A mom and widow who had benefits cut because of a mistake on a form. A home health aide making $13/hour who said food pantries are so overwhelmed, they couldn't really help. A student who said SNAP access supported eating disorder recovery. So many people are being impacted:
I study racist politicians from the Jim Crow era and this is on par with anything that John Rankin, Theodore Bilbo, or Cotton Ed Smith ever said in public
“The Trump administration, as far as I’m concerned, destroyed the old NSF and tried to create a new organization,” said Neal Lane, who served as NSF director from 1993 to 1998.
“It’s unrecognizable.”
HT @cdelawalla.bsky.social
thehill.com/homenews/adm...
literally every day my wife or I go outside with our daughter people go out of their way to be friendly, offer aid or a kind word, no matter where we've traveled. it's nice to remember that hostility as default mode of interaction is not destiny, much as it benefits some to pretend it is
Today, a lot of people will be talking about the manifesto that Palantir released. In addition to pouring over what those words mean, I invite you to ground the conversation in what Palantir has already done.
Its work with Israel and ICE show us exactly what it stands for.
21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures ... have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
⚠️ Palantir released what it describes as a vision for “The Technological Republic” in which it argues AGAINST democratic and cultural pluralism and FOR militaristic supremacy enforced by a technocratic elite who produce AI weaponry.
These points stand out:
The Palentir statement on its desired “Technological Republic” is one of the scariest things I have seen in a while. It is a call for a world dominated by an authoritarian U.S., generated by AI (both the statement and the world), run by tech-surveillance companies. Technofascism pure!
It's also worth being clear about who's doing the arguing. Palantir sells operational software to defence, intelligence, immigration & police agencies. These 22 points aren't philosophy floating in space, they're the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating.
The Supreme Court is fundamentally corrupt & after the NYT reporting there's a big opening for Democrats to make a huge stink about the shadow docket and that it was born to stop the first Black POTUS's climate agenda. We must talk about how the shadow docket has become a racially weaponized tool.
Great, shocking reporting on the origins of the Supreme Court maneuver that has enabled Trump to impose his agenda without full-blown legal review. Roberts resented the Obama admin’s EPA and wanted quick protection for oil companies.
Remarkable SCOTUS reporting in the NYTimes, which pretty much confirms what observers have always assumed, but still astonishes. (Gift link)
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
Diana Acosta Verde, who came into the U.S. illegally from Honduras when she was six months pregnant, had to leave her baby at a hospital while she returned to a detention center. nyti.ms/3Q8gBEK
If you think legislation that targets “low enrollment degrees” only impacts the humanities please look at this list. Degrees in chemistry, math, physics, political science, data analytics, psychology and economics are being eliminated. ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/04/16/o...
Current hostility (on the part of politicians and institutional leaders alike) to even looking at the past is strikingly blunt. It touches many disciplines, but denying history is the key issue.
The backlash against Bouie’s piece on Enlightenment and then the 1619 Project were public turning points
The job market collapse rightly gets a lot of attention (actually, in many ways it doesn’t get enough) but the political landscape in which people write, research and teach history in general and histories of empire, race and slavery in particular is unrecognizable from what it was even a decade ago
Twenty-nine people have died in ICE custody since October, the start of the federal government's fiscal year, already surpassing 2004's toll of 28, the previous record, according to government data. n.pr/4sLetjV
Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt is the 17th Reported ICE Detention Death of 2026
A 27-year-old man from Cuba died on April 12, one day after the 16th death of the year. The pace of detention deaths holds at an average of 1 every 6 days.
austinkocher.substack.com/p/aled-damie...
A federal judge in Illinois today ruled that the Trump administration improperly coerced Facebook and Apple to remove ICE-tracking apps in violation of the First Amendment. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Isaac Villegas Molina, a plaintiff challenging immigration raids, was detained by ICE at a routine check-in and is now being held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.
“To be targeted because he is pursuing his rights is unacceptable,” Stacy Tolchin
www.latimes.com/california/s...
Earlier this evening: dozens of people gathered in Chicago's far north side Rogers (Phillip) Park in support of an 18-year-old Mather High School student and his mother, who, according to the student's older brother, were abducted from the Chicago immigration court at Ida B. Wells Drive in March.
You read that correctly.
Just saw a post lamenting a lack of connections being made between incarceration/jail and "immigrant detention." I understand why a general public might not see those lines drawn but I have to say that this is another instance where long-time organizing is invisible and invisibilized.
Now we’re sending random people to Congo.
/Insert fake surprise gif/: the stepson who had her detained is a former state trooper, changed the locks in the house she was living in, which had been her marital home, and rerouted the mail so she missed her immigration appointment.
Read that again. This Louisiana bill forces homeless people to choose between jail and "treatment"—and if they can't pay for the latter, they will be forced to perform unpaid labor.
The historical precedents are clear: convict leasing, Black Codes, debtor's prison.
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").
EXCLUSIVE: When ICE arrested a Connecticut high school student last week, it was trying to rearrest his father — a former interpreter for U.S. forces in Afghanistan who spent three months in ICE custody last year.
My latest at @ctinsider.bsky.social — www.ctinsider.com/connecticut/... #nutmegsky
Bingo.
People need to just look at the most recent immigration law— which will be 30 years old next year— for the root of pretty much every authority the Trump admin is using and misusing right now
I happen to be working on a documentary about IIRIRA to come out next year! I will share more details soon! The goal of the movie: WE NEED LEGISLATIVE REFORM
And it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t make the same mistakes as were made in 1990s!
