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Mike Slaven

@mcslaven.bsky.social

2.3K followers 1.9K following 1.2K posts

Author of "Securing Borders, Securing Power" (Columbia UP, 2022) http://tinyurl.com/yeywvdaa Doing migration politics/policy research, currently @colmigproject.bsky.social. Political speechwriter of yore. Obscure academic in provincial England, AZ guy 🌵

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Mike Slaven @mcslaven.bsky.social · May 13

Does calling anti-immigrant policies racist work at opposing them? Much analysis (validly) says no, but I have a new 📖 article 📖 on why this was essential to changing immigration politics in Arizona 🌵. Sometimes the effective arguments aren't already popular! 1/ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Saying racism: calling anti-immigration policies racist as effective pro-immigrant politics in Arizona

Identifying anti-immigration policies as racist commonly features in political discourse in many majority-white countries. Both behavioralist studies of voter attitudes and studies of party positio...

www.tandfonline.com

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George Pearkes @peark.es · 6h

"We are considering terminating business with China having to do with Cooking Oil" is an all-timer. Thank you Mr President, we appreciate your insights.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

I believe that China purposefully not buying our Soybeans, and causing difficulty for our Soybean Farmers, is an Economically Hostile Act. We are considering terminating business with China having to do with Cooking Oil, and other elements of Trade, as retribution. As an example, we can easily produce Cooking Oil ourselves, we don’t need to purchase it from China.

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Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social · 4h

Better Schumer: We know these views are common among many young people in the GOP and that many of young activists have gone on to work in Congress, the White House and federal agencies.

I'm launching an investigation to root out Nazis from our government and I hope my GOP colleagues join me.

Chuck Schumer @schumer.senate.gov · 4h

Sickening. Revolting. Vile. This makes you want to throw up.

This is the kind of garbage that the worst kind of people say when they think nobody is watching.

And where are Republican leaders from Trump on down condemning these comments swiftly and unequivocally!?

I’m waiting to hear it.

A headline from POLITICO reads: "‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat"

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 7h

Oh hey, check this out. They talk the same way in their private chats as they do on Twitter www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

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Arizona fRight Watch 🎃 @azrww.bsky.social · 6h

The Arizona Young Republicans chairman mentioned in this, Luke Mosiman, was one of the Turning Point affiliates demanding that Phoenix Suns sports writer be fired for not properly mourning Kirk to their liking

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 8h

POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

@politico.com
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

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Spooky Back From the Dead Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 6h

"Watergate-a-day" undersells how bad this is.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 6h

Breaking News: A U.S. military strike killed six people on a boat in international waters near Venezuela, President Trump said, asserting without evidence that they were drug smugglers for an unspecified group his team had labeled terrorists.

U.S. Military Kills 6 People in Another Attack on Boat, Trump Says

In a social media post, the president said the people aboard a boat were suspected of smuggling drugs for an unspecified group his team had labeled terrorists.

nyti.ms

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 11h

An example of the government not having a project: only yesterday the government was trumpeting new measures to make it easier to build things. We'll work out who actually builds stuff later on.

András Forgács W @andraswf.bsky.social · 12h

Well this will certainly do it www.gov.uk/government/n...

Migrants will be required to pass A Level standard of English

Migrants will be required to pass tough new English language requirements under a law introduced in Parliament today.

www.gov.uk

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Mike Slaven @mcslaven.bsky.social · 9h

"The last thing anyone needs after a summer of far-right violence is more tough talk based on bad data. By the government’s own admission, most migrant workers are already fluent in English."

The Independent @the-independent.com · 13h

Migrants will need A-level standard English to work in UK

www.independent.co.uk

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Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social · 13h

We have also been here before, it wasn’t even a year ago that the second trump era began with him declaring how good at making peace he was only for that to predictably not happen at all, and then he helped escalate the war

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 13h

The many media outlets, politicians, and commentators who rushed to declare “a great peace, glory to the king!” should ask themselves why they did that, and figure out how to not make the same mistake again.

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 14h

(ABC) - The Israel Defense Forces said its troops opened fire on Palestinians, killing five, after they allegedly violated the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

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This skeet will self destruct @pardoguerra.bsky.social · 23h

This is a sign of immense weakness. It’s like a mobster asking others if they’d be interested in a shakedown because their first targets didn’t cooperate.

Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · 1d

After getting zero firm commitments to this point from the first nine invitees, the Trump administration is extending its proposed compact to all colleges. Expect some red-state publics to say yes.

Trump Offers All Colleges Preferential Funding Plan Rejected by MIT

The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact — initially rejected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — that would grant preferential federal funding in re...

www.bloomberg.com

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Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 18h

It's not a challenging graduate labour market. It's a challenging labour market for ALL young people. And it's WORSE for non graduates.

Data source: @jburnmurdoch.ft.com

bsky.app/profile/gile...

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 18h

'A “challenging” graduate labour market in the UK could further erode trust in the higher education sector, with the “bad times” showing little sign of ending.'

All the more reason to have a serious, nationwide discussion of what universities do and what they are for.

Faith in universities ‘at new low’ as graduate jobs dry up

Challenging economic conditions may have led to bump in student recruitment numbers this year but experts fear long-term damage after institutions pegged futures to employability agenda

www.timeshighereducation.com

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QM_UCU @qmucu.bsky.social · 17h

Fix the economy, Starmer.

We have no power over changing the economy; to blame universities for its ills and using it to hit us (& get ever more culture warriors on us) is just bullying.

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 18h

Faith in universities ‘at new low’ as graduate jobs dry up

Challenging economic conditions may have led to bump in student recruitment numbers this year but experts fear long-term damage after institutions pegged futures to employability agenda

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 19h

This is the inevitable outcome of relentless anti-immigration political rhetoric and a media environment which disproportionately amplifies the voices of racists, giving the indication that they are the "voice of the public" rather than the minority they are.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

‘Frightened to get out of their cars’: Britain’s toxic race debates threaten overseas care workers

Staff are being advised to travel in mixed groups and carry panic alarms as incidents of intimidation spread

www.theguardian.com

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

If you make "controversial statements" outside of classroom, that the President of the university dislikes, you can be summarily fired even if you are tenured.

Julie Greene @greeneland.bsky.social · 1d

I just learned, Thomas Alter, tenured professor, has been terminated effective immediately. Shame on Texas State! We mst build support for Tom. spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-tex...

Texas State upholds the firing of associate history professor Thomas Alter

Alter’s termination occurred on Sept. 10, stemming from his remarks at the Revolutionary Socialism Conference on Sept. 7.

spectrumlocalnews.com

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George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 1d

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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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 1d

Do you want to live in a "papers, please" country?

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Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 1d

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.

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wesin-🎃a spooky version of 🎃-japan @wesinjapan.bsky.social · 1d

Kafkaesque does not even do this justice.

Keri Blakinger @keribla.bsky.social · 1d

A man was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he did not commit for more than 40 years. As soon as he was exonerated, ICE picked him up to deport him to a country he has not lived in since he was a baby 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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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 1d

Who would win a fight between a 280-pound slab of good ol' boy and a five-foot-10 guy from the end of the Princeton basketball bench

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Cas Ⓜ️udde @casmudde.bsky.social · 1d

Indeed! And while journalists, pundits obsess over the modest loss of SD voters to far-right parties, there is relatively little debate about the large loss of center-right voters to far-right parties.

Catherine E. de Vries @catherinedevries.bsky.social · 1d

Scholars & pundits have focussed a lot on the electoral demise of center left, but in doing so we paid to little attention to the electoral problems of the center right.

Case-in-points here not only British conservatives or center right in France, but increasingly also the center right in Spain.

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Mike Slaven @mcslaven.bsky.social · 1d

Constantly dangling a Nobel Peace Prize to get Donald Trump to do specific things is good, actually. Someone should convince him he should avoid deploying the military and masked goons in his own country if he wants to win one

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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 1d

From Robert Jenrick's video - in which he did not see a single other white face on a brief trip to Birmingham, despite his video showing that he did.

"He must have been walking around Handsworth with his eyes closed" writes Dan Cave

www.birminghamdispatch.co.uk/a-notorious-...

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 1d

'An idea all but guaranteed to founder on the rock of imperfect data, legal challenge, and the adverse consequences of institutions entering quality/funding death spirals all the way to disorderly market exit.' @wonkhe.bsky.social 's Monday Briefing succinctly anatomises proposal to tie fees to TEF.

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Will Jennings 🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 2d

Anyone writing about the influence of these thinkers really needs to provide detail on what they have actually written. Most of it is incoherent, lacking any substance and often downright weird.

Huw C. Davies @huwcdavies.bsky.social · 2d

Reading Thiel, Yarvin, Peterson et al. makes you realise what passes for intellectual iconoclasm these days is all absolute bollocks. Why anyone gives any of these people the time of day let alone credibility is baffling.

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Chris Towers is in Offseason Mode @cptowers.bsky.social · 2d

How it started: How it’s going:

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Mike Slaven @mcslaven.bsky.social · 5d

Yeah, still though I think it is interesting to see so many Republicans vaguely negative about aspects of the administration.