Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 2h

Are we sure that statement is true now, or will be true next year or in 2028? The lesson was not given lightly: Trump’s first term was wildly corrupt by American historical standards, and seemed not to damage him at all. His second term is much worse. Will this matter to voters? Why?

Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 2h

Beware of over-learning the lessons of past election cycles is good advice as far as it goes. What lessons should we keep and discard from 2024 (and 2020)? I don’t have a full list , but here’s one to consider: 2024, and even 2020, showed that corruption doesn’t matter to voters.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 2h

In early 2021, I thought Trump was done in national politics. I was wrong. The national electorate did not react to his inadequacies as President as it had to Bush’s. Trump was entertaining, Biden was not — and it turned out that entertaining was a big part of what voters wanted in 2024.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 3h

But Trump had made himself the center of a personality cult, as Bush had not. This gave Trump’s support a hard floor. Meanwhile the best-known Democrats in the post-Obama Party were all very old; none of them had the appeal to casual voters Obama had had.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 3h

The lessons learned were not false or unreasonable. They just proved wrong for the changed conditions of 2020 & beyond. Trump’s first term had ended in national calamity, as Bush’s had. Trump was also convicted once & indicted many times on charges more serious than any President had ever faced.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 3h

But voters associated Bush with the Great Recession and the Iraq quagmire for years after he left office. So Democrats came away thinking that if they just kept their partisans’ turnout up, they had little to fear from the Republicans during Presidential years at least.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 3h

Moreover, enthusiasm for the Republican Party’s national leadership had collapsed by 2008, and stayed collapsed. George W. Bush had so thoroughly dominated the Republican Party that two successive GOP nominees ran on platforms little changed from the Bush had won on in 2004.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 3h

Thread. In retrospect, Democrats learned the wrong lessons from the early Obama period, when Republican support collapsed in a high-turnout Presidential election and then rebounded in a low-turnout midterm. Electoral organizing (or, in 2010) its absence really was crucial then.

Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 6h

I will say that i, personally, was not in the "win elections" camp but essentially decided to yield to it, and looking back I think I was wrong about that

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 7h

The siren call of electoral strategy and analysis partially crowded out work on things like law, organizational resistance, and protest. I blame myself, too

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 3h

These people and tear gas. I swear it’s like some kids with new toys on Christmas morning. There are surely situations in which chemical agents serve a purpose, just not that many of them. Immigration agencies in particular seem to fire off tear gas and pepper balls just to have something to do.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 4h

….Johnson was fudging his answer about special education cuts. But he may genuinely not have known; more to the point, the reporter probably didn’t know very much about this subject either. Options for follow-up questions would be quite limited in that case.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 4h

From the standpoint of journalism, an obvious improvement would be to bring in reporters experienced in the subject being discussed. That would diminish the show hosts — the stars — so it won’t be done. But it could be.

Getting back to that Mike Johnson press conference, it’s quite possible….

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 5h

Television rewards stars, not reporters. Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and similar shows have one host questioning a variety of different guests. This invites guests who want to get out talking points and nothing more to attempt just that. The host will rarely know enough to challenge them.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 5h

What one reporter might see as dogged journalism all the other reporters present might see as being a camera hog. This is not, obviously, an excuse available to hosts of interview programs like the ones on Sunday morning. They have another one.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 5h

It’s a good question. Let’s first stipulate that there’s nothing magic about follow-up questions. They can be handled or evaded as one-off questions can; it just takes more work on the politician’s part. Follow-up questions also take time to ask, a problem in a press conference format.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 5h

Well, I hope this is what today’s ceremonies represent. A lot of very grim history has been made in the last two years, so there is a great deal to overcome.

Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 6h

There’s a lesson buried here for Republican politicians: make your own identity. The path of least resistance is to move as close to Trump as possible; nearly all Republicans in Congress have taken it. But Brian Kemp did not, and prospered. Now Greene is as well.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 6h

There is no “ongoing fight” against drug cartels. Indeed, law enforcement personnel at FBI and ATF have evidently been diverted away from counter-narcotics activities to deportation of migrants.

There have been showy air strikes, on what may have been Venezuelan fishing vessels.

Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 19h

“Coral reefs have been in the midst of a global bleaching event since January 2023 – the fourth and worst on record – with more than 80% of reefs in more than 80 countries affected by extreme ocean temperatures.” Reporting by @readfearn.bsky.social

Michael Mazengarb @michaelmazengarb.bsky.social · 21h

This is very sad, but also not surprising. The science has warned for a long time, including in IPCC reports, that even modest levels of global warming will devastate virtually all coral reefs.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’

Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

www.theguardian.com

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 19h

Trump’s ICE: protecting America from middle schoolers. This is the kind of thing that happens when an agency measures success by the numbers it can report to a White House aide. The agency isn’t going to go after “the worst of the worst”: there are too few of those, and they’re too hard to find.

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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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 20h

A serious discussion begins with @jimacosta.bsky.social’s conclusion. The 25th Amendment’s drafters did not envision any President like Trump, or a Vice President and Cabinet like his: full of flakes, bimbos and shallow careerists. The Amendment is a dead letter in our current situation.

Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 22h

Thread. As @walterolson.bsky.social rightly says, putting Republican propaganda on channels meant for official government information is standard practice during the Trump administration. No Republican will speak out against it.

Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 1d

“We didn’t consent to playing it, as we believe the Hatch Act clearly prohibits using public assets for political purposes and messaging. … We believe consenting to playing this video on Port assets would violate Oregon law." /1

PDX chooses not to air video of Sec. Noem blaming Democrats for shutdown

The Port of Portland is choosing not to broadcast a new video that shows DHS Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for the federal government shutdown."Democr

katu.com

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 22h

If you’re struggling to beat the Bengals in October, you’re not looking good against the Eagles or Lions in January.

Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 22h

It sure is. But luck runs out.

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Reposted by Joseph Britt

Corinne Smith @corinne-smith.bsky.social · 1d

At least 20 people are unaccounted for in Kwigillingok, in the Y-K Delta as of Sunday morning, and several homes were flooded and carried away by the remnants of Typhoon Halong - the worst storm on record.

Damage is still being assessed along the coast of Western Alaska
www.kyuk.org/alaska-state...

A major storm is bringing dangerous flooding and hurricane-force winds to Western Alaska

The remnants of Typhoon Halong have already caused damaging flooding in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The storm is expected to move north and continue into Monday.

www.kyuk.org

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 23h

Maybe that’s been Morgan’s problem all along. Bouncing from one position to another he has always looked not quite as good as the starters already there.