Author | Lightnews

John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 42m

They'd need to be put in witness protection. Turn coating on Trump is literal suicide.

John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 7h

New York! The choice couldn't be more clear! Vote! I usually encourage everyone to vote and leave it at that. Today, as we face down fascism at the federal, state, and municipal level... VOTE MAMDANI.

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 9h

Early voting in the NYC mayoral election begins TODAY.

If you're a New Yorker, I urge you to vote for Zohran Mamdani — the only candidate who will stand up to the oligarchy and fight for working people.

Listen to his inspiring words from primary night.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 9h

He is aware that there are many millions of GOP voters in those blue states? And they might vote blue in the mid-terms (or stay home). They've told him that, right? In between the 2020 footage of Portland protests and the pillow guy's tv show?

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 9h

The corporate media's entire MO is to keep uncomfortable narratives from "breaking through". Chomsky and Herman wrote this decades ago - the media is there to limit the discourse and they're very successful at that endeavor.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 9h

The "American Way". Tanking in the polls cuz your inhuman policies harm voters who put you in? Start an oil war as fast as you can arrange it! Call it "regime change" and voters will imagine it's a humanitarian intervention to save the peasants suffering under a dictator. They know the script.

John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 10h

Now imagine accepting the fairytale that he's not to blame and voting for him in 2028 and you have a clear image of MAGA and the effect of propaganda.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 10h

I believe that's the point - when you pay them with your own money, and they accept it. Mercenaries are notoriously twitchy. The only thing that keeps them fighting for the patron-king is fear of being killed by other mercenaries higher up on the food chain. I could be wrong.

John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 11h

Yep. Awful. Fascist. Got overturned. Biden's expansion of ICE was inherited by Trump 2.0. And largely overlooked by centrist Dems, certainly by the GOP who pedaled a lie about open borders.

John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 11h

The "Biden open borders policy" is propaganda from Trump. You seem to have absorbed it.

Some sources:
TRAC Immigration Reports: tracreports.org/reports/753 
Brennan Center: www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana... 
National Immigrant Justice Center: immigrantjustice.org/research/pol...

Immigration Detention Statistics: A Retrospective and a Look Forward

tracreports.org

John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 11h

In 2024, 277,913 migrants were detained — average 759/day. Biden oversaw over half million deportations, many through expedited removal. Groups like the Brennan Center call it a “deportation-industrial complex” — continuity masked by moral language about “humane enforcement.”

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 11h

— while expanding private detention contracts instead of phasing them out as promised. ICE now uses 190+ facilities, with most beds in private prisons. Biden closed a few of the worst centers but renewed multiple corporate contracts inherited from the Trump years.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 11h

Under Biden, ICE detention levels, funding, and contracts all increased. Jan 2025, ICE detained ~ 40,000 people daily, more than double Trump’s first term numbers. Under Biden Congress approved $3.4B for ICE detention in FY2024 — $500M more than the year before.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 11h

In 2024 Biden was indeed to the right of Trump 1.0. If this is the first you're hearing this argument, you might want to read more widely. The year 2025, yes, Trump is one click to the right of Hitler on immigration. Doesn't change the facts about Biden.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 12h

You're cherry picking. Rollbacks of Trump policies were a small portion of Biden's immigration platform. He EXTENDED Title 42 - enabling mass expulsions w/ limited asylum opportunity. Then introduced new asylum restrictions on par with or surpassing Trump's. Biden hit record deportations in 2024.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 13h

No Kings! We need to mobilize like this every week! We need a general strike. Trump is executing civilians (fishermen to be precise) in the Caribbean as a rehearsal for what he'll do in Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities.

#NoKings
#ReleaseTheEpsteinFiles

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 13h

Right? Not seen a loaf or one fucking fish appear for hungry people - federal workers included. Of all the "miracles" that have been claimed, none of them have to do with feeding the hungry or housing the poor. That always falls to the slightly less poor folks sharing theirs OUTSIDE Trump Tower.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 13h

I hope you're right, b/c now it looks like the people in power are rehearsing summary executions of civilians. They'll perfect the process (and justifications) on fishermen in the Caribbean and then move the practice to Portland, Chicago, DC, LA & NYC. We've seen the authoritarian playbook before.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 13h

"They CHEATED on a commercial". Somebody warm up the 25th Amendment please. What a fucking child.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 14h

Follow the money. Thomas Ferguson has been writing about this since at least the early 1980s. In the US, the candidate who spends the most cash wins, and then makes good on the obligations to the funders. It's not rocket science. It's mafia level graft, legalized. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Golden Rule

"To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outco...

press.uchicago.edu

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 14h

This is exactly what I'm talking about. The bill had no chance of passing but looked so good on paper and afforded Biden the chance to say he was making good on campaign promises. By Mid-2021 it was dead in the Senate. And then his pivot toward enforcement-heavy executive actions came & came hard.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 14h

This is a fucked up top ten list, but I'd put summary executions of fishermen higher in the rankings (at least in the "unlawful" category) if only because it seems like training missions for what he plans to do in Portland, Chicago, DC and eventually LA and possibly NYC.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 14h

Is this really a surprise? This is one of the more sensible things he's said in the past decade. It's daft, it's part of what seems like a campaign to kill US citizens sure, but it's totally on brand for the brain worm cabal.

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 14h

For years, Democrats promised to "humanize" the immigration system, but the practical outcome was “border control with softer language.” Style changed. Substance didn’t.

John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 14h

It was a return to enforcement-heavy politics, not reform.

The much-hyped CBP One app turned asylum into a lottery, forcing migrants to use limited digital channels or risk losing eligibility entirely — immigrant rights groups called it “Transit Ban 2.0.”

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John Zibell @jzbrooklyn.bsky.social · 14h

Biden reinstated Trump restrictions like Title 42, expanded expedited removals, and in 2024 issued an order that let the U.S. shut down asylum when crossings rose. He also oversaw around 271,000 deportations in 2024 — the most in a decade — and even sent troops to the border after Title 42 expired.

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