Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 1d

It's because:
1) more people turn to social media for their news
2) many distrust legacy media & the Washington Post specifically
3) @hcrichardson.bsky.social is a national treasure who succinctly provides proper context to the news of the day rather than just sensationalist headlines for clicks

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 1d

Who would have thought that 25 times as many people would be getting their daily news updates from a Boston College history professor (Heather Cox Richardson, who has 2.5 million subscribers) than from the Washington Post.

karl rove knausgård @uhactually.bsky.social · 1d

Lmao WaPo has fewer than 100K circulation now. It turns out “alienate your liberal subscriber base” is not a good strategy when the Republicans also hate you. www.forbes.com/sites/andyme...

Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, you are correct. I tried to oversimplify it too much (and way too little sleep the past few days), though the larger point remains that ending it led to rise of echo chambers

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 1d

Perhaps it’s time to read/post the Declaration of Independence in schools rather than the 10 Commandments

#NoKings

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 2d

He has…sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people…

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

—Declaration of Independence, 1776

David Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 4d

ICE agents to US citizen: Turn around or you're getting the dog.

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 1d

You can go back a bit further & see how Reagan in 1987 ended the Fairness Doctrine that forced outlets/shows to report stories based on facts. The ending of this doctrine led to the rise of Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and, yes, Fox News

It allowed them to create a Right Wing echo chamber

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 2d

Definitely. Time would fail to detail all the successful and attempted overthrows of democratically elected leaders just in Central America and South America (see Chile), all in the name of having a brutal dictator being better than an elected "communist"

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 2d

As a historian, I understand how we have gotten here. But it still shocks me how people could hear this is what Trump wanted to do and still vote for it.

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 2d

Definitely. Time would fail to detail all the successful and attempted overthrows of democratically elected leaders just in Central America and South America (see Chile), all in the name of having a brutal dictator being better than an elected "communist"

Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 2d

The is dictator talk.

How have we gotten to a place where the U.S. president is praising and siding with dictators and autocratic strongmen?

How the US has fallen😢

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

Trump in Egypt: "This country is doing very well. It has good leadership. It's nice when you say, 'How is your crime situation?' and they don't even know what you're talking about. Because if he has crime he puts it out very quickly. Some people think that's not nice, but I think it's great."

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 5d

BREAKING: Letitia James indicted by a grand jury.

There is no bottom to this barrel of shame that is the Trump administration. He’s just going down his enemies list to exact revenge and retribution, not for the American people before himself.

#TrumpEnemiesList

Reposted by Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️

Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 7d

A bold retelling of the 1960s civil rights struggle through its work against police violence—& a prehistory of both the Black Lives Matter & Blue Lives Matter movements that emerged half a century later.

@joshuaclarkdavis.bsky.social's Police Against the Movement is now available: hubs.ly/Q03Mp5Ss0

Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back by Joshua Clark Davis

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Reposted by Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️

Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 9d

👇🎯 This is how governing works in literally every actual democracy around the world. If you don’t have the votes, it’s up to you to make concessions to the minority parties. It’s not their job to save you from your responsibility to govern by giving you things you don’t have the votes for already.

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 9d

Sounds like Republicans ought to get all the Republicans who form the Republican majorities in the Republican-led House and the Republican-led Senate together to pass the budget that Republicans wrote with the Republican White House and that Republicans now insist absolutely must be passed.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 9d

Sean Duffy says the safety of the air traffic control system will start being impacted next Sunday if the shutdown continues

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 11d

Gonna leave this here.

(However, I remember them complaining about Shakira too, though she was the guest to Jennifer Lopez - that was a good show)

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 12d

It’s a great series.

I have used incarceration as well. I also use concentration camps in part to show the inhumanity and because I have quotes from those in the camps who used “concentration camps”

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 12d

This does hit hard

It is why using the word “internment camp” for Japanese-descended people in WWII is just a bad euphemism to cover the atrocity

And it is yet another parallel from the fascism of Germany to the US today

Due process is for EVERY PERSON in the United States without exception

Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️ @phdrachel.bsky.social · 12d

Reviewing my WWII lecture & this hits different this year:
The US Holocaust museum argues that “what distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison... is that it functions outside of the judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.” 🗃️

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 12d

Just because a person says 2+2=5 doesn’t make it true. It just makes that person wrong and, if they keep repeating it insisting it’s true, makes them idiotic & dangerous

Trump has 'determined' “ U.S. is in 'armed conflict' w/ cartels, administration tells Congress www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 13d

No, it was racist. It was imparting cultural appropriation and playing it for laughs (it would be similar to posting a fake image of a white person donning blackface). That is racist, plain and simple

He may have been trying to “be funny” with it but that doesn’t make it any less offensive & racist

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 13d

Historian here. No, it was racist. It was imparting cultural appropriation and playing it for laughs (it would be similar to posting a fake image of a white person donning blackface). That is racist, plain and simple

Reuters @reuters.com · 13d

Trump's AI videos of top Democrat were a joke, not racist, Vance says reut.rs/4ntlX99

Trump's AI videos of top Democrat were a joke, not racist, Vance says

U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday described AI-manipulated videos that President Donald Trump posted on social media of House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries as a joke, dismissing complaints from Democrats that the videos were racist.

reut.rs

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 15d

This is literally what every apocalyptic Book of Revelation evangelical movie/book from the 90s warned us about - a one world government leader declaring he alone can bring peace whole his followers wear his mark on their foreheads

I remember thinking no one could be so stupid as to believe him 🙄🤬

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 15d

Trump: My plan calls for the creation of a new international oversight body. The board of peace… it will be headed by a gentleman known as President Donald J. Trump… everybody wants to be on it now. They named me and everyone wanted to be on it.

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 18d

I remember in the 90s during the rise of the militia movement - all those white dudes stockpiling weapons and shouting that Democrats would send the military against them…Rush Limbaugh decrying Janet Reno was a femi-nazi

No, its the Republicans doing it

www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru... in

Trump directs defense secretary to deploy troops to Portland

In a post on Truth Social, the president said he was authorizing the use of "full force" to protect ICE facilities in Portland, Oregon, if necessary.

www.nbcnews.com

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 18d

Simply amazing how all these type of stories are always ICE detaining/arresting a person of color. It’s like they just assume a person of color doesn’t belong and deserves to be harassed/removed 🙄🤬

The white supremacist playbook hasn’t changed (certainly not since Reconstruction).

Laura Belin @laurarbelin.bsky.social · 19d

Breaking news from Des Moines: ICE has detained Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Iowa's largest school district.
The Des Moines Public Schools said "We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps."
www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/09/26/i...

ICE detains Des Moines Superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts

Iowa's largest school district had "no confirmed information" on why ICE detained Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent since 2023.

www.bleedingheartland.com

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 19d

This post certainly seems especially relevant now

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 19d

I hear the President has decreed that it is possibly a crime to refer to Americans as "fascists," but "fascism" is a word that has a relatively clear meaning that's worth understanding. Here's how an official publication of the US Army defined "fascism" in 1945.

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · Aug 1

The central point is that when fascism came to America it wouldn't call itself that, nor would it be wearing a swastika. It would call itself "patriotic" and "100% American."

Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 19d

Trickle-down economics continue to work as they always have & how they have always been intended: to make the wealthy wealthier while offering false hope to the rest under the guise of freedom/less govt

Psst. It’s always meant to be less taxes for the rich w/ the govt always ready to bail them out

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 20d

CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1965: 20-1

CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1990: 75-1

CEO-to-worker pay ratio today: 280-to-1

Trickle-down economics was always a sham.

Nothing has ever trickled down.

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 20d

Between this, Jimmy Kimmel back on air, and Trump suffering 2 self-inflicted malfunctions at the UN, this is the best news week in quite awhile.

Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 20d

BREAKING: Oklahoma Education Superintendent Ryan Walters says he is resigning. (Of course, he announced this on Fox News.)

www.koco.com/article/ryan...

Ryan Walters to resign as
Oklahoma state superintendent for private sector job
State Superintendent Ryan Walters announced Wednesday that he will resign from office and take a job in the private sector.
VEWS
Updated: 10:46 PM CDT Sep 24, 2025

Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 20d

Pretty sad when it would better to go back to Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth where the .1%res built libraries and universities than to have this crap.

I mean, Carnegie was bad, but at least he didn’t buy The NY Times

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 20d

The richest man on earth owns X.

The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok.

The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post.

See the problem here?

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Brett Olmsted, PhD 🗃️ @brettolmsted.bsky.social · 21d

Does Trump know his party has the majority in both chambers and could pass this without Democratic Party votes (if they could unify all the Rs)?

Trump rant about continuing resolution budget bill and slamming Democrats