Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Chris Kaiser

Jack Tripper @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 18h

World’s richest person demanding the President send the Army to clear out people with no housing and we’ll see hesitance in naming precisely what’s happening.

The Independent @the-independent.com · 20h

Elon Musk calls for US troops to be sent to San Francisco for war on drugs: ‘It’s the only solution’

Musk demands US troops be sent to San Francisco for war on drugs

www.independent.co.uk

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Darin Self @darinself.com · 21h

One lesson for pro-democracy advocates currently sitting in opposition around the world -- hammer incumbents on corruption and link strengthening liberal democracy (aka accountability) to anti-corruption efforts.

Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 21h

This is what I pay the New York Times for: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/w...
[Gift link]

Viktor Orban’s ‘Propaganda State’ Is Starting to Show Cracks

www.nytimes.com

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 1d

The deportation order is based on Vedam’s conviction for murder—a crime he did not actually commit and for which he’s now been wholly exonerated. He entered the US at 9 months old and was a legal permanent resident before his conviction. We are so, so, so far from the light of justice.

Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social · 2d

After spending 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, evidence hidden by the prosecution reversed his conviction. Rather than finally enjoying freedom, ICE abducted him for deportation

Depraved.

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him

Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam now faces deportation.

www.miamiherald.com

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Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · 1d

This is really good. But stepping back, it is also a sign of where comparative politics and political theory are going these days, towards productive engagement on basic questions of civilian rule, republicanism, and the politics of order. The field needs more work like this.

Avishay BSG (Ben-Sasson-Gordis) @avishaybsg.bsky.social · 1d

🧵 I'm excited to share that my article "Democratic Backsliding and the Limits of Civilian Control of the Military" has been accepted @thejop.bsky.social.

It answers the question "how ought militaries act when civilian leaders turn on democratic institutions?"

1/
#CivMilSky #PolTheory

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Chris Kaiser @chriskaiserva.bsky.social · 1d

On Thursday, he strongly encouraged news agencies amid a double crisis they are facing, with economic pressures threatening their survival and consumers increasingly unable to distinguish truth from lies.
"I urge you: Never sell out your authority!"
Leo said.
He quoted Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" in asserting that the world needs free and objective information. He cited her warning that "the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

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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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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

vought's view is that the president is an elected dictator and lo and behold he is seizing outright the power of the purse

Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 2d

Unconstitutionally taking money that the law says must be spent on one purpose & using it for something else—when it's to establish personalist control over the FUCKING MILITARY—is about as dangerous a constitutional crisis/failure as you can imagine

Via: www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

The Office of Management and Budget sent a notification to Congress about their intent to use research and development funds to pay members of the military, two sources with direct knowledge tell NBC News.

A spokesperson for the OMB confirmed to NBC News that it plans to use the research and development funds and that there are two years' worth of funds available within the Department of Defense.

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Marble Liberal @marbleliberal.bsky.social · 2d

Who owns the army is THE constitutional question of the 17th century

jim0novak.bsky.social @jim0novak.bsky.social · 2d

The U.S. Constitution's Army Clause (Article I, Section 8) requires that congressional appropriations to raise and support armies must be for a term no longer than two years.

They feared standing armies.

The Founders were more radical anti-fascists than common knowledge would expect.

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Chris Kaiser @chriskaiserva.bsky.social · 2d

🤔

(5) the term "domestic terrorism" means activities that—
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of
the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended—
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(ill) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States; and

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The 14th Amendment Center @the14thcenter.bsky.social · 2d

A critical premise of the work of the 14th Amendment Center is that we are all founders & framers of the future of democracy in this country.

Prof. Kate Andrias channels that spirit in this excellent op-ed.
GIFT LINK
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/o...

Opinion | The Constitution Doesn’t Belong to Trump or the Supreme Court

www.nytimes.com

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Murshed Zaheed @murshedz.bsky.social · 2d

“More than three dozen federal judges have told The New York Times that the Supreme Court’s flurry of brief, opaque emergency orders in cases related to the Trump administration have left them confused about how to proceed in those matters and are hurting the judiciary’s image with the public.”

Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders

www.nytimes.com

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Michael Li (李之樸) @mcpli.bsky.social · 2d

Next week is not just Callais. On Tues., 10/14. the New York Court of Appeals (the state's highest court) will hear oral argument in Clarke v. Town of Newburgh, a case that challenges the constitutionality of New York's state voting rights act.

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Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 3d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 3d

Remember that there are righteous people among us, always.

Left: Netherlands, 1942

Right: Illinois, 2025

One day in the summer of 1942, after the onset of the deportations of the Jews from Holland to “the East”, a student, who was a courier for the ASG student underground group in Amsterdam, approached the de Vries family, asking them to hide a Jewish child. The de Vrieses, who had two children of their own, decided to accept the offer despite the risk that was involved in hiding Jews, and soon four year-old Louise Pinto was brought to their home.

Amid the smoke bombs and screams that ricocheted throughout a South Shore building last month during a massive military-style immigration raid, one man heard a knock on his door.

On the other side was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for his help.

“I wasn’t planning on letting her stay, but I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” the man said of his Venezuelan migrant neighbors. But he quickly relented. The little girl was inconsolable and hid under his bed.

“I didn’t want them to take her,” said the man, who didn’t want to be named because he fears he’ll be targeted by federal authorities for his actions.

“I gave her my bedroom, and I just told her, ‘Just stay there. Don’t open, don’t, shh, just stay quiet,’” he recalled telling the mom and daughter as he choked back tears.

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 3d

“FPS could even enter a private residence containing an identified sniper blocks away from a federal facility in order to eliminate that exigent threat…we do not live in a world of sticks and stones, but Mausers and Winchesters.”

DHS top lawyer says 'no legal barrier' to actions officers can take to defend federal property

In a memo obtained exclusively by The Handbasket, Federal Protective Service (FPS) officers were given free rein.

www.thehandbasket.co

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 4d

Far from states' rights, the secession declarations were full of complaints federal power hadn't been used enough: against free states, to force slavery on the territories, to censor abolitionists. They wanted federal power but only in their hands. Opponents winning an election was unacceptable.

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 5d

trump II has made it blindingly clear by their actions that they are conducting a purge of the federal bureaucracy and the military based on race, based on gender, based on identity

this is about the opposite of promoting based on merit... unless you happen to be a white supremacist

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Chris Kaiser @chriskaiserva.bsky.social · 5d

really want to go back to before I read this. ☹️

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 5d

This might be the worst ICE video yet, because it’s literally random dudes hanging around, and then a bunch of heavily armed thugs running them down completely out of nowhere, because they’re brown. It’s a nightmare that would have seemed excessive in Jim Crow. Everyone in America should see this.

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 5d

ICE is not only chasing down every random brown person in Chicago, they have a cameraman following them to film this for social media. Cruelty and inhumanity as content.

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Matthew Stiegler @matthewstiegler.bsky.social · 5d

I’m not a political strategist or a social psychologist, but to me this seems true and important. Values must be activated. Surviving a real crisis takes real leadership.

Highlighted: “We've learned, hearteningly, that majorities seem to harbor a deep attachment to liberal rights and liberties, one that instinctively recoils at masked kidnappings, at hypermilitarized vehicles on urban boulevards, at the trappings of totalitarian dictatorship. But this must be activated. That takes conflict and controversy-powerful imagery and language that rivets attention.”

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 5d

I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

Donald Trump Truth Social Post: Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also.

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 6d

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.

www.nytimes.com

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 6d

Presidents have federalized a state's own Guard to use over its objection, most famously desegregation. And sometimes regular military has been used. But taking one state's soldiers and putting them in another state? This is a completely unprecedented breakdown of what the Union fundamentally is.

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Spooky action at a distance @mkranz.bsky.social · 6d

“At first glance, Skrmetti and Chiles seem logically inconsistent: Medical uncertainty confers authority here, yet restricts it there. There is, though, an internal consistency: For the Supreme Court, right-wing reactionaries should always win.” There it is, courtesy of @audrelawdamercy.bsky.social

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 6d

SCOTUS signaled at its hearings today it may strike down Colorado's ban on conversion therapy

ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/chile...

The Conservative Justices Don't Trust Any Science That Supports LGBTQ Kids

States that want to facilitate discrimination against LGBTQ people have the Court's blessing. States that want to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination do not.

ballsandstrikes.org

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Sam Levin @samtlevin.bsky.social · 7d

NEW: Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom "deceived" the Supreme Court + "profoundly misrepresented" LGBTQ+ research, according to scholars cited by ADF.

Quoted experts speak out about ADF's "distortions" + "false evidence" in major case, on deck tomorrow, to revive "conversion therapy"

Christian group ‘deceived’ supreme court about LGBTQ+ research, cited scholars say

Exclusive: Experts say Alliance Defending Freedom, arguing to revive conversion therapy, ‘profoundly misrepresented’ their work in case threatening trans and queer youth

www.theguardian.com

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