The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. — Frederick Douglass

The evil that men do lives after them

Judge frees Columbia student activist whom Trump administration wants to deport Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested as part of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian students who were legally studying in the United States.

By ordering the Columbia student's presence in his courtroom and ordering his release then and there, a federal judge robbed Trump and his team of the opportunity to defy his order, which was implemented on the spot by court officers. www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

there really is no alternative to tearing up CBP and ICE root and branch

“A couple days later, on March 6, I was working from home at around 11:30 when I got a notice that my VPN had gone down,” he says. “I didn’t think much about it. It can cut out from time to time. About 10 minutes later, I got a knock at the door.” Two men were outside Jackson’s door, dressed in slacks and polos. They were not wearing badges. “I first thought they were going to try to sell me something. But as soon as I opened the door they said, ‘Are you Clayton Jackson?’ I think I shook my head or said ‘yeah,’ and then I heard, ‘We have information that you are obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation.’” Jackson says alarms went off in his head. “My first instinct was to want to know what this was about. That it must be a misunderstanding. So I started to tell them about how I’ve been involved in some pro bono work. Then this voice in my head kicked in and just said, you need to shut the fuck up — don’t say anything.” The officers never identified themselves. They did ask if they could come inside. “I said absolutely not,” Jackson says. “I asked for their names and badge numbers. They said they didn’t have to provide that information at this time. So I told them I’d be calling my lawyer and I shut the door behind me.” Jackson says his mind started racing. “I needed to know who they were, what agency they were with. Then I remembered that I have the Ring camera. Maybe I could watch the video of the incident and figure out who they were from that.” There was no video. “That’s when I learned why my VPN had gone down. It wasn’t the VPN. Someone had shut off my Wifi.” About 15 minutes after the interaction at his front door, Jackson’s Wifi was up and running again.

It's a high bar, but this from @radleybalko.bsky.social might be one of the most fucked up things I've read in the new Trump era. For context, this TX lawyer had just had an informal conversation with a family caught up in ICE raids.

Seriously. Read this. radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-courag...

black americans in ostensibly “free states” were then very vulnerable to kidnapping and trafficking to slave states for sale, where they were effectively disappeared since, as slaves, they had no due process and could not prove their freedom

Team Trump Is Gaming Out How to Ship U.S. Citizens to El Salvador Donald Trump’s administration is talking internally about denaturalizing American citizens — and potentially sending some to El Salvador.

i have argued before that MAGA is recapitulating antebellum pro-slavery ideas about citizenship and bodily autonomy. one thing i am also thinking about, when it comes to the rendition of people to a foreign gulag, is the way it is reminiscent of the kidnapping of free blacks for sale into slavery

Ivy League admit rates are way down over the last 20 years, because the number of applicants has skyrocketed. Mostly due to digitization and access (the Common App). Elites have chosen to explain their children’s failures to succeed in this larger pool by scapegoating minorities and blaming DEI tho

“We are at a moment right now where people are asking themselves why can’t the Democratic Party defend this assault on democracy . . . and I would submit to you that if you can’t draw the line at genocide, you probably can’t draw the line at democracy.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates

the American services surplus with China comes partly from the billions of dollars Chinese families spend on US schooling

Yesterday China warned against studying in the US, given new and abrupt student visa revocations www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

You never forget the sight of children starving to death, so I wish White House officials could have been with me on this trip to South Sudan, where 70 percent of nutrition assistance has come from the United States. Malnutrition is common in poor countries — more than one-fifth of young children worldwide are stunted from malnutrition — and near the Sudan-South Sudan border, I dropped in on the remote Upper Nile town of Bobonis, where many children are affected. Staff members of a nonprofit supported by U.S.A.I.D. used to visit weekly to provide an emergency high-nutrition paste to save the lives of young children with severe acute malnutrition — but that program was ended by the Trump administration last month. So now children in the village are starving. I quickly found a half-dozen children with severe acute malnutrition and getting no help. Fatima Abdulai, 14, held her niece, Nadia, a severely malnourished 2-year-old, and said the household has been reduced to one meal a day of sorghum mush. It was midafternoon when I met them, and nobody in the family had had a bite to eat that day, including Nadia. “Sometimes she cries from hunger,” Fatima said. “Then we give her water to drink.”

I’m not much of a theologian but I do not believe doing this to people is forgivable www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

everyone should listen to this in its entirety but journalists should listen to it multiple times. this is how you ask questions. you just keep asking simple, easily answerable stuff and the evasiveness becomes that much more glaring

There’s no opposition party, just a few brave voices in a sea of vichy cowards bsky.app/profile/greg...

I for one would welcome our new Canadian overlords

I have warned about the rightwing attack on empathy. It is as dangerous as any attack on democracy. It is an attack on our humanity. Once you turn off empathy you can do anything.

It will accelerate in Musks’ hands. open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...

It's like decades ago, when racist whites filled swimming pools with concrete, or closed down rec centers entirely, rather than integrate them. Hurting themselves as much as anyone, just to prevent Black people from having access to any public good. And huge % of whites were OK with that!

US higher education had become a world-class sector, one of the greatest strengths of this country, even with the amount of work still to be done in making it more just and equitable. But a cabal of mediocre whites, out of pure spite and belligerent stupidity, have decided to choke it to death.

58 Jazz Musicians Were Photographed for ‘Harlem 1958.' Only One Remains. Art Kane’s “Harlem 1958” gathered giants of the music. Sonny Rollins, 94, looks back at the historic picture.

On Aug. 12, 1958, Art Kane gathered 58 jazz notables in front of a Harlem brownstone for a group portrait.

Only one of its subjects is still alive: the saxophonist Sonny Rollins, 94, who spoke about the historic image.

The sleepy time tea bear

me in my echo chamber

A man in a green sweater and blue shirt drawing with crayons across three pictures. "Do you like to draw with crayons. I'm not very good at it but it doesn't matter"

A man in a green sweater and blue shirt drawing with crayons across three pictures. "It's the fun of doing it that's important. Now, I wouldn't have made that if I'd just thought about it."

A man in a green sweater and blue shirt drawing with crayons across three pictures. "No matter how anybody says it is. It feels good to have made something. The best thing is that each person's would be different."

A man in a green sweater and blue shirt drawing with crayons across three pictures. "In a way, you've already won in this world because you're the only one who can be you and that's the way it's supposed to be."

Fred Rodgers on the importance of making something even if other people don't think it's good had me crying this morning. Passing it along for anyone else that might need it.

I’m upstate NY and feel pretty firmly Northeast when it comes to weather and gardens. Downstate might feel differently tho?

I think the east coast also needs a mid-Atlantic. For garden purposes, I consider the Northeast to be New England+NY+PA. Cold winters are our defining trait

I am really amused by accounts that pop up and are like 'Looks like Bluesky is full of LEFTISTS (derogatory) and I'm here to SHAKE THINGS UP' and then they promptly get blocked by everyone and shake up nothing

I’d volunteer to run a regional, if you need someone for the US northeast (I’m zone 6b)

I found the feed back when the site was a lot smaller, but I really like the idea of one big federated international feed populated by smaller regional feeds. Seems ideal to me to have the option to have both

Love it!

Oh no, wishing you a speedy recovery! I’m happy for every single flower til the bitter end lol