Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 8h

Remember we're already in a world of Kavanaugh stops based solely on ethnicity. If you are from a targeted group, this can happen to you no matter what your citizenship status is. What if you forget your wallet at home? You could end up in detention for days or worse.

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 9h

Do you want to live in a "papers, please" country?

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Redshift ❌👑 @redshift42.bsky.social · 1h

The Rev. William Barber writing eloquently about all the people who were called “anti-American” or “treasonous” or “communists” who are now considered great Americans.

open.substack.com/pub/ourmoralmoment/p/good-company

Good Company

MAGA's Mike Johnson calls those who challenge authoritarianism "anti-American." He's not the first.

open.substack.com

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WhatSaraSaid @whatsarasaid.bsky.social · 1h

Greeley, born at Illinois Masonic hospital & adopted, carries a copy of her passport just in case she runs into federal agents.

“I am Latina and I am a service worker, I fit the description

During the encounter, Greeley said they told her she “doesn’t look like” a Greeley.

Paging CJ Roberts /1

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Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · 1h

Solidarity is the only way

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Jodi Breckenridge Petit @jodibp.bsky.social · 2h

‘But when individuals claim their African-, Italian-, Japanese- or other heritage as a part of their identity, they aren’t disavowing their American-ness. Rather, they are invoking a unique cultural narrative that has shaped their path and relationship to this country.”

Asha Rangappa @asharangappa.bsky.social · 2h

I almost forgot to do my annual (re)post of my Christopher Columbus essay. Enjoy! open.substack.com/pub/asharang...

How Christopher Columbus Ruined My Life

I have to explain to my children the difference between Native Americans and Indians simply because one man got lost one time.

open.substack.com

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Redshift ❌👑 @redshift42.bsky.social · 1h

Far fewer Americans support political violence than recent polls suggest
theconversation.com/far-fewer-am...

Far fewer Americans support political violence than recent polls suggest

Well-known flaws in conventional polling methods may be creating the incorrect perception that many Americans think political violence is justified.

theconversation.com

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Senator Chris Van Hollen @vanhollen.senate.gov · 7h

These are the same kind of weasels who would’ve called George Washington & America’s revolutionaries “terrorists.” They spend their days sucking up to King Trump & demonizing peaceful protest just as some in America sought to appease King George III.

Looking forward to No Kings Day.

Johnson describes planned No Kings rally as ‘hate America,’ ‘pro-Hamas’ gathering

Organizers largely blew off the rhetoric, but some Democrats online criticized the tone.

www.politico.com

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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 1d

Absolutely crucial point here by Greg Sargent. When we don’t call propaganda what it is, we co-produce it, and hasten disaster.
newrepublic.substack.com/p/maga-implo...

MAGA Implodes over Kristi Noem’s “Stare Down” with Man in Chicken Suit

A good New York Times piece on Portland nevertheless demonstrates how the conventions of objective reporting fail to accurately capture the bad faith driving pro-Trump propaganda.

newrepublic.substack.com

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Celeste Labedz @celestelabedz.bsky.social · 5h

A lot of comments on Mars rovers or Moon landings, but it's important to remember that the planet NASA studies most is Earth. This is less about cutting flashy things like moonwalks and more about keeping communities in the dark on climate, weather, agriculture, pollution, natural hazards, and more.

Reuters @reuters.com · 8h

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to lay off about 550 workers reut.rs/4302N2L

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to lay off about 550 workers

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Monday it will cut nearly 550 jobs as part of a restructuring, not related to the current U.S. government shutdown.

reut.rs

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Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 1d

“With your patient and rigorous work, you can act as a barrier against those who, through the ancient art of lying, seek to create divisions in order to rule by dividing,” he said. “You can be a bulwark of civility against the quicksand of approximation and post-truth...”

apnews.com/article/pope...

Pope urges news agencies to stand as bulwark against lies, manipulation and post-truths

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the “ancient art of lying” and manipulation.

apnews.com

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The Onion @theonion.com · 6h

Nation’s Indigenous People Confirm They Don’t Need Special Holiday, Just Large Swaths Of Land Returned Immediately https://theonion.com/nation-s-indigenous-people-confirm-they-don-t-need-spec-1839033177/

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Emily L. Hauser (she/her) ❌👑 @emilylhauser.bsky.social · 5h

*10/13/2025 noncooperation thread*

“Even in Afghanistan, we had very clear rules of engagement. The conduct of these agents was such that if it occurred in Afghanistan, they would be removed from the front line. They would be court-martialed.”

11/

Rebecca Spang @rlspang.bsky.social · 12h

I find these veterans' continuing service to the United States very moving www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Growing number of US veterans face arrest over Ice raid protests

Veterans are facing federal charges after protesting Ice sweeps and Trump’s national guard deployments. The justice department claims the veterans were violent

www.theguardian.com

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Redshift ❌👑 @redshift42.bsky.social · 6h

But remember, they claim it's the *Democrats* who are keeping the government shut down until the protests.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 15h

Bessent: "No Kings means no paychecks. No paychecks and no government."

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Redshift ❌👑 @redshift42.bsky.social · 6h

Every accusation is a confession.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 16h

Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."

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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 12h

NEW: There’s a disaster unfolding in Alaska right now. And no major network is covering it.

The remnants of Typhoon Halong battered western Alaska overnight. Homes, with people in them, have literally been swept into the Bering Strait.

At least 20 are missing. No comment from any federal agency.

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Redshift ❌👑 @redshift42.bsky.social · 6h

Especially considering how egregiously slanted some of the earlier GOP polls this year were. (Remember the ones that, showing governors race at 5-6 points?) I hope the polling experts get to examine the internals of these ones and lets us know if they're again trying to manufacture "momentum."

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Nick Kristof @nickkristof.bsky.social · 14h

In Portland, an ambulance was summoned to the ICE office to treat an injured protester (not clear how he was injured). But when the patient was loaded inside, ICE officers refused to let the ambulance leave and threatened to shoot the ambulance driver: www.wweek.com/news/2025/10...

Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver

Feds delayed medics who had come to pick up an injured protester. Then, according to confidential incident reports, the agents became aggressive.

www.wweek.com

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Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 9h

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 1d

It's hard to help Americans left behind because so much of US identity is rooted in individualism. The average American conservative holds all three positions at once:

— Virtue signals about supporting US manufacturing
— Against raising the minimum wage
— Buys foreign imports because they're cheap

HardPass4 on Twitter tweets: "I'm willing to pay more for quality products if they are made in America, by Americans, who are paid a decent income." The tweet shows Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" painting, which is often used to show the tweeter is expressing a brave opinion.

HardPass4 on Twitter tweets: "MINIMUM WAGE JOBS WERE NOT MEANT TO BE A CAREER. Why does no one understand this? Entry level jobs are STEPPING STONES to better jobs. No one wants to work towards that though."

HardPass4 on Twitter tweets: "Buy $5 gloves instead of $50 ones. Trust me." The tweet shows a box of "Gorilla Grip" gloves.

The label on Gorilla Grip gloves show they're made in China.

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Redshift ❌👑 @redshift42.bsky.social · 7h

I just signed Kyiv's petition with All Out that could really change things for LGBT+ people. Add your name and join me in the fight for LGBT+ rights! a.allout.org/s/Oodwl/

URGENT: In Ukraine, same-sex couples face unthinkable challe

Legislation is underway to recognize their rights, but we need YOUR help to apply pressure. SIGN the petition NOW. Help them have the rights they deserve!

a.allout.org

Redshift ❌👑 @redshift42.bsky.social · 8h

Signs popping up around D.C. note: ‘ICE kidnapping happened here’ (gift article)
wapo.st/3J8HS6E

Signs popping up around D.C. note: ‘ICE kidnapping happened here’

The signs range in style and mark numerous locations where people have been taken by federal agents.

wapo.st

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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 10h

ICE has been deployed to *provoke* civilians, not to protect them. They want to throw tear gas canisters and get people on the streets riled up, all to create footage for Fox News and Newsmax, et al., that will be used as a pretext for imposing martial law to lower voting rates in Democratic cities.

Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 1d

The only violence I’ve been seeing in Portland is from the so-called Feds!!!

Keep sharing these videos; it’s evidence.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 2d

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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digby @digby56.bsky.social · 1d

Remember,Trump reneged on an agreement to pay medical expenses for his disabled relative and told his nephew in 2020,

“Those people,” Fred Trump said his uncle told him, “the shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

www.disabilityscoop.com/2024/07/25/t....

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 1d

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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