Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Joshua Benton @joshuabenton.com · 9h

If any of you wanted to spend $200 to buy me Steve Albini’s screenprint of Jay Ryan’s “Let’s Eat Ice Cream and Dismantle White Supremacy” (2019), I promise I wouldn’t be mad

www.stevealbiniscloset.com/stuff/p/jay-...

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Joshua Benton @joshuabenton.com · 15h

I love Local Matters and was specifically thinking of it when I wrote this! I’m thinking of something more like a YouTube playlist or video compilation.

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Joshua Benton @joshuabenton.com · 18h

You know what I wish someone would make? A daily (or weekly, I suppose) compilation of the most kick-ass stories in local TV news.

Like, the ones that show real tenacity and enterprise, investigations and watchdog stuff. It’s still out there! Everybody like catching a corrupt mayor, bad cops, etc.

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Boston Tom Levenson @tomlevenson.bsky.social · 2d

This is the moment when we realize that people we thought were merely ordinarily horrible are actually monsters.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

i desperately want everyone involved in the destruction of USAID to have to, st the very least, answer to the american people for the suffering and misery they have caused apnews.com/article/myan...

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

apnews.com

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Reposted by Joshua Benton

ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 2d

Ubisoft: "Okay, so in this game you fight the Klan"
Marketers: "You can't sell that in America"
Ubisoft: "Why?"
Marketers: "Umm [gestures broadly]. The Klan fucking won?"
Ubisoft: "Merde."
Marketers: "Yeah, we've asked for the Statue back but they're being dicks about that too."

Stephen Totilo @stephentotilo.bsky.social · 2d

SCOOP: Last year, Ubisoft cancelled an Assassin's Creed game set during Reconstruction. Was to feature a Black Assassin who, among other things, fought the rise of the Klan

Sources: Leadership nixed it over concerns re: U.S. political climate, backlash to Yasuke

www.gamefile.news/p/scoop-ubis...

Scoop: Ubisoft cancelled a post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed last year

Company leadership deemed the project too controversial for the moment, sources tell Game File

www.gamefile.news

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Patrick Luck @patrickluck.bsky.social · 1d

"Good people will be deterred from public service if they see a meaningful risk of winding up in jail afterward."

Sure, man.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | Jack Smith’s lawfare and James Comey’s arraignment on pathetically weak charges

Good people will be deterred from public service if they see a meaningful risk of winding up in jail afterward.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Jennifer Smith Richards @jsmithrichards.bsky.social · 2d

To understand the Trump administration’s vision for American education, @megomatz.bsky.social and I studied dozens of hours of political appointees’ speeches and podcasts and essays. What emerged is a desire to dismantle the nation’s system of public schools.

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.

Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of publ...

www.propublica.org

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Matt Zoller Seitz @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social · 2d

This is the old joke about the guy who kills his parents, then begs the court for mercy because he's an orphan.

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 2d

So this is funny.
The administration just issued a rule slashing foreign agricultural worker wages. And to justify it, in a public filing, Trump's Labor Department alleges that Trump's immigration enforcement has devastated the Ag workforce and caused a "risk of supply shock-induced food shortages."

Trump Labor Department Says His Immigration Raids Are Causing a Food Crisis

In a filing in the Federal Register, the Labor Department argues there are “immediate dangers to the American food supply” due to a lack of migrant agricultural workers.

prospect.org

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

i think it is cool that a government run by fanatical bigots is on track to plunge the economy into a mountain and cause a food crisis

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 2d

So this is funny.
The administration just issued a rule slashing foreign agricultural worker wages. And to justify it, in a public filing, Trump's Labor Department alleges that Trump's immigration enforcement has devastated the Ag workforce and caused a "risk of supply shock-induced food shortages."

Trump Labor Department Says His Immigration Raids Are Causing a Food Crisis

In a filing in the Federal Register, the Labor Department argues there are “immediate dangers to the American food supply” due to a lack of migrant agricultural workers.

prospect.org

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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 3d

This oped is actually pretty bad. Caldwell claims that “the military of the 2020s has been as overburdened by the imperatives of progressivism as schools were by the duties of racial integration in the 1970s” and that Hegseth “outlined a nuanced vision of the military’s purpose” in his speech.

Opinion | That Hegseth Speech Was Actually Pretty Good

www.nytimes.com

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3d

the chris caldwell of 1948 would have been arguing against desegregation of the armed forces www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/o...

Opinion | That Hegseth Speech Was Actually Pretty Good

www.nytimes.com

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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 3d

ironically the question has never been more frequently asked

Sarah Posner @sarahposner.bsky.social · 3d

Lawless Russell Vought thinks he can nullify a law by deleting it from an FAQ

www.govexec.com/pay-benefits...

OMB deletes reference to law guaranteeing backpay to furloughed feds from shutdown guidance

An Office of Management and Budget FAQ document now states that only excepted employees forced to work without pay are guaranteed backpay at the conclusion of a lapse in appropriations.

www.govexec.com

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Soraya Nadia McDonald @sorayanadiamcdonald.com · 1d

Trump treating the federal government like those apartments he owned with his daddy: No Blacks Allowed!

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 1d

Without comment.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/u...

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

Two points:
1) for all the talk of restoring merit, in many cases we are seeing highly qualified people replaced by less qualified White people.
2) Trump and allies have made it harder and harder to explain to students why this is happening.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/u...

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Joshua Benton @joshuabenton.com · 1d

June 11: GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn introduces a bill to defund NPR and PBS because of their "left-wing propaganda" and "radical leftist gender ideology."

October 7: The news industry's main trade group gives Blackburn its "Support Journalism Champion Award."

Just shameless.

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Joshua Benton @joshuabenton.com · 1d

"Many Democrats still cannot see how their legal aggression against Trump during his four years out of power set the stage for the dangerous revenge tour on which he is now embarked."

It's a clown show over there these days.

Philip Bump @pbump.com · 2d

I spent more than a decade at The Post. It was good to me and I was proud to work there. I’ve largely refrained from being critical since I left. But this framing of the special counsel probe is embarrassing and flatly wrong. Stunning, but not. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | Jack Smith’s lawfare and James Comey’s arraignment on pathetically weak charges

Good people will be deterred from public service if they see a meaningful risk of winding up in jail afterward.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Reposted by Joshua Benton

Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer · 4d

If the blockchain was real instead of a cokehead thing it would be able to solve this deplatforming problem according to the cokehead blockchain people. But it’s not so it can’t

hannah gais @hannahgais.bsky.social · 4d

Identifying public officials isn't "doxing." People have the right to know who is working for their government. Nor, for that matter, is it "radical left-wing terrorism." So it's frustrating to see platforms caving to these bad faith characterizations. www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/06/1...

Another effort to track ICE raids was just taken offline

People over Papers was removed by Padlet, the platform it was built on, yesterday.

www.technologyreview.com

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D. A. Powell @dapowell.bsky.social · 4d

ICE agents are intentionally breaking the law, shooting protestors who are citizens and lying in court.

Chicago Sun-Times @chicago.suntimes.com · 4d

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government’s claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed.
trib.al/9Sxu9IN

Attorney for woman shot by Border Patrol claims officer said 'Do something b-----' before shooting

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government's claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed. A judge ordered Martinez and a co-defendant released pending trial.

trib.al

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 4d

eventually politicians need to start advocating for criminal and civil penalties for people involved in fabricating stories to get citizens incarcerated.

or, put another way: a society that would like to keep functioning has to discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities

Chicago Sun-Times @chicago.suntimes.com · 4d

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government’s claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed.
trib.al/9Sxu9IN

Attorney for woman shot by Border Patrol claims officer said 'Do something b-----' before shooting

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government's claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed. A judge ordered Martinez and a co-defendant released pending trial.

trib.al

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 6d

A notable response from the most traditionally conservatives of the Ivies. Essentially ‘go do one’.

Daniel P. Moriarity @dpmoriarity.bsky.social · 6d

Dartmouth response to the Trump Administration Compact

president.dartmouth.edu/news/2025/10...

Response to the ‘Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education’ | Office of the President

president.dartmouth.edu

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 6d

Jesus. You think it can’t get any worse, then you read these stories. US citizens and legal residents illegally arrested and held for days. **Native Americans** getting detained and held for days because ICE agents are too stupid/racist to know about tribal IDs.

Maya Sen @mayasen.bsky.social · 6d

Brett Kavanaugh and his clerks need to read this --->

www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/...

From the AskReddit community on Reddit

Explore this post and more from the AskReddit community

www.reddit.com

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Alice Stollmeyer @stollmeyer.bsky.social · 6d

🔥 Finally an EU leader says it out loud:

“We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies.”

Defend Democracy @defenddemocracy.bsky.social · 6d

President Macron: “Europeans, let's wake up!

We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks.”

defenddemocracy.eu/macron-democ...

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 3d

It's not just that they're going to strike down a law against conversion therapy, it's that they're going to do it on behalf of made-up claims from a straw plaintiff who can't honestly show the law affected her at all

Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 3d

One thing about American's widespread distrust and disapproval of the Supreme Court is that mainstream news coverage mostly doesn't dwell on stuff like standing, so people don't even begin to grasp how rigged the Court truly is www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

Supreme Court Live Updates: Justices Seem Set to Rule Against Colorado’s Ban on Conversion Therapy

www.nytimes.com

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 3d

One thing about American's widespread distrust and disapproval of the Supreme Court is that mainstream news coverage mostly doesn't dwell on stuff like standing, so people don't even begin to grasp how rigged the Court truly is www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

Supreme Court Live Updates: Justices Seem Set to Rule Against Colorado’s Ban on Conversion Therapy

www.nytimes.com

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Joe Germuska @joe.germuska.com · 3d

From 404 Media: Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime

www.404media.co/police-said-...

In documents created prior to the publication of our article, there is zero mention of concern about the woman’s safety. The records show that the police retroactively created a separate document about the Flock search a week after our article was published, in which they justify the search by saying they were concerned for her safety.

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