mxtt the secessionist
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mxttqhuman.bsky.social
mxtt the secessionist
@mxttqhuman.bsky.social
110 followers 70 following 1K posts
audhd, nonbinary, anti-capitalist, secessionist. break the US into 6-12 countries.
more coming soon (hopefully).
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mxttqhuman.bsky.social
mxtt the secessionist @mxttqhuman.bsky.social · Sep 10
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Where do the Trump/Miller camps stand along with other historical camps?

slate.com/news-and-pol...
SLATE Headline: Trump's Deportation Warehouse System Already Matches a Very Specific Period in History BY DAHLIA LITHWICK FEB 17,2026 | 2:22 PM Dahlia Lithwick: What is being built? At what speed is it being built? At what cost is it being built? How is it that we're at the place where the language that you use in your post, concentration camps, actually is not just apt but has become fairly obvious? Andrea Pitzer: The U.S. already had a pretty extensive immigration deportation system. In the first Trump administration, the White House wanted to prioritize the kinds of optics that signaled that it could go after anybody at any time. That led to a sort of a Keystone Cops approach, and so the numbers of people deported were in fact lower than under Barack Obama. But the optics of things like family separations and the deliberate cruelty were really apparent. The administration learned from that first outing that it needed to do more planning and be more strategic. Now that Donald Trump has returned to office, we're still seeing a lot of Keystone Cops stuff that the administration probably didn't intend for people to see, but we're also seeing a lot of deliberate cruelty on the streets that it does intend for people to see. The infrastructure of all that is extraordinary. When you look at some of the biggest concentration camp systems across the world, we are actually approaching or ahead of the numbers for those massive famous ones. The Nazis came to power in 1933 and immediately, within weeks, had opened Dachau-which, I will note, was founded on a converted factory site-so we're echoing this history right from the beginning. It was not until about five and a half years later, with Kristallnacht, that they started doing large sweeps of German Jews into camps. In that 48-hour period, more than 30,000 Jews were sent into concentration camps. That was five years into Nazi rule. We are at the end of the first year of this second Trump administration. And even when you look at, let's say, 1940 to 1941, World War Il had started, Germany was putting a lot more people into camps, and yet we have more people in immigrant detention today than Nazi Germany did seven years into the Third Reich, which I think is just astounding when you think about it. This is not something this administration stumbles into sideways, right? This was the plan. Last April, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons was heard to say that what he really, really wanted to do was to just run deportations like a business: "Like Amazon Prime, but with human beings," he said. We are witnessing the construction of a system for just warehousing people systematically. How much of what we are seeing playing out right now is just the tip of the iceberg for what is imagined? If we look at that "Amazonification," different concentration camps evolved over time in different ways. I often use the Nazi example because it's almost the only concentration camp system people know, even though there have been a bunch of different ones. The Nazis were the very first who took this logistical approach that we think of as Amazonification now. There was a detainee named Margarete Buber-Neumann, who wrote an amazing memoir, Under Two Dictators. She was detained in the Soviet gulag system, then later held in the Nazi concentration camp system. The Soviets handed her over to the Gestapo at the beginning of World War II, and she describes coming to the Nazi camp system and being issued
February 18, 2026 at 10:41 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Hmmmmm….

Guardian on Microsoft and ICE surveillance: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

BBC on Microsoft cutting off Israeli surveillance (because of Guardian reporting): www.bbc.com/news/article...
The Guardian Headline: ICE reliance on Microsoft technology surged amid immigration crackdown, documents show Exclusive: ICE more than tripled the amount of data stored in Microsoft's cloud at the same time that its arsenal of surveillance technology ballooned BBC Headline: Microsoft cuts off some services used by Israeli military unit 25 September 2025 Natalie Sherman 8 Microsoft has cut off some services to a unit of Israel's Ministry of Defence after an investigation found its technology had been used to conduct mass surveillance on people in Gaza. Brad Smith, president of the company, said using the firm's technology to conduct mass surveillance on civilians was a violation of its standard terms of service. Mr Smith said the decision, which was prompted by an investigation published by The Guardian, would not affect other work the company does with Israel. Microsoft's work with the Israeli government has been a controversial issue, including within the company, prompting protests by employees. "I know many of you care about this topic," Mr Smith wrote in a message to staff that was published by the company on Thursday. He emphasised that the review was ongoing: "I'll share more information in the coming days and weeks, when it's appropriate to do so."
February 18, 2026 at 12:43 AM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
As I was saying, sewing doubt into the electoral process is a huge win for Trump on many fronts.

If people are worn out and distrusting now, just wait until the dozens of lawsuits to contest election results all over the country!

www.latimes.com/politics/sto...
Headline: Voter trust in U.S. elections drops amid Trump critiques, redistricting, fear of ICE By Kevin Rector Staff Writer Feb. 16, 2026 3 AM PT • Republicans cite mail ballot fraud concerns. Democrats fear voter intimidation and ICE agents stationed at polling places. • One expert called the across-the-board decline in voter confidence a 'parallel movement in this polarized era.' Voter trust in the upcoming midterm elections, meanwhile, has dropped off sharply, and across party lines, according to new research by the UC San Diego Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections. Out of 11,406 eligible voters surveyed between mid-December and mid-January, just 60% said they were confident that midterm votes will be counted fairly — down from 77% who held such confidence in vote counting shortly after the 2024 presidential election. Shifts in voter confidence are common after elections, with voters in winning parties generally expressing more confidence and voters in losing parties expressing less, said Thad Kousser, one of the center's co-directors. However, the new survey found double-digit, across-the-board declines in confidence in the last year, he said. According to voting experts, such drops in confidence and fears about voter intimidation are alarming - and raise serious questions about voter turnout in a pivotal midterm election that could radically reshape American politics. Many Democratic leaders and voting experts have raised concerns about disenfranchisement and intimidation of eligible voters, in part based on Republican efforts to enforce stricter voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements, and Trump suggesting his party should "take over" elections nationwide. Others in Trump's orbit have suggested Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be deployed to polling stations, and the FBI recently raided and seized ballots from Fulton County, Ga., Long a target of Trump's baseless claims of 2020 election fraud.
February 16, 2026 at 3:50 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
"I Have Been Here Too Long": Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE's Dilley Facility

www.propublica.org/article/ice-...
PROPUBLICA Image: a child’s drawing, "yo en dilei EStay feliz tortavor Saquemet de a qui colombia Antonio” Headline: "I Have Been Here Too Long": Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE's Dilley Facility by Mica Rosenberg, Anna Donlan, Shoshana Gordon and Cengiz Yar February 9, 5:25am ET In early February there were more than 750 families, nearly half of them including children, as well as some 370 single adult women being held at this facility. It is just one of many immigration centers across the coun-try, but the only one holding fami-lies. Since the start of the Trump administration, the number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention has sky-rocketed, increasing sixfold. ProPublica received letters in mid-January from several children at Dil-ley. All but two of them had been living in the United States when they were detained. In their words and drawings, they convey how much they ache for creature comforts and describe the anguish of being trapped. They write about missing their friends and teachers, falling Susej F A 9-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Houston, Texas Detained for 50 days "Hello, my name is Susej F and l'am 9 years old. I'am from Venezuela. I have been 50 days in Dilley Immigration Processing Center. And I want to go to my Country. But I miss my school and my friends I feel bad since when I came here to this Place, because I have been here too long. I have been 2 years and 6 months in united states, and I was happy with my friends in The school but now I need to leave. I miss my family in my country so now I want To go to Venezuela. But my mom do not want to leave because she wants a better future for me. Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S looking for a good and safe place to Listen to Ariana read her letter Link to media player ••• Ariana V. V. A 14-year-old from Honduras who was living in Hicksville, New York Detained for 45 days "Hello, my name is Ariana V.V. im 14 years old and im from Honduras, ive been detained for 45 days and I have never felt so much fear to go to a place as I feel here everytime I remind myself that once I go back to Honduras a lot of dangerous things could happen to my mom and my younger siblings haven't been able to see their mom in more than a month. They are very young and you need both of your parents when you are growing up. Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression. When people have their
February 16, 2026 at 3:18 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Is SAVE making mistakes or are these exactly the people the Trump admin is fighting to discredit as voters?

Trump’s whole game here is to maintain the illusion of democracy while manipulating the electoral process to MAGA’s advantage.

www.propublica.org/article/save...
Headline: "Not Ready for Prime Time." A Federal Tool to Check Voter Citizenship Keeps Making Mistakes. by Jen Fifield, ProPublica, and Zach Despart, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune February 13, 5:30am ET When county clerk Brianna Lennon got an email in November saying a newly expanded federal system had flagged 74 people on the county's voter roll as potential noncitizens, she was taken aback. Lennon, who'd run elections in Boone County, Missouri, for seven years, had heard the tool might not be accurate. The flagged voters' registration paperwork confirmed Lennon's sus-picions. The form for the second person on the list bore the initials of a member of her staff, who'd helped the man register — at his naturalization ceremony. It later turned out more than half the Boone County voters identified as noncitizens were actually citizens. At Trump's direction, DHS has pooled confidential data from across the federal government to enable states to mass-verify voters' citizenship status using SAVE. Many of the nation's Republican secretaries of state have eagerly embraced the experiment, agreeing to upload all or part of their rolls. But an examination of SAVE's rollout by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reveals that DHS rushed the revamped tool into use while it was still adding data and before it could discern voters' most up-to-date citizenship information. Texas and Missouri were among the first states to try the augmented tool. In Missouri, state officials acted on SAVE's findings before attempting to confirm them, directing county election administrators to make voters flagged as potential noncitizens temporarily unable to vote. But in hundreds of cases, the tool's determinations were wrong, our review found. Lennon was among dozens of clerks statewide who raised alarms about the system's errors. "It really does not help my confi-dence," she said, "that the information we are trying to use to make really important decisions, like the determination of voter eligibility, is so inaccurate."
February 16, 2026 at 2:53 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
The United States didn’t magically turn into a fascist empire under the Trump admin. They are just the authoritarian opportunists who capitalized on what has been building/deteriorating since the end of WWII and was accelerated by 9/11.
February 15, 2026 at 4:29 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
How broken is the American brain? Today I told someone I had given up my FitBit years ago and they said, “you don’t go running anymore???”

We have been so thoroughly deskilled that even the idea of exercise is intrinsically linked to technology.

Can’t wait for our AI future!
February 14, 2026 at 5:56 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
The fear mongering is that immigrants “steal” tax dollars by existing.

The better “solution” is to burn billions of tax dollars creating what will likely be inhumane facilities so we can ensure the US is…?

That much more white…?

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
The Washington post Headline: ICE plans to spend $38.3 billion turning warehouses into detention centers Lede: Documents released Thursday offer the most complete picture to date of the Trump administration's controversial and costly plan to overhaul immigrant detention using industrial buildings. February 13 at 12:17 PM 2026 By Douglas MacMillan and Jonathan O'Connell U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants, according to agency documents provided to New Hampshire's governor and published on the state's website Thursday. ICE plans to buy and convert 16 buildings across the country to serve as regional processing centers, each holding 1,000 to 1,500 immigrant detainees at a time, according to one of the documents, an overview of the detention plan. Another eight large-scale detention centers will hold 7,000 to 10,000 detainees at a time, and serve as "the primary locations" for international removals. Detainees would spend an average of three to seven days at the processing sites before being transported to the larger facilities, where they would be held about 60 days before being deported, according to the document. The additional detention space is necessary, the document states, due to ICE's hiring of more agents and an expected surge in arrests. In several of the towns targeted for the project, local officials have said their water and sewer infrastructure would not be sufficient for a new facility holding thousands of people. For example, in Social Circle, Georgia, a town with a population of 5,000, the town is permitted to pump up to 1 million gallons of water per day, and for much of the year, its peak usage is already above 800,000 gallons, according to data the city's manager shared with The Post. In the project overview document, ICE says it reviewed the water supply at all of the proposed buildings, and found that "the capacities currently at the sites are sufficient to support the new facilities." However, at the larger sites, the document said, "additional infrastructure" would be needed to support wastewater systems, and "numerous solutions" will be implemented. The document did not provide any more details.
February 14, 2026 at 2:59 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Here’s another fun twist on Trump’s reality show administration, the gov’t is paid $1mil per deportee to create a false threat of being sent to terrible places. In reality, the Trump admin then just paid to send them back to their home countries.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
The Guardian Headline: US paid $32m to five countries to accept about 300 deportees, report shows Lede: Some of the world's most corrupt countries have received huge payments in third-country deportation scheme A 30-page report from Senate foreign relations committee Democrats, released on Thursday and shared with the Guardian, details how the US government paid more than $32m to five foreign governments - including some of the world's most corrupt regimes - to accept approximately 300 third-country nationals deported from the US. In the most extreme case, the administration paid Rwanda $7.5m plus an estimated $601,864 in flight costs to accept just seven people - about $1.1m per individual, according to the report's analysis of government spending data and flight records. The administration similarly paid Equatorial Guinea $7.5m to take 29 people, costing taxpayers an estimated $282,126 per person. Palau was paid $7.5m with no documented flights, Eswatini was paid $5.1m for 15 people, and El Salvador $4.76m for about 250 people. Committee staff indicated the state department is pursuing third-country deportation agreements with 70 to 80 countries. More than 80% of migrants sent to these third countries have already returned to their home nations or are in the process of doing so, the investigation found, raising the question as to why they were not deported directly in the first place. "The Trump administration is sometimes paying the country to take people, flying them there and then paying to take them to their home country. It doesn't make sense," one current US official told committee staff, according to the report, which is the first of its kind under the second Trump administration. "This is a scare tactic for them be able to tell people here in the US: if you don't self-deport, you could get sent to South Sudan. You could get sent to Eswatini," a member of the committee told the Guardian. "I really think that that is a huge driving factor, both for the pace and the way in which they've been carrying this out." The practice has resulted in the US government paying twice for some deportees' travel. In one case, a Jamaican national was sent to the southern African nation of Eswatini at an estimated cost of more than $181,000, only to be flown back to Jamaica on US-funded flights weeks later. The Jamaican government publicly stated it had "not refused the return of any of our nationals", contradicting administration claims that third countries are only used when home governments refuse to accept deportees back. "We spent so much of last year hearing about how we have to cut waste, we have to cut spending," said the member. "We're not spending millions of dollars on foreign assistance, on health saving dollars for childcare and maternity health and diseases and epidemics and famine around the world, but we are spending it on this."
February 14, 2026 at 1:48 AM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Elon Musk’s Starlink is developing quite a name for itself in global conflicts.

Don’t forget when Musk sent them to help Ukraine, but then became buds with Vladimir Putin. See below for more on that.

www.wsj.com/world/middle...
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Headline: U.S. Smuggled Thousands of Starlink Terminals Into Iran After Protest Crackdown Lede: The Trump administration has denied fomenting public unrest in Iran, but the operation shows it has provided covert support to antiregime efforts After Iranian authorities smothered mounting unrest in January by killing thousands of protesters and severely cutting internet connectivity, the U.S. smuggled roughly 6,000 of the satellite-internet kits into the country, the first time the U.S. has directly sent Starlink into Iran. The State Department had purchased nearly 7,000 Starlink terminals in earlier months-with most bought in January—to help anti-regime activists circumvent internet shutoffs in Iran, officials said. The purchase came after senior Trump administration appointees decided to divert some funds from other internet-freedom initiatives inside Iran to the purchasing of Starlink terminals instead. Trump and Musk spoke in January about ensuring Iranians could use Starlink to access the internet during protests, the White House confirmed at the time. The administration's decision to procure Starlink systems came against the backdrop of internal debates over whether diverting funds to Starlink would undercut other important U.S. programs that fund internet access in Iran. For months, senior officials pushed Starlink as the best way to support antiregime movements inside Iran alongside or instead of virtual private networks, known more commonly as VPNs. Mora Namdar, who until December led State's Middle East bureau, in August sent a memo to Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging the acquisition of Star-link expressly for delivery to Iran. While her bureau "has funded a variety of VPNs and other internet freedom technologies, it is useless when the internet is shut down," she wrote. Internet-freedom experts and other U.S. officials have advocated for fully funding VPNs because they would better protect Iranian dissidents. They argued for funding both Starlink and VPNs, but warned against curbing VPN funds. Operating Starlink without VPNs, they said, would make it easier for Iranian authorities to geolocate the user, adding that VPNs are also more accessible and cost-effective for a broader base of peo-ple. Some 30 million Iranians used U.S.-funded VPNs during the country's widespread protests in 2022, according to internal State Department data. State Department officials also estimate that around 20 percent of Iranians were still able to get limited internet access with U.S.-funded VPN services during the 12-day war in June 2025, when the Iranian government issued a nearly full-scale internet blackout following U.S. and Israeli strikes.
February 12, 2026 at 4:30 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Symbolic compliance. The “surge” is ending.

WSJ: www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Wired: www.wired.com/story/ice-ex...
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Headline: Trump Administration to End Immigration Crackdown in Minnesota Lede: Border czar Tom Homan says officials will be winding down the enforcement surge in the state WIRED Headline: The ICE Expansion Won't Happen in the Dark Lede: People have a right to know who their neighbors are, especially when it's ICE. BRIAN BARRETT 02.11.26 14:02 PM ON TUESDAY, WIRED published details of ICE's planned expansion into more than 150 office spaces across the United States, including 54 specific addresses. If you haven't read that yet, you should, not least because there's probably one not far from you. ICE has designs on every major US city. It plans to not only occupy existing government spaces but share hallways and elevator bays with medical offices and small businesses. It will be down the street from daycares and within walking distance of churches and treatment centers. Its enforcement officers and lawyers will have cubicles a modest drive away from giant warehouses that have been tapped to hold thousands of humans that ICE will detain. Normally a leasing frenzy like this would happen out in the open; it would involve multiple bids, renovations of selected spaces, all the process and bureaucracy that makes government work slow but accountable. Not so here. The General Services Administration, which manages federal government properties, was asked to skip standard operating procedures in favor of speed and discretion. Internal documents reviewed by WIRED make clear that these locations, and the way in which they were acquired or planned, were intended to be a secret from the start. They should not be. Which is why we published them.
February 12, 2026 at 3:20 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Why waste money sending people to gulags in other countries when we can build for-profit gulags right here at home!

slate.com/news-and-pol...
SLATE Headline: Trump's Plan for an American Gulag Just Got a Major Boost in Court BY MARK JOSEPH STERN FEB 10,2026 | 4:32 PM President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign seemed to hit a horrifying crescendo in the last month, with chaos in the streets of Minneapolis stretching the city's populace to a near-breaking point. Unfortunately, the situation is about to get worse. On Friday, two far-right judges greenlit the Trump administration's radical reinterpretation of federal law that would sweep millions more immigrants into mandatory detention, potentially expanding the mass deportation machinery in new and horrifying ways. Their 2-1 decision for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would transform the entire United States into a permanent border zone where unauthorized immigrants can be jailed indefinitely without bond, even years after they arrived. It supercharges the administration's push to build an archipelago of mass detention centers larger than any existing jail or prison in the country. These mega-warehouses-which are not designed for human habitation-will hold up to 10,000 immigrants each, with little oversight and little recourse for detainees whose rights are violated. Even as public outrage over Trump's mass deportation campaign intensifies, the legal and physical infrastructure of the plan are rapidly falling into place. The 5th Circuit's Friday decision gives new legal muscle to the Stephen Miller-orchestrated mass deportation campaign by endorsing the administration's audacious rereading of a 1996 immigration law governing the detention of unauthorized migrants. For nearly 30 years, both the executive branch and the federal judiciary have understood this statute to draw a sharp line between migrants "seeking admission" at the border and those already in the country. The former are subject to mandatory detention without bond (with a few narrow exceptions). The latter, by contrast, can seek release on bond. If that request is denied, they can demand a bond hearing before an immigration judge. Most of the roughly 11 million immigrants without permanent legal status in the U.S. today fall into this second, bond-eligible group. In July, the Trump administration collapsed the long-standing distinction between new arrivals and everyone else. It announced that it had "revisited" its view of the law and concluded that unauthorized immigrants already present in the United States are subject to mandatory detention, just like migrants encountered at the border. To reach that result, the government asserted that anyone who was never legally admitted to the reach that result, the government asserted that anyone who was never legally admitted to the country must, by definition, be "seeking admission" today. Under its theory, an immigrant who has lived here for decades is subject to the same harsh rules as someone who tried to cross the border yesterday. This shift empowered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain exponentially more immigrants without bond, prompting a flood of habeas petitions from those detainees challenging their confinement. Indeed, according to ProPublica, noncitizens have filed more of these petitions in the last 13 months than in the last three administrations combined. Although the Trump-stacked Board of Immigration Appeals swiftly adopted the administration's distortion of the statute, federal judges have overwhelmingly rejected it and freed detainees in habeas proceedings. As Kyle Cheney reported in Politico, at least 360 judges have spurned the government's reasoning in more than 3,000 cases. They've done so in increasingly alarmed terms. Last week, Judge Thomas E. Johnston, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote: "It is appalling that the government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written," deriding the administration's theory as "dystopian absurdity."
February 11, 2026 at 2:07 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Americans are taught the myth that Manhattan was sold for trinkets to mythologize manifest destiny, business savvy and “dumb savages.”

But also, what a weird flex. All currency is made up!

You don’t even use paper anymore! You buy groceries and houses with made up numbers that live in websites!
February 11, 2026 at 12:36 AM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
The Trump admin is choking out Cuba in a way that will likely create a humanitarian crisis.

Why? Cause they intend to reshape this hemisphere. They need right wing strongmen who are interested in maximizing quarterly profits.

Bonus: Trump has an excuse to be adversarial to Mexico if they aid Cuba.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Headline: Life in Cuba Is Grinding to a Halt Under U.S. Oil Blockade Lede: The island is in crisis as airlines cancel flights, hotels close and authorities furlough workers Daily life in Cuba is grinding to a halt under a U.S. campaign to block the island's oil imports, drawing international criticism that the Trump administration is pushing the island toward a humanitarian crisis with no clear endgame. The Caribbean island's Communist authorities are rationing dwindling fuel supplies, curtailing public transportation and furloughing workers. Children are being sent home from school early, people can barely afford basic food like milk and chicken, and long lines have sprung up at gas stations. The swiftly deteriorating conditions in Cuba come after the Trump administration effectively set up an oil blockade last month. The last oil delivery to the country was a Jan. 9 shipment from Mexico, which has since halted supplies under U.S. pressure. Cuba has also lost crude deliveries from Venezuela since the U.S. raid on Jan. 3 that captured authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, ending all support for Cuba from its biggest backer. President Trump's executive order on Jan. 29 called Cuba "an unusual and extraordinary threat" and warned of new tariffs for any country that supplies oil to the island. The new measures go on top of a comprehensive set of U.S. sanctions on Cuba that began in the early 1960s when the Fidel Castro-led government nationalized U.S. property. "It is very unjust," Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has been under pressure at home to help Cuba, said on Monday. "You cannot strangle a people like this. They don't have fuel for hospitals, for schools." Trump officials have denied that U.S. pressure to curb fuel shipments to Cuba is responsible for the crisis. "This idea that a short-term change in some amount of oil shipments is what's responsible for the humanitarian situation in Cuba is simply not true," Jeremy Lewin, a State Department official for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs, told reporters last week. The State Department recently said the U.S. would send $6 million in humanitarian aid, which includes canned tuna, rice, beans, pasta, and solar lamps to allow recipients to charge their phones.
February 10, 2026 at 8:10 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
“I’ve never coded a day in my life. But then I used AI…”

Ok, so you still haven’t coded and rather then fact checking you are just trusting the computer did it right. #superbowlads #lackofcriticalthought
mxttqhuman.bsky.social mxtt the secessionist @mxttqhuman.bsky.social · 10d
I love that thus far the Super Bowl ad pitches I have seen for AI are, “creativity, but you don’t have to do the work.”

Sorry, the work is the joy of creativity.

And the value of creativity.

AI is nothing more than a digitized focus group making milquetoast decisions.
February 9, 2026 at 1:43 AM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Hey Americans, taxes aren’t supposed to be punishment. They are (theoretically) a contribution to society that also benefits the individual taxpayer.

American indoctrination treating April 15th as a day of reckoning helped lead us to fascism.

Happy #superbowlads, brought to you by TurboTax!
February 9, 2026 at 1:04 AM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
I love that thus far the Super Bowl ad pitches I have seen for AI are, “creativity, but you don’t have to do the work.”

Sorry, the work is the joy of creativity.

And the value of creativity.

AI is nothing more than a digitized focus group making milquetoast decisions.
February 9, 2026 at 12:08 AM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Can’t say I am particularly up-to-date on Japanese politics, but this victory seems worth noting. Japan is positioned to be an unflinching ally of the Trump admin.

Note: I went to get the link and I got a different source that mentions “Japan First.”

www.wsj.com/world/asia/j...
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Headline: Japan's Takaichi Scores Landslide Win in Election Gamble Lede: Increased majority empowers her to draw Japan closer to the U.S. and spend more on defense and industrial policy TOKYO—Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi led her party to a thumping victory in parliamentary elections, handing her a powerful mandate to deepen ties with the U.S. and rev up Japan's economy. The landslide win is a vindication for the 64-year-old conservative, who called the risky snap vote during a snowy Japanese winter only three months after taking office. Her gamble was that her straight-talking appeal to voters would cement her grip on power amid challenges including sluggish economic growth and worsening relations with Beijing. Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, were on track to win at least 310 seats in the 465-seat lower house in Japan's par-liament, according to initial results and projections by public broadcaster NHK. That would hand Takaichi's government a two-thirds majority in the lower house, giving it overwhelming control of that chamber and the ability to overrule the smaller upper house to push through its agenda. Under Takaichi, the LDP alone was projected to win a majority of seats, according to NHK, a turnaround in the party's fortunes after more than a decade of coalitions. "We stand at a crossroads that will profoundly transform our nation," Takaichi said Saturday in a message on social media, urging supporters to turn out and vote. Takaichi is a pro-U.S. leader who has pledged to ramp up defense spending and wants to bolster Japanese industry to make Japan the U.S.'s indispensable partner in Asia. While other traditional U.S. allies have struggled to respond to President Trump's enthusiasm for tariffs and disruptive foreign policy, Japan under Takaichi is doubling down on the U.S. alliance, a reflection of Tokyo's pragmatism and a recognition that loosening ties is unthinkable when confronted with an increasingly assertive China. "Japan has no option but a close relationship with the U.S. for its security," said Gerald Curtis, an expert on Japanese politics at Columbia University.
February 8, 2026 at 6:03 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
ICE has all sorts of tools they can use to come at you.

Because their real deal main tool is fear. Well also threat of/actual violence, but that’s part of the fear.

slate.com/news-and-pol...
SLATE Headline: The Frightening, Very Real Tool ICE Agents Have to Add You to a "Nice Little Database" if You Attend a Protest BY SHIRIN ALI FEB 05, 2026 1:03 PM Imagine you attend a protest, like hundreds of thousands of Americans have since President Donald Trump began his second term. Perhaps it is a No Kings event, or a local ICE demonstration to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement's crackdown on immigrants in your community. During the protest, you take a video of yourself and your fellow protesters, caption it "Abolish ICE," and upload it to Instagram. A few weeks later, there's a knock on your door. Federal agents stand before you, demanding to question you. You're wondering to yourself: Do they know about the protest I attended? Are they legally allowed to track me? Do I have to comply? The answer to these first two questions is, shockingly, yes, and it's made possible in part by a little-known power that the Trump administration has supercharged in recent months. The answer to the last question is much more complicated. The Department of Homeland Security is one of a number of federal agencies with something called administrative subpoena power, and it has been leveraging that tool in unprecedented ways under Trump 2.0. The Washington Post detailed these abuses this week, focusing on the story of a U.S. citizen targeted by DHS for simply emailing a federal prosecutor his opinion about the federal government's case against an Afghan national facing deportation. How can something like this happen? Congress has granted administrative subpoena power to federal agencies, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission, to allow them to access information quickly to make decisions about issues under their purview. A key distinction between administrative subpoenas and civil or criminal ones is that federal agencies do not need a judge's sign-off. These agencies retain the power to approve administrative subpoenas themselves. This also means that agencies can demand documents without needing to prove that there is an ongoing investigation into or probable cause against a person when issuing administrative subpoenas.
February 8, 2026 at 12:20 AM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
No kings, right?

Keep on telling yourself that as Trump’s authoritarian rule continues to solidify. While Democrats watch meekly from the post-9/11 sidelines they created for themselves. Appealing to courts that all lead to the MAGA controlled Supreme Court.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
The Guardian Headline: Trump says he'll free infrastructure funds for New York if Penn Station is renamed after him Lede: Trump also demanded Dulles airport be given his name in exchange for funding NY-NJ tunnel and subway extension The demand, which was first reported on Thursday by Punchbowl News, comes after the president in October halted $18bn in funding for a major subway line expansion in New York City as well as a new rail tunnel connecting the city to New Jersey. The funding freeze was announced on the first day of a 43-day government shutdown in which Schumer, who represents New York, played a major role. A spokesman for Schumer did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. Trump, who is not eligible to serve another term as president, has moved to emblazon his name on a host of government buildings and websites since taking office a year ago, including the Kennedy Center and the US Institute for Peace. It is unclear if either change is legal. He also pushed congressional Republicans to create new tax-advantaged investment accounts for young people dubbed "Trump Accounts", and announced a new government-run website to sell discounted prescription drugs called TrumpRX.com. The president is also reportedly planning to build a 250ft arch across the river from Washington DC that would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial.
February 6, 2026 at 5:24 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Anyone who says “money can’t buy happiness” is a person who never had to truly financially struggle and does not see their own privilege for what it is.

Stress from a lack of financial security fucks up your mental health.
Notification: Business Insider Yesterday, 1:34 PM Elon Musk says money can't buy happiness. Research suggests it can — up to a point.
February 6, 2026 at 3:42 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Sure, two thirds of Americans say ICE is going “too far,” but *enough* Americans still don’t care/are supportive. And most of these people probably only care cause white people got killed.

www.npr.org/2026/02/05/n...
npr Headline: Poll: Two-thirds of Americans say ICE has 'gone too far' in immigration enforcement Lede: A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds a jump in disapproval of the agency among Democrats and independents, but Republicans are standing by ICE and the president. Domenico Montanaro • February 05, 2026 05:00 AM EST "The thing in the numbers that we've been experiencing is the shift among some of the folks who voted for him — his voting coalition — not necessarily the governing support he has, but his voting coalition," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. That coalition included younger people, Latinos and independents, all of whom Trump is struggling with in this survey. "Right now, those groups - they're the ones who deserted," Miringoff added. Trump's base, on the other hand, is sticking with him on a range of policies that are otherwise unpopular, from ICE's conduct and the job Trump is doing, to tariffs, the need to consult with Congress before taking military action and even whether the United States should take control of Greenland. On Greenland, for example, almost 7 in 10 Republicans said they supported taking control of the Arctic Danish territory, while overwhelming numbers of independents and Democrats opposed such a move. "For those who are always thinking that, 'Ah! This situation is really going to break loose the Republicans; his base is crumbling, " Miringoff said, "reports of that tend to be overexaggerating and based on very, very skimpy evidence." And despite all of the attention on immigration enforcement, as well as Trump's action in Venezuela and threats to invade Greenland in recent weeks, a majority of voters continue to say, by wide margins, that the Trump administration's focus should be on lowering prices. Republicans marginally increased in saying ICE has gone too far, but they largely remained steady in their support of ICE. Almost three-quarters said they approve of the job ICE is doing, 77% said the agency is making Americans safer, and about three-quarters said the way it is going about enforcement is either "about right" (45%) or "not far enough" (28%). Three-quarters of Republicans also see the protesters as acting mostly unlawfully.
February 5, 2026 at 1:23 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Or we could abolish ICE/DHS, take all the money dumped on them and create a supported Visa program. And maybe not demonize human beings as “illegal” for trying to find employment opportunities in the land of milk and honey?

You know, like, not be the fascist bad guys?

Just a thought.
schumer.senate.gov Chuck Schumer @schumer.senate.gov · 15d
Democrats want commonsense reform for ICE:

End the roving patrols and racial profiling.

Take accountability and abide by the same rules as local police.

Masks need to come off, body cameras need to stay on—no secret police in the United States of America.
February 4, 2026 at 3:29 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
The trap is spreading, making criminals of those who don’t help treat immigrants like subhumans.

“it mandates that officials report the presence of undocumented persons to ICE, while criminalizing disclosure of information about immigration enforcement”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Guardian Headline: Tennessee to test Stephen Miller's plan of enlisting states for immigration enforcement Lede: Bills mandate ICE cooperation, school status checks and criminalize information release, testing constitutional lines George Chidi 07:00 EST Wednesday, 04 February 2026 The power to enforce immigration law rests with the federal government. But Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, has a vision for states working in coordination with federal immigration officials, and he's attempting to test it out in Tennessee. Earlier this month, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Miller had been meeting in Washington DC with Tennessee speaker of the house, Cameron Sexton, to craft model legislation for states around the country. A few weeks later, the speaker announced a suite of eight bills that would turn state and local police officers, judges, teachers, social workers and others into an auxiliary extension of the federal immigration system. It makes the presence of an undocumented person with a final deportation order a state crime in Tennessee. And it mandates that officials report the presence of undocumented persons to ICE, while criminalizing disclosure of information about immigration enforcement activities to the public. "It's really alarming," said Lisa Sherman-Luna, executive director of the advocacy organization Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. "We have folks in office who are really creating infrastructure for the secret police, with zero accountability, total impunity, legitimizing the way that ICE is behaving, wearing masks or civilian clothes, not identifying themselves, and giving these guys license to behave in whatever way they desire without an ability for the public to hold them accountable." But the most controversial and legally impactful proposal would require local school systems to verify lawful status for K-12 students. Those without legal residency would be charged tuition. Others could be denied enrollment. The Tennessee state senate passed a version of this bill last year, but the state house paused movement while looking for guidance from Washington on how it might affect federal education funding.
February 4, 2026 at 2:32 PM
mxttqhuman.bsky.social
Current true health of the US economy: the wealthiest 1% held about $55 trillion in assets in the third quarter of 2025 — roughly equal to the wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans combined.

WSJ: www.wsj.com/lifestyle/ca...

CBS: www.cbsnews.com/news/us-weal...
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Headline: The Hardest Part About Being a Billionaire in California: Proving You Left Lede: Advisers recommend leaving breadcrumbs, like a 'we've moved' note on the Christmas card, and you really do have to quit the country club. Headline: Wealth inequality in America just hit its widest gap in more than 3 decades MONEY WATCH By Mary Cunningham Updated on: January 21, 2026 / 5:11 PM EST / CBS News Data from the Federal Reserve shows that the so-called K-shaped economy in America is alive and well, with low- and middle-income households falling further behind as the richest Americans pull away. The top 1% of households owned 31.7% of all U.S. wealth in the third quarter of 2025, the highest share on record since the Federal Reserve began tracking household wealth in 1989. That share has increased even as wealth growth for the rest of the population has stalled or slowed, the data shows. Collectively, the wealthiest 1% held about $55 trillion in assets in the third quarter of 2025 — roughly equal to the wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans combined. "Household wealth is highly concentrated and becoming steadily more concentrated," Mark Zandi, chief economist at financial research firm Moody's Analytics, told CBS News. The latest snapshot of wealth inequality comes as billionaire fortunes continue to grow rapidly, both in the U.S. and abroad. An Oxfam International report released this week found that billionaire wealth in 2025 increased three times faster than the average annual rate over the previous five years.
February 2, 2026 at 1:53 PM