Author | Lightnews

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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 1d

ACLU-DC’s Michael Perloff: “[G]overnment officials can't punish you for making them the punchline. That's really the whole point of the First Amendment.”

"Armed National Guard should not be policing D.C. residents as we walk around our neighborhoods," said Sam O'Hara, plaintiff in the case. "It was important to me not to normalize this dystopian occupation. Instead of respecting my right to protest, police officers handcuffed me so tightly my wrists were still marked and sore the next day. This shows the danger of deploying troops onto American streets: it puts all our basic rights at risk."
"The government doesn't get to decide if your protest is funny, and government officials can't punish you for making them the punchline. That's really the whole point of the First Amendment," said Michael Perloff, senior staff attorney at ACLU-D.C.

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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 1d

Ad: This clip, then cutting to people waiting in food lines, then to Johnson saying he isn't familiar with X, Y, or Z, then cutting to U.S. citizens being arrested by masked goons, then a quote from Roberts and the immunity decision.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Leavitt: "At this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president's main priority."

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Silky @silkyweineck.bsky.social · 6d

this rocks. when indiana edu killed the student newspaper, Purdue stepped up, printed the forbidden issue, drove it to Bloomington and stocked the boxes.

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 6d

John Quincy Adams- Amb for 8 years, 4 years Senate, 8 years Sec of State.

Then post Presidency 16 years in the house and would have been better than anybody in the White House during that period.

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Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 11d

The idea that political dissent can only be the product of “paid protesters” or “outside agitators” has a long history. Here is the Mississippi columnist Tom Ethridge in June 1963 concerned that attendees at the upcoming March on Washington might be “whipped into a frenzy by skilled agitators.”

“Aug 28 has been set as the date for this mass invasion of the captial by upward of 100,000 negroes…”

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Corey Rayburn Yung @coreyryung.bsky.social · 11d

The spirit of Dollree Mapp has joined the battle

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 11d

Border Patrol “attempted to arrest a plumber working inside a Logan Heights home but left empty-handed after the homeowner refused them entry.

The homeowner told agents she would not allow them inside because the warrant they presented did not include her address and lacked a judge's signature.”

Federal immigration operations target San Diego neighborhoods, sparking community resistance

Federal immigration agents conducted operations in Logan Heights and Southeast San Diego on Friday, with community members capturing footage of the enforcement actions.

www.10news.com

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Annie Abrams @annieabrams.bsky.social · 12d

it’s such a privilege to be able to teach from the heart

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E. Perkins 🎃 @hauntedpumpkin.bsky.social · 13d

Making the Democrats sound 100%, 400%, 600%, 1,000% in some cases cooler than they are.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 14d

Thune: "If the Democrats had won the majority, they probably would've tried to nuke the filibuster. And then you'd have four new senators from Puerto Rico and DC, you'd have a packed Supreme Court, you'd have abortion on demand ... "

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Lucius Fox In The Box @carnegro.bsky.social · 15d

Pope Leo is spitting.

www.npr.org/2025/10/09/n...

Leo questioned a world where the wealth of the elite grows
"exponentially" while many "millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings." He also criticized "ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation,"
with false promises "that a free-market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty."

Leo described a "new tyranny," which shuns any kind of oversight and where the economy is structured "in such a way that sacrifices are demanded of the masses in order to serve the needs of the powerful." The poor, he wrote, are only allowed "drops that trickle down."

The pope openly challenged "prosperity theology" and called Christians to the practice of giving charity. "It will not solve the problem of world poverty, yet it must still be carried out, with intelligence, diligence and social responsibility," he wrote.

Popular movements that challenge "the empire of money," invite people to take on the cause to combat poverty alongside the poor, instead of on their behalf, and "make history," the pope said. It our duty, Leo said, to "make their voices heard, albeit in different ways, in order to point out and denounce such structural issues, even at the cost of appearing foolish or naïve."

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Drew Magary @drewmagary.bsky.social · 18d

Ugh defector.com/bari-weiss-s...

Bari Weiss Signs Huge Deal To Usher CBS News Into Its Vichy Era | Defector

On Monday, newly appointed Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that his company had acquired the Free Press, the smirking blood-and-soil blog founded and run by former New York Times hall monitor Ba...

defector.com

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 18d

Why I cancelled my subscription

Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 19d

behold the bold and brave washington post opinion section (under new management), lol

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 20d

Teachers should also get more time to be pleasurably bored! It’s a solution for many things!

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

America today is a puzzle of contradictions: it proclaims freedom yet fears its own police, it venerates strength yet trembles before old age, it boasts of prosperity yet cannot afford its own steak. At the center sits its weary ruler, a man older than his republic can bear.

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 23d

Trying to imagine what a historian of this moment will look for in sources. A visiting foreign journalist's account of the collapse of the Republic, perhaps?

Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

Dispatch from Washington, D.C.
I arrive in Dulles Airport, just as the capital is preparing for its recurring October 1st ritual: the potential and probable Federal government shutdown. For the outsider, this strange rite may appear chaotic, but for Americans it is as old as their democracy.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 24d

the president of the united states wants to use the american military to kill american citizens on american soil. that's the whole story!

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

The press, once celebrated as a pillar of freedom, now cowers under the thumbs of billionaires. Once-brave journalists have become court stenographers, transcribing lies and calling them news. The Washington Post, no longer a watchdog, but a leashed poodle, tugged by the whims of Jeff Bezos.

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

The capital trembles, & at its center is the 79-year-old ruler, Donald Trump, so aged that his own government seems to wither around him. His reign illustrates America’s gerontocratic culture: the elderly cling to power and youth is seen only as a source of campaign rallies and military recruits.

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

Dispatch from Washington, D.C.
I arrive in Dulles Airport, just as the capital is preparing for its recurring October 1st ritual: the potential and probable Federal government shutdown. For the outsider, this strange rite may appear chaotic, but for Americans it is as old as their democracy.

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@Crowebarre @davidcrowe.bsky.social · 24d

The “growing body” here is a tumor, malignant and metastatic

Pat Sobkowski @patsobkowski.com · 24d

“Growing body of modern scholarship”

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 24d

durbin underrated as one of the worst mcclellan democrats in the senate

🎃 public HELLth guy 🎃 @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 24d

good lord, dick durbin wants democrats to give up their only remaining leverage this year for an *informal commitment* from republicans. www.semafor.com/article/09/2...

For instance, some Democrats indicated they could be open to funding the government with simply a commitment from Thune to extend health care subsidies in the coming days.
"It would be a real mark of progress. I hope that's considered by him. That's progress, as far as I'm concerned; whether it's enough, I can't say," said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-II. "If we're not sitting down talking about ending this responsibility and helping people deal with health care, it's going to be a rocky road."

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

The world once looked to America for guidance. Now it looks on in pity. As my cab departs Dulles, I reflect: this is not a government on the verge of shutdown. This is a civilization on the verge of expiry.

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

America today is a puzzle of contradictions: it proclaims freedom yet fears its own police, it venerates strength yet trembles before old age, it boasts of prosperity yet cannot afford its own steak. At the center sits its weary ruler, a man older than his republic can bear.

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

And so, As October 1st approaches, the nation braces. Federal workers prepare to be cast aside. Families stockpile canned goods. The machinery of empire grinds to a halt, not from invasion or collapse, but from the sheer weight of its own dysfunction.

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

At the same time, the Great Beef Crisis gnaws at the American psyche. Steak—once the sacred meal of their mythology—is now beyond the reach of ordinary citizens. Farmers in the Great Plains, their soybeans unwanted by China, plead desperately for alms from the very government that may close tomorrow

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Wes Termin @historyell.bsky.social · 24d

The American economy is suffering not merely a recession but a crisis of spirit. The U.S. dollar, long their talisman of power, grows weaker by the day. Confidence drains from it like blood from an old man’s face.

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