Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jen @jenk3.bsky.social · 1h

Private prisons
New facilities
Their "tactical" gear

Jen @jenk3.bsky.social · 1h

This is me NOT waking my husband to read questionablecontent.net

Questionable Content

questionablecontent.net

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MurderBotBot @murderbotbot.bsky.social · 1h

Why the hell does everything have to happen at once?

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Jen @jenk3.bsky.social · 1h

I take it as the protagonist moving on, alone if need be.

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Hobby Drifter in Tokyo @hobbydrifter.bsky.social · 7d

White people who have spent decades thinking “Born in the USA” is patriotic and “Every Breath You Take” is a great wedding song are suddenly very concerned about not being able to understand lyrics to some songs at the Super Bowl halftime show.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 17h

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 · 17h

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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Jen @jenk3.bsky.social · 1h

Appreciate cites from 1700-1860 in favor. ..

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Tom Joscelyn @tomjoscelyn.bsky.social · 19h

“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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Jen @jenk3.bsky.social · 1h

Gotta say, Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack was a great purchase. Even if I'm mostly listening to Linus & Lucy.

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Louisa @louisathelast.bsky.social · 5h

My 83 year old, concert pianist, music professor dad has asked us if we own “any Taylor Swift recordings” because he wants to see what the fuss is about

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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 4h

Truly can’t believe they took this quote
www.thebulwark.com/p/the-other-...

"They keep saying as loudly as possible, we're going to do more illegal partisan impoundments, and I think Democrats are seeing this and it just reinforces their sense they can't negotiate with these guys," Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, told me. "It's Darth Vader saying 'I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it any further'—again and again and again."

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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 4h

SCOTUS has announced it will review a Hawaii law that forbids gun owners from bringing firearms on private property without the property owner’s explicit permission.

If it falls, the court could make it harder for states and cities to keep guns out of everyday life. trib.al/lrF0Sqm

The Supreme Court Could Make It Easier to Bring a Gun Everywhere

The justices just took up a challenge to a Hawaii law that bars people from carrying guns on private property against the owner’s wishes.

trib.al

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 1d

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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CZEdwards @czedwards.bsky.social · 6h

More on Lucky Loser:

The history of this man’s deceit, corruption, and irrationality was never discreet. It was always out there, always major.

The NYT itself committed major journalistic malpractice in not assembling THEIR OWN archives into a precís of negligence, dereliction, fraud, and abuse.

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digby @digby56.bsky.social · 2h

Remember,Trump reneged on an agreement to pay medical expenses for his disabled relative and told his nephew in 2020,

“Those people,” Fred Trump said his uncle told him, “the shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

www.disabilityscoop.com/2024/07/25/t....

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Heather in Milwaukee @heatherbob.bsky.social · 5h

Also, everyone there - ICE, protesters, onlookers - has camera phones. ICE has also been dragging around a film crew on occasion.

And yet, every video I’ve seen is of ICE being violent.

WHERE’S ALL THE VIDEO OF SCARY VIOLENT PROTESTERS CAUSING MAYHEM? Where’s the video of frog attacking cops?

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Jen @jenk3.bsky.social · 2h

The US was involved in the Korean War for a little over 3 years.

M*A*S*H ran from 72-83.

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Dr Rebecca Hall I’m Spartacus! @wakerevolt.bsky.social · 3h

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 9h

As ICE terrorizes communities, remember that some of Trump's biggest supporters are private prison companies that will make bank off his budget bill.

And Stephen Miller recently disclosed over $100K of stock in Palantir, the shady data firm ICE uses to target immigrants.

Cashing in on cruelty.

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Jen @jenk3.bsky.social · 3h

Otoh, in the movie That Touch Of Mink, Doris Day's roommate works at an Automat. We get a scene set there.

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Chuck Darwin @cdarwin.c.im.ap.brid.gy · 4h

In response to an op-ed I published in the San Francisco Chronicle,
DHS claimed that during the July 10 operation in Camarillo, CA, I
“became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement,” blocked their route, and was arrested for assault.

They stated that US citizens are not being […]

Original post on c.im

c.im

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svart flagg @svartflagg.bsky.social · 5h

Today in Portland, a fed shooting pepper balls from the roof of the ICE facility was so eager to aim for people’s heads, that after shooting one photographer in the head and another in the upper arm, they accidentally shot a DHS agent in the head. This photo shows the moment of impact;

Riot cops standing a street with less-lethal weapons, and one in a gas mask has a cloud of pepper dust around his helmet.

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Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 6h

The largest demonstration during Trump’s first term was around 750 events.

“We’re now expecting about 2,500 events around the country on No Kings. So we’re talking about literally four times as many.” - @leahgreenberg.bsky.social

Please join us on Saturday: www.nokings.org?SQF_SOURCE=i... #NoKings

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Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 12h

Reminder that George H.W. Bush signed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Sen. Jim Jeffords quit the Republican Party because of underfunding for the IDEA.
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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🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾 @blackamazon.bsky.social · 7h

American politics becomes what it becomes because when people were saying “ Americans don’t protest like the French, Koreans, etc”

Everyone leaves out the context of

How they stopped covering Black protests and no longer mention them

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