Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

"Chris" "Caple" 🇨🇦🥌🦫🎸🎶 @chriscaple.bsky.social · 1h

WIRED @wired.com · 2h

Former GOP operative Scott Leiendecker just bought Dominion Voting Systems, giving him ownership of voting systems used in 27 states. Election experts have concerns.

One Republican Now Controls a Huge Chunk of US Election Infrastructure

Former GOP operative Scott Leiendecker just bought Dominion Voting Systems, giving him ownership of voting systems used in 27 states. Election experts have concerns.

wrd.cm

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Michael P. Breen @mpbreen21.bsky.social · 4d

Once American democracy made it possible for a Black man to be elected president, American conservatives decided that it had to be destroyed

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 4d

While Vought traces the “leftwing revolution” back a hundred years, to the progressive era, there is no question that the election of Barack Obama was a radicalizing moment for him and many key thinkers on the radical Right - as were the multiracial protests in the summer of 2020.

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 4h

The first Jim Crow was enacted under the auspices that racism is a necessity and a great and natural moral good.

The second one is being enacted under the auspices that racism doesn’t exist if you claim you don’t see it and anyone who questions your motives about that is oppressing you.

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 5h

Roberts has always felt that the suggestion that white people might discriminate on the basis of race is a profound moral injustice, much greater than black people being denied the right to vote bsky.app/profile/jayw...

Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 1d

Everything about John Roberts's approach to the Voting Rights Act makes sense when you remember that John Roberts has has always been hostile to the Voting Rights Act, never believed it was appropriate, and has spent most of his 45-year legal career working to hollow it out.

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Hunter @hunterub.bsky.social · 17h

There's literally no reason for Congress to exist if any random freak in the presidential orbit can nullify laws and seize federal funds. All of this is plainly illegal, but Mike Johnson leads the most corrupt Congress in US history (and by a wide margin.)

Reuters @reuters.com · 22h

White House budget director Vought plans to shut down CFPB within months, says it's no longer protecting consumers reut.rs/4qjMIyT

White House budget director Vought plans to shut down CFPB within months, says it's no longer protecting consumers

White House budget director Russell Vought said he wants to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and expects to do so within the next two to three months.

reut.rs

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 11h

It's the CDC’s job to detect, respond to, and help prevent the spread of diseases like chikungunya, while keeping the public informed and prepared. It's too bad for us that the Trump regime is destroying the CDC.

What is the chikungunya virus now transmitted in the US for the first time in years?

A mosquito-borne virus more common in South America has been detected in the United States. Health officials say the chikungunya virus has been identified in a patient living in the suburbs of New Yor...

apnews.com

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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 12h

15 US states and territories have formed a new Public Health Alliance, which will counter the absence of federal leadership by tracking outbreaks, issuing guidance, buying vaccines and more.

Members of the new alliance include CA, CO, CT, DE, GU, HI, IL, MD, MA, NJ, NY, NC, OR, RI, WA.

Map: Governors Public Health Alliance
* Guam is also a member of the alliance
Updated October 15, 2025
Map: @luckytran • Created with Datawrapper

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Meade Krosby @meadekrosby.bsky.social · 20h

One of the most challenging aspects of the climate crisis is that it becomes harder to solve as it proceeds, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation. It isn't something that can be put off until tomorrow without serious penalty.

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 20h

The wet tropical rainforests of Queensland are now a carbon source because CO₂ emitted from trees dying and decaying outstripped the CO₂ taken up by trees growing. 😕

Australia's tropical trees emit more carbon than they absorb: study

Climate change is killing trees faster than they can be replaced leading to greater carbon emissions, according to a new study.

www.abc.net.au

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 17h

"a memorandum expanding his administration’s authority"

The phrasing you're looking for is that he's suspending parts of the Constitution by decree.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 17h

President Trump on Wednesday signed a memorandum expanding his administration’s authority to repurpose unspent federal funds to pay members of the military during the government shutdown, escalating his challenge to the authority of Congress on spending matters.

Trump Signs Memo Expanding His Authority to Spend Federal Money

The president gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wide authority to repurpose funds to pay members of the military without approval from Congress, which has the sole constitutional authority to decide federal spending.

nyti.ms

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 17h

When this regime is over and buried, I don't want to hear about oh it's not worth the money or it's too petty to worry about. The order to bulldoze this illegal and unconstitutional monstrosity should be signed on Day 1.

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 19h

Exclusive: More than three dozen organizations and individuals are expected to attend a dinner with Trump on Wednesday after opening their checkbooks to support a $250 million White House ballroom.

Trump Invites Ballroom Donors to Glitzy White House Dinner

The dinner is set to include representatives from Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon and Palantir Technologies.

on.wsj.com

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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 21h

The Supreme Court's Republican appointees sound ready to transform the 14th and 15th Amendments into a weapon against the very racial minorities they were meant to protect—handing Republicans 15-19 additional House seats in the process. A disaster for democracy.
slate.com/news-and-pol...

Is it racist to remedy racism? That’s the question at the heart of Callais v. Louisiana, which the Supreme Court heard on Wednesday. The case asks whether the Voting Rights Act gives Black Louisianans too much political power—and if so, whether the landmark law violates the Constitution. Unsurprisingly, the Republican-appointed justices seem eager to rule that it does. Throughout oral arguments, they suggested the VRA protects minority voters too effectively, dragging the government into race-conscious considerations that offend the equal protection rights of the white voters who sued in this case. And they floated various ways to gut what remains of the statute by twisting it beyond recognition or striking it down altogether. The result would be a windfall for Republicans, who stand to gain at least 19 seats in the House of Representatives if the Supreme Court frees them to gerrymander Black communities into oblivion. Such a decision would also devastate minority representation in Congress, eliminating up to 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus.

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LOWρUF🐸 🇵🇦🇬🇱🇨🇦🇲🇽 @lowrhoufo.bsky.social · 21h

I feel like Ben Gvir personally being in the room when Greta Thunberg was being tortured should be bigger news

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 21h

white reactionaries disenfranchising black voters to secure political power? that’s a jim crow. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...

The Supreme Court Case That Could Hand the House to Republicans

www.nytimes.com

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"Chris" "Caple" 🇨🇦🥌🦫🎸🎶 @chriscaple.bsky.social · 19h

In the war against cancer the Trump 2 administration is objectively as a flat statement of fact firmly on the side of cancer.

bsky.app/profile/theb...

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists @thebulletin.org · 19h

If President Trump gets his way with federal radiation limits, "the new standard could allow four out of five people exposed over a 70-year lifetime to develop a cancer they would not otherwise get," write Daniel Hirsch, Haakon Williams, and Cameron Kuta.

President Trump's radical attack on radiation safety

If President Trump's executive order results in a new public radiation exposure limit of around 10 rem—that opponents to the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure often advocate…

thebulletin.org

"Chris" "Caple" 🇨🇦🥌🦫🎸🎶 @chriscaple.bsky.social · 22h

Persistent dishonesty is the beginning of individual, national, and international calamity.

"Chris" "Caple" 🇨🇦🥌🦫🎸🎶 @chriscaple.bsky.social · 22h

A Dostoyevsky excerpt that sums up America under Trump. A nation of brutal, bestial, loveless liars.

Text reads:

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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"Chris" "Caple" 🇨🇦🥌🦫🎸🎶 @chriscaple.bsky.social · 1d

It'd be neat if the absolute worst people imaginable weren't in charge of everything.

It'd be swell if, ideally, the absolute worst people imaginable weren't in charge of anything.

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StrictlyChristo 🇺🇦🌻❌👑 @strictlychristo.bsky.social · 1d

Two dozen masked ICE Federal Secret Police, who are kitted out like they are going to war, kidnap a local and brutalize the community.

Toward the end of the video, they throw a gas cannister that almost hits a baby. 😟

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"Chris" "Caple" 🇨🇦🥌🦫🎸🎶 @chriscaple.bsky.social · 1d

Your news organization did its utmost to help get these monsters elected.

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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 1d

To be clear:

LA County has declared a state of emergency BECAUSE OF the federal government.

The Feds, LA County is (correctly) saying, have CAUSED the emergency.

This is a striking political moment of internal collapse. Local govts feeling compelled to protect their ppl from … their own govt.

Los Angeles County declares state of emergency over immigration raids

Los Angeles County officials voted on Tuesday to declare a state of emergency over ongoing federal immigration raids.

abcnews.go.com

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 1d

This is so significant: a new comprehensive report detailing the myriad modalities of Canadian university complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

static1.squarespace.com/static/68bf2...

Palestine at Canadian Universities: How institutional complicity in colonial genocide is maintained

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"Chris" "Caple" 🇨🇦🥌🦫🎸🎶 @chriscaple.bsky.social · 1d

Hmm... that ain't a particularly good sign either...

bsky.app/profile/mick...

Mickey Djuric @mickeydjuric.bsky.social · 1d

Statement from the president of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s trip to Egypt:

“It is unprecedented that Canadian media be entirely excluded from a Canadian prime minister’s foreign trip.”

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · Jul 17

Note that all these chatbots are made by billionaire sex pests, who are desperately trying to make other people see humans the same way they do: inanimate objects to be used for one's own whims.

The people making these, openly say they see other people as NPC's.

Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · Jul 17

The thing about these guys forming relationships with chatbots is that they will start treating actual women like the chatbots.

And when real women don't fawn, don't glaze them the way these digital yes men do, express opinions, they will view them as *defective* chatbots.

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Amy Westervelt @amywestervelt.bsky.social · 1d

Something this book really drilled home (scuse the pun) is that we're not stalled out on climate because scientists didn't model hard enough or campaigners didn't come up with the perfect message, but because the world's most powerful spent gazillions to sabotage action.

cssn.org/wp-content/u...

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"Chris" "Caple" 🇨🇦🥌🦫🎸🎶 @chriscaple.bsky.social · 1d

Oh yay.

bsky.app/profile/pari...

paris martineau @paris.nyc · 2d

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...

Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports

CR tests of 23 popular protein powders and shakes found that most contain high levels of lead.

www.consumerreports.org

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 1d

The inherent corollary of "this is murder" is that we prosecute and punish people who commit murder.

Senator Ed Markey @markey.senate.gov · 1d

Trump just bombed six more people in the Caribbean, for a total of 27 civilians who have been killed so far by the US military. It’s illegal for the military to target civilians who do not pose an immediate threat. This is murder.

U.S. Military Kills Another 6 People in 5th Caribbean Strike, Trump Says
In a social media post, the president said the people aboard a boat were suspected of smuggling drugs for an unspecified group his team had labeled terrorists.

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