Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Your Local Epidemiologist @ylepidemiologist.bsky.social · 2d

7/ The danger isn’t just what’s dismantled, it’s what’s not being built in its place. There's no vision, no plan, no long-term strategy. The slow bleed will continue, and eventually, it will be measured in American lives. Public health resilience is being tested like never before.

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Lia @liamendez.bsky.social · 2d

"The slow creep of public surveillance can dull our sense of alarm, experts caution, turning extraordinary monitoring into an everyday norm."

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2d

Some people have been saying.

How everyday tech is training us to accept constant surveillance

By ignoring small tech intrusions, society lowers the bar for what counts as privacy.

www.axios.com

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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 2d

Emily Tucker argues that the AI regulation debate largely misses the point: the real threat to democracy is the unchecked data extraction and accumulation that is fueling corporate power. “We can have mass surveillance, or we can have political self-determination. We can’t have both,” she writes.

To Have Democracy, We Must Contest Data | TechPolicy.Press

Emily Tucker makes the case for redlines for data, not AI—real limits on corporate data collection to protect democracy and political self-determination.

www.techpolicy.press

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 4d

Looks from here like the goal is to create confusion, and focus public attention on a subset of the most outrageous firings — to distract from the other firings.

We shouldn’t be fooled, and should demand that all the illegal shutdown RIFs are made null and void. /end

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elizabethcooney.bsky.social @elizabethcooney.bsky.social · 5d

“Calling this a budget issue is a lie. It’s an abuse of power — unethical, unlawful, and profoundly dangerous,” a high-ranking CDC official told me.

www.statnews.com/2025/10/11/c...

‘It’s a massacre’: CDC battered by government shutdown firings

The White House’s mass firing of CDC staff on Friday has decimated offices related to injury prevention, respiratory disease surveillance, and chronic disease, according to four people familiar with t...

www.statnews.com

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USA TODAY @usatoday.com · 5d

The Education Department laid off nearly everyone at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

Education Department wipes out special ed office in shutdown layoffs, union says

The Education Department laid off nearly everyone at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

bit.ly

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 5d

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT

GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.

www.theverge.com

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Gravel Influencer @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 5d

They continue to eviscerate the public health machinery that has quietly kept Americans, and others around the world, safe and healthy for decades.

The staff of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the journal that reports on health trends and emerging infectious threats, was also laid off. The publication’s storied history includes a June 1981 report that five previously healthy gay men were treated for an unusual pneumonia — the first hint of the AIDS epidemic.

Roughly 70 Epidemic Intelligence Service officers — the so-called “disease detectives” who respond to outbreaks around the globe — received layoff notices, according to a person familiar with them. The service was spared during an earlier round of layoffs in February.

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Lena Sun @lenasun.bsky.social · 5d

NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4

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More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 6d

Corporate income taxes are $77 billion lower than last year, primarily due to the Republican tax cuts for the rich.

itep.org/trump-tax-la...

Well, That Was Fast: Trump Tax Law’s New Corporate Breaks are Already Worsening the Deficit

Corporate income taxes for the fiscal year that ended in September are $77 billion lower than in the previous year, a 15 percent drop.

itep.org

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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 6d

"Institutions should embrace collective storytelling between those who hold deep knowledge and those with the cultural fluency and media reach to deliver it effectively." Amen to that!

For Expertise to Matter, Nonpartisan Institutions Need New Communications Strategies

To avoid irrelevance when they are needed most, experts and nonpartisan analysts must rethink not just their channels of communication but also their theory of influence.

carnegieendowment.org

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Maggie Tokuda-Hall @maggietokudahall.bsky.social · 9d

It's banned books week and so I'm legally obligated to bully you, a person who has ever had their name on a book, into joining @authorsabb.bsky.social.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

We fight the source of book bans with calls to action, partnership w everyone in the game, and offer training.

AABB Author Sign-Up Form

Hello! We're Authors Against Book Bans, a group of authors who’ve come together to protect and promote the freedom to read on both the national and local levels. We’re creating a network of authors to...

docs.google.com

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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 10d

You’ll now be able to get an updated coronavirus shot in every state without a prescription, according to the American Pharmacists Association.

CVS and Walgreens have stated you won’t need to attest to any underlying conditions and the questions will be removed from their online booking system.

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Thinking Person's Guide to Autism @thinkingautism.com · 19d

I feel so awful for parents of newly diagnosed autistic kids right now, being drowned in such hateful nonsense. You deserve better. Your autistic kid deserves better.

My kid was diagnosed 20 yrs ago; please let me give you hopeful advice:

thinkingautismguide.com/2025/09/afte... #autism #parenting

After an Autism Diagnosis: 13 Necessary Next Steps For Parents — THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM

If your child has recently been given an autism diagnosis, as my son was in 2003, here's what I want you to know: Learn from me, don't be me.

thinkingautismguide.com

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 19d

Larry Ellison envisions a surveillance state in which techbros rule. '“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.'

Larry Ellison predicts rise of the modern surveillance state where ‘citizens will be on their best behavior’ | Fortune

Oracle's Larry Ellison believes citizens and police alike will be under constant surveillance of each other.

fortune.com

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Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 23d

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site

As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.

www.miamiherald.com

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Lia @liamendez.bsky.social · 23d

Burnout and burnout recovery. How to prevent? What support systems and resources are most helpful for recovery? How to make those resources available to those in need?

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Scott Nover @scottnover.bsky.social · 26d

Katie Fallow from @knightcolumbia.org said the new policy is part of “the Trump administration’s broader assault on free speech and press freedom.”

“A reporter who publishes only what the government ‘authorizes’ is doing something other than reporting,” she said.

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Scott Nover @scottnover.bsky.social · 27d

NEW: The Pentagon told journalists it will require them to pledge they won’t gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey. @washingtonpost.com

Pentagon demands journalists pledge to not obtain unauthorized material

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is imposing strict new rules that would severely limit the ability of journalists to report on the Pentagon.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Nick Turse @nickturse.bsky.social · 29d

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Troop Deployment in U.S. Climbs to 35,000 Boots on the Ground

A federal judge found the deployment to LA violated bedrock constitutional law, but Trump’s domestic military campaign continues.

theintercept.com/2025/09/17/t...

Trump Troop Deployment in U.S. Climbs to 35,000 Boots on the Ground

A federal judge found the deployment to LA violated bedrock constitutional law, but Trump’s domestic military campaign continues.

theintercept.com

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · Sep 16

"As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald."

Erica Ifill @wickdchiq.bsky.social · Sep 16

So…they’re disappearing people. This is all just ticking along as expected. Now I know how the junta in Argentina lasted so long

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site

As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.

www.miamiherald.com

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Lia @liamendez.bsky.social · Sep 16

Yup, here's your problem.

a cartoon character has a shirt that says evil good

Alt: a cartoon doll has a switch that is set to "evil." A repairman switches it to "good."

media.tenor.com

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · Sep 10

being totally comfortable speaking this way to millions of people is one of many signals that we're in an extremely dark place

Media Matters for America @mmfa.bsky.social · Sep 10

Fox News host on mentally ill people who commit crimes: “Just kill them”
www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/...

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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · Sep 8

The New Yorker asked me “how bad” today’s Supreme Court ruling was. I boiled it down to one paragraph:

link.newyorker.com/view/5bda429...

"Just the other day, I was in the audience at Lincoln Center when Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, while promoting a new book, that she doesn't think the United States is in a constitutional crisis," Farias told us. "Today, the Supreme Court, without offering a single line of reasoning, more or less declared that the Fourth Amendment, which protects everyone from unreasonable searches and seizures, nonetheless allows the Trump Administration to arrest and detain anyone who looks Latino, citizen or not, on account of the language that they speak or the kind of jobs they do. The ruling putatively covers the Los Angeles area, but the effect could be national," he continued.
"If that's not a constitutional crisis, then what is?"

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · Sep 8

"Half the population” of greater Los Angeles "now meet the government’s criteria for reasonable suspicion," in the wake of today's 6-3 SCOTUS ruling.

www.latimes.com/politics/sto...

Supreme Court upholds 'roving patrols' for immigration arrests in Los Angeles

The Supreme Court says immigration agents may stop and question people they suspect are here illegally based on little more than working at a car wash, speaking Spanish or having brown skin.

www.latimes.com

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