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Reposted by Erin S. Pumpkins

Amanda Katz @katzish.bsky.social · 1h

Unbelievable story of Afghan refugee, a highly vetted fluent English speaker who helped the US against the Taliban and now lives here with his US citizen kids, declared “illegal” and perhaps about to be shipped home by the Trump admin to his likely death

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 2h

He supported America’s war, escaped Afghanistan and started a family in the U.S.

Then ICE arrested him.

If he is deported, he expects the Taliban to kill him.

America saved him from the Taliban. Trump wants to send him back.

He supported America’s war, escaped Afghanistan and started a family in the U.S. Then ICE arrested him. If he is deported, he expects the Taliban to kill him.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Institute for Social Research (ISR) - University of Michigan @umisr.bsky.social · 3h

Despite limited federal data due to the shutdown, ISR’s Surveys of Consumers continues offering critical insights into the U.S. economy.

In a new Q&A, ISR's Joanne Hsu explains why consumer sentiment has remained stable and what to watch moving forward.

Read more: myumi.ch/Mk574

Government shutdown hasn’t left consumers glum about the economy – for now, at least

Consumer sentiment remained flat in October, compared to the previous month. But history shows a prolonged federal shutdown can impact how people feel about the economy.

myumi.ch

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 2h

Speaker Mike Johnson just said he's completely fine with ICE agents shooting priests in the head with pepper balls and roughing up journalists.

I'm sure he'll tell us soon about how it's the Democrats who are waging a war on religion and free speech though.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2h

Q: We've seen images out of Chicago of federal agents shooting faith leaders with pepper balls and arresting journalists. Where's the limit for you on what's acceptable conduct by federal agents?

MIKE JOHNSON: I've not seen them cross the line yet.

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Matt @tiredgenerally.bsky.social · 13h

i cannot get over how quickly this is happening. the decline of the other two branches/ascent of the lawless executive is outpacing actual democratic decline, which is usually what precipitates executive consolidation. but in our case, the other two branches are collaborators

Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 14h

We are living through the most consequential shift in the constitutional government of the United States in over a hundred and fifty years and nobody seems to have even noticed yet.

Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social · 14h

Congress no longer holds the power of the purse, the executive can just do whatever they want with federal monies

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Erin S. Pumpkins @erincikanek.bsky.social · 5h

But they’ve looked nowhere and are all out of ideas!

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Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 15h

If I send you this, know I’ve lost my shit

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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 15h

I see muskox zoomies, I share muskox zoomies. Those are the rules.

Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium @ptdefiancezoo.bsky.social · 15h

Muskox Monday mood: activated. Willow and Pretzel are zooming into the week like pros! 💕 #MondayMotivation

📹: Curator Jen

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 16h

What if the unidentified masked men with guns don't accept the validity of your papers?

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Erin S. Pumpkins @erincikanek.bsky.social · 19h

Damn I missed a chance to use the Pwease Steppy snake

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Erin S. Pumpkins @erincikanek.bsky.social · 19h

Well yes. We all know why

kermit the frog is drinking a cup of tea from a bag .

Alt: kermit the frog is drinking a cup of tea from a bag .

media.tenor.com

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Erin S. Pumpkins @erincikanek.bsky.social · 19h

a man in a purple sweater is making a gesture that says more please

Alt: a man in a purple sweater is making a gesture that says more please

media.tenor.com

Erin S. Pumpkins @erincikanek.bsky.social · 19h

The news orga are like:

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 1d

why did Apple engineer the AirPods case so that if you drop it, the AirPods both *blast* out of there like consumer-electronics cluster munitions and immediately lodge themselves in the most inaccessible, dusty place under your couch or bed

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Miranda Yaver @mirandayaver.bsky.social · 1d

If you'll be in Pittsburgh tomorrow, I hope you can attend this panel on which I'll be participating at Pitt Law. I'll be discussing the role of executive orders in reshaping domestic and global health. Should be a good discussion!

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

federal agents stealing children and sending them south. where have i heard about that before?

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 1d

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 2d

Shared courtesy of my Penn History colleague, Ben Nathans

Image: A variation on Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” engraving, originally published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. Each segment of the snake has the name of a university sent Trump’s “compact”: Texas, AZ, Vanderbilt, USC, Dartmouth, UVA, Brown, Penn, MIT.

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Erin S. Pumpkins @erincikanek.bsky.social · 1d

Right?!?!

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Erin S. Pumpkins @erincikanek.bsky.social · 1d

“Not even believing in Jesus will get me in to heaven, probably,” says noted Christian …the president.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Trump: "I don't think there's anything that's gonna get me in heaven. I think I'm not maybe heaven bound. I may be in heaven right now as we fly on Air Force One. I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to make heaven."

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Homestar Screens @grapenutsrobot.graphics · 1d

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NPR @npr.org · 1d

A Cornell University researcher has been developing an artificial heart for children for more than 20 years. Now, his research is on hold and his lab is shut down.

This 4-year-old's heart is failing. A federal grant that might help him was canceled

A Cornell University researcher has been developing an artificial heart for children for more than 20 years. Now, his research is on hold and his lab is shut down.

n.pr

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 1d

I really wouldn’t be shining lasers at helicopters if I were you. It’s illegal and could cause an aircraft to crash - and that could kill a LOT of people, in the air and on the ground.

And the ICE goons appear to be *salivating* at the chance to claim people that they arrest were doing this:

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dan sinker @dansinker.com · 1d

New levels of hell: just got an email from our local AYSO cancelling today’s youth soccer games because ICE is at the Home Depot across from the soccer fields at James Park in Evanston.

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 2d

"Look at the picture... One of these is a member of a private militia that supports the President and was involved in a violent effort to overturn the election, the other is an agent of the state. Can you tell the difference?" donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

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Avishay BSG (Ben-Sasson-Gordis) @avishaybsg.bsky.social · 2d

🧵 I'm excited to share that my article "Democratic Backsliding and the Limits of Civilian Control of the Military" has been accepted @thejop.bsky.social.

It answers the question "how ought militaries act when civilian leaders turn on democratic institutions?"

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#CivMilSky #PolTheory

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Erin S. Pumpkins @erincikanek.bsky.social · 2d

I didn’t yell at the dudes in my undergrad philosophy classes enough, honestly

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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