Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 8h

The First Amendment explicitly guarantees:

-the right of the people peaceably to assemble
-to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
-the free exercise of religion
-freedom of speech

If this priest had also been press, ICE would have violated all five 1A freedoms at once.

Kurt @flglchicago.bsky.social · 10h

Here’s video of the incident

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 9h

I liked both movies, albeit for different reasons.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 9h

Calling bluffs works.

If the people controlling the White House, House, Senate, and Supreme Court want to hurt America (even more than they already are) under the theory that the public will blame someone else, the move is to reject their demands and let them, not to validate the technique.

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 10h

“.. With Democrats having shown no signs of budging .. and a growing number of Republican lawmakers warning about potential blowback, the White House is now planning to hold off at least a little longer on sending out notices of Reductions in Force ..”

@cnn.com
www.cnn.com/2025/10/07/p...

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 10h

Oppenheimer got a lot of praise for depicting rapid pursuit of a dangerous new technology that, once unleashed, cannot be undone, which many compared to AI. But it turned out the movies’s timeliest, most currently relevant historical analogy was in depicting McCarthyism.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 10h

It’s not Kristallnacht. That was bigger, involving more people in multiple locations, and left about 90 dead.
But the regime’s repressive paramilitaries hunting a scapegoated ethnic minority, violating rights, smashing property, harming citizens and noncitizens alike, is disturbingly Kristallnachty.

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 10h

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 10h

You don’t announce undercover law enforcement operations in advance, but you’ve gotta hype new content.

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Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 14h

this is literally stuff King Charles did, like not only did the American colonists have a revolution to not have this happen, but they did so in the wake of the English revolution, which was about not having stuff like this happen

George Pearkes @peark.es · 15h

Well that's not how appropriations work at all

*WHITE HOUSE TO TRANSFER TARIFF REVENUE TO FUND WIC: LEAVITT

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 13h

If words have meanings and laws were laws, then that logically follows, yes. Good point.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 13h

If recreational drugs are weapons of war such that their presence authorizes deadly military force, wouldn't drugs also be arms with possession protected by the Second Amendment?

We shouldn't have to ask—because drugs are not arms—but having to ask highlights how the US is not operating under law.

G A Lenker @galenker.bsky.social · 13h

If drugs are weapons, don't Americans have a Second Amendment right to have them?

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Will Oremus @willoremus.com · 13h

Obviously not the main point here, but it's interesting how this is framed as content rather than policy.

"BREAKING" is typically what journalists or influencers say when they have a big story -- not what government officials say when they launch "undercover" operations

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 14h

Never before has the United States had an Attorney General and FBI Director who openly serve the president personally as he works to break laws rather than enforcing laws for the country, Constitution, and American people.

I don’t know if any previous one even said “the president’s agenda.” Ever.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 14h

US military action is done with the American people’s money in the American people’s name, as is DOJ. The people’s elected representatives in Congress have oversight authority. They are 100% entitled to this info.

You know who doesn’t have to disclose legal advice? Personal attorneys and advisors.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 20h

COONS: How did you conclude that these strikes on boats in the open ocean are legal?

BONDI: I'm not going to discuss any legal advice that my department may or may not have issued

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 16h

The second biggest shareholder of X is a Saudi prince. Would the Saudi royal family eat some financial losses to cut off avenues of dissent? Pretty sure the answer to that is a solid yes, at least to some degree of annual financial loss.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 16h

Porque priorizar la ideología hace perder dinero

In this circumstance, it's a trade off

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 17h

Why assume CBS under the Ellisons aims to make money, rather than sees financial losses as an acceptable price to advance political goals, like the Washington Post under Bezos or RT?

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 17h

Often that means “I have strong ideological biases, and validating them is the price of admission.”

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Topher Brennan (he/they) @topherbrennan.bsky.social · 19h

Iran-Contra is extremely illuminating as a disanalogy. Iran-Contra was an attempt to do an end-run around Congress' prohibition on funding the Contras. Today, the Trump admin would just fund the Contras and dare anyone to try to enforce the law. bsky.app/profile/whst...

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 20h

The thing about Iran-Contra and Watergate was that they WEREN’T flagrant: they had to be exposed.Trump literally does stuff five times worse than Watergate every day, and then tweets an openly neo-Nazi meme about it from the official White House account. It’s a difference in kind, not just degree.

Emcee Hammerpants @emceehammerpants.bsky.social · 21h

I dunno, man. Iran-Contra and Watergate were pretty flagrant. I have a hard time believing they haven’t been heading down this road where the executive is all-powerful and power is the end, not the means, for a long, long time. Whether that alone qualifies as fascist I don’t know for sure.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 19h

You're describing a plausible process by which something like that could happen, but it's not a convincing case that these people can pull it off.

Either way, even if they can, they have not currently.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 19h

Similar, yes. For example, see:

AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism

It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right.

newsocialist.org.uk

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 19h

That's a straightforward description, is it not? As far as I'm aware, no correction of factual inaccuracies nor statement that it was wrong to publish them, but accusations that Balko did something wrong by pointing out the falsehoods and not agreeing to promote a podcast with them afterwards.

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Nick Fleisher @nickfleisher.bsky.social · 20h

See also: people who say we must "restore trust in higher ed"

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 20h

I keep waiting for the powers that be in media to grasp the concept of bad faith, realize how often "restore trust in news" and similar statements mean "stop doing journalism, lie more in ways I like," come from people ideologically committed to destroying trust in news, and can never be satisfied.

Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 20h

I too am keen to "restore trust in news" by turning a major broadcast network into a 24/7 slurry of right wing culture war propaganda and engagement trolling

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 19h

💯

The main cause of the declined trust is bad faith ideologues trying to destroy, not improve, the institution. Not the only problem, of course, but there's no possible way to restore trust when in denial about why trust declined.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 19h

When I say MAGA is post-truth, one of the things I mean is the movement—along with its fellow travelers and apologists—approaches the world insisting that there’s no such thing as factual reality, there are only words and images that are good or bad for one’s team.

Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 20h

I am following this debut, and I don’t know anyone who can explain why an opinion journalist has been chosen as Editor-in-Chief. Did we need more opinion at CBS?

Kevin Collier @kevincollier.bsky.social · 21h

Not an expert on this stuff but I have the sense that no one backing Weiss understands that what she has done her whole career, opinion-based news-flavored content, is distinct from news reporting.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 20h

The Trump regime’s desire for authoritarian domination is bottomless, but its capacity is very much not.

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 22h

New on MSNBC: Trump's new acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan has recruited prosecutors from outside her office to take James Comey to trial, after being unable to find any federal prosecutors in her own office willing to pursue the charges, according to two people familiar with the selections.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 20h

Yeah, that's it. I'm not claiming the situation is good (it is very bad). I'm claiming that pretending the situation isn't very bad, as if something like lowering the standards for op-eds will fix it, is just making the bad situation worse.

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