Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kaz @kazlefay.bsky.social · 9h

Please let Portland continue making the secret police assault frogs and unicorns on national TV.

If they’re going to try to cosplay soldier, make them own that shit.

Do not underestimate the power of making authoritarians look ridiculous.

It’s their kryptonite. It terrifies them.

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John Collins @logicallyjc.bsky.social · 15h

This is the way.

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Kaz @kazlefay.bsky.social · 10h

I live pretty rural and there are two No Kings protest organized within 15 minutes of me so I have to choose which one to go to.

I promise. You can find one near you too.

www.nokings.org#map

No Kings

As the president escalates his authoritarian power grab, the NO KINGS non-violent movement continues to rise stronger. We are united once again to remind the world: America has No Kings and the power ...

www.nokings.org

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 1d

FT: “.. Xi can promise what he likes at the meeting .. But unless the White House and its dwindling number of allies develop their own rare earth supply chains, the US will always be vulnerable.”

@financialtimes.com
www.ft.com/content/4699...

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Sen. Adam Schiff @schiff.senate.gov · 13h

Congrats to University of California professors & alumni for being awarded 5 Nobel Prizes!

California’s scientists are leading the world in crucial breakthroughs.

www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

University of California sets world record with five Nobel Prizes in one week

The UC system made history this week, as its faculty and alumni won five Nobel Prizes across medicine, physics and chemistry — the most ever awarded to a single institution in one year.

www.sfchronicle.com

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m @keptsimple.bsky.social · 20h

is this how CBS is gonna work now? using bari weiss's personal blog to launder poorly sourced and lightly edited stories (complete with a misspelling of mamdani's name in the headline) that would never pass muster if reported directly by a real news source?

@NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) @newsjennifer.bsky.social · 21h

CBS News would never put a thinly sourced 'story' by a rookie blogger like this on it's air. Until now. The Free Press isn't a journalism outlet, it's bloggers aren't reporters. This piece is more NYPost than Tiffany Network but I guess that's the goal.

www.cbsnews.com/video/some-n...

Some NYPD officers worry about Mandani becoming the NYC mayor, The Free Press reports

The Free Press spoke to several New York City Police Department officers who are worried about Zohran Mamdani becoming mayor. Olivia Reingold joins CBS News with more.

www.cbsnews.com

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 2d

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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Kaz @kazlefay.bsky.social · 12h

I gotta say if you’re only going to let guys who look slim serve in the guard, you’re going to have a pretty serious recruitment problem in Texas.

35% of adult Texans are classified as obese.

Nicholas Slayton @nslayton.bsky.social · 1d

The Texas Military Department confirmed to @taskandpurpose.com it had replaced some of the 200 National Guard troops sent to Chicago for not being "in compliance" with validation standards. This came after photos of heavyset NG members were widely mocked. taskandpurpose.com/news/texas-n...

Some Texas National Guard troops replaced in Illinois after failing to meet standards

An unspecified amount of Texas National Guard troops were replaced in Chicago, shortly after photos of their appearance were mocked.

taskandpurpose.com

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Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social · 12h

Take National Guard troops away from their families and jobs at a moment's notice for a pudding brained authoritarian's social media clout, billet them on the floor of county buildings and then send a bunch of them back to Texas because people online called them "Gravy Seals."

Nicholas Slayton @nslayton.bsky.social · 1d

The Texas Military Department confirmed to @taskandpurpose.com it had replaced some of the 200 National Guard troops sent to Chicago for not being "in compliance" with validation standards. This came after photos of heavyset NG members were widely mocked. taskandpurpose.com/news/texas-n...

Some Texas National Guard troops replaced in Illinois after failing to meet standards

An unspecified amount of Texas National Guard troops were replaced in Chicago, shortly after photos of their appearance were mocked.

taskandpurpose.com

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George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 23h

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 13h

"Support the troops, y'all!"

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Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen.bsky.social · 13h

Multiple airports are now announcing they will refuse to play Kristi Noem’s government-funded video blaming “Democrats” for the government shutdown.

“We believe the Hatch Act clearly prohibits use of public assets for political purposes and messaging,” one airport said.

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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 12h

It’s a start. Keep making phone calls to keep partisan politics out of airport safety PSAs.

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Governor Gavin Newsom @governor.ca.gov · 19h

A record 29% — nearly a third! — of all new cars purchased in California during July, August, and September were zero-emission vehicles.

DC may be fine with selling out American innovation to China, but California will keep charging ahead toward cleaner air for our communities.

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 1d

ICE attacks cemetery workers trying to help a man in the Des Plaines river www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMUmUjPs/

Caught on camera… ICE agents clash with suburban cemetery workers trying to help man in Des Plaines River… #wgn9 #ice #operationmidwayblitz #immigration

TikTok video by WGN9Chicago

www.tiktok.com

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Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social · 2d

After spending 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, evidence hidden by the prosecution reversed his conviction. Rather than finally enjoying freedom, ICE abducted him for deportation

Depraved.

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him

Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam now faces deportation.

www.miamiherald.com

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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 14h

you cannot "abuse" your rights.

civil rights either are protected and real or they are not.

Dave Byrnes @djbyrnes1.bsky.social · 17h

Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson's full statement, in which she says she will sign an EO permitting protest "only at the safety zone located at the ICE facility on Beach Street," is up on the village's website.

"There are too many protesters abusing their right to protest," Thompson says.

Image text:

Broadview Shrinks Protest Safety Zones

The following statement can be attributed to Village of Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson:

“The protests at the ICE facility on Saturday night degenerated into chaos. There were 15 arrests, and 10 of those were around the age of my own daughter. As a mother and a mayor, I am mad. Broadview didn’t choose to have the ICE facility in our community. But it’s here. And so are Broadview residents. There are too many protesters abusing their right to protest. Too many are raising their fists rather than their voices, creating chaos at the expense of the people who call Broadview home. Broadview residents lack the protestors’ privilege to return to calm, quiet neighborhoods for undisturbed rest.

Therefore, I have issued a new executive order, in consultation with the Illinois State Police and Cook County Sheriff, that permits protests only at the safety zone located at the ICE facility on Beach Street.

There will no longer be a designated protest safety zone at 2000 South 25th Avenue between Lexington and Fillmore.

Additionally, it has been only God’s grace alone that a protester has not been struck and killed by a motorist on 25th Avenue given how frequently protesters dash onto this busy, four-lane street. This new
measure will provide for both the serenity of residents and safety of protestors.

As I have repeatedly said, I respect, support, and defend the protesters’ free and – peaceful – speech against the outrageous injustices and deplorable unprovoked chemical arms attacks by ICE agents against American citizens, journalists, and ministers that put Broadview police and firefighters in harms’ way.

Nevertheless, my first priority is to defend public safety and the residents who live here and people who work here. They deserve stability, safety, and respect, a quality of life that is currently being denied to them. They deserve the love and kindness that they expect by being Broadview residents.”

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bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 18h

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 17h

ICE has been deployed to *provoke* civilians, not to protect them. They want to throw tear gas canisters and get people on the streets riled up, all to create footage for Fox News and Newsmax, et al., that will be used as a pretext for imposing martial law to lower voting rates in Democratic cities.

Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 1d

The only violence I’ve been seeing in Portland is from the so-called Feds!!!

Keep sharing these videos; it’s evidence.

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Faith K. Falkner @faithfalkner.com · 14h

Anger is a healthy response to cruelty, actually.

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Ruth Delgado @heylookitsruth.bsky.social · 16h

A mom in Houston reported her 15-year-old son with autism missing. She spent 6 days terrified, searching for him. The whole time, Houston police knew exactly where he was since they helped ICE place him in a refugee facility.

This is beyond cruel.
www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

Missing teen with autism transferred to refugee facility by HPD

He is currently being held at an Office for Refugee Resettlement facility.

www.houstonchronicle.com

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Marc Elias @marcelias.bsky.social · 14h

If you read only one democracy story today, make it this one. While legacy media largely skipped the Texas redistricting hearing, Democracy Docket's Jen Rice was there for all 10 days. Her coverage stands out and sheds insight into how the GOP operates -- not only in TX -- but nationally.

In a Federal Courtroom in Texas, Republicans Were Desperate to Keep Details of their Gerrymander Under Wraps

Read about the fight for democracy from activists, elected officials, legal experts and others.

www.democracydocket.com

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Kaz @kazlefay.bsky.social · 13h

I hate to break it to you but I think a permanent government shutdown was always the plan.

The regime still has the secret police on payroll and as far as they’re concerned that’s all they need.

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Ahmed Baba @ahmedbaba.bsky.social · 20h

Trump & Vought are exploiting the shutdown to accelerate Project 2025.

They're on track to hit 300k ousted federal workers by the end of 2025. They just ousted 4.2k more.

The purge of nonpartisan civil servants aims to twist the federal bureaucracy into a loyalist tool of Trump.

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C. E. Aubin @ceaubin.bsky.social · 22h

What The Hell Is Going On, a thread:

I’ve seen some thinkpieces and posts about Portland protests that fail to understand the long-term hyperspecificity of Portland culture/humor, and frame it as a sort of shitposting meme-pilled ironic thing. Which is wrong.

So I’m gonna give you my breakdown.

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