Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Amanda Kolson Hurley @amandakhurley.bsky.social · 38m

Always find the local angle www.thebanner.com/economy/grow...

Silver Spring company demolishing White House wing faces online firestorm

ACECO, a Silver Spring construction company, is taking flak for its role in the demolition of the East Wing of the White House for President Donald Trump’s ballroom project.

www.thebanner.com

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Chad Loder @chadloder.bsky.social · 2h

"US Marshal shot during immigration enforcement in LA"

* article explains he was shot by an ICE officer whose weapon discharged when he used it to smash a car window

US Marshal shot during immigration enforcement operation in LA, reports say

A U.S. Marshal was shot while assisting an immigration enforcement operation, according to several reports.

www.kktv.com

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Ari Berman @ariberman.bsky.social · 3h

North Carolina already one of most gerrymandered states. Now GOP passing new gerrymander giving Rs nearly 80% of seats in state where Trump got 51%. Specifically targets Black Dem Don Davis. This is preview of what post-Voting Rights Act America will look like www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Republicans are making one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation even more rigged

North Carolina Republicans just passed a new Trump-inspired congressional map to oust a Black Democrat.

www.motherjones.com

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Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 42m

It’s rarely worth making this point anymore, but: imagine if Obama tore down the White House bsky.app/profile/ddia...

Dan Diamond @ddiamond.bsky.social · 50m

The White House heard the complaints

Dismissed them as “manufactured outrage”

And kept demolishing the East Wing on Tuesday

New photo and update with @jonathanreports.bsky.social

White House continues East Wing demolition amid cries of Trump overreach

More of the structure was torn down Tuesday to make way for President Donald Trump’s planned ballroom, despite complaints about the project’s lack of transparency,

www.washingtonpost.com

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Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 1h

Hi to whom do I send my invoice and W9 for attending a No Kings protest?

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Doug Lindner @douglindner.bsky.social · 3h

He did the crimes, Senate and SCOTUS Republicans let him get away with them, he got reelected, Senate Republicans let him appoint his personal lawyers to run DOJ, and now he’s ordering his personal lawyers who run DOJ to give him $230 million of your money.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 4h

Breaking News: President Trump wants $230 million from the Justice Department for investigating him, people familiar with the matter say. Any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit. nyti.ms/4hmIi5X

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Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 2h

Tearing down the ballroom shall be a national holiday

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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 3h

NEW: 200+ Chicago-area clergy — Protestants, Catholics, and evangelicals — have signed a letter decrying ICE's efforts and voicing a willingness to put their "bodies on the line" for migrants.

"What Kristi Noem and her ICE agents are doing is immoral," they write. religionnews.com/2025/10/21/a...

(RNS) - Last Friday (Oct. 17), the Rev. Hannah Kardon, a United Methodist minister in the Chicago area, stood alongside other protesters demonstrating outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Illinois. As a line of Illinois State Police began marching toward her and other demonstrators, gripping wooden batons, footage shows the pastor with her hands raised in prayer.
Officers then pushed into the protesters, forcing them back.
One officer shifted his stance, reared back and began shoving his baton like a battering ram - jamming it repeatedly, Kardon says, into her leg. A few seconds later, the pastor was pulled from the crowd and thrown to the ground.
All the while, Kardon says, she never stopped praying. When officers began to arrest her, they tied her arms behind her back and placed her along the curb.
"I said, 'God, please help these people to know that what they're doing is wrong, and help them to turn around," Kardon, who leads United Church of Rogers Park in Chicago, said in an interview. Her leg, she said, has developed visible bruises.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 1d

This is unforgivable -- innocent, helpless families being tortured and torn apart for the entertainment of a decadent, bloodthirsty domestic audience. I feel sick being part of it.

Portfolio: The Trap at 26 Federal Plaza

Every day in downtown Manhattan immigrants arriving for routine hearings are targeted by ICE agents and taken from their families.

nymag.com

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Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 19h

Hey you know what would have prevented this? The Voting Right Act, if the Supreme Court hadn’t wiped out Section 5 as a supposedly needless relic of a bygone era. bsky.app/profile/marc...

Marc Elias @marcelias.bsky.social · 1d

NEW: Four years after GOP lawmakers in Georgia enacted one of the most aggressive anti-voting laws in the country, new evidence filed in federal court shows that Senate Bill 202 has drastically deepened racial inequalities in voting access in the state. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Georgia’s Sweeping Anti-Voting Law Suppressed Black Votes, New Data Shows

Read more here.

www.democracydocket.com

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Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 21h

I am in extreme distress over the missing Link To The Opinion

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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 1d

Whether it's Obama wearing a tan suit to a press conference or Trump dumping brown liquid on protesters, both presidents have made some controversial earth-tone color choices.

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sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · 23h

Sua sponte call for en banc less than two hours after the 9th Cir decision to let loose the National Guard into Portland

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

you’re telling me that another thirtysomething republican has nazi beliefs. wow

Politico @politico.com · 1d

EXCLUSIVE: Embattled Trump nominee Paul Ingrassia told Republicans that the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and that he has “a Nazi streak,” according to a group chat viewed by POLITICO.

Trump nominee says he has a ‘Nazi streak,’ bashes MLK Jr. Day, according to texts

Paul Ingrassia’s bid to lead a whistleblower agency is set for a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday.

www.politico.com

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Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 1d

Endlessly wild to me how the same crowd saying explicitly that in America “jesus is King” also takes credit for “protecting Jewish students” bsky.app/profile/atru...

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Chip Roy: "The truth is the marxist, radicals, and Islamists the Democratic Party promoted this weekend, they cannot handle the truth. The truth is that there is a king and that king is Jesus. And the president has been willing to say it, & Charlie Kirk was willing to say it & he got killed for it."

Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 1d

2/ For more on what Illinois courts have (not much) and should (much more) be doing with what has been given the misnomer "proportionate-penalties" clause, see this deep-dive in the Northwestern Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol114/...

From that convention emerged a revolutionary idea: that Illinois should adopt in its constitution the strongest known language in the nation limiting a government’s ability to mete out extreme punishments to those citizens who have transgressed the criminal law—and clearly identifying the purpose of those criminal sentences as rehabilitation. Thus was born what appears in Illinois’s constitution today: the so-called proportionate-penalties clause. That clause, codified in 1970 as Article 1, Section 11 of the Illinois Constitution, proclaims that “all penalties shall be determined both according to the seriousness of the offense and with the objective of restoring the offender to useful citizenship. No conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate. No person shall be transported out of the State for an offense committed within the State.”

This Article traces the origins of the proportionate-penalties clause back to the 1970 constitutional convention, using floor debate transcripts and other contemporaneous sources to establish that its authors did, indeed, intend Illinois sentences to serve rehabilitative purposes. To interrogate the context of those documents, this Article also examines the surrounding historical events of late 1960s-era Chicago, as well the lives and identities of the delegates who propelled this clause forward.

This Article uses the authors’ words as prescient calls for a new interpretation of the proportionate-penalties clause that hews to their vision —and that can serve as a model for rethinking the guardrails around criminal punishments nationwide. Indeed, a constitutional scheme that insists that criminal penalties be directed at rehabilitative ends can and must carry implications for many of the statutes and rules that sustain our current system of mass incarceration.

Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 1d

1/ This piece is also a reminder that when states *do* ratify heightened protections, state courts should actually, you know, apply them.

Hard to reconcile this remarkable (and mandatory!) 1970 Illinois clause w/ the state's nearly 4,000 people serving life in prison: bsky.app/profile/year...

The Illinois constitution provides that "all penalties shall be determined ... with the objective of restoring the offender to useful citizenship"

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Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 1d

Are government lawyers not identifying themselves at these hearings?

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Michael Smith @msmith750.bsky.social · 4d

My article, "Pluralism in State Constitutional Law," is now published with the Georgia Law Review! It explores different ways state courts interpret state constitutions and variations in how explicit courts are regarding this interpretive pluralism!

georgialawreview.org/wp-content/u...

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Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 1d

The meritocracy bsky.app/profile/john...

John Ismay @johnismay.bsky.social · 2d

An artillery shell fired during 250th anniversary celebration of the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton on Saturday detonated prematurely over Interstate 5, damaging a California Highway Patrol vehicle on JD Vance's security detail www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/u...

Artillery Shell Detonated Over Interstate 5 During Marines’ Celebration, California Officials Say

www.nytimes.com

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Kyle Barry @kylecbarry.bsky.social · 1d

Way to meet the messaging moment Amy

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 1d

Whoa. Chicago mayor calls for a general strike; now we're talking

www.huffpost.com/entry/chicag...

Chicago Mayor Issues Defiant Call For A General Strike

It was an audacious proposal, given that the U.S. has never held a true, nationwide general strike.

www.huffpost.com

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Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 2d

I joined the "human banner" at San Francisco's Ocean Beach. This flag was at the center. It was a gorgeous day with enormous waves. #nokings

The image is taken from an angle, and you can see the ocean tilting 30 degrees in the distance, with a huge crowd in front of it. In the foreground, you can see the giant American flag that is being held up by hundreds of protesters clustered around its edges.

This is the human banner from the air. It's sign made from masses of people standing together to form letters. It reads "No Kings Yes on 50." There is an American flag in the middle and a thick border around the banner. (Prop 50 is a California state proposition to gerrymander the state to create more blue districts, in order to combat the Texas law that gerrymanders their state to create more red districts.)

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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 2d

“There’s no way I’m bending the knee I have left for a king in America.”

Damn. Just … damn.

Dale Denwalt @denwalt.bsky.social · 2d

Retired Army Sgt. Brian Wofford spoke to me this morning at the Oklahoma City #NoKings protest. Didn’t expect him to be carrying his DD214 so I asked some warmup questions like when he got out and whether his injury was service-related.

He paused while describing the car bomb in Iraq to say this:

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 2d

Imagine thinking they ever cared about debt, fraud, waste, abuse, or anything of the sort. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/u...

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