Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Audra Wolfe @audrajwolfe.bsky.social · 2h

My best advice to aspiring authors of scholarly books is to read other scholarly books recently published by your target press. This may seem obvious and yet is not!

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Holly Guise ❄️ @hollyguise.bsky.social · 1h

Can’t believe I’m sharing this- my book #AlaskaNativeResilience: Voices from World War II by @uwapress.uw.edu has received the Athearn Book Prize given annually for a published book on the twentieth-century American West! Quyaana!

#Alaska wartime history #AlaskaNatives
#Alaskasky #historiansky
🗃️

Screenshot from the Western history association Instagram page showing book awards including the author Holly Miowak Guise, a Native woman with brown hair and an Inuit ivory necklace, with the caption Robert C Athearn Award for Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 3h

Who would have thought that 25 times as many people would be getting their daily news updates from a Boston College history professor (Heather Cox Richardson, who has 2.5 million subscribers) than from the Washington Post.

karl rove knausgård @uhactually.bsky.social · 22h

Lmao WaPo has fewer than 100K circulation now. It turns out “alienate your liberal subscriber base” is not a good strategy when the Republicans also hate you. www.forbes.com/sites/andyme...

The Washington Post Is Running Out Of Readers Willing To Pay

Once a titan of American journalism, The Washington Post now struggles to reach even 100,000 print subscribers most days.

www.forbes.com

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Joshua R Greenberg @joshrgreenberg.bsky.social · 2h

We know Eli Whitney's story, right? He invented the cotton gin, interchangeable parts, and set the South and North on course for War -- except that didn't actually happen writes Ariel Ron @arielron.bsky.social in an important new Commonplace piece. Check it out:🗃️
commonplace.online/article/how-...

How Eli Whitney Single-handedly Started the Civil War . . . and Why That’s Not True - Commonplace

The real Whitney story is less grand than the legend, but more interesting and, ultimately, more edifying.

commonplace.online

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 3h

The whites are literally arguing it's literally *unconstitutional* if they're not OVERREPRESNTED in Congress.

Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 4h

Just so everyone is clear, the main issue in the Supreme Court voting rights case tomorrow is whether it's racist against white people to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

I'm dead serious. We live in incredibly stupid times.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

American Historical Association @historians.org · 4h

In #AHAPerspectives, Bruce W. Dearstyne examines President Theodore Roosevelt’s address at the 1912 AHA annual meeting to think about how historians today can address the public. 🗃️

The Progressive President and the AHA – AHA

In his AHA presidential address in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt encouraged professional historians to write for the public.

www.historians.org

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 3h

Again, the argument is that the Voting Rights Act violates the Constitution (14th and 15th Amendments) because you have to take race into account in order to draw a map that has a second majority Black district and taking race into account violates the Constitution.

It's an ouroboros of stupidity.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 3h

I remember at the time ranting on my podcast that of course you have to take race into account in order to draw racially fair maps.

But I guess we're gonna be stupid and say SFFA v. Harvard eliminated race consciousness across the board and so drawing a non-racist map is in and of itself racist.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 4h

Just so everyone is clear, the main issue in the Supreme Court voting rights case tomorrow is whether it's racist against white people to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

I'm dead serious. We live in incredibly stupid times.

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Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️ @phdrachel.bsky.social · 4h

This is such a great way to explain this! 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 5h

We often say that the VRA had two hearts: The shield in Section 5 / preclearance, and the sword to strike down bad policies in Sec 2. In 2013, the Court broke the shield. In 2021, they bent the sword. Tomorrow's case could radically undermine what remains.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 5h

We often say that the VRA had two hearts: The shield in Section 5 / preclearance, and the sword to strike down bad policies in Sec 2. In 2013, the Court broke the shield. In 2021, they bent the sword. Tomorrow's case could radically undermine what remains.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 5h

But the Court didn't stop in 2013. In 2021 (Brnovich v DNC), they undermined the ability of Section 2 to stop those "vote denial" practices from being overturned -- the ones that make casting a ballot harder. Although that case didn't touch racial gerrymandering, it led to a big drop in Sec 2 cases

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 5h

This is dangerously close to what the case SCOTUS is considering this week might do. This case strikes at the VRA's ability to prevent racial vote dilution all around the country (under Sec 2). The last time the Court made it easier, localities jumped at the opportunity. They might do so again now.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 5h

We found that Shelby County also led to more vote dilution at the local level: Namely, by allowing once-covered municipalities to annex more new residents -- and these new residents were, on average, considerably whiter than the city. This "diluted" the nonwhite share of these cities

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 5h

As we showed in a @brennancenter.org report, and a forthcoming paper at the Journal of Politics, this led to a major expansion in the racial turnout gap in parts of the country now free from preclearance
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kevin Morris @kevintmorris.bsky.social · 5h

Tomorrow, SCOTUS will hear arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a major threat to (what remains of) the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But this isn't the first time the VRA has faced dire threats; in 2013 and 2021, SCOTUS weakened other provisions. We can learn from those why Callais could be so dangerous 🧵

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Kassandra Jo Tomaras @raconteuse.bsky.social · 21h

When a trans woman dies of natural causes, at an age greater than 75, having lived more than half her life as herself, that is cause for celebration, not mourning.

Thank you, Miss Major.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Emily Badger @emmbadger.bsky.social · 2d

We thought about trying to quantify DOGE's effect at the end of the fiscal year — Musk’s own deadline for finding $1T — and realized it was impossible.

That’s the larger story: No one, even Congressional appropriators, can follow what’s happened to federal spending.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Not Even Congress Knows How Much Money DOGE Cut

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Orion Rummler @oriion.bsky.social · 6h

Miss Major was known as many things in her community — a caretaker for other Black trans women, a defender of the homeless and the incarcerated, and a Stonewall veteran who did not want the past to be used as an excuse for inaction.

Read our full obituary here:

Legendary transgender activist Miss Major dies at 78

Known as a surrogate mother of her community, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy leaves behind a legacy as a fierce advocate for trans and LGBTQ+ rights.

19thnews.org

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 8h

instead they get grandmas, and priests, and inflatable frogs, and ordinary decent people rising up and saying "this is vile, this is unamerican, these are secret police"

they get kristi noem in a staring contest with a guy in a chicken suit

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

👻SAAAAAAAAHHHHHHvik Ford 🎃 @saavikford.bsky.social · 17h

THIS!!!

No, ACA isn’t perfect, but just straight up repealing it would kill a LOT of people.

THAT Amber @buriedbybooks.bsky.social · 20h

I like to remind people about lifetime limits and the refusal of insurers to sell coverage to people with preexisting conditions.

The ACA has issues. But those 2 things alone make it worth saving and fixing.

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

Marc Elias @marcelias.bsky.social · 21h

If you read only one democracy story today, make it this one. While legacy media largely skipped the Texas redistricting hearing, Democracy Docket's Jen Rice was there for all 10 days. Her coverage stands out and sheds insight into how the GOP operates -- not only in TX -- but nationally.

In a Federal Courtroom in Texas, Republicans Were Desperate to Keep Details of their Gerrymander Under Wraps

Read about the fight for democracy from activists, elected officials, legal experts and others.

www.democracydocket.com

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Ruth Delgado @heylookitsruth.bsky.social · 1d

A mom in Houston reported her 15-year-old son with autism missing. She spent 6 days terrified, searching for him. The whole time, Houston police knew exactly where he was since they helped ICE place him in a refugee facility.

This is beyond cruel.
www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

Missing teen with autism transferred to refugee facility by HPD

He is currently being held at an Office for Refugee Resettlement facility.

www.houstonchronicle.com

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Reposted by Rachel Gunter, Ph.D. 🗃️

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

obviously john roberts and the trump majority aren't going a little thing like "history" or "the written text of the constitution" get in the way of their ideological drive to remake the (republican) presidency as an elected dictatorship.

Originalist ‘Bombshell’ Complicates Case on Trump’s Power to Fire Officials

www.nytimes.com

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David DeWitt @daviddewitt.bsky.social · 21h

More than 4 million Medicare beneficiaries used telehealth services in the first half of this year, but now the federal government shutdown is forcing a reckoning for two remote health care programs because they automatically expired Oct. 1 ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/10/13/r...

Shutdown forces Medicare patients off popular telehealth and hospital-at-home programs • Ohio Capital Journal

More than 4 million Medicare beneficiaries used telehealth services in the first half of this year, but now the federal government shutdown is forcing a reckoning for two remote health care programs…

ohiocapitaljournal.com

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