Dear god. Very, very serious allegations of mass civil rights violations at the State of Florida's Everglades immigration detention center (officially known as "Alligator Alcatraz").

Disappointed, though not surprised, I began to describe various life- saving components of USAID’s global health portfolio, highlighting how we prepare for and respond to emerging pandemic threats; support the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV; and immunize millions of children from the deadliest childhood diseases. I spoke for about five minutes, focusing primarily on our infectious diseases work and hoping to keep the attention of people who seemed to have no experience—or interest—in global health. When I finished, the room was silent, the political appointees looking at one another in what appeared to be disbelief. The silence was broken by Ken Jackson, who chuckled softly and shook his head. “Wow, there really is so much that USAID does that we never knew,” he said. “This is the story that needs to get out there.” Joel, also smiling, chimed in next, echoing Jackson’s amazement. “I had no idea you did all this,” he said. “As a Republican, when I think of what USAID does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions.”

This is NUTS

www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usai...

What the death of Direct File tells us about state capacity We CAN have nice things - if we want them

New, from me: American taxpayers will spend billions of hours and hundreds of billions of dollars — not to pay their taxes, but to report them to the government.
Thank Trump, who killed Direct File, a free tax high-quality reporting tool that IRS had built. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/what-the-d...

c'est abominable. et l'europe s'en fout apparemment complètement. www.lorientlejour.com/article/1502...

Tweet from JK Rowling: Today's ruling by the IOC means a welcome return to fair sport for women and girls, but I'll never forget the scandal of Paris 2024, when people who consider themselves supremely virtuous and progressive publicly cheered on men punching women.

Been thinking about it since I saw JK Rowling posted this yesterday about the IOC's new policy, calling Imane Khelif a man.

Imane Khelif was born female. She was raised as a girl. Her original birth certificate says female. She's always been a woman.

But sure. "Men punching women."

Monstrous racist. Still astounds me, even after more than ten years of relentless repetition. Just the worst person imaginable to be president.

The IOC's New Policy Isn't Really a Trans Story Every headline says the IOC banned trans women from the Olympics. The athletes who’ll actually be barred are cis women who’ve never heard of the SRY gene.

The AP's story on the IOC's new policy mentions that it "also restricts" athletes like two-time Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya. That word "also" is doing a lot of work. New piece on who this policy is actually about: www.readtpa.com/p/the-iocs-n...

Yesterday morning I stepped outside on my balcony for coffee with my wife and our neighbor. The drone was as low as it has ever been. We saw it over our heads. Below, our alleyway had turned into a parking lot for displaced people’s cars. A school next door is hosting around 1500 people.

Le niveau d'ignominie de ces journalistes, c'est effarant !
Et bravo au maire qui serait en droit pour bien moins que cela de s'énerver et de porter plainte !

IR people who decry gender studies or arguments are fish refusing to believe the study of water is important.

As Trump pushes deportations, immigration data becomes harder to find The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is expanding, but the public data that tracks it is drying up.

I have had COUNTLESS convos where reporters ask me “okay but Trump hasn’t actually deported as many people as Biden (or Obama), right?” and what I try to stress in response is “the real story is how hard it is, and getting harder, for us even to know.”

Must-read.

apnews.com/article/trum...

Israeli forces shot all four members of the Bani Odeh family in the head, including their 5yo and 7yo. The 7yo, Othman, was blind and had special needs. This comes a day after Israeli settlers shot 28yo Amir Moatasem Odeh and stabbed his father.

The Density Divide and the Southernification of Rural America The Old North/South Split Lives on in the Urban/Rural Divide

Will Wilkinson wrote about this a few years ago modelcitizen.substack.com/p/the-densit... @wlknsn.xyz

Steve King 9 @SteveKinglA + Follow Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies. ESTERN ILIZATION Voice of Europe @V_of_Europe Hundreds of Islamists shouting "Allahu Akbar" in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Wilders is right for over 10 years. #turkijerel RETWEETS LIKES 516 688 10:40 AM - 12 Mar 2017 from lowa, USA

I'm teaching about early 20th century eugenics today and was reminded that 9 years ago Republican Representative Steve King was stripped of his committee assignments by his GOP colleagues for this post that simply states what is now bog standard GOP policy/rhetoric on immigration and "civilization."

The Kids Trump Sent to ICE’s Dilley Detention Center ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of...

Some children in Dilley were so distraught they cut themselves or talked about suicide, parents told ProPublica.

They said kids lost their appetites after finding worms and mold on their food, had trouble sleeping, and were constantly sick.

So the confrontations, violent apprehensions, and general fear bearing down on communities like Minnesota is only the beginning of the nightmare. Behind the scenes, Orwellian anti-judicial antics thwart lawful recourse. And hidden from sight, non-citizens are tortured for being noncitizens.

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He was then flown to the Ice facility in El Paso, Texas. He said he has been locked in the same large, cold and damp room for 4½ months with more than 70 men. He said detainees are constantly hungry because meals served at tables in the centre of the room offer only child-sized portions. Fights often break out over food, “even over those little child-sized juice containers”. Toilet areas are “filthy”. He said there is little to do but lie on a bed all day. Most detainees do not speak any English. He said he has been allowed outside for air and exercise fewer than a dozen times in nearly five months. The atmosphere is full of “anxiety and depression”, he said.

The government says the people being deported are violent criminals, and they treat them inhumanely. But mostly they are subjecting ordinary people to extraordinary punishments.

Senator Chuck Schumer conducts a news conference in the U.S. Capitol in May 2025. Image: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images FORUM How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism Moderation used to help Democrats win, but its advantages now have been greatly exaggerated. Adam Bonica, Jake Grumbach With responses from → Cori Bush, Amanda Litman, Matthew Yglesias, G. Elliott Morris, Julia Serano, Eric Rauchway, Suzanne Mettler & Trevor E. Brown, Thomas Ferguson, Timothy Shenk, Jared Abbott & Milan Loewer, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, Lily Geismer, Danielle Wiggins, William A. Galston, and Henry Burke

We have a Boston Review Forum out today on the Democratic Party in a time of authoritarianism

www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

Column | In Gaza, an ‘apocalyptic wasteland’ foretold Seen two years later, a suppressed U.S cable warning of a “wasteland” in northern Gaza, as reported by Reuters, is a small footnote of history.

My latest
In Gaza, an ‘apocalyptic wasteland’ foretold wapo.st/4rrkWAb

U.S. Envoys Refused to Report "Apocalyptic" Conditions in Gaza. Exclusive Photos Show the Reality They Suppressed The U.S. embassy in Jerusalem suppressed a February 2024 report on northern Gaza because it “lacked balance.” These photos from the UN fact finding trip are visual evidence of the conditions.

Look at the photos. The thing I heard often working on the USAID Gaza response from our partners in Gaza was the field of dead bodies - men, women, children - that fanned out around IDF checkpoints in the Netzarim corridor. Shot by IDF soldiers for no reason (unless "for fun" counts as a reason).

This is such a good illustration of how the ACA enhanced subsidies worked.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...

The young Muslim woman detained in a locked Whipple bathroom with three men said she never thought this could happen to her. She saw America as a land of opportunity after a childhood in a refugee camp. She hopes to become a nurse or a flight attendant. Her criminal record, she said, consists of one speeding ticket. With Whipple's holding facilities filled, the woman said, agents eventually moved her to another locked bathroom by herself. There was an air vent at the door's bottom. When she saw federal agents' footsteps, she banged for help. On her third night of detention, agents took in two new detainees: an African immigrant and her 7-month-old baby girl. She said the immigrant told her they had been detained as the mother took her baby to a doctor to be treated for influenza.

"When the woman arrived, she was screaming and crying and yelling, 'My baby is already sick!' " she recalled. " 'I don't want my baby to die!' " The next morning, she said, the woman and baby were moved from the bathroom. It wasn't until her fourth day of detention when the young woman was allowed to use a phone at the facility. When she heard her mother's voice, she burst into tears. On the fifth day, agents drove her and two other recently released detainees to a light-rail station near Whipple. They took off her handcuffs and told her to call an Uber, even though she didn't have a phone. She borrowed one from another detainee. As they released her into the cold, she recalls their simple words: "You are good to go."

“You are good to go.” Good to go?!?!

This is what ICE tells a young woman they tossed out into dangerously freezing temperatures after four agonizing days in detention at Whipple.

Today’s front page Strib report: www.startribune.com/no-humanity-...

And what are they learning? Experts on the formation of internal security services in authoritarian regimes point to a sense of impunity as a warning sign. Regime officials abuse their power when they know they will be protected, and even praised, for doing so. Over the course of weeks and months, we have seen images of DHS officials abusing American citizens and immigrants alike, including killing them. What we do not hear is regime officials calling for credible investigations into such abuses, or even expressing any concerns. Renee Good’s killer was announced innocent, and both Good and her wife was instead the subject of an investigation, a perversion of justice so obvious that an FBI agent and half-dozen career Department of Justice prosecutors assigned to Minnesota resigned.

What we are watching is a paramilitary force learning that they can kill with impunity, that the regime will smear the victim and defend them. Unless politicians and the legal system exerts accountability, it will not stop. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/past-the-b...

Stuff like this was obviously at stake in 2024 but received virtually zero coverage in the media, who decided that Tim Walz' trips to China in the 1980s was a more important issue to Americans

Attn news commentators: Trump saying he could use force to obtain Greenland but won’t is not Trump saying he won’t use force to obtain Greenland. It is Trump using force as a threat to obtain Greenland. That is why he mentions it.

If you're only reading headlines and see "Trump Says He Won't Use Force" it will give you a misimpression of both how bellicose this speech is and how dug in he is on Greenland.

How Africa boycotted the 1966 World Cup The BBC's Piers Edwards explains the little-known story behind the African boycott to the 1966 World Cup, the only World Cup in history to have been snubbed by an entire continent.

On the subject of World Cup boycotts, this is a story which ought to be much better known: why African countries decided not to compete for a place at the 1966 tournament. One of Fifa's most shameful moments, which hardly ever gets a mention.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-a...

So fmr Honduran President Hernandez voluntarily surrendered, and was duly extradited, tried and convicted for drug trafficking, and Trump pardoned him 6w ago.

And this morning, Trump illegally attacks Venezuela and abducts its president and his wife purportedly to try them for drug trafficking.

“Delegalization” is IMHO the most undercovered/under-understood story of the first year of Trump 2.

But it’s really, really hard to talk about it in a way that breaks through.

Some problems: