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rachelnyssen.bsky.social
@rachelnyssen.bsky.social
Reposted
It might be easy to find things like this merely petty or superficial, but that would be a mistake. Demeaning, erasing or eliminating celebrations or acknowledgments of Black America is straight from Redemption playbook, and is intended to reinforce the racial hierarchy and signal its reinstatement.
National parks change prioritizes Trump birthday over days honoring Black people
Free entrance days at national parks no longer include MLK Day and Juneteenth.
www.sfgate.com
December 5, 2025 at 6:30 PM
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I was reading one of the cases about Trump canceling funds for anything related to "DEI" and I'm happy to announce a federal judge lowkey appears to be joining Team Don't Listen to the Supreme Court

ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...
Judges Are Finding Ways to Deal With the Supreme Court’s Disastrous Shadow Docket
The White House wants to keep its cases out of skeptical federal district courts. Judges are finding ways to reel them back in.
ballsandstrikes.org
November 17, 2025 at 9:04 PM
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My latest is a love letter to Chicago. "I see you stumbling through the stubborn, awkward rhythm of showing up, again and again. I see you fighting alongside people who sometimes frustrate and confuse you, and defending neighbors you may have never met, because you know they’re all your people."
In Chicago, We Run Toward Danger Together
"Faced with unrelenting state violence, Chicagoans have refused to be cowed," says Mariame Kaba.
organizingmythoughts.org
November 8, 2025 at 2:46 PM
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The most heartening thing about right now is the propensity of my neighbors to run towards trouble
November 7, 2025 at 4:35 PM
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We must note that all the condemnation of Tucker Carlson platforming Nick Fuentes has been about anti-Semitism and there has been an alarming and revealing silence around his anti-Black racism and white supremacy. When the head of the Heritage Foundation apologized, he only cited anti-Semitism.
November 6, 2025 at 5:50 PM
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Republicans understand that the best way to kill social programs is to paint their beneficiaries as Black, as support for these programs declines — even amongst white people who need them — when they think large numbers of Black people will benefit.

news.stanford.edu/stories/2018...
November 1, 2025 at 5:27 PM
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Let’s be clear, most EBT users are white. The reason he’s specifically lying about “weaves” and we’ve seen so many AI fakes of Black women ranting about food stamps is they need to make BW the face EBT because they know many Americans don’t care if Black people suffer, and some actually wish for it.
ROB SCHMITT: People are using SNAP benefits to get their nails done, to get their weaves and their hair. This is a really ugly program.

SEN. RON JOHNSON: That program needs to be dramatically reformed.
November 1, 2025 at 5:22 PM
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I'm pro-union because I think workers should organize to balance the power that business owners have in various negotiations. It's true that unions have been weakened, but it's not because of multiculturalism. I would argue, it's because people seek to exploit divisions for their material interests.
October 30, 2025 at 8:07 AM
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JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing.

Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵
October 30, 2025 at 8:07 AM
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This is exactly the same argument — and, in parts, even the same language — that segregationists advanced to argue that white people had a “right” not to live next to people who were different from them.
Vance says it is "totally reasonable and acceptable" for people to not want to live next door to people who speak a different language than they do
October 29, 2025 at 4:43 PM
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This is an especially worrying statement when facial recognition can be inaccurate, biased, and generally make mistakes. Basing whether someone should be in the US or not, and ignoring physical media like a birth certificate, is ripe for disaster bsky.app/profile/jose...
New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people

www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...
October 29, 2025 at 4:18 PM
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The Trump Administration is refusing to use SNAP’s contingency reserves — which Congress provided for this exact purpose — to help low-income families afford groceries next month.

Nearly 90% of SNAP participants are in households with kids, seniors, or people with disabilities.
October 26, 2025 at 11:11 PM
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The Trump Administration’s assertion that it can't use SNAP’s contingency reserves for SNAP benefits is contrary to:
▪️The plain language of the law
▪️Their own (now deleted) shutdown plan
▪️Guidance from prior Administrations

We have the receipts:
SNAP’s Contingency Reserve Is Available for Regular SNAP Benefits, as USDA and OMB Have Ruled in Past
The Administration must use all available options to fund November benefits for the 1 in 8 people in the U.S. who need SNAP to afford their grocery bill.
www.cbpp.org
October 27, 2025 at 8:19 PM
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> "a September contingency plan, since deleted from the USDA’s website...said Congress intended 'that SNAP’s operations should continue' and that contingency funds 'are also available to fund participant benefits in the event that a lapse occurs [mid-fiscal year]'"

www.huffpost.com/entry/govern...
Trump Administration Buries Legal Memo Suggesting It Could Pay November Food Benefits
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the food program, says its hands are tied by the shutdown.
www.huffpost.com
October 27, 2025 at 7:56 PM
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"Kids dressed in halloween costumes walking to a parade" do not present an immediate threat to law enforcement officer and riot control measures may not be used, Ellis says.
October 28, 2025 at 3:17 PM
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This is a real thing that a judge had to say to the Chief of US Customs and Border Protection.
"Kids dressed in halloween costumes walking to a parade" do not present an immediate threat to law enforcement officer and riot control measures may not be used, Ellis says.
October 28, 2025 at 3:20 PM
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If you have it please donate cash to the food banks. $10 in their hands will feed more people than the $10 worth of canned goods you can buy for retail prices. Also check on your elders. Many of them will not admit they rely on these programs so grocery gift cards or a surprise bag of staples
October 26, 2025 at 3:37 PM
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Nine months ago I put most of my hope in major institutions continuing to hold fascism in check, but had little expectation that regular people with little to no power would step up and put themselves at risk.

I had it exactly backward.
signs like these are up all over Chicago cafes and storefronts (here, cafes in Brighton Park and Back of the Yards) warning ICE not to enter without a judicial warrant
October 26, 2025 at 12:00 AM
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signs like these are up all over Chicago cafes and storefronts (here, cafes in Brighton Park and Back of the Yards) warning ICE not to enter without a judicial warrant
October 25, 2025 at 11:54 PM
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Precisely. Racism is the gateway to Trump’s power grab.
It is impossible to imagine people allowing this to go on (or even participating in it within the government) if he was ordering the murder without any process of French citizens or Brits or Australians on boats no matter what they were alleged to be doing.
Trump: "I don't think we're necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war, I think we're just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We're going to kill them. They're going to be, like dead."
October 24, 2025 at 1:48 AM
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This is extrajudicial murder. It is illegal and unethical. And it is a pathetic use of American military force, demonstrating not strength but weakness.
U.S. strikes alleged drug vessel, this time on the Pacific side.

In what is the eighth known U.S. attack on a boat since Sept. 2, two to three individuals aboard the vessel were killed.

www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-str...
U.S. strikes 8th alleged drug vessel, this time on the Pacific side
This is the first U.S. strike against an alleged drug vessel on the Pacific side of South America.
www.cbsnews.com
October 22, 2025 at 9:43 PM
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just a reminder that there were people of the time — and of the same class and station — who saw this stuff and thought, "yeah this is bullshit"
October 21, 2025 at 1:47 AM
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learned recently that the guy who wrote "The Night Before Christmas," clement clarke moore, also wrote a takedown of thomas jefferson's proto-scientific racism in "Notes on the State of Virginia," basically accusing him and others of making it up to justify slavery. which, that's right.
October 21, 2025 at 1:45 AM
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But yeah, leading Republicans training racists to be less direct in their racism as they groom them for leadership is probably the bigger story.
October 20, 2025 at 8:37 PM