Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Brian Wasik

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 12h

About a month ago, the Trump administration got rid of the de minimis exemption, whereby packages valued under $800 could slide in without import duties. Now there's a backlog as the government can't process all of this paperwork, leading to UPS just destroying packages

Business Insider headline reads: UPS is telling customers that their packages coming to the US are marked for destruction.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 48m

At first i thought the majority on the court was just a bunch of hardcore gop partisans with brains pickled in right wing propaganda but after seeing them do these softball book tour interviews with right wing outlets I'm convinced they're just neutral arbiters doing their best.

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 46m

GOP leadership could even spin it as downsizing and targeting waste/fraud/abuse. I don't care.

Have some pride in your institution and Article I powers, you cowards.

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 56m

My “don’t worry about China, it will all be fine” shirt has people asking a lot of questions that are already answered by my shirt

A tweet from Donald Trump that reads “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!! President DJT”

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Prof Gavin Yamey @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 2h

The lab leak conspiracy theorists running the US health agencies are getting kookier & kookier 🤦‍♂️

In fact, research shows that “the Lyme disease bacterium is ancient in North America, circulating silently in forests for at least 60,000 years” (medicine.yale.edu/news-article...)

Jonathan Howard @joho.bsky.social · 22h

Makary is now saying that Lyme came from a lab too.

youtu.be/bQovoQaaE4w?...

Silly Makary says COVID and Lyme came from labs.

YouTube video by Jonathan Howard

youtu.be

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 57m

There's nothing stopping Congress from deauthorizing/defunding the OMB Director and his office.

Robert Cruickshank @robertcruickshank.com · 1h

This is good. The next step is to impeach him or defund his office.

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 2h

Sens. Schumer, Merkley, Murray, and Peters are calling for the resignation of OMB Director Russell Vought.

"By impounding billions of dollars … and aggressively pursuing the illegal use of pocket rescissions, Vought has done everything in his power to gut the federal government piece by piece."

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1h

Shared courtesy of my Penn History colleague, Ben Nathans

Image: A variation on Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” engraving, originally published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. Each segment of the snake has the name of a university sent Trump’s “compact”: Texas, AZ, Vanderbilt, USC, Dartmouth, UVA, Brown, Penn, MIT.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3h

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 4h

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 4h

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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Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 2h

Sens. Schumer, Merkley, Murray, and Peters are calling for the resignation of OMB Director Russell Vought.

"By impounding billions of dollars … and aggressively pursuing the illegal use of pocket rescissions, Vought has done everything in his power to gut the federal government piece by piece."

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Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 2h

The "plaintiffs" seeking to dismantle the Voting Rights Act (in a case this week at SCOTUS) include:

-a member of the "Trumpettes," a group of women who ardently support for the president
-a retiree who said he didn’t remember signing up to be involved in a lawsuit.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/u...

One woman made national news when she protested the Covid-19 vaccine at her local City Council. Another is a member of the Trumpettes, a group of women united in their ardent support for the president. A third is a retired grocery salesman who said he didn’t remember signing up to be involved in a lawsuit.

The three are among the 12 Louisiana voters at the center of a case set to be heard by the Supreme Court on Wednesday that could gut what remains of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark civil-rights-era legislation.

In January 2024, the group filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Louisiana’s congressional district map, arguing state lawmakers had discriminated against them as white voters by impermissibly taking race into account when they drafted the map after the 2020 census.

Since then, they’ve been referred to in court filings merely as the “non-African-American” voters.

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Clay Ranck @clayranck.bsky.social · 1h

If they haven’t “resolved the issue,” then they shouldn’t be using the shadow docket to overturn long-standing precedents.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1h

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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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 1h

Good. When a guest is lying you cut their air. It’s a disgrace to the Vice President’s office that Vance deserves this treatment, but everyone in this administration is exactly such a disgrace to their offices.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2h

STEPHANOPOULOS: I didn't insinuate anything. I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50k as was heard on an audio tape recorded by the FBI in September 2024. You did not answer the question. Thank you for your time.

VANCE: No, George, I sai--

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back

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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 14h

An HHS source says admin also RIFed entire Office of Population Affairs last night.
“Not a single staff person to run our nation's family planning program or the evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention program. The Office of Adolescent Health which nested within OPA functionally ceases to exist”

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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 18h

For any Catholic, the sight of a Eucharistic Procession being turned away at the gates of the destination is the embodiment of Jesus being denied entrance. You don't have to be Catholic to get the symbolism in that!

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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 18h

The end of federal enforcement of special ed laws. Some states - including MN - will likely be ok. But a lot of disabled kids in a lot of states are going to lose the education that federal law and decades of jurisprudence say they are owed.

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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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 16h

Illegitimate Executive Branch.

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 17h

Well done.

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 18h

One more note: there were many more RIFs on Friday night.

Perhaps the administration does not think of these as 'errors', and will claim that some RIFs were 'correct'.

We should assume otherwise: these RIFs are a form of political retribution that do not serve federal agency missions.

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 18h

posting tomorrow morning at strength in numbers: is trump "dong what he promised"? and what does that even mean? www.gelliottmorris.com/p/is-trump-d...

Is Trump "doing what he promised"? | Weekly roundup for October 12, 2025

And what does that even mean? Also this week: Shutdown polls; Left-wing populism; Low favorability ratings for all U.S. leaders; Judges' concerns about Trump; + more!

www.gelliottmorris.com

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 18h

AI has lost the dunce vote. It’s over

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538 • 5h
•.°
I'm just one person, and my programming needs are somewhat unusual (building various kinds of statistical forecasting models). But I'm just not seeing the consistent productivity gains from LLMs that I would have expected if you'd asked me 6 months ago.

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 18h

Looks from here like the goal is to create confusion, and focus public attention on a subset of the most outrageous firings — to distract from the other firings.

We shouldn’t be fooled, and should demand that all the illegal shutdown RIFs are made null and void. /end

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 18h

Seeing a lot of celebration of this as a win.

But at NIH we have seen this exact play before.

It looks like it is the Vought strategy -and to stop the lawless firings we have to see the bigger picture.
A 🧵:

Trump Administration Will Rehire Scores of Experts Fired in Error

www.nytimes.com

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 17h

Its an insane workplace where every weak-jawed chud (Miller, Vought) can smash whatever and others reverse it and back and forth until maybe Sundown Grandpa gives 'direction' based on his attention and mood at three moment.

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 18h

guys i'm beginning to think they haven't thought this through

Lena Sun @lenasun.bsky.social · 19h

BREAKING: Some of the layoffs at CDC are being REVERSED.
Here is my updated story.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

More than 1,000 CDC staff receive layoff notices during government shutdown

Another round of mass layoffs has struck CDC. The agency had already been cut during a reorganization this year, and more employees are now being shed amid the government shutdown.

www.washingtonpost.com

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