is just mocking Republicans in Congress now.

Remember this when you see Thune or Johnson blame Dems for anything. They are just ceremonial co-chairs of the Duma, rubber stamps for their leader

Trump, Vought & Miller have made them all as feckless as Susan Collins. No small feat

SFDB @sfdb.bsky.social · 2d

"Inside the White House, top advisers joke that they are ruling Congress with an 'iron fist,' according to people who have heard the comments. Steve Bannon, the influential Trump ally, likened Congress to the Duma, the Russian assembly that is largely ceremonial."

via www.msn.com/en-us/news/p...

Trump, Feeling Emboldened, Pushes Agenda Into Higher Gear
Recent moves reflect a commander in chief who has seemingly faced little resistance to his ambitious agenda

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Daniel Rob-hurts 🎃 @drobertsimg.bsky.social · 1d

My brother died of cancer last year. He got it from toxic burn pits in Iraq, just like Beau Biden.
When my brother was fighting cancer, Joe FaceTimed him and gave him pep talks before chemo. When he died, he wrote our family a beautiful letter. And my brother was nobody. Joe did it because he cared.

JoJoFromJerz @jojofromjerz.bsky.social · 2d

“We’ve known for months that he’s been sick, but the words radiation and treatment hit differently. They landed in a place I didn’t expect. Because it feels like more than just one man enduring.
It feels like a reflection of all of us.”
open.substack.com/pub/jojofrom...

The Only Way Out Is Through

What Joe Biden’s endurance teaches us about America’s own capacity to heal.

open.substack.com

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Mongabay @mongabay.com · 1d

A landmark global treaty to curb billions of dollars in government subsidies for overfishing took effect on Sept. 15, Mongabay contributor Elizabeth Fitt reported.

This is the first time the World Trade Organization has approved an environmental sustainability agreement in its 30-year history.

Global treaty to end subsidies for destructive fishing takes effect

A landmark global treaty to curb billions of dollars in government subsidies for overfishing took effect on Sept. 15, Mongabay contributor Elizabeth Fitt reported. The agreement marks the first time…

news.mongabay.com

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 1d

“Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors ***
The conservative think tank told prospective donors that the project was part of its work to combat [alleged] antisemitism” 1/7/25 … 1/ forward.com/news/686797/...

Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors

The conservative think tank told prospective donors that the project was part of its work to combat antisemitism.

forward.com

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Emma-Rose DeLeon 🔞🏳️‍⚧️ 4HS Solis Year @emrosedeleon.bsky.social · 1d

A screenshot of a snopes fact check regarding the claim that JD Vance once referred to Donald Trump as "America's Hitler."

In 2016, Vance wrote in a private message to his former law school roommate: "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a--hole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler. How's that for discouraging?"

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Steve Benen @stevebenen.com · 1d

Vance picked interesting examples:

- Trump publicly begged the DOJ to prosecute Hillary in his 1st term: tinyurl.com/bdhvrcfh

- Trump directed the DOJ to investigate Biden in 4 months ago: tinyurl.com/2s3w8fpv

- Trump accused Obama of being “guilty” of “treason” 3 months ago: tinyurl.com/2f6p265z

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

WELKER: Is the DOJ acting on orders from the president to prosecute his political opponents?

JD VANCE: No ... You know who we haven't prosecuted? Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton ... he's allowed to have opinions about law enforcement

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 1d

“America First.”

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B. Safarik @bradsafarik.bsky.social · 1d

"Nearly 90% of the Education Department is furloughed, too."

Devastating

Cynthia “Cina” Pelayo @cynthiapelayo.bsky.social · 1d

Mom of two children with disabilities here —

There are no words for this cruelty.

www.usatoday.com/story/news/e...

Education Department wipes out special ed office in shutdown layoffs, union says

The Education Department laid off nearly everyone at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

www.usatoday.com

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Justin Elliott @justinelliott.bsky.social · 1d

Here is our full story that Vance is dismissing, with primary source documents showing Trump cabinet members with multiple primary-residence mortgages

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

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The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · 1d

Rep. Jim Himes on Trump blowing up boats in the Caribbean: "The White House has not shared what they believe their legal justification is. They did put out a memo. I will tell you based on what I know now and the reading of that memo, these are illegal killings."

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Mueller, She Wrote @muellershewrote.com · 1d

Trump just installed Michael Ellis as CIA general counsel, possibly to green light legally dubious CIA ops to do this as an end run around congress.

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 1d

Kelly: I really worry about those aviators, drone operators, special forces guys that are in the Caribbean right now striking these boats and whether or not this is legal..

There’s no authorization for the use of military force. The Congress has not given that to the president. He hasn’t asked.

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B. Safarik @bradsafarik.bsky.social · 1d

Don't forget that Trump 1.0 saw Bannon flame out bigly to him getting too much of the light too early. We was one of the first examples of the perils of overshadowing the Orange.

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Gabe Ortíz @tusk81.bsky.social · 1d

WIC, which helps feed babies and new moms, is facing critical funding issues.

But ICE’s mass deportation operation—which has attacked faith leaders in Chicago—is raging on uninterrupted during the GOP shutdown. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us,” said Rev. Black.

Priorities.

America's Voice @americasvoice.bsky.social · 5d

"While new moms worry about formula for their infants and furloughed federal workers stress about next month’s rent or mortgage, the administration’s mass deportation obsession will continue uninterrupted," writes @tusk81.bsky.social

This says everything about this administration’s priorities.

ICE Rages On During Shutdown As Federal Workers Go Without Paychecks and American Kids Face Potential Hunger

Priorities.

americasvoicecnn.substack.com

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 1d

This is infuriating. She excuses the orders as "preliminary," but that's an argument for applying settled law or preserving the status quo. Allowing POTUS to disregard Congressional appropriations and fire independent agency heads are neither, they're a radical restructuring of Constitutional order.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Amy Coney Barrett defends heavy use of the shadow docket: "If we wrote a long opinion, it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue, and in none of these cases have we finally resolved the issue."

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 1d

also "retribution" implies he was wronged in some way by the people he's persecuting, subtly justifying what he's doing. bsky.app/profile/reun...

Kevin Reuning @reuning.bsky.social · 2d

Trump straight up murdering people in the Caribbean and the NYT writes this

The Trump Split Screen: A Peacemaker Abroad, a Retribution Campaign at Home

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Steven Lucy @slucy.bsky.social · 1d

"If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter." -- Justice Kavanaugh

Tom Joscelyn @tomjoscelyn.bsky.social · 1d

“I spent three nights and three days in federal custody. During that time, I was never told what I was charged with, was not allowed to shower despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, had no phone call to my family, and no access to an attorney.” - George Retes, U.S. citizen and veteran.

I’m a US citizen and a veteran. ICE arrested me for no reason.

Jailed for three days without an explanation or ability to notify anyone, George Retes argues the only path to healing starts with the government taking accountability for its actions.

newsletter.ofthebrave.org

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