Author | Lightnews

Reposted by Benjamin راغب

Senator Patty Murray @murray.senate.gov · 4h

This is about as sick and cruel as it gets. This policy is in place to stop grocery stores from OVERCHARGING people using SNAP.

The Trump administration, while it illegally withholds SNAP benefits, is telling grocers they can't offer discounts to people on SNAP.

Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 1d

The USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse.
I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email

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Benjamin راغب @benzado.com · 3d

Harry Potter and the Rule of Law

Benjamin راغب @benzado.com · 4d

I looked it up. She didn’t jail any parents. She mailed them letters.

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Benjamin راغب @benzado.com · 5d

real New Yorkers transfer from the 2 or 3 train to the 1 train at 42nd instead of 34th

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Melo @letitmelo.bsky.social · 5d

I legitimately didn't know they were competing with Steam and it's crazy to me that they burnt so much money on what sounds like something with very little (or wildly misguided) market research.

Ethan Evans, former Amazon VP

As VP of Prime Gaming at Amazon, we failed multiple times to disrupt the game platform Steam. We were at least 250x bigger, and we tried everything. But ultimately, Goliath lost. Here's why:

The 15+ year long attempt to challenge Steam started before I was VP of Prime Gaming, but we never cracked the code. Not under my leadership or anyone else's.

The first way we tried to enter the online-game-store market was through acquisition. We acquired Reflexive Entertainment (a small PC game store) and tried to scale it. It went nowhere.

Then, after buying Twitch, we created our own PC games store. Our assumption was that gamers would naturally buy from us because they were already using Twitch. Wrong.

Finally, we built "Luna," a game streaming service that let people play without a high-end PC. Around the same time, Google tried the same thing with their
product "Stadia." Neither gained significant traction. The whole time, Steam dominated despite being a relatively small company (compared to Amazon and Google).

The mistake was that we underestimated what made consumers use Steam

It was a store, a social network, a library, and a trophy case all in one. And it worked well.

At Amazon, we assumed that size and visibility would be enough to attract customers, but we underestimated the power of existing user habits We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions. The truth is that gamers already had the solution to their problems and they weren't going to switch platforms just because a new one was available

We needed to build something dramatically better, but we failed to do so. And we needed to validate our assumptions about our customers before starting to build. But we never really did that either.

Just because you are big enough to build something doesn't mean people will use it

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 5d

On top of the raw cruelty and the lack of any reason for this beyond the GOP commitment to allowing every rip-off they can imagine, this is also a decision to make prison *worse* at reforming/rehabilitating people, because we're making it harder for them to stay connected with people outside.

Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 5d

It literally took decades of advocacy to pass these reforms, which would have prevented prison phone and teleconferencing companies from ripping off inmates and their families to the tune of hundreds of millions annually

F.C.C. Changes Course on the Price of Prisoners’ Phone Calls

www.nytimes.com

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 7d

A huge part of Trump's success is that he is able, because of the fragmentation of his base's media ecosystem (and their unwillingness to trust regular sources) to say multiple, contradictory things to different groups and have them all believe him.

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Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 7d

"For every meal that a food bank provides, the SNAP program provides nine. There's no way we can meet that gap. There's no way we can replace every single one of those meals. It is not sustainable for food banks to fill this gap. We were not built to do this."

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 6d

And I would like to challenge this person to get a real job

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 6d

Gaines: I want to challenge AOC to a debate.

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Benjamin راغب @benzado.com · 6d

it’s really annoying that I prefer Ruby to Python when the former community has an uncomfortable amount of fascism within it and the latter just told Trump’s NSF to pound sand.

Python Software Foundation @python.org · 7d

Please read our statement, share it with your networks, and support us if you can. www.python.org/sponsors/app... psfmember.org/civicrm/cont...

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 6d

🚨BIG changes happening -- ICE leadership is being purged tonight. The old guard, which prioritized targeted enforcement operations aimed at people with criminal records, is being replaced with Border Patrol and Gregory Bovino's "Midway Blitz" style.

Think things are bad now? It'll get worse.

Bill Melugin
@BillMelugin_
BREAKING: Per four senior DHS & Trump admin sources, a mass removal of ICE leadership around the country is underway, with up to 12 ICE field office chiefs being removed & reassigned in an effort to increase deportation numbers. I'm told the move is spearheaded by Corey Lewandowski, and a handful of the ICE Chiefs will likely be replaced by Border Patrol & CBP officials, some of whom will be hand-picked by aggressive & controversial Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino. I'm told some of the ICE leadership removed from their positions include the ICE Field Office Directors in:

- Los Angeles
- Phoenix
- Philadelphia
- Denver
- El Paso
- San Diego
- Seattle/Portland
- New Orleans

Border Patrol officials taking over ICE leadership positions would be extremely significant, as Border Patrol and ICE do different things, and I've done numerous ride-alongs/embeds with both.

Generally speaking, ICE typically conducts very targeted operations, largely going after criminal illegal aliens or those with deportation orders, but almost always knowing who they are targeting for arrest, often conducting surveillance to learn their schedules before and waiting hours before arresting them if needed.

Border Patrol, under Trump 2.0, while sometimes doing their own targeted operations, has been extremely aggressive and has been at the forefront of some of the most controversial immigration enforcement operations we've seen so far, carrying out roving patrols in Los Angeles, Chicago, etc, often at Home Depot, car washes, flea markets etc, leading to a handful of federal judges around the country issuing injunctions against them. A majority of the viral videos you see online are Border Patrol agents, including the use of a Trojan horse style Penske moving truck at a Los Angeles Home Depot, an operation organized by Bovino.

ICE often gets blamed for what Border Patrol does, as the media and activists often cannot tell the difference between federal agents, and everyone is called "ICE". I'm told there are growing concerns about the political and PR fallout associated with some of the roving patrols Border Patrol is conducting as lawsuits continue to stack up and mid-terms approach next year.

I'm told there is significant friction within different wings of DHS and the administration, with Border Czar Tom Homan & ICE Director Todd Lyons preferring to prioritize targeting criminal aliens & the "worst of the worst" or those with deportation orders, while DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski, and BP Commander Bovino prefer to use aggressive tactics to arrest anyone in the US illegally, including but not limited to criminals, to ramp up deportation numbers and achieve President Trump's promises of mass deportations.

I am hearing from both sides of this friction.

One senior DHS official tells me:

"ICE started with the worst of the worst, knowing every target they are hitting, but since Border Patrol started in LA in June, we've (DHS) lost our focus, going too hard, too fast, with limited prioritization. It's getting numbers, but at what cost?".

Border Patrol agents I've talked to defend their tactics, with one telling me:

"What did everyone think mass deportations meant? Only the worst? Tom Homan has said it himself, anyone in the US illegally is on the table."

It's quite a situation, as both sides of this are on the same team, with the same end goals, but different perspectives on how to get there.

Another DHS official confirmed the personnel changes to me on deep background, adding that the moves are based on performance and doing what is needed to achieve the best results.

Official statement to
@FoxNews
via
@TriciaOhio
:

"While we have no personnel changes to announce at this time, the Trump Administration remains laser focused on delivering results and removing violent criminal illegal aliens from this country."
7:57 PM · Oct 27, 2025
·
29.6K
Views

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Gerry Doyle @mgerrydoyle.bsky.social · 7d

I haven't seen anyone produce evidence that more illegal immigration here actually produced macro harmful results in terms of crime, economics or anything else. no, "a sense of lawelessness" doesn't count

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 7d

knew immediately this would have an abysmal 'to be sure' paragraph

Being Latino in the United States Should Not Be a Crime

As is typical for Mr. Trump, he has identified a real problem — illegal immigration — but responded with a destructive solution. For decades, the United States tolerated a level of illegal immigration that fostered a sense of lawlessness at the border and frustrated many Americans, including many Latinos. The Biden administration’s porous policies worsened the situation, making possible the largest immigration surge in American history, with most of the arrivals lacking legal permission to enter the country. Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to reverse those policies, and he has an electoral mandate to do so. At the border, he has succeeded at reducing illegal entries to the lowest levels in decades.

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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 8d

When you reach a certain age and have worked all your life believing in—and often fighting to create—a better world for our children and look around at where we are now, it’s radicalizing. I really don’t think political leaders grasp how furious we are.

onion person @junlper.beer · 8d

might be one of the funniest videos i’ve ever seen

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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 7d

"New York is not for sale" is just a great line for this specific time and place.

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Benjamin راغب @benzado.com · 7d

I like Zohran because he likes New York

Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 7d

My closing pitch to voters? “I will only live in this awful place if I rule over it”

METRO
EXCLUSIVE
Andrew Cuomo says he 'will move to Florida' if Zohran Mamdani becomes NYC
mayor

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Benjamin راغب @benzado.com · 8d

if these guys could deal with criticism they wouldn’t hide behind masks

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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 10d

Politics is the art of making people care. Effective movements *shift the polls* by framing issues as moral questions.

If the fascists can make people care about conspiracy theories like QAnon, we can make people care about freedom and democracy.

(George Lakoff wrote several books on this.)

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 10d

"normies do not care about this thing and so it is no use raising a stink" is imho just an excuse for not doing politics, which is the job of making normies care about something

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Benjamin راغب @benzado.com · 11d

I also did not recognize that skull as a Nazi symbol, but I am also not asking people to donate their money to help me become United States Senator, a job that requires a lot of “looking into things”

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Benjamin راغب @benzado.com · 11d

the ghostbusters logo but the ghost is a king

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Benjamin راغب @benzado.com · 13d

but even fictional TV shows make other people feel real emotions!

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 13d

100% true even-dumber-than-you-think reason they do this: fear of "most liberal senator" a la Kerry, so it's savvy to throw away cheap nobody-cares votes to juice the stats.

They think their DW-NOMINATE score matters b/c it was a third-tier attack line in a presidential election two decades ago.

Senate Press Gallery @senatepress.bsky.social · 13d

By a vote of 66-32, the #Senate invoked cloture on the nomination of Harold D. Mooty III to be US District Judge for the Northern District of Alabama.

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Greg Greene (he/him/his) @greene.haus · Jul 31

In addition to the aesthetic woes, the near-pointlessness of the space, and all the rest: of _course_ Trump would destroy the East Wing, where the First Lady's offices traditionally sit, to build this. His titular First Lady has hardly set foot near him this term.

Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · Jul 31

Trump announces new shlock shithole extension of White House to be built as part of broader Mar-a-Lago-fication if historic executive mansion. www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st...

The White House Announces White House Ballroom Construction to Begin

Washington, D.C. — For 150 years, Presidents, Administrations, and White House Staff have longed for a large event space on the White House complex that

www.whitehouse.gov

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Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 13d

Clark Construction, AECOM and McCrery Architects.

brendanamartin.bsky.social @brendanamartin.bsky.social · 13d

Thanks again. Here’s a link:

www.constructiondive.com/news/clark-w...

Clark nabs $200M White House ballroom project

The Bethesda, Maryland-based contractor will lead the construction team that includes AECOM and McCrery Architects, with work beginning in September.

www.constructiondive.com

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Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur.bsky.social · 13d

Three ways the US government shutdown could end

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Craig Harrington @craigipedia.bsky.social · 14d

Roughly 2% of the whole country went out on a Saturday and protested the lawless Trump regime. There was essentially zero violence or destruction of property by the demonstrators. They were just fed up. Write 1,000 stories about this!

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