"Being here, in solidarity, is part of the repair work in my own soul," said Rev. Rob Schenck, an Evangelical minister who spent decades advancing Christian nationalist causes, as he marched against ICE in Minneapolis. "This is redemption."
TEXT: I was Alex Pretti’s final nursing student. He was my friend and my nursing mentor. For the past four months, I stood shoulder to shoulder with him during my capstone preceptorship at the Minneapolis VA Hospital. There he trained me to care for the sickest of the sick as an ICU nurse. He taught me how to care for arterial and central lines, the intricacies of managing multiple IVs filled with lifesaving solutions, and how to watch over every heartbeat, every breath, and every flicker of life, ready to act the moment they wavered. Techniques intended to heal. Alex carried patience, compassion and calm as a steady light within him. Even at the very end, that light was there. I recognized his familiar stillness and signature calm composure shining through during those unbearable final moments captured on camera. It does not surprise me that his final words were, “Are you okay?” Caring for people was at the core of who he was. He was incapable of causing harm. He lived a life of healing, and he lived it well. Alex believed strongly in the Second Amendment and in the rights rooted in our Constitution and its amendments. He spoke out for justice and peace whenever he could, not only out of obligation, but out of a belief that we are more connected than divided, and that communication would bring us together.
TEXT: I want his family to know his legacy lives on. I am a better nurse because of the wisdom and skills he instilled in me. I carry his light with me into every room, letting it guide and steady my hands as I heal and care for those in need. Please honor my friend by standing up for peace, preferably with a cup of black coffee in hand and a couple of pieces of candy in your pocket, just as he would. He would remind you that caring for others is hard work, and we must do whatever it takes to get through the long shifts. Step outside with your dog, breathe in the world, hike or bike as he loved to do, and let yourself find peace in the quiet moments within nature. Stand up for justice and speak with those whose views differ from your own. Hold your beliefs with strength, but always extend love outward, even in the face of adversity. Take one step, no matter how small, to help heal our world. Through these acts, carry his light forward in his name. Let his legacy continue to heal.
From a FB post about Alex Pretti:
Immigration court arrests continued across the nation yesterday (and are likely ongoing today).
Yesterday, in NYC, 30 ICE officers swarmed the immigration court, holding lists of names of people to arrest. All were dutifully attending their immigration hearings and many had pending asylum claims.
Update: reports today that multiple legal observers were arrested today in New York at two separate immigration courts, for allegedly “obstructing” ICE.
Not only that, apparently some immigration courts are barring the public from attending hearings.
This mess is escalating fast.
Sounds like he wants the kind of reports Putin got about Ukraine pre invasion
“By demanding that the FBI take agents who are currently looking for criminals and instead assign them to look for migrants, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are confessing that migrants aren’t the criminals that Trump’s entire political career has been built on claiming they are.”
I talked to the AP about grok's "white genocide" meltdown. A few hours after publication, xAI admitted to hard coding it. This is important accountability journalism because people use AI as an arbiter of truth & here we see AI owners making the tools match their politics
apnews.com/article/elon...
Sean Duffy, reality TV star and Fox News host is headed to his makeup studio to solve this
Reminder below - Biden funded upgrade but the media didn't give a shit and now Duffy, Trump will blame Biden and they will nod along because they love the racist / fascist
www.denverpost.com/2025/05/15/d...
I don't know what this means, but I'm the one who wrote a fully updated, 624-page hurricane response plan at FEMA that took over 2 years of work and careful coordination among state and federal agencies. He could start by studying that.
Harvard scientist Kseniia Petrova has been in ICE custody for about two months. Her colleague and friend Leon Peshkin says her case is causing some scientists to reconsider working in the U.S.
Almost every line of this story would have been simply unbelievable a few months ago:
—Pioneering cancer researcher;
—*Arrested* at airport in Boston;
—Now indefinite ICE detention in Louisiana;
—"Crime": not declaring some frog-embryo samples for research.
Read it.
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
This is an obvious point, but cannot overstated. There is an enormous difference between deporting someone - where they get off a plane as a free citizen in their home country AND FUNNELING THEM INTO A BRUTAL PRISON FROM WHICH THEY HAVE NO CHANCE OF EVER EMERGING!!!
For those unfamiliar with the trucking industry: 80 blank sailings means, give or take, about 1,000,000 cargo containers that had been scheduled and booked for delivery which just disappeared.
In addition to everything else that is wrong with this, why aren't these men wearing uniforms? They're dressed like they just came from the skateboard park and half seem to be concealing their faces. These are terror tactics, meant to inspire a penumbra of fear beyond those directly victimized.
Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.
We pivoted really quickly from "natural rights for all must come from God rather than the government, and any other view is decadent nihilism" to "only citizens get rights, and then probably only the citizens I like."
"On October 8, 1931, a law went into effect requiring every Italian university professor to sign an oath pledging their loyalty to the government of Benito Mussolini. Out of over 1,200 professors in the country, only 12 refused. All of them were immediately fired." www.chronicle.com/article/what...
This is sickening
Former judge Maryanne Trump Barry, the president's sister:
"The issue ... is whether an alien who is in this country legally can ... be forcibly removed ... in the unfettered discretion of the Secretary of State and without any meaningful opportunity to be heard. The answer is a ringing 'no.'"
Tuberculosis, the deadliest infectious disease on the planet, kills more than 1.25M people a year. New infections are expected to surge by 30% as a result of closing USAID, a memo says. The increase will inevitably lead to cases in the U.S.
For anyone needing a US source for this (with interviews featuring the friend of one German and the partner of the other German)
Uganda's Ebola outbreak has worsened — but the country’s ability to fight it has been severely weakened by the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign assistance, per recording of US officials obtained by @lattif.bsky.social @stephanienolen.bsky.social.
Eye-catching + worrying scoop.
Per Dr Atul Gawande, ex USAID: “All malaria supplies protecting 53 million people, mostly children, including bed nets, diagnostics, preventive drugs, and treatments – terminated.”
There are no words that sufficiently describe this level of cruelty and sadism.
As someone who camps at Yosemite a few times every year... this is frustrating. And so pointless.
New: Last night, hundreds of CDC post-doc fellows were fired, including all in the group who call themselves the "disease detectors," and are the future of public health lab leaders. One senior official told me, "It is going to cripple public health for decades."
www.nbcnews.com/politics/dog...
This negotiation between the US and Russia, and cutting out Ukraine, is just like when Trump cut out Afghanistan and negotiated with Taliban.
We see how that “good deal” turned out. Afghanistan was on Trump
Every Trump deal fails
These absolute morons are going to destroy the United States.
If you’re in favor of the US leaving NATO, you either don’t want the US to succeed, or you don’t know wtf NATO does.
Worth noting that Mike Lee voted to expand NATO in 2022.
“So Elon Musk killed this program for disabled kids (illegally) because it included the word ‘transition.’ It helps them to transition from high school to work.”
H/T @palafo.bsky.social, who posted the above on another platform.
"Elon Musk’s US DOGE Service is seeking access to a heavily guarded Internal Revenue Service system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country, according to three people familiar with the activities, sparking alarm within the tax agency."