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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 19h

What if… Trump doesn’t have any “dealmaking magic.”

Bloomberg

The fragility of Trump's self-proclaimed dealmaking magic is being laid bare as the China trade truce teeters on the verge of collapse

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

Hey, Hidden Cities is already listed as #30 “Rising” in World Politics on Substack (the fastest-growing publications within a category).

Help me pass Council Estate Media and Yascha Mounk in momentum!

Read Omar El Akkad’s bracing essay:

open.substack.com/pub/hiddenci...

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

“I can’t think of words to capture the significance that federal judges themselves have to speak out,” said J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge, “because the Supreme Court has given them no choice but to speak out.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders

www.nytimes.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

Remarkable reporting, and hugely significant that federal judges are speaking out like this (anonymously).

One thing that seems to go unsaid: judges see the Supreme Court’s shadow docket decisions as arbitrary. They are opaque, unexplained, unreasoned. Antithetical to the entire judicial system.

Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 1d

More judges speak to the press (the NYT) about what a disaster the Supreme Court (specifically the shadow docket) has been - “incredibly demoralizing & troubling”; a “judicial crisis”; a “slap in the face to district courts.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

Benioff barely lives in San Francisco anymore. Like other tech oligarchs, he spends most his time in Hawaii where he has amassed land like a plantation lord.

So why is he calling on federal troops to occupy the city? To curry favor with Trump, who wants a presidential guard deployed at his whims.

Since the pandemic, he has mostly lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, where he has bought up numerous parcels of land. He said that he wasn't sure how many days he spends each year in San Francisco, but that he is never in one place for more than a day or two.

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

American business continues to capitulate to Trump. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

Marc Benioff Says Trump Should Send Guard Troops to San Francisco

www.nytimes.com

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

“It’s possible that what I have to say is how to live with defeat, or how to live with despair, or how to champion a lost cause.”

Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s first interview since his release: “there is no opportunity for organising in Egypt and it is too dangerous at the moment.”

‘I deserve to heal’: freed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah on his prison ordeal and next steps

The campaigner, who spent more than a decade in an Egyptian ‘vortex of incarceration’, wants to join his son in the UK while he reflects on the fight for freedom

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Frederick Deknatel

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

“It is not so hard to believe, even during the worst of things, that courage is the more potent contagion. That there are more invested in solidarity than annihilation. That just as it has always been possible to look away, it is always possible to stop looking away.“

Omar El Akkad in Hidden Cities

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

Honored to publish this essay by Omar El Akkad adapted from his stunning book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” in Hidden Cities, a new publication that aims to illuminate the world.

Read and subscribe here: open.substack.com/pub/hiddenci...

Omar El Akkad: 'One Day There Will Be No More Looking Away.'

An excerpt from One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

open.substack.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 1d

“It is not so hard to believe, even during the worst of things, that courage is the more potent contagion. That there are more invested in solidarity than annihilation. That just as it has always been possible to look away, it is always possible to stop looking away.“

Omar El Akkad in Hidden Cities

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Reposted by Frederick Deknatel

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

"One day there will be no more looking away... One day there will be an accounting."

A powerful excerpt from Omar El Akkad's searing book "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This," in my new publication, Hidden Cities.

Read and subscribe! hiddencities.substack.com/p/omar-el-ak...

Omar El Akkad: 'One Day There Will Be No More Looking Away.'

An excerpt from One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

hiddencities.substack.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

Yes but: Wasn't the Nobel, however dubious, really because of Obama's call for eliminating nuclear weapons? That "vision" obviously failed but still seemed somewhat momentous at the time, and was perhaps more significant than simply not being George W. Bush? www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace...

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

Albert Speer, a name people are saying more and more.

Model of Adolf Hitler's plan for Berlin formulated under the direction of Albert Speer, looking north toward the Volkshalle at the top of the frame.

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

open.substack.com/pub/hiddenci...

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

"When finally there is no other means of preserving self-interest but to act, the powerful will act. The same people who did the killing and financed the killing and justified the killing and turned away from the killing will congratulate themselves on doing the right thing."

One day this will end. In liberation, in peace, or in eradication at a scale so overwhelming it resets history. It’ll end when sanctions pile up high enough, or the political cost of occupation and apartheid proves debilitating. When finally there is no other means of preserving self-interest but to act, the powerful will act. The same people who did the killing and financed the killing and justified the killing and turned away from the killing will congratulate themselves on doing the right thing. It is very important to do the right thing, eventually.

When the time comes to assign blame, most of those to blame will be long gone. There will always be feigned shock at how bad things really were, how we couldn’t have possibly known. There will be those who say it was all the work of a few bad actors, people who misled the rest of us well-meaning folks. Anything to avoid contending with the possibility that all this killing wasn’t the result of a system abused, but a system functioning exactly as intended.

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

"One day there will be no more looking away... One day there will be an accounting."

A powerful excerpt from Omar El Akkad's searing book "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This," in my new publication, Hidden Cities.

Read and subscribe! hiddencities.substack.com/p/omar-el-ak...

Omar El Akkad: 'One Day There Will Be No More Looking Away.'

An excerpt from One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

hiddencities.substack.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

Meanwhile, the architects of Biden’s Middle East policies have plum positions at Harvard etc and are awaiting the call to advise the next Democrat in the White House and do this all over again.

Andrew Exum @exum.bsky.social · 2d

This week has confirmed my suspicion that Biden’s Middle East policies will look worse, and will be even more embarrassing for Democrats, with the passage of time.

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

Trump, as ever, has no idea what he’s talking about or what he’s supposedly committing the US to.

He wants a hostage deal that he can boast about and take credit for, and then… “we’ll see.”

Naturally, the media response is a flood of articles on Trump the peacemaker. bsky.app/profile/atru...

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3d

Q: What guarantees Hamas disarms and that Israel doesn't resume bombing?

TRUMP: The first thing we're doing is getting our hostages back. After that we'll see.

Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

Give it up for Trump’s “new vision” for peace that “promises a practical approach” instead of “endless, abstract negotiations over maps and the hypothetical constitutional arrangements of two states.” 🙃 www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

Trump is sure to lose interest here in a matter of days, yet his plan commits the US — and Trump personally — to brokering long talks over many incredibly messy and intractable issues.

As Aaron David Miller put it, do you think Trump knows what he signed up for? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/u...

"He has created a peace plan that, if in fact Hamas accepted it in principle, would require an extraordinary lift by the United States," said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime State Department official who is now a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Every single point is going to be negotiated to death."
Mr. Miller said he was struck by how the peace proposal seemed to hinge so much on the president personally playing a role. "Trump signed up for something that I think is going to require an extraordinary amount of American involvement and monitoring, and he's made himself the key monitor," Mr. Miller said.
"This is not a throwaway cease-fire agreement,' he added. "This is the full monty here, and at the top of this full monty sits one Donald Trump."

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

Perhaps you should wait until the details of the deal are actually public before praising Trump’s “vision” as “the best chance of creating lasting peace since the Oslo accords.”

Just one small detail. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

Sounding like Jared Kushner, they somehow call this “the best chance of creating lasting peace since the Oslo accords in 1993 and 1995.” www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

A new beginning for the Middle East

The breakthrough in Gaza could open up a new approach to peace

www.economist.com

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 2d

The Economist just might be getting ahead of itself on Trump and Gaza. Is it as thirsty for Trump to get a Nobel Peace Prize as he is? view.e.economist.com?qs=d6448b77a...

Instead of endless, abstract negotiations over maps and the hypothetical constitutional arrangements of two states, the Trump plan promises a practical approach in which Israelis and Palestinians can rebuild their lives. Success looks less like a ceremony in the White House and more like cement mixers spinning in Gaza, as the threat of missiles fades and ordinary people embrace a slowly rising belief in a safer, more prosperous future. It is a triumph for President Donald Trump's transactional, bullying style of diplomacy.

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Reposted by Frederick Deknatel

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 4d

My piece - to be in this week's issue - on the South Shore raid and what it says about Donald Trump's America:

www.economist.com/united-state...

My view is this stuff is as much or more about creating content and fear than it is about actually catching immigrants, though that's a goal too

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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 3d

“Jack Smith’s Lawfare” ….

The Post opinion pages will soon be indistinguishable from the WSJ or National Review. Just as Bezos wants.

Philip Bump @pbump.com · 3d

I spent more than a decade at The Post. It was good to me and I was proud to work there. I’ve largely refrained from being critical since I left. But this framing of the special counsel probe is embarrassing and flatly wrong. Stunning, but not. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | Jack Smith’s lawfare and James Comey’s arraignment on pathetically weak charges

Good people will be deterred from public service if they see a meaningful risk of winding up in jail afterward.

www.washingtonpost.com