Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 5h

Stick to the costumes guys

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 9h

I really wouldn’t be shining lasers at helicopters if I were you. It’s illegal and could cause an aircraft to crash - and that could kill a LOT of people, in the air and on the ground.

And the ICE goons appear to be *salivating* at the chance to claim people that they arrest were doing this:

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 13h

The rampant war zone of Portland

Kaia Sand @mkaiasand.bsky.social · 13h

Really sweet resistance scene outside ICE in Portland of coffee, donuts and morning.

Person in bunny costume carries donuts outside ICE in Portland

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Jack Iwashyna @iwashyna.bsky.social · Jul 18

Note also that the lawsuit alleges that because race and class are correlated, providing free tuition to lower income students is also racial preference.

They just want a pure aristocracy of inherited wealth

Jack Iwashyna @iwashyna.bsky.social · Jul 18

“Johns Hopkins has not merely preserved its discriminatory DEI framework — it has entrenched, expanded and openly celebrated it as a cornerstone of its institutional identity,”

www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/hi...

Conservative group files complaint against Hopkins medical school

America First Legal is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a formal investigation into diversity policies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

www.thebaltimorebanner.com

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Florence Ashley @floralashes.bsky.social · 2d

It is a fascinating thing that the Philistines refer to God in the plural, in 1 Samuel 4:8 – Philistines use plural agreements for God. In other passages they use the singular, but not there!

One might posit that this is an older poetic fragment that preserves Israelite polytheism.

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 13h

Activists can learn from ACT UP

Ricardo Levins Morales Art Studio @rlmartstudio.bsky.social · 14h

This week in 1988: 1,000+ ACT UP demonstrators shut down the FDA headquarters, demanding (and eventually winning) action on developing HIV/AIDS treatments. ACT UP's militant and creative actions always included powerful visual artwork, and paved the way for movements in the decades to come.

A photograph from the 1988 ACT UP demonstration outside the FDA. Many people are participating in a die-in on the front steps, holding mock tombstones with messages like "RIP - killed by the FDA" and "Dead from lack of drugs." A line of police officers (some with classic 80s mustaches) wearing riot helmets stands between them and the building; one cop wearing white gloves is walking through the demonstrators. Affixed to the 2nd story windows of the building is a series of posters and a large blank banner reading Silence = Death.

Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 15h

I love it

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James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 1d

It's incredible the extent to which Congress just utterly refuses to defend itself. You'd think for entirely self-interested reasons you would stridently oppose having the power of the purse arbitrarily ripped from you, ya know?

Why would you allow yourself to become the Roman Senate circa 27 BC.

Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 1d

Unconstitutionally taking money that the law says must be spent on one purpose & using it for something else—when it's to establish personalist control over the FUCKING MILITARY—is about as dangerous a constitutional crisis/failure as you can imagine

Via: www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...

The Office of Management and Budget sent a notification to Congress about their intent to use research and development funds to pay members of the military, two sources with direct knowledge tell NBC News.

A spokesperson for the OMB confirmed to NBC News that it plans to use the research and development funds and that there are two years' worth of funds available within the Department of Defense.

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 1d

Piggybacking on this: a lot of federal employees are having a hard time getting payment deferrals on car payments, credit cards, and utilities. You guys need to address this to companies and creditors, this isn't our fault.

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 1d

They'll learn when they need to take out loans they can't afford

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 1d

The democrats played friends with them too long.

Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 2d

And they think who they vote for isn't part of the "government"

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 3d

That's what happens when you actually take a stand on something

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 3d

The internet HATES happy women. Just despises them, lol.

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 3d

And centrist Dems need to be forgotten about

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 3d

We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly

Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy.

Some thoughts from my new piece:

🧵

We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly

Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy

steady.page

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 3d

They even have to admit it at The Hill

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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 4d

Oh — new reporting on Pope Leo from El Paso Matters, citing footage they have of yesterday's meeting.

Sounds like the pope was even *more* forceful in urging U.S. bishops to speak out about immigration than first reported.

I mean, that's…not subtle. elpasomatters.org/2025/10/08/e...

“I was struck at the beginning (of the video), it talks about the feeling of powerlessness, which I think is so much. I think it’s so important that we as a church give a message of hope in the midst of these horrible struggles, what’s going on in so many cities in the United States right now. At least the church cannot be silent,” the pope told the El Pasoans, according to a video of the meeting provided to El Paso Matters by Hope Border Institute.

Seitz responded: “You’ve spoken very strongly. We’re trying to do the same in our country and yet not get into the political fray the best that we can.”

Pope Leo told Seitz that he’d like to see the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops become more vocal on immigration issues.

“I mean, even within the conference, there are challenges. That’s one place they should be … I wish they were stronger in their own voice,” Leo said, adding that Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the president of the conference, should speak out more on immigration.

“There’s been some good movement in that sense, but I certainly intend to continue to encourage” U.S. bishops to address immigration, Leo said.

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Radio Free America @radiofreeflorida.bsky.social · 4d

This is America.

#RadioFreeAmerica

youtu.be/wVbHeSereR0?...

Commercial We Are America ft John Cena Love Has No Labels Ad Council

YouTube video by Professionally Pretty Model & Talent Agency

youtu.be

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 4d

This is an important point.

Everyone one of these people has been asked to leave their home, their family, and their job to work without pay bc of the shutdown. We're better off thinking of ways to make this backfire on Abbott than to treat them poorly.

Ben Raderstorf @raders.bsky.social · 5d

Texas National Guard troops arriving in Chicago (via ABC News)

Remember: These are not MAGA stormtroopers. These are everyday teachers and accountants who signed up to serve their country with their spare time. They're being used as political pawns by venal, un-American, draft-dodging president

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 4d

JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are doing something new and important: They understand Stephen Miller's theory of fascist power politics, and they've developed a theory on how to combat it. More Dems need to reckon with Miller's understanding of the moment.

New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/2014...

Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule

He wants to supercharge searing civil tensions to get low-information voters to embrace their inner authoritarian. Exactly two Democrats appear to fully grasp this.

newrepublic.com

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Bryan Edward Stone (שָׁלוֹם) @bestonetx.bsky.social · 5d

And like MAGA, the "Invisible Empire" was an organized grift that channeled followers' money to its founders.

Dr. William Horne @wihorne.bsky.social · 5d

We really need to be thinking abt the current regime through the lens of the Second Klan, which helped to nationalize systems of Jim Crow state & vigilante violence & exploitation while creating an explicitly white nationalist immigration system. They even paraded down Pennsylvania Ave.

A 1926 klan parade marching down Pennsylvania Ave. The front of the column holds banners that read Connecticut & Rhode Island. Original available via the Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2001706338/

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 5d

They should be locking the doors once the House is back in

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Asha Rangappa @asharangappa.bsky.social · 6d

We’re in a moment now where it would be worth people taking three hours to watch Gandhi, particularly the scene of the salt march. There is value to making the brutality of your opponent so plain as day that no one can argue with it. The clarity of that brought down an empire

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 6d

Americans lack a memory and the consequences of it are here

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Wig Powder 🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦 @wigpowder.bsky.social · 6d

We need to throw out analysis of what is going to "alienate" voters just like polling. People simply lie in polling and the general public has yet to feel the full brunt of what was passed in the budget bill. That might be the only thing that shifts public opinion

Feisty Firecracker @deaconwife.bsky.social · 6d

If all that is true then why and how did he get re-elected?