Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Lily Mason

Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 16h

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 4h

"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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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 4h

I really believe that huge majorities of Americans don’t want masked soldiers shooting priests in the street. They don’t want naked children ripped out out of their apartments in the middle of the night and handcuffed. We win by making sure these stories get told.

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 4h

The same people who insisted devout Catholic Joe Biden was leading a “war on Christianity” are now cheering Trump on as his armed goons assault clergymen.

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 4h

WATCH: Trump’s lawless Ice goons shoot an unarmed priest in the head with a pepper ball. Completely out of control.

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Nour Kteily @nourkteily.bsky.social · 1d

@elijfinkel.bsky.social
& I are recruiting a postdoc in the #LitowitzCenter for Enlightened Disagreement at Northwestern University. We seek research excellence regarding navigating conflict.

Application deadline: Nov. 17.

Salary: ~$80k.

facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu/apply/MjQzNw==

Northwestern Faculty Search -

facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu

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Charlotte Garden @charlottegarden.bsky.social · 1d

One thing to take from this is that legacy media’s attempts to win back GOP audiences have utterly failed. If those attempts have also eroded trust among Dems and Independents, then they’re a massive own-goal.

Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 1d

Gallup has been surveying Americans' trust in legacy media since 1972. This year, a mere 28 percent of the public have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of trust in legacy media, its lowest level in more than five decades of tracking.

news.gallup.com/poll/695762/...

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 2d

The way the right builds their "violent left" narrative is being hyperreactive to any action by anyone they perceive to be on the left and blasting it all over conservative media while systematically ignoring any violence by the far right. Mainstream media covers the former but barely the latter.

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Andrew Weinstein @andrewjweinstein.com · 3d

ICE admits that up to 50% of arrests in its Chicago raids are "collateral.” These aren't statistics. They are parents taken from their children, neighbors taken from our communities. When does a "collateral" U.S. citizen child's trauma matter? This isn't law enforcement; it's a campaign of terror.

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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 2d

Once upon a time, if a president head lied this brazenly, it would be considered a disgrace by both political parties

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 2d

Trump: Portland is burning to the ground—insurrectionists all over the place. The politicians are afraid for their lives. That’s the only reason they say there’s nothing happening.

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KOJAMF🤘🖤🤘 @kojamf.bsky.social · 3d

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 3d

Popularists, or pollingists—or whatever you call the pundit/consultant thinking that dominates Dem politics—take on the straw man "no one should use data," but avoid the more substantive criticism "you're using data poorly."

This, by @anatosaurus.bsky.social, is an excellent version of the latter.

Bringing a Survey to a Gun Fight

“Pollingism” Has Failed Democrats and Voters. Here’s Why, and What to Do Instead.

www.weekendreading.net

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Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer · Sep 8

working on a new unified theory of american reality i'm calling "everyone is twelve now"

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 4d

This is what authoritarians do - use the powers of the state to humiliate and degrade their opponents in public so that others will not challenge them

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 4d

“The source told CBS News that [Kash Patel and Dan Bongino] asked for "large, beefy" agents to conduct an arrest of Comey "in full kit," including Kevlar vests and exterior wear emblazoned with the FBI logo.” The leadership of the FBI is now in the hands of infantile psychopaths.

The FBI is weighing an arrest and perp walk for Comey — and suspended an agent for refusing to help, sources say

The FBI is considering carrying out a "showy" arrest and perp walk of the agency's now-indicted ex-Director James Comey, sources tell CBS News.

www.cbsnews.com

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Dave Infante @dinfontay.com · 4d

“'The fact that we don't have money to pay journalists, but we have money to pay Bari Weiss between $100 and 200 million is indicative of what the Ellisons' true goal here is,' a network correspondent said. 'And it's not journalism.'"

CBS News staffers are ‘literally freaking out’ about Bari Weiss taking over newsroom

EXCLUSIVE: ‘People are using words like depressing and doomsday – feels like some sort of doomsday,’ one source told The Independent about the mood inside CBS News right now.

www.independent.co.uk

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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 4d

It could not be clearer how low the bar has become for assessing this administration.

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 5d

Chris Murphy says Dems should lay down a simple marker for Trump: No Dem support for anything that funds his lawbreaking.

"if you want our votes, it can’t be for rampant lawlessness. This isn't a normal time...the world [is] watching to see what we stand for." 2/

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

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Philip Bump @pbump.com · 5d

comic book authors: we invented the punisher as a cautionary tale about vigilante crime fighting
the director of the fbi: at long last, we are implementing the ethos from the classic comic book the punisher

Sam @samd.bsky.social · 5d

reddit occupied government

Ken Dilanian
@DilanianMSNBC
Follow
The challenge coins being handed out by @FBIDirectorKash. Seems someone put a lot of thought into this.

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Lily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 5d

There are a few links in our CES data!

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Rebekah Tromble @rebekahtromble.bsky.social · 5d

Hand holding a frying pan with a fried egg in it, with the words “This is your university if you sign” at the top. Image is from the 1980s “This is your brain on drugs” campaign.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 6d

Surreal moment for America. Needless to say, if the normal police ever pulled something like this — pulling every single person out of an apartment building and handcuffing them to run warrant checks — they would be sued into oblivion.

Yet ICE is going to get away with it entirely.

"It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face," Fisher said. "They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me, did I have any warrants? And I told them, 'No, 'Ididn't."
Fisher said she was handcuffed before being released around 3 a.m., and she was told that if anyone had any kind of warrant out for them, even if it was unrelated to immigration, they would not be released.

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Lily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 6d

I'm glad you wrote it and so sorry you went through it.

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 6d

As @tressiemcphd.bsky.social knows, I almost didn’t write my book because of years of threats against me and my family. I wrote the book and I’m happy about it, but this kind of harassment takes a toll.

Emily Farris @emayfarris.bsky.social · 7d

This new column by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social makes me think about when I recently had to talk to the police for yet another safety plan, I tried to “lighten” the mood by saying that we all knew this wasn’t my first rodeo. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

For at least the past 15 years, my colleagues in academia have grappled with angry letters to university officials for doing their jobs. They have weathered campaigns for their firing. They have contended with an internet army obsessed with doxxing them, their parents, their kids. I’ve been contacted by the F.B.I. more than once in my career. Not because I hold any important state secrets or know a biker gang but because one of my colleagues has lived with so much sustained harassment from right-wing “activists” that it has become a matter of federal concern. Watch lists (one of which was constructed by Kirk’s organization) do not distinguish between public intellectuals at wealthy enclaves and hoi polloi who teach popular classes at cash-strapped schools. In either case, an army of trained provocateurs stands ready to destroy their lives to prove their bona fides as conservative activists.

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Lily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 7d

Literally removing the stakes to push the odds.

Editing the Blue-Gray Lady @nytdiff.bsky.social · 7d

Change in Headline

Before: These Six Charts Tell You Exactly What’s at Stake in This Shutdown
After: These 6 Charts Explain Why Democrats May Shut Down the Government

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 7d

Just having a moment reflecting on what a ridiculous state we're in, where the president is making "deals" with private universities by personally meddling in federally allocated education and research funding and this is being treated as just ordinary politics.

Senator Chris Van Hollen @vanhollen.senate.gov · 7d

If Harvard bows down to this lawless president, it will cover itself in shame and betray its motto “Veritas.”

Don’t pretend to stand for truth if you’re going to surrender to this bully. Appeasement only feeds the beast and puts us all at greater risk.

Trump Says a Deal With Harvard Is Close

www.nytimes.com

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 7d

my latest is expanding on the observation that your view of the politics of opposition to the administration depend largely on your view of the election (gift link)

Opinion | Trump Has No Mandate to Destroy America

www.nytimes.com

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Lily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 7d

It was one of the greatest fears of Washington (see his Farewell Address)

I have already intimated to you the danger of
parties in the state, with particular reference to the
founding of them on geographical discriminations.
Let me now take a more comprehensive view and
warn you in the most solemn manner against the
baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our
nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the
human mind. It exists under different shapes in all
governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or
repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen
in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over
another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to
party dissension, which in different ages and countries
has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a
frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more
formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and

miseries which result gradually incline the minds of
men to seek security and repose in the absolute power
of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some
prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his
competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of
his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this
kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out
of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the
spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest
and the duty of a wise people to discourage and
restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and
enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the
community with ill founded jealousies and false
alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against
another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.
It opens the door to foreign influence and
corruption, which find a facilitated access to the
government itself through the channels of party
passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country
are subjected to the policy and will of another.

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking
in a free country should inspire caution in those
entrusted with its administration, to confine
themselves within their respective constitutional
spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one
department to encroach upon another. The spirit of
encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all
the departments in one and thus to create, whatever
the form of government, a real despotism. A just
estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse
it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient
to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity
of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power,
by dividing and distributing it into different
depositories and constituting each the guardian of the
public weal against invasions by the others, has been
evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of
them in our country and under our own eyes. To
preserve them must be as necessary as to institute
them. If in the opinion of the people the distribution

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Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis @jeffjarvis.bsky.social · 8d

History: "But the right did not learn cancel culture from the left; the modern right in America emerged as a censorious movement."
The Right Didn’t Catch Cancel Culture From the Left www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/o...

Opinion | The Right Didn’t Catch Cancel Culture From the Left

www.nytimes.com

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