Pear trees may be the sour smell you’ve noticed around Philly Although Philly is full of smells at all times, there’s one in particular you may have noticed lately – Bradford Pear trees.

What's that foul smell in the air in Center City? Probably the Bradford pear trees, an invasive species once popular for their pretty blooms.
billypenn.com/2026/04/03/b...

War on water.

@reuters.com

Trump now blocking terror threat warnings because it makes him look bad.

“They don’t want anything getting out that says what they’re doing in Iran is raising the threat level at home.”

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Oh, how accurate this is...

Remember, if they make this law, most places online literally cannot afford to do ID verification themselves and will have to outsource it, and the dominant business in that field currently is the one that is connected to Epstien-business-partner-owned fascist-surveillance-corporation Palantir.

MOST places online literally cannot afford to outsource it either; we'll all just end up shutting down.

Finally off Peter Pan bus at NY Port Authority. Driver inside + staff outside couldn't open door for 20+ min, passengers panicked over missing connections, on-board babies were the calmest chillest crew while adults freaked out. Manual release required air pressure which failed. Engineers, thoughts?

Starting a newsletter as a disabled user: a journalist’s story - The Word My vision only took me so far without my sight when I tried to navigate BeeHiiv, Buttondown, and Substack for my sports newsletter

Today: Starting a newsletter as a #disabled user: a journalist’s story

the-word.news/2026/0305/di...

“At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom....So it was last week in Selma, Alabama."
Lyndon B. Johnson, speech before Congress on Voting Rights, March 1, 1965.

The DOJ’s “ransom” letter to Minnesota reveals how Trump plans to rig the midterms After ICE killed Alex Pretti, US Attorney Pam Bondi tells Minnesota to hand over its voter roll to "bring an end to the chaos."

Bondi’s outrageous demand for Minnesota voter rolls in exchange for ICE leaving is smoking gun showing their plan to rig midterms. They’ll stop at nothing to spread false claims of voter fraud, wrongly purge eligible voters from rolls & challenge election results www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Two weeks ago this guy announced he was providing legal help to the agent who shot Renee Good. That's how quickly the winds are shifting.

part of this is like, conservatives projecting; part of this is conservatives unable to imagine politics without money; and part of this is dudes who are so out of touch with feminized labor that they think children's birthday parties exist as a spontaneous act of parthogenesis

A moment of silence that ends with someone shouting "fuck ICE!" and the crowd roaring in response

He spent decades bringing the religious right to power. Now he's marching to undo it.

Rev. Rob Schenck spent decades helping build the Religious Right—commingling church and state to advance conservative causes. Now, he says he must confront the damage he helped cause.

‘The people are being charged with keeping the peace, asked to stand firm against the federal agents who are disrupting it. This is a sick form of double taxation — your paycheck gets docked so that a guy in a mask can beat you up while you try to calm him down.’

Wrote this paragraph 17 days ago, about the killing of Renee Good.

I do think that a possibly underrated dynamic in The Horrors is that the Right as it has reconstituted itself under Trump legitimately can’t understand sincere moral or physical courage

The Instant Smear Campaign Against Border Patrol Shooting Victim Alex Pretti Within minutes of the shooting, the Trump administration and right-wing influencers began disparaged the man shot by a federal immigration officer on Saturday in Minneapolis.

NEW:

Within minutes of Alex Pretti being shot and killed, the Trump administration began rewriting the narrative, labelling the victim as a "lunatic" and a "terrorist" contradicting all available evidence

www.wired.com/story/the-in...

Home • Minnesota Reformer

If you're looking for independent Minneapolis media specifically, check out the Minnesota Reformer(minnesotareformer.com), Sahan Journal(sahanjournal.com), and Racket(racketmn.com) (full disclosure: I've done some posts at Racket, I don't care if this is a shameless plug).

If you’re outraged over ICE and you want to do one thing tonight where you don’t even have to leave your couch, subscribe to a local, independently owned newspaper.

Having reporters who can be relied on right now to ask questions and actually report the truth is essential.

when the feds essentially abandoned the scene today after gassing us, we saw upon returning to the intersection this pile of what we were pretty sure was alex’s coat & some of his clothes, a lighter & a crampon, with crime scene tape in it

we created the barrier to preserve likely evidence

man.

nursesonja • 7h & Threads Let us not forget, it was the same administration that reduced us to wearing trash bags as protective gear while we watched the hospital go up in flames around us during the pandemic that just murdered one of our own on the streets in broad daylight. As a nurse & as a person, I will never forgive. I will never forget. I will never back down. This was never about border control. This is about total control. O240 Q5 G34 → 21

The nurses are pissed

Two and half minutes. That’s all the time the CBS Evening News thought today’s events in Minneapolis were worth. Not even time to tell viewers what Alex Pretti did for a living.

The winter storm got 8 minutes.

NBC Nightly News spent 8 minutes, nearly half the show, on Pretti’s killing

this is kind of crazy to see

January 24, 2026 This morning, on a street in Minneapolis, at least seven federal agents tackled and then shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse for the local VA hospital.

January 24, 2026

Having reviewed the Complaint, Motion, Memorandum of Law, and other evidence submitted in support of the Motion, and in accordance with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65, IT IS ORDERED THAT Plaintiffs' Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order [ECF No. 2] is GRANTED as follows: 1. Defendants, together with their employees, agents, and anyone acting in concert with them, are ENJOINED from destroying or altering evidence related to the fatal shooting involving federal officers that took place in or around 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026, including but not limited to evidence that Defendants and those working on their behalf removed from the scene and/or evidence that Defendants have taken into their exclusive custody.

Really hard to put into words how much this TRO says about how lawless the Trump administration is, but I tried to do so tonight at Law Dork — discussing the many lightning-fast litigation moves today in Minnesota after the ICE killing of Alex Pretti.

www.lawdork.com/p/the-ice-ki...

'It's a damn shame': Park Service crews dismantle President’s House exhibit on slavery Members of the National Park Service removed signage around the President’s House historic site on Independence Mall on Thursday afternoon.

“It’s history, you know,” said Juan Suarez, a Delaware County resident who was visiting President’s House with his family. “The fact that they are going to erase this — this is outrageous.”

‘ICE Out’ trainings help Philadelphians feel ‘informed and aware’ The gatherings, led by elected officials and groups throughout the city, teach Philadelphians how to respond to and resist an ICE raid.

The “Know Your Rights” trainings, which have served over 1,000 people, provide information and tactics for interacting with ICE. Residents say they’re needed and useful.

Era of ‘global water bankruptcy’ is here, UN report says Overuse and pollution must end urgently as no one knows when whole system might collapse, says expert The world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy” that is harming billions of people, a UN report has declared. The overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently, the report’s lead author said, because no one knew when the whole system could collapse, with implications for peace and social cohesion. Continue reading...

Era of ‘global water bankruptcy’ is here, UN report says