Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1h

Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back - The Onion

https://theonion.com/health-experts-recommend-standing-up-at-desk-leaving-o-1819577456/

theonion.com

3

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 2h

Miller takes a Schmittian view of "democracy": Great Leader embodies the will of the Folk. Only "radical left" judges believe Great Leader is constrained by law, or that civil society and other branches of government should be independent of the will of the Folk, as embodied in Great Leader […]

Original post on kolektiva.social

kolektiva.social

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 18h

Pluralistic: They’re just trying to earn a buck (07 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/07/take-it-easy/

Pluralistic: They're just trying to earn a buck (07 Oct 2025)

pluralistic.net

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 19h

How to Fight Your Health Insurance Denial With an External Appeal — ProPublica

https://www.propublica.org/article/health-insurance-denial-external-review

Reposted by Kevin Carson

:ulfr: @ulfr.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 1d

@KevinCarson1

Is it a crazymaking gaslighting sociopath, or just a condescending prick on a shitton of coke? I could not finish reading the article, need to stop wasting my attention. What an utterly deranged pseudo-intellectual.

@pluralistic

1

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

George Bush *shrieks*: I'm sorry, I thought you were my mom. She's dead.

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

Stephen Miller Loses It After Judge Blocks Portland Troop Deployment | The New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/post/201369/stephen-miller-trump-troop-deployment-portland

1

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

A Major New Constitutional Clash Erupts In Oregon

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/a-major-new-constitutional-clash-erupts-in-oregon

A Major New Constitutional Clash Erupts in Oregon

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This...

talkingpointsmemo.com

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

As it turns out, the “inequality gap” between the United States and Europe is not explicable by the comparative generosity of the latter’s welfare states, which are in fact funded by more regressive systems of indirect taxation. Rather, the key to Europe’s relatively higher levels of equality is […]

Original post on kolektiva.social

kolektiva.social

3 1

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

The World’s Most Annoying Man

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2019/05/the-worlds-most-annoying-man

The World’s Most Annoying Man

Steven Pinker is selling Reason™, not reason…

www.currentaffairs.org

2 4 1

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

Big city police are one of the most naturally Republican constituencies in the world. The fact that ICE is systematically cultivating their hostility is chef's kiss-level strategic stupidity on the part of the Trump administration […]

Original post on kolektiva.social

kolektiva.social

2

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

White House Flips Out After Chicago Mayor Announces “ICE-Free Zones” | The New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/post/201393/chicago-ice-free-zones-white-house-reaction

White House Flips Out After Chicago Mayor Announces “ICE-Free Zones”

After a spate of appalling federal immigration operations in Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday signed an executive order to curb abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the city—which has already incensed the White House. The executive order establishes “ICE-free zones,” limiting ICE agents from using “city property and unwilling private businesses” as “staging grounds” for their raids, Johnson said at a press conference. Under the order, private businesses can choose to display signage indicating that ICE cannot enter without a warrant—thereby designating “their property as part of a city-wide network of community spaces that stand together in affirming the safety, dignity, and belonging of all of our residents,” the mayor said. Johnson touted the order for building “a broad civic shield that limits the reach of harmful enforcement practices. It strengthens neighborhood solidarity and it reaffirms Chicago’s role as a welcoming city.” According to the mayor, while federal agents in violation of the order would not be arrested by Chicago police, the city will take the federal government to court if necessary. “Our school parking lots are not for ICE to load their weapons,” Johnson said. “They are for Chicagoans who drop their kids off to learn. Our libraries are not for ICE to prepare for a raid. They’re for Chicagoans to read and relax. Our parks are not for ICE to set up checkpoints. They are for Chicagoans to play and enjoy.” Donald Trump’s rapid-response White House X account decried the move. “This is SICK,” said the president’s team, accusing Johnson of “aiding and abetting criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, traffickers, and gang bangers.” The order came after a series of high-profile instances of brutality by federal immigration agents in the city. Last week, for example, some 300 agents conducted a massive raid on an apartment in the middle of the night, reportedly rappelling in from helicopters, deploying flash bangs, and tearing tenants—including naked children—from their units. Several tenants, including U.S. citizens, said they were zip-tied and held for hours. In a separate incident, agents detained a local elected official for peacefully inquiring about the due process rights of a detainee being treated in a hospital.

newrepublic.com

2

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

Stephen Miller’s Own Cousin Calls Him the “Face of Evil” | The New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/post/201387/stephen-miller-cousin-face-of-evil

Stephen Miller’s Own Cousin Calls Him the “Face of Evil”

Stephen Miller’s own cousin called the White House deputy chief of staff “evil” and a disgrace to his family. “I am living with the deep pain of watching someone I once loved become the face of evil,” Alisa Kasmer, Miller’s cousin, wrote in a July Facebook post that resurfaced over the weekend. Written in the weeks after Immigration and Customs Enforcement received a slush fund in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending plan—and as ICE raids ramped up against immigrants in Los Angeles, where Kasmer lives—her post lamented how the United States under Trump has directed its vast resources against “the hardest workers, the most vulnerable, the ones who carry this country on their backs.” “This is not by accident,” Kasmer wrote, “but by design. Your design, Stephen.” Kasmer, who used to babysit Miller, described now being estranged from her cousin, as she refuses to “knowingly let evil into my life.” Immigrant communities in the entire country are “terrorized by the cruelty you have brought upon us all,” she told her cousin. People “always” ask “what happened” to Miller, Kasmer noted. “I can only surmise it was a perfect storm of ego, fear, hate, and ambition.” Kasmer also expressed regret for having not intervened in her cousin’s political development. She and her sister would have done so, she said, if they had seen the “horrific videos of [Miller] in high school,” she wrote. (Clips from Miller’s high school days show him telling classmates that “torture is a celebration of life and human dignity,” and decrying “being told to pick up my trash when we have janitors.”) Miller, Kasmer added, is guilty of betraying his background—both because “immigrants were a part of your upbringing” and because “we were raised Jewish.” “We celebrated holidays each year with the reminder to stand up and say ‘never again,’” she wrote, referencing the lessons of the Holocaust. “But what you are doing breaks that sacred promise. It breaks everything we were taught. How can you do to others what has been done to us? How can you wake up each day and repeat the cruelty that our people barely escaped from?” This isn’t the first time one of Miller’s family members has renounced him. During the first Trump administration, in which Miller spearheaded the president’s “Muslim ban” and family separations, his uncle David Glosser penned an editorial for Politico, recounting their family’s immigration history and describing how Miller had “become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.” “Dozens of family members “encouraged me to push forward with this,” Glosser said.

newrepublic.com

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

Transcript: Trump Press Sec Snaps at Journos as Shutdown Polls Worsen | The New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/article/201367/transcript-trump-press-sec-snaps-journos-shutdown-polls-worsen

Transcript: Trump Press Sec Snaps at Journos as Shutdown Polls Worsen

_T_ _he following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 6 episode of the_ Daily Blast _podcast. Listen to ithere._ **Greg Sargent:** This is _The Daily Blas_ t from _The New Republic_ , produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent. As of now, most indications are that President Trump is losing the political battle over the government shutdown that started last week. Three national polls show Trump and the GOP taking substantially more blame for it than Democrats. The White House is attempting several lines of attack. One, that Democrats are shutting down the government to deliver health care to undocumented immigrants—which is a lie. And two, that if Democrats continue with this, the White House will use all its power to punish Democratic states and constituencies—which is depraved. At a media briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lost her temper precisely because she was questioned about both of those claims. All of this goes completely counter to what our wisest pundits predicted. Why is it happening? We’re puzzling through all of this today with _Salon_ ’s Amanda Marcotte, who’s always good at skewering MAGA. Amanda, great to have you on as always. **Amanda****Marcotte****:** Thanks for having me. **Sargent:** So Trump posted video of his Office of Management and Budget Chief Russell Vought in the role of the Grim Reaper. This refers to Vought using the shutdown to inflict big spending cuts designed to hurt Democratic states, and cuts to the workforces that agencies Democrats like. A reporter asked Karoline Leavitt about the Grim Reaper imagery. Here’s her answer. **Karoline Leavitt (voiceover):** _The president likes to have a little fun every now and then and I think both things can be true at the same time. The Democrats have given the administration this opportunity and we don’t like laying people off. Nobody takes joy in that around here. And if you think that, then I think that’s very sad. You view the White House and our staff as wanting to put people out of work. Nobody wants to do that, but sometimes in government you have to make tough decisions._ **Sargent:** So, Leavitt is very angry that anyone would dare question Trump’s deep empathy with those hurt by his policies. Amanda, your reaction to that? **Marcotte****:** I really think this entire video just gets to a dilemma on messaging that on messaging is really hurting Republicans—and why I find it a little baffling that the mainstream punditry seems to think that Republicans are winning. Which is, Republicans can’t decide if shutting down the government is a good thing or not. On one hand, they’re supposed to be blaming Democrats—the whole theory of all this is that whoever takes the blame loses and they will fold. But on the other hand, they just can’t stop taking credit for shutting down the government. I was listening to Sean Hannity clips at Media Matters, and it was the same thing. Hannity was just going on and on about how great government shutdowns are and how much he loves government shutdowns. And then you see this polling showing that most voters blame Republicans for the shutdown, and you’re like, well—they are taking credit, you know? **Sargent:** Right, well I think you actually saw this play out with this very exchange. There you have Leavitt rejecting the idea that they’d be enjoying these layoffs and they’d be enjoying what’s happening. But Trump _is_ joking about it and he’s putting up this Grim Reaper imagery. **Marcotte****:** Yeah, part of the problem is that Trump and J.D. Vance and all these people—their instincts are only to do a base-only play, right? They want to only speak to the MAGA base. They want to revel in racism. They want to crap on federal workers. They want to stoke all these resentments. That’s their happy place. But they also can’t succeed politically without getting, you know, another 10 to 15 percent of Americans to back their agenda—people who are more _fools_ as opposed to fully on board. You know, I call them the _price of eggs_ voters—the people who bought Trump’s shtick that, yeah, he may be crass, he may even be a little racist, but he’s a businessman who will get things done. And they need those people to think that Trump is working for them. But they can’t get there, because all they’re doing is signaling that he cannot wait to screw them over. **Sargent:** Yes, those are not voters that are going to like the Grim Reaper video very much. **Marcotte****:** My partner was making a really funny joke the other day. He was like about how Trump keeps calling all these federal agencies “Democrat agencies,” and he was like, I think that they should lean into...the Democratic Veterans Affairs, Democrat Medicaid, the Democrat Yellowstone Park. I like the sound of that. **Sargent:** I think it’s great. Well, let’s listen to another exchange with Leavitt. Trump and Republicans have been falsely claiming that Democrats are shutting down the government to provide free health care to undocumented immigrants. A reporter quite properly pointed out to Leavitt that this is bullshit. Listen to this. **Reporter (voiceover):** _At the top of the briefing you made a statement about that the Democrats are interested in giving healthcare to illegal immigrants? Yes, they are. U.S. law already prohibits that. It’s a 1996 law saying that they cannot give unauthorized immigrants any federally subsidized healthcare coverage through Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. There seems to be a disconnect in the message._ **Karoline Leavitt (voiceover):** _Are you denying that Medicaid money has never gone to illegal aliens in the United States of America?_ **Reporter (voiceover):** _I’m not denying anything, I’m asking you if you can explain the disconnect in the message._ **Karoline Leavitt (voiceover):** _I most certainly can._ **Sargent:** So after snapping at that reporter, Leavitt didn’t actually go on to explain why she was wrong because the reporter was right. And Leavitt seemed to botch the Medicaid formulation there a bit. But what’s noteworthy to me is that in both cases, what really got Leavitt angry is that reporters were accurately pointing out the enormous flaws in White House messaging really puncturing holes in it. What’s your take on that, Amanda? **Marcotte****:** So I wrote about this at _Salon._ The very surface-level thing they’re doing with this immigration stuff is just a standard Big Lie. They’re claiming—falsely—that Democrats are taking a stand because they want Medicaid to go to undocumented immigrants. That’s a lie. Flat out. Medicaid does _not_ go to undocumented immigrants. They don’t get it. That’s just it. But J.D. Vance, particularly, does this thing—he uses Big Lies like that to draw people into B.S. debates. You’ll see him do these interviews where he’ll say the Big Lie, and then a reporter will push back, like, _Well, that’s not true though—it’s illegal for undocumented immigrants to get Medicaid benefits_. And then he’ll say, _Well, what I mean is maybe one immigrant once got Medicaid_ , and da-da-da-da-da. And the whole point is to draw you into this discussion about whether or not _any_ immigrant should ever get health care at all. It’s about deflecting from the fact that what they’re really doing is trying to take away Medicaid from millions of Americans—they’re trying to raise health care costs for millions of Americans. And I think one of the things they’re trying to do here is posit this hypothetical: _One day, an undocumented person slipped through the cracks and got into the ER and got their bill paid—aren’t you outraged_? And the implication is: therefore everyone should lose their coverage to prevent that one possibility that they can’t even prove has happened. It’s a very strange kind of logic if you unpack it at all. Because imagine if a feminist said, _Well, some men are rapists, so they should all be locked up_. The possibility of any man raping any woman is much higher than an undocumented immigrant getting Medicaid. She would even have _more_ of a case—and we’d all immediately know that’s bad. That’s a bad thing to say. You can’t just take away everybody’s rights on the possibility that one person maybe sometime abuses them. **Sargent:** Well, I think we should talk about what the Democrats’ budget proposal actually is. It seeks to extend the Obamacare subsidies, which are about to expire, and it rolls back the Medicaid cuts in the big ugly bill that Trump passed. Now, I think JD Vance’s role in this is worth dwelling on for a second. He’s really the guy who pushes—more than anyone else in the Trump administration—the zero-sum bullshit that is core to MAGA. He’s essentially saying to people, _look, you should focus on the fact that undocumented immigrants are getting screwed by our administration,_ _rather than focus on the fact that_ you _are getting screwed by us_. Because these two policies—the ACA subsidies and the Medicaid cuts that Republicans passed with Trump—those absolutely clobber the MAGA base, both of them. And so you’ve got JD Vance essentially saying: _focus on illegal immigrants we’re hurting, not on working-class Americans we’re hurting._ **Marcotte****:** Yeah, it’s a good question about whether that’s going to be effective. On one hand, there is a lot of evidence that people will give up—especially bigoted, racist people will give up—something they want in order to deny it to someone they hate. On the other hand, most of the research on that has been on stuff that people don’t have yet, right? It’s like, if you promise somebody five dollars, but then they have to give two of it to a person they don’t like, they’ll say no to the five dollars. I think that when you’re taking away something people already have, you’re in much different territory. People have become dependent on Obamacare, they’ve become dependent on Medicaid—they like going to the doctor. **Sargent:** And right now, the latest data does suggest that Trump and Republicans are losing the shutdown fight itself. A new _Washington Post_ poll finds that 47 percent of Americans blame Trump and the GOP for the shutdown, while only 30 percent blame Democrats. Among independents, that’s 50 percent blaming Trump and Republicans versus 22 percent blaming Democrats. That’s very bad for Trump and the GOP. Trump is just absolutely tanking among independents in many polls right now. Meanwhile, the latest Marist poll has Republicans taking more blame than Democrats by 12 points. The latest _New York Times_ poll has Republicans getting more blame by seven points. I don’t know if you saw this, but CNN polling analyst Harry Enten had a good little riff. He pointed out that, in these polls, Republicans are taking the blame by an average of 12 points more than Democrats are. That’s kind of unexpected. I didn’t expect it, I have to say. How do you explain it, Amanda? **Marcotte****:** Well, Republicans’ brand has always been anti-government, and they’ve been responsible for basically every shutdown ever. So I think people are just trained to believe that it’s Republicans’ fault when the government shuts down. It was always kind of odd to think that you were going to get people to completely rethink how they see Democrats—to see Democrats as the ones who _want_ to shut down the government, who want federal employees furloughed, things like that. So no, I mean, just on the very baseline branding issue, Republicans stepped into a big trap on this. **Sargent:** Yeah, it sure looks that way. I want to return to something you said earlier because it gets to something really interesting. There’s a big conflict in the White House position. On one hand, everything Russell Vought is doing right now—the threats to directly target Democrats, the threats to cut the federal workforce, all of it—is about delivering a sadistic thrill to the MAGA base. MAGA loves the idea of pain being inflicted on Democratic constituencies. Trump knows that. That’s why he’s putting out videos of Vought as the Grim Reaper. But on the other hand, some in the White House know it’s not good to be seen enjoying layoffs and enjoying pain for lots of people. So you’ve got Karoline Leavitt pretending to show empathy to laid-off workers. The core problem is that what thrills MAGA turns off the middle. It’s just a fundamental conflict—and I think they know it. What do you think? **Marcotte****:** I agree. I think it’s really important for liberals to remember that there are two buckets of Trump voters. There are the hardcore Trump loyalists—and yes, that’s most Trump voters—but he doesn’t get over the hill without that other 10 percent: the _price of eggs_ voters. They’ll tell pollsters or in focus groups that they don’t like Trump. They’ll say he’s gross, he’s racist, he’s a pig—but they’ve bought into this lie that he’s a competent businessman. They have this vague nostalgia for what they thought was the Trump economy in his first term, which was really just pre-COVID America, and they’re looking at that with rose-colored glasses. What’s happening now is that those voters—the ones he really does need on board if he wants to get anything done—are turning against him pretty quickly. You can see it when you break down the polling: young voters, a lot of whom were actual kids when Trump was president the first time, and Latino voters who bought into the notion that his racism was a joke. **Sargent:** Latino men. Not the women. **Marcotte****:** Yeah, during the campaign, there was a lot of pressure to say, yeah, he makes these racist jokes about Latinos, but it’s a joke. He doesn’t actually hate you. And now we’re seeing ICE just going after anybody who speaks Spanish or is perceived to be Latino. And that’s turning people off. And then, of course, the big 800 pound gorilla in the room, which is everything Trump is doing is about increasing costs on ordinary working people who are already legitimately feeling the squeeze. **Sargent:** Yeah, I think you’re getting at what I think is a real problem in the Trump coalition, kind of in a very broad sense, right? So if you think of the Trump coalition as being MAGA plus all these voters who kind of have passing familiarity with Trump because he penetrated deep into the culture for many, many years, he builds big buildings, he’s a rich guy, he must be doing something right. That kind of thing. Once he gets in and governs, everything that they do, everything that MAGA governance does, is tailor-made to splitting that coalition. Like that second bucket of voters who understands Trump as kind of a can-do, snap his fingers, businessman type: They hate the anti-vax stuff. They hate the deportations. They hate the tariffs because they’re getting screwed by them and they’re not ideologues about globalization or anything like that. And then same with the healthcare stuff so, you see what I’m saying? The MAGA coalition is almost guaranteed to fracture once these lunatics actually start governing, I think. **Marcotte****:** I feel like we’ve seen this movie before—the first Trump term. He got elected in 2016 because so many people just thought he was the guy from The Apprentice. They thought he was this great businessman. They were willing to overlook the racism and the sexual predation because they thought he’d do great things for the economy. And then what’s the very first thing he tries to do in office? Take away people’s health care. And he didn’t even succeed at that—because of John McCain. Yet in 2018, Republicans lost much bigger than expected in the midterms. And all the data shows it was because of the attack on health care in particular. I mean, yes, it was also that Trump showed who he really was and people learned more about him. But the threat to health care—people took that very seriously. And now Trump Two, like all sequels, is the same story, just bigger, louder, and with more explosions. **Sargent:** Layer on all the fascism as well. He’s getting much more of what he wants with the mass deportations. He’s got tens of billions of extra dollars to play with to terrorize immigrant communities and unleash law enforcement in cities and so forth. So you’ve got almost like the first term dynamic that you’re talking about, but supercharged. **Marcotte****:** And I really don’t want to underestimate that. I think the reason health care is such a predominant issue is because, unfortunately, you can get a lot of people to accede to authoritarianism if they don’t think they’re personally going to be affected. But make no mistake: People do not like ICE. People do not like the immigration raids. If you go out to any community and people are talking about it, it’s upsetting people. And obviously, the Jimmy Kimmel situation—I do think it brought home to a lot of people that Trump _is_ a fascist. He does want to censor free speech. While a lot of people still may not think that’s going to affect them, when it happens to someone like Jimmy Kimmel, they begin to realize a little more clearly that it could—or that it could happen to somebody they know. So I do think those threats are upsetting people. But the health care thing is just immediate and visceral in this way that I’m actually glad Democrats went after it as their top issue, because it’s turning out that people are paying attention. **Sargent:** So I think at the end of the day what you’ve really got here is Democrats finally sensing Trump’s weakness in a new kind of way. They didn’t seem to want to go into this shutdown fight this time—and they certainly didn’t want to last time—but they kind of got forced into it by their base this time. And it seems to me that they’re figuring out that it feels kind of good to put Trump on the defensive. What do you think? It seems like Democrats understand that Trump is not a strong figure right now in a way that they just haven’t previously. **Marcotte****:** I certainly hope so. I can never get a good read on Chuck Schumer because he’s so dissembling, but Hakeem Jeffries does seem like he’s leaning into it a little bit more than he used to. So that’s a good sign. I think, for listeners, what I’d really emphasize is that this is a reminder that speaking out works—organizing works. We shouldn’t just lay down and let this happen to us. Weirdly, I kind of do keep coming back to the Jimmy Kimmel thing, but I think that put a little fire in people’s bellies and made them realize, yes, you _do_ have power in this world. And we put that on the Democrats, and now they’re doing what their people want them to do. And while some of them may be reluctant, I think they’re starting to enjoy having people give them _attaboys_. **Sargent:** Yeah. In fact, I’ll tell you what—I think the memes and the imagery the White House is using, the depiction of Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero, the Grim Reaper-type stuff—it’s all designed to get Democratic voters and liberals to forget what you just said, which is that they _do_ have power. It’s about emasculating Democrats. It’s about trying to create the impression that it’s all over, that they’ve got utter mastery of the political environment and the information space, so you might as well give up. **Marcotte:** And that’s why I really appreciated the video that Bernie Sanders and AOC released, where they’re walking along, palling around, talking about why they support the shutdown and the importance of protecting people’s health care. It’s not a meme-ified or crazy video—it’s very straightforward, but it’s also very charming. So it’s getting shared a lot. And it’s a reminder that we _do_ have power here, that they don’t control all the levers of messaging, that our free speech is still there and we can talk back, we can fight back. I think it’s important to do so in terms that make sense to the people behind the message. We shouldn’t be doing gross AI videos—that doesn’t resonate with the people Democrats are trying to reach. But I do think it’s important to recognize there’s power here, there’s leverage here, and to just keep going forward. Because one of the reasons I supported the shutdown to begin with wasn’t that I thought it would necessarily “work”—I don’t even know what that means—but because if Democrats can show fight and get any kind of win, that pays dividends. It makes people realize, yes, standing up works, resistance works. Because I think a lot of people have been demoralized. **Sargent:** Right. It sends the message that they’re not all powerful. They haven’t won. Amanda Marcotte, always great fun to talk to you. Thanks for coming on. **Marcotte****:** Thanks for having me.

newrepublic.com

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

Of course Robby Soave wrote this. Of course he did. That POS.

https://reason.com/2025/10/06/bari-weiss-has-won-the-war-on-wokeness-in-media/

Bari Weiss Has Won the War on Wokeness in Media

In the resignation letter announcing her departure from the Grey Lady in July 2020, the opinion journalist Bari Weiss memorably lamented that "Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor." What Weiss meant was that the extremely progressive sensibilities of elite social media users—leftist activists, educators, journalists, Democratic campaign staffers, etc.—held undue sway over the range of views that could be printed in the opinion pages. This was a constant source of frustration for Weiss, a centrist thinker critical of the left whose mission was to bring some measure of ideological diversity to the paper. (In her letter, she bragged about having published independent and contrarian writers such as Jesse Singal, Glenn Loury, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and _Reason_ 's own Nick Gillespie.) But in the summer of 2020, the collective set of ideologies, habits, and preferences commonly referred to as _wokeness_ still ruled the roost. Much has changed in the last few years, and they are about to change even more noticeably at another large media company. Weiss is set to become the editor in chief of CBS News, and parent company Paramount has also purchased _The Free Press—_ the media company she built from scratch in the years since leaving _The New York Times—_ for an eye-popping $150 million. In other words, over the course of just five years, Weiss has gone from an under-appreciated mid-level editor at a hostile (to her) newspaper to the boss of a major television news company, making millions in the process. One doesn't have to be in sympathy with Weiss' views in order to appreciate the staggering nature of this achievement: She has pulled off an elaborate _Count of Monte Cristo–_ style revenge, if not over the _Times_ itself, at least over the sort of people who made her experience at the _Times_ so miserable. And the misery, in Weiss' telling, was indeed thorough. She claims that her __ colleagues bullied and badgered her for soliciting opinions that conflicted with their own, even though this was the job the _Times_ had hired her to perform. This tension had culminated, just one month prior to her resignation, in a full-on staff revolt over an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) that called for the National Guard to be deployed to quell post-George Floyd rioting in U.S. cities. Progressive staffers framed their opposition to the op-ed as a matter of workplace safety: They said this op-ed put the lives of black staffers at risk and constituted a form of violence. The argument was not _: We question the wisdom of sending the army into cities to conduct law enforcement._ The argument was: _You should not be allowed to write this._ In other words, it wasn't an argument at all. Again, back in 2020, this was par for the course. A phenomenon that previously remained confined to elite college campuses had spread throughout social media, infecting workplaces that disproportionately hired young, uber-progressive people. It hit the media industry particularly hard—the _Times_ was hardly alone in having to reckon with junior employees suddenly making unreasonable demands for emotional safety. Twitter may have served as the "ultimate editor," in Weiss' telling, but Slack—the online communications platform used by many businesses, particularly media companies—was where the social-media-constructed opinions of woke youngsters took shape as internal enforcement mechanisms for groupthink. Since at least 2016, when Donald Trump made opposition to political correctness a central aspect of his presidential campaign, many libertarian, contrarian, and otherwise heterodox figures—including Weiss herself—have warned that the thing we now call _wokeness_ would engender massive backlash. Her elevation to the position of editor in chief of CBS News is, in some sense, one of the clearest indicators yet that wokeness in media, like wokeness everywhere else, is a loser. It is losing in the marketplace of ideas, as well as the _actual_ marketplace: Entertainment companies that once fretted about offending activists by platforming un-woke comedians have abandoned this fear. Moreover, with Trump back in charge, companies are more worried about offending a very thin-skinned president and a Federal Communications Commission that is eager to please him. Indeed, the recent kerfuffle over Jimmy Kimmel's cancellation is a reminder that backlashes can generate much-needed correction, but they can also go completely off the rails and bring to power a political figure that has no interest in ideological consistency with respect to free speech. Trump proclaims that his will be the most pro-free speech administration in U.S. history, and then he threatens to immediately arrest flag-burners for engaging in one of the most obviously protected forms of First Amendment expression. One can certainly think the various components of wokeness—the cancelations of provocative speakers, haranguing of classmates and coworkers over imprecise use of language, and so on—were extremely annoying and reflective of an illiberal social trend without cosigning the Trump remedy. Patriotic correctness is also annoying. Some will likely see Weiss' conquest of CBS, not as some legitimate victory for anti-wokeness, but rather yet another humiliating example of a major media organization sucking up to Trump. Paramount's merger with Skydance Media required the president's approval, and Trump had sued _60 Minutes_ , one of CBS's flagship news programs, over its Kamala Harris interview. Viewing this development through a Trump lens is reductive, however. Weiss isn't Trump or MAGA, and though the mainstream media is already describing CBS News as facing a hostile takeover from a "Trump-friendly" journalist, _The Free Press_ does run plenty of criticism of Trump and his movement, particularly on foreign policy. Their sensibilities are far more neoconservative than MAGA's, and the publication's uncompromising support for Israel is out of step with many of the right's more popular online figures these days: Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, Joe Rogan, and others. (To its credit, _The Free Press_ does regularly feature debates on this subject, including this one between Coleman Hughes and Dave Smith.) For her part, Weiss has announced no specific plans to radically rebrand or reformat CBS News. In a letter to all employees of the company, she outlined ten "core journalistic values" she thinks the company should exemplify under her leadership. They are all inoffensive and non-ideological. Even so, CBS News veterans are anonymously telling media reporters that they are "encouraging" Weiss not to interfere with _60 Minutes_ or _CBS News Sunday Morning_. That seems more than a little delusional on their parts.

reason.com

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

“I said one year before to Pete Hegseth. I said one year before. Where’s Pete? In the book I wrote—whatever the hell the title, I can’t tell you. But I can tell you there’s a page in there devoted to the fact that I saw somebody named Osama bin Laden, and I didn’t like it, and you got to take […]

Original post on kolektiva.social

kolektiva.social

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

Chicago bystanders thwart ICE abduction. ICE thugs drive away in defeat.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPbn8rWEbdX/

1

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 3d

Indigenous Nations Plan Tariff-Free Trade Corridor Across US-Canada border – Mother Jones

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/indigenous-nations-plan-tariff-free-trade-corridor-across-us-canada-border/

Indigenous Nations Plan Tariff-Free Trade Corridor Across US-Canada border

This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Just west of Fort Qu’Appelle in Saskatchewan, the Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation is working across the US border to revive centuries-old trade routes as part of a new Indigenous-governed trade corridor. Trucks from the First Nation could soon be […]

www.motherjones.com

28 5

Kevin Carson @kevincarson1.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 3d

"You can imagine Stephen Miller practicing his shouty fascist speeches in the mirror.... No one besides that twisted man in the mirror takes Miller seriously."

https://badfaithtimes.com/ok-tough-guy/