Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Santiago Mayer @santiagomayer.com · 2h

JD Vance can dismiss the Young Republicans as a college group chat.

But let's be clear: the group chat includes a State Senator, a Trump Admin official, and multiple Republican staffers — and some of the worst comments came from folks associated with Mike Johnson, Elise Stefanik, and Mike Lawler.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2h

Jeffries: "I remind all of these corrupt individuals, these sycophants -- the statute of limitations is five years. The American people want accountability, deserve accountability, and will get accountability."

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 4h

They're trying to prevent the student newspaper from printing news, period. Not just a particular story.

"The Media School directed us to print no news in the paper... nothing but information about homecoming — no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage."

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 5h

Indiana University has fired the staff director of the student newspaper, after disputes in which university leadership tried to pressure him to prevent students from publishing news.

IndyStar 2 . Follow
1h:
"All Media School and IU students, faculty and staff
should be scared by this blatant attack on someone
standing up for what's right," student Editors-ln-Chief
Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller said in a statement.
Read more: bit.ly/43ebKW1
IndyStar.
IDS
The original investigative student
newsroom of Indiana University
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Indiana University fires IDS
adviser amid push to control
student newspaper's content

The director of student media at Indiana University was fired amidst a dispute between university leadership and editors at the Indiana Daily Student over what content gets printed in the student newspaper.

As director of student media, Jim Rodenbush did not directly oversee or have any say over the content published in the IDS, per a charter between the IDS and the university. But he told IndyStar his firing follows a series of meetings with IU Media School leadership in which it grew increasingly apparent they were expecting him to officially prohibit students from publishing news.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Anne Trubek @atrubek.bsky.social · 4h

Probably best to chase it indefinitely

2covet @2covet.bsky.social · 5h

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/rare-whit...

Locals stunned by world-famous white whale sighting off NZ coast

Locals near Kaikōura captured rare footage of a white humpback whale.

www.nzherald.co.nz

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 6h

X post today from Homeland Security @DHSgov that says "Remigrate."
3:06 PM · Oct 14, 2025

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Audra Wolfe @audrajwolfe.bsky.social · 11h

My best advice to aspiring authors of scholarly books is to read other scholarly books recently published by your target press. This may seem obvious and yet is not!

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Holly Guise ❄️ @hollyguise.bsky.social · 10h

Can’t believe I’m sharing this- my book #AlaskaNativeResilience: Voices from World War II by @uwapress.uw.edu has received the Athearn Book Prize given annually for a published book on the twentieth-century American West! Quyaana!

#Alaska wartime history #AlaskaNatives
#Alaskasky #historiansky
🗃️

Screenshot from the Western history association Instagram page showing book awards including the author Holly Miowak Guise, a Native woman with brown hair and an Inuit ivory necklace, with the caption Robert C Athearn Award for Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 12h

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...

The Washington Post Is Running Out Of Readers Willing To Pay

Once a titan of American journalism, The Washington Post now struggles to reach even 100,000 print subscribers most days.

www.forbes.com

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Joshua R Greenberg @joshrgreenberg.bsky.social · 11h

We know Eli Whitney's story, right? He invented the cotton gin, interchangeable parts, and set the South and North on course for War -- except that didn't actually happen writes Ariel Ron @arielron.bsky.social in an important new Commonplace piece. Check it out:🗃️
commonplace.online/article/how-...

How Eli Whitney Single-handedly Started the Civil War . . . and Why That’s Not True - Commonplace

The real Whitney story is less grand than the legend, but more interesting and, ultimately, more edifying.

commonplace.online

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 12h

The whites are literally arguing it's literally *unconstitutional* if they're not OVERREPRESNTED in Congress.

Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 13h

Just so everyone is clear, the main issue in the Supreme Court voting rights case tomorrow is whether it's racist against white people to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

I'm dead serious. We live in incredibly stupid times.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

American Historical Association @historians.org · 13h

In #AHAPerspectives, Bruce W. Dearstyne examines President Theodore Roosevelt’s address at the 1912 AHA annual meeting to think about how historians today can address the public. 🗃️

The Progressive President and the AHA – AHA

In his AHA presidential address in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt encouraged professional historians to write for the public.

www.historians.org

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 12h

Again, the argument is that the Voting Rights Act violates the Constitution (14th and 15th Amendments) because you have to take race into account in order to draw a map that has a second majority Black district and taking race into account violates the Constitution.

It's an ouroboros of stupidity.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 12h

I remember at the time ranting on my podcast that of course you have to take race into account in order to draw racially fair maps.

But I guess we're gonna be stupid and say SFFA v. Harvard eliminated race consciousness across the board and so drawing a non-racist map is in and of itself racist.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 13h

Just so everyone is clear, the main issue in the Supreme Court voting rights case tomorrow is whether it's racist against white people to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

I'm dead serious. We live in incredibly stupid times.

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Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️ @phdrachel.bsky.social · 13h

This is such a great way to explain this! 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 13h

We often say that the VRA had two hearts: The shield in Section 5 / preclearance, and the sword to strike down bad policies in Sec 2. In 2013, the Court broke the shield. In 2021, they bent the sword. Tomorrow's case could radically undermine what remains.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 13h

We often say that the VRA had two hearts: The shield in Section 5 / preclearance, and the sword to strike down bad policies in Sec 2. In 2013, the Court broke the shield. In 2021, they bent the sword. Tomorrow's case could radically undermine what remains.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 13h

But the Court didn't stop in 2013. In 2021 (Brnovich v DNC), they undermined the ability of Section 2 to stop those "vote denial" practices from being overturned -- the ones that make casting a ballot harder. Although that case didn't touch racial gerrymandering, it led to a big drop in Sec 2 cases

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 13h

This is dangerously close to what the case SCOTUS is considering this week might do. This case strikes at the VRA's ability to prevent racial vote dilution all around the country (under Sec 2). The last time the Court made it easier, localities jumped at the opportunity. They might do so again now.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 13h

We found that Shelby County also led to more vote dilution at the local level: Namely, by allowing once-covered municipalities to annex more new residents -- and these new residents were, on average, considerably whiter than the city. This "diluted" the nonwhite share of these cities

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 13h

As we showed in a @brennancenter.org report, and a forthcoming paper at the Journal of Politics, this led to a major expansion in the racial turnout gap in parts of the country now free from preclearance
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 13h

Tomorrow, SCOTUS will hear arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a major threat to (what remains of) the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But this isn't the first time the VRA has faced dire threats; in 2013 and 2021, SCOTUS weakened other provisions. We can learn from those why Callais could be so dangerous 🧵

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Kassandra Jo Tomaras @raconteuse.bsky.social · 1d

When a trans woman dies of natural causes, at an age greater than 75, having lived more than half her life as herself, that is cause for celebration, not mourning.

Thank you, Miss Major.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Emily Badger @emmbadger.bsky.social · 2d

We thought about trying to quantify DOGE's effect at the end of the fiscal year — Musk’s own deadline for finding $1T — and realized it was impossible.

That’s the larger story: No one, even Congressional appropriators, can follow what’s happened to federal spending.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Not Even Congress Knows How Much Money DOGE Cut

www.nytimes.com

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Orion Rummler @oriion.bsky.social · 15h

Miss Major was known as many things in her community — a caretaker for other Black trans women, a defender of the homeless and the incarcerated, and a Stonewall veteran who did not want the past to be used as an excuse for inaction.

Read our full obituary here:

Legendary transgender activist Miss Major dies at 78

Known as a surrogate mother of her community, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy leaves behind a legacy as a fierce advocate for trans and LGBTQ+ rights.

19thnews.org

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 17h

instead they get grandmas, and priests, and inflatable frogs, and ordinary decent people rising up and saying "this is vile, this is unamerican, these are secret police"

they get kristi noem in a staring contest with a guy in a chicken suit

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