B. Safarik
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bradsafarik.bsky.social
B. Safarik
@bradsafarik.bsky.social
PhD, Associate Professor in Poli Sci, interested in political systems of the Global South, increasingly concerned about democratic backsliding in my own country. Polyglot. Eyes wide open.
Reposts are sometimes endorsements
Reposted by B. Safarik
November 25, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
"Unfortunately, a decade into the revelations of how social media is poisoning us, government and the social media platforms are actually unwinding the very few safeguards they’ve ever put into place," writes @vermontgmg.bsky.social: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/the-very-b...
November 25, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
After ousting the BLS director and scrapping the October jobs and inflation reports, Trump is now canceling release of the advance Q3 GDP estimate.

Trump doesn't mind turning the lights off on the economy because he’d rather Americans not know how badly it’s doing under him.
November 25, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
Dr. Ralph Lee Abraham, who as Louisiana’s surgeon general ordered the state health department to stop promoting vaccinations and who has called Covid vaccines “dangerous,” has been named the second in command at the CDC.
(Gift article)

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/h...
C.D.C. Quietly Appoints Doctor Critical of Vaccines as Second in Command
www.nytimes.com
November 25, 2025 at 6:45 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
but that line is a fact. Objectively true.
NEWS --> BBC confirms to me that they did edit a line out of historian @rutgerbregman.com's speech. It called Trump "the most openly corrupt president in US history."

BBC also confirms this was done on the advice of lawyers. So Trump's threats worked.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/2036...
Trump’s Fury at BBC Gets Unnerving Results with Pro-MAGA Edit Stunner
First, British Broadcasting Corporation execs resigned after Trump complained about a segment. Now the BBC edited out a line from a historian that was critical of Trump. Where does this end?
newrepublic.com
November 25, 2025 at 8:37 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
Alito and others think the offense is in pointing out the government is lying, rather than the government lying bsky.app/profile/mjsd...
This is the same playbook the Trump administration ran in Portland, where DHS officials falsely accused local police of failing to help them (or not arriving quickly enough). Strikes me as a problem that the government lies so freely to the Supreme Court now. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u...
November 25, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
A Trump administration request to the Supreme Court to deploy troops in Chicago contains factual errors, mischaracterizing the responsiveness of local police and the actions of protesters, our Visual Investigations team found. nyti.ms/43T7qfn
Times Analysis Finds Errors in Trump’s Supreme Court Filing That Calls for National Guard in Chicago
The Trump administration has claimed the police were slow to protect federal agents on Oct. 4, but videos and audio show that their rationale conflates hours of events involving a shooting, a protest, a car crash and a police radio call.
nyti.ms
November 25, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
This is called “chain refoulment” and it’s illegal under both U.S. and international law. And the State Department and ICE know very well what Ghana is doing and simply don’t care.
ICE deported a woman who owned a home in the US for 30 years. A judge banned ICE from deporting her to Sierra Leone where she had been tortured, so it deported her to Ghana, which kidnapped her and sent her back Sierra Leone anyway. ICE is part of this illegal conspiracy.
November 25, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
FYI the conservative justices' complaints are, by and large, petty, self-serving, and absurd wisconsinexaminer.com/2023/08/10/w...
What a temper tantrum by the Wisconsin Supreme Court's chief justice tells us • Wisconsin Examiner
Chief Justice Annette Ziegler accuses the Wisconsin Supreme Court's new majority of a 'coup' but it's the right seeking illegitimate power
wisconsinexaminer.com
November 25, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
The numbers vary from study to study but hundreds of thousands of people have died because of Elon Musk and Marco Rubio illegally disbanding USAID — a body count on par with the first eight years of the Syrian civil war — In just seven months. It’s mass death that is simply unfathomable in scale.
USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, accord...
hsph.harvard.edu
November 25, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
November 25, 2025 at 2:49 AM
Reposted by B. Safarik
A few months ago @thelocal.to got a promising pitch from a writer with bylines in whole bunch of reputable publications—The Cut, The Guardian, Dwell, Architectural Digest, etc. Then I started investigating. Here's a story about fabulists in journalism's AI slop era. thelocal.to/investigatin...
Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era | The Local
A suspicious pitch from a freelancer led editor Nicholas Hune-Brown to dig into their past work. By the end, four publications, including The Guardian and Dwell, had removed articles from their sites.
thelocal.to
November 19, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
“The younger generation is the most ecologically informed ever."

They are also “the most emotionally involved in [nature loss], have contributed the least to [its] causing, and are going to suffer most as a result.”

The power of rewilding to transform our own lives, as well as nature.
November 25, 2025 at 6:21 AM
Reposted by B. Safarik
Cannot overstate how, from my perch as a national-security reporter, this would have been an earth-shattering scandal in a prior era.
Billionaire Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, pardoned by Donald Trump, has been accused of facilitating millions of dollars’ worth of payments to Hamas in the wake of its attack on Israel on October 7 2023. Zhao also financed the Trump family's entrance into the cryptocurrency market.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao accused of facilitating payments to Hamas
Crypto tycoon pardoned by Donald Trump faces US court complaint from families of victims of October 7 attack
www.ft.com
November 25, 2025 at 4:33 AM
Reposted by B. Safarik
The Overton Window has shifted and increasingly wanton overt bigotry and evil are mainstream. Don’t accept it. Fight and defy people like this.

www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-colu...
British columnist Melanie Phillips lashes out at Palestinians at pro-Israel NYC event
The controversial columnist and broadcaster also mocked Christianity and claimed the West is facing a 'death cult' in 'forces of Islam'
www.middleeasteye.net
November 25, 2025 at 5:18 AM
Reposted by B. Safarik
Worth reiterating that what Trump tried to pull off with Halligan would, if successful, neutralize the Constitution’s appointments clause and allow him to install an endless series of insane and unqualified prosecutors without a single Senate vote. slate.com/news-and-pol...
It Turns Out Lindsey Halligan Was a Fake Prosecutor All Along
This fight is not over.
slate.com
November 24, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
It says a LOT about Neil Gorsuch and really the entire FedSoc wing of the Supreme Court, that Mike Davis clerked for Gorsuch not once, but *twice*: first in the Tenth Circuit, and then again—at Gorsuch's request—when he was elevated to SCOTUS.
Article III Project (A3P) founder Mike Davis, a close ally of Ed Martin, is wigging out over the dismissal of the court cases against James Comey & Leticia James. (Davis has said that A3P is advising Trump on judicial nominations.) 1/ x.com/mrddmia/stat...
November 24, 2025 at 7:57 PM
#Kavanaughstop
#SCOTUS approved terror campaigns of US citizens by masked bandits.
ICE kidnapped a 17-year-old U.S. citizen named Christian Jimenez. Jimenez, a high school senior born in Newberg, Oregon, was driving on his school’s lunch break when ICE/CBP agents stopped his car, smashed his window, and abducted him on November 21, 2025.

www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...
November 24, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
With the Epstein Files in the wings, Trump is back to sharing QAnon memes on Truth Social

(Note collar; and 'tick tock' is a common phrase in the QAnon lexicon)
November 24, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
Is it possible that our "immigrant problem" was far smaller and less significant than they've been trying to scare us into believing?
The Heritage Foundation, the white nationalist “think tank” behind Project 2025, says in a report out Friday that the Trump administration is "significantly off pace" on mass deportations.

www.axios.com/2025/11/21/h...
Heritage report blasts Trump's record on deportations
"The American people voted for mass deportations. They're getting mass communications instead."
www.axios.com
November 24, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
For the Tahltan, it seems like a case study in asserting Indigenous rights and winning benefits from industries operating on their traditional lands.

But as the rush for critical metals turbocharges demand for copper, it might pose risks for Indigenous groups across the border in Alaska. #canpoli
One Indigenous Community's Mining Windfall Is Another’s Worry | The Tyee
As the Tahltan benefit from Red Chris and other critical metal plays, 14 Alaskan nations are pushing back.
thetyee.ca
November 24, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
Last month, Article 3 Project (A3P) founder Mike Davis posted these heinous remarks. I’ve kept my eye on him because he has bragged on X that A3P advises Trump on judicial nominees, because he’s close with Ed Martin, & because “National Conservatism proponent” Josh Hammer is an A3P attorney. 1/
November 24, 2025 at 9:15 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
Trump amplified foreign-based accounts repeatedly, often opting to amplify foreign accounts over actual US MAGA accounts. meidasnews.com/news/trump-a...
Trump Amplified Foreign-Based Accounts This Weekend
One account boosted by Trump promoted banning Ilhan Omar from office. The account is based in Africa.
meidasnews.com
November 24, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
American Gestapo
In California, a mother of eight who has lived in the country for 40 years was deported just one day after she reported sexual harassment by an ICE contractor on her case. This action was taken despite a judge’s order prohibiting it.
November 24, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Reposted by B. Safarik
NEW in Bolts: Before he left office, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 people on federal death row. Now, Trump officials are sending them to a notoriously harsh supermax prison.

Read our new collaboration with @thenation.com:
Death Row Prisoners Granted Clemency by Biden Brace for “Living Hell” Under Trump
Trump officials are retaliating by imposing the harshest conditions in the entire federal prison system, including near total isolation.
boltsmag.org
November 24, 2025 at 5:10 PM