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Dr Bob
@drbob601.bsky.social
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Reposted by Dr Bob
Anna Brauch said an ICE agent grabbed her by handcuffs, and used all his strength to yank her repeatedly around the car.

She told him: “You're breaking my hands, you’re breaking my hands.”

He told her: “I don’t fucking care. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up.” (6) www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...
Fear factor: Intimidation becomes a calling card as Twin Cities ICE surge widens
Six weeks into the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, observers say there are signs that federal agents are employing violence more frequently and with little apparent restraint against citiz...
www.mprnews.org
January 16, 2026 at 8:29 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Wow, they really are tracking down the most hardened criminals in America, even the bloodthirsty monsters who work at ... toy stores?
DHS employees entered our store this afternoon and served us a Notice of Inspection, demanding copies of I9 forms for each employee.

In 27 years as shopkeepers, we have never been subjected to this type of investigation.
January 17, 2026 at 1:03 AM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic.

The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.
Breaking news: The Justice Department has issued subpoenas for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as part of an investigation alleging that they are impeding federal law enforcement officers’ abilities to do their jobs in the state.
Justice Dept. launches criminal investigation of Minnesota governor
The Justice Department has issued subpoenas for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as part of an investigation into impeding law enforcement.
www.washingtonpost.com
January 16, 2026 at 11:46 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
🙃

This FB post is public.
January 16, 2026 at 11:24 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Well put
34-time convicted fraudster Donald Trump launches an invasion of Minneapolis on the pretext of stopping fraud, and then fires all the fraud prosecutors and grants his sixtieth pardon to a large-scale fraudster. If you believe his pretexts, you're extremely gullible.
Trump Sets Fraudster Free From Prison for a Second Time
www.nytimes.com
January 16, 2026 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Her father faced bribery charges. She donated $2.5M to a pro-Trump Super PAC. Trump's Justice Department gave her father a lenient deal, overruling prosecutors. She gave another $1M. Now Trump has pardoned her dad. @kenvogel.bsky.social @susannecraignyt.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/u...
Trump Sets Fraudster Free From Prison for a Second Time
www.nytimes.com
January 16, 2026 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
BREAKING: Judge enters TRO blocking feds from interfering with or arresting peaceful protesters in Minnesota. Judge Kate Menendez, Biden appointee. Order: www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
January 17, 2026 at 1:02 AM
Reposted by Dr Bob
It’s the latter. And it answers a question I kept posing: how do you punish people with complex bureaucracy if you dismantle…the complex bureaucracy that can punish?

You can’t.
On the Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend, the Department of Education announces that borrowers will not have their wages or tax refunds garnished for being in default on their student loans. This could be driven by political considerations or difficulties in actually collecting funds.
U.S. Department of Education Delays Involuntary Collections Amid Ongoing Student Loan Repayment Improvements
ED announced that it will delay the implementation of involuntary collections on federal student loans, including Administrative Wage Garnishment and the Treasury Offset Program, to enable the Departm...
www.ed.gov
January 16, 2026 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
This is an answer nobody would ever accept from a democrat. A democrat who gave this answer would be ruthlessly mocked until the end of time. Yet Trump and Republicans get away with it without so much as a follow-up.
Q: Can you explain how your healthcare plan will affect premiums?

TRUMP: It's a tremendous thing. It's called the great healthcare plan. And we're gonna get tremendous, uh, reductions through, uh, if you look at prescription drugs, they're gonna come down by numbers that have never been seen before
January 16, 2026 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
every single successful general strike in US history has had union backing through the local AFL-CIO

this is the first time it’s been called for since the 1940s
January 16, 2026 at 9:24 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Every few weeks we get a story like this and it always fizzle out. Stephen Miller is in control. Let's not pretend otherwise. Even when Brooke Rollins convinced Trump to *publicly* say he'd back off of some raids, it took Miller just 48 hours to browbeat Trump into changing his mind.
Trump is privately worried about the "optics" of ICE raids and his advisers are looking for ways to soften them, Axios reports. I'm calling bullshit: The terror and violence cannot be hived off from the broader policy agenda. They are 100% intrinsic to it.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/2053...
Trump’s Own Advisers Suddenly Unnerved as ICE Raids Take Horrific Turn
So the president doesn’t like the “optics” of what ICE is doing. But there’s no such thing as sanitized, popular mass deportations—and this is by design.
newrepublic.com
January 16, 2026 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
NEW: Trump’s DHS forces have shot 11 people since September. NBC News examined every case, revealing a pattern that policing experts called alarming: officers firing into cars, injuring and killing drivers.
Trump's DHS has shot 11 people during immigration enforcement operations since September
The ICE and Border Patrol shootings show a pattern that policing experts say is alarming: officers firing into cars and injuring and killing drivers.
www.nbcnews.com
January 16, 2026 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Full survey results show American public have high levels of confidence in scientists while revealing some partisan differences (including on how to fund science), but statements asserting lost trust should be read instead as intentional efforts to degrade trust.

www.pewresearch.org/science/2026...
January 16, 2026 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
pretty sure he meant the other thing, grok, but very cool that those are your two things
January 16, 2026 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
A perfect (and terrible) example of how "state capture" does not always mean *using* state power for private ends -- as it's usually understood -- but can instead mean *destroying* the state's capacity to pursue broadly public ends.
New, from me: A year in, did DOGE deliver on its promises?

Not the promises it made to us (cut spending, modernize government, improve services). It worsened state capacity.

But it was part of a successful broligarchy exercise in state capture. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-year-on-...
A Year On: The DOGE Disaster
A Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of your government
donmoynihan.substack.com
January 16, 2026 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Look at this absolute queen
January 16, 2026 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
JUDGE: how does your client plead

MY LAWYER: like a whiny little bitch your honor

ME: hey quit it i do not

JUDGE: whoa i see what you mean counselor

MY LAWYER: right? so annoying
January 6, 2026 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
It’s the weekend. Treat yourself, America. Your luxurious $3 meal comes with one whole M&M tonight.
January 16, 2026 at 6:22 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Tired: Committing fraud, getting a Trump pardon

Wired: Committing fraud again, getting a Trump pardon again

www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...
January 16, 2026 at 6:54 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Man Who Sent Mob to Storm Capitol, Beat Police, Hang Vice President Worried About Looking Heavy Handed
Trump is privately worried about the "optics" of ICE raids and his advisers are looking for ways to soften them, Axios reports. I'm calling bullshit: The terror and violence cannot be hived off from the broader policy agenda. They are 100% intrinsic to it.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/2053...
Trump’s Own Advisers Suddenly Unnerved as ICE Raids Take Horrific Turn
So the president doesn’t like the “optics” of what ICE is doing. But there’s no such thing as sanitized, popular mass deportations—and this is by design.
newrepublic.com
January 16, 2026 at 8:10 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
A former federal agent after watching the New York Times breakdown of the ICE shooting:
January 16, 2026 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
Peter Pomerantsev called his book about the information environment of Putin's Russia "Nothing is True & Everything is Possible" to convey how important turning it into an unnavigable morass of lies was to consolidating autocracy there, precisely because it made cynicism the main rational response
I've increasingly come to view cynicism as the seedbed of totalitarianism, both because it can paralyze the opposition and because it implicitly validates the might-makes-right ethic of the authoritarian.
i have been reading Tom Ricks’ “Fighting the Good War” which is a military analysis of the civil rights movement, and one thing that comes abundantly across is that movement leaders and ordinary people made it a practice to refuse to fall into despair and cynicism.
January 16, 2026 at 8:29 PM
@scoremywordle.bsky.social

Wordle 1,672 4/6

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January 16, 2026 at 8:09 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
January 16, 2026 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Dr Bob
"Trump allowed the richest man in the world, who has increasingly embraced a white nationalist worldview, to condemn potentially millions of mostly non-white people to death. Its that simple. The elimination of USAID is the greatest moral atrocity of the Trump admin to date, and one driven by DOGE."
New, from me: A year in, did DOGE deliver on its promises?

Not the promises it made to us (cut spending, modernize government, improve services). It worsened state capacity.

But it was part of a successful broligarchy exercise in state capture. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-year-on-...
A Year On: The DOGE Disaster
A Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of your government
donmoynihan.substack.com
January 16, 2026 at 3:01 PM