Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Victor Ray

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 11h

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

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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 13h

2/2 A student wrote to the White House saying, "...my teacher says the US is leaning to authoritarianism now. Do you think it's true?" [paraphrased]

They identified themselves, the university, and the course.

💀

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 13h

Oh man that’s something

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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 13h

I'm teaching Intro US Gov this semester and I incorporate Civic Engagement Assignments regularly. During the week on the presidency the assignment is to write a letter to the president (or any gov't executive). Students submit screenshots of their submissions.

You'll never guess what happened.

1/2

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Kendra, regular version @kendrawcandraw.bsky.social · 1d

You can't logic your way out of being burnt out. Unless you're me. Who should be able to do it and it's a personal failing that I can't

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 14h

I mean, if you weren’t writing on Stormfront in 2018 can you even get an interview with GOP leaders?

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

Worth stepping back and just recognizing that one now expects young R staff to be outright Nazis

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 15h

Strong evidence for the democrats hate winning thesis.

Give it to the oyster guy.

Janet Mills, 77, jumps into race to challenge Susan Collins for Senate

Mills, Maine’s popular governor, must first defeat populist newcomer Graham Platner in next year’s Democratic primary

www.the-independent.com

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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 19h

As I read this, I keep thinking over and over again about the two major groups I see in politics and policy spaces: folks who take opinion polls as gospel and folks who see them as indicators of what people believe at the moment that can be *shaped* into something else.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 20h

we’ll see how his mayoral tenure shakes out but i am convinced that Mamdani has the juice. not just the charisma to win an election but the temperament to govern and the measured pragmatism of someone who genuinely believes what they’re saying and wants to accomplish real things.

Inside the Improbable, Audacious and (So Far) Unstoppable Rise of Zohran Mamdani

www.nytimes.com

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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 16h

It’s funny how black people are expected to reach across the aisle to voters like these, while no one ever expects them to reach across the aisle to black people. Amazing who gets to be human, and who doesn’t.

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 17h

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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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 15h

Happy to learn where this very useful term comes from.

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Aaron Huertas @aaronhuertas.bsky.social · 1d

I’m in the newspaper with Julia Roberts.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/o...

In 2018, the Democratic strategist Aaron Huertas coined the term “reactionary centrism” to describe a style of politics that prides itself on even-handedness while being disproportionately obsessed with left-wing overreach. Always deployed as an epithet, “reactionary centrism” is overused by progressives to inoculate themselves from criticism. But it describes a real ethos — a loathing of wokeness so intense it led some elite former Democrats to support Donald Trump. “After the Hunt” brings reactionary centrism to prestige cinema.

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 16h

'“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,” Joe Maligno...wrote'

'Many of the chat members already work inside government or party politics, and one serves as a state senator.'

‘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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Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com · 16h

this reminds me of the almost exact same racist content that was in the TPUSA at Virginia Tech chats

www.collegiatetimes.com/news/student...

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 16h

The only really surprising thing about this is that the chats were leaked. Open racism and bigotry are the mainstream positions in the GOP at the moment. They feel liberated from the tyranny of being decent human beings. Like I said the other day, the Alt-right won and this is what they wanted.

‘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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Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 18h

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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Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 17h

I love when writers use patreon!

Lyz @lyz.bsky.social · 19h

It’s time, beyond time, really, I’m leaving Substack. I didn’t do it before because I had no other income to rely on. I don’t think abandoning spaces is always the right answer but sometimes it’s necessary www.patreon.com/posts/why-i-...

Why I am leaving Substack | Men Yell at Me by Lyz Lenz

www.patreon.com

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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 17h

It's almost as if, hear me out now, MAGA billionaires like Jeff Bezos (WaPo) and Elon Musk (Twitter) purchased key properties in our public square not as business investments, but so that they could turn them into vectors of right wing propaganda.

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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.bsky.social · 18h

this looks like something The Husband would send me when he's roasting one of my perfectly-normal outfits

see, e.g.,

screenshot of a text I sent The Husband years ago (back when he was just The Boyfriend haha) with a photo of me smiling wearing a vibrant, largely yellow but multicolor shirt with vertical stripes. "My extremely 90s shirt has arrived," I said. "I is pleased."

screenshot of this motherfucker's responding to me innocently saying my 90s shirt had arrived and I was pleased with an image of Bert, of Bert and Ernie/Sesame Street fame! Bert also wears a multicolor shirt with vertical stripes smdh. My response to this harassment was "Lawl" and "Disrespectful"

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Elana Levin @levin.bsky.social · 17h

D'Angelo speaking out about the physical and emotional burden of maintaining a nearly unobtainable physique and sexy image as a Black male artist should be taught in labor studies. It absolutely impacted how I analyze pop culture.

GQ Profile Of D'Angelo Explores The Perils Of Being Sexy

Visit the post for more.

uproxx.com

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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 17h

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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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 18h

D'Angelo has died after a battle with pancreatic cancer, his former manager says. He was 51

D'Angelo Dead at 51

Grammy-winning R&B soul singer D'Angelo is dead from pancreatic cancer ... TMZ has learned.

www.tmz.com

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Jonathan Ladd @jonmladd.bsky.social · 17h

Ezra Klein recently revived Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" comment in a series of interviews! How many actual persuadable voters recalled that comment when voting in 2024?

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Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 17h

I'm generalizing, but why do conservatives remember political irritations for so much longer than liberals?

It's been 17 years since Obama said some voters "cling to their guns, to their religion" and I heard a senator denounce that last month.

Obvious theory: Media ecosystem puts it on repeat

Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 18h

Imagine caring about Kaepernick in the year of our lord 2025

Irenic Bro @irenicbro.bsky.social · 18h

"We're saving God from Colin Kaepernik" is a pretty good distillation of Republican thought

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Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 19h

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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Leon “Lee” Grayhare @grayharetherabbit.bsky.social · 18h

I literally just came back from the ABS conference this weekend, this shit is wild.
(I also coincidentally talked about white students at HBCUs in class yesterday. The only reason reactionaries think we operate on a basis of explicit exclusion is b/c that's how their institutions have been run.)

Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 21h

I know it is beside the point because this administration simply wants resegregation but conferences for Black professional associations have always been open to everyone. Typically, the started as a response to white exclusion, and did not replicate that.

Benjamin McKean @blmckean.bsky.social · 21h

Very bad: OSU unilaterally cancelled the registration of grad students attending the joint conference of the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists. And OSU won't fund recruiting at the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.

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