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Amanda Lefer

@amandalefer.bsky.social
151 followers 253 following 14 posts

Queens. Cats.

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Reposted by Amanda Lefer
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 18/06/2025
I need y'all to understand what the NYT, Dem donors, and centrists are doing here. They're pushing the narrative that trans people went too far and we deserve what is happening to us. It's pure victim blaming and it's not done yet, there's a Confessore piece in the works with the same framing.
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Kim Kelly @kimkelly.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Sesame Street is officially UNION! Workers at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, have voted 55-19 to join @opeiulocal153.bsky.social Huge congrats to @sesameworkersunion.bsky.social! “We can officially say that today, May 15th, is brought to you by the letter U!”
Group photo of Sesame Street workers holding their firsts high with graphics showing the logo of their new union and the winning vote tally, 55-19
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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
"The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden Administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat." www.seattletimes.com/business/usd...
seattletimes.com
USDA withdraws a plan to limit salmonella levels in raw poultry
The Agriculture Department says it is withdrawing a plan to limit salmonella bacteria in poultry products.
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. TRAINS! WE NEED TRAINS NOT JETSONS-ASS ROBOT-CAR DEATH MACHINES
Finally, I can’t think of a more obvious moonshot project to spur advanced manufacturing in America generally than making it our goal to have Waymos or robo-Teslas — or any other brand of self-driving taxis that we can make — operating in every city in America. Because if you look under the hood of any Waymo, it is made up of chips, batteries, sensors and other components that also go into every part of the 21st-century industrial ecosystem — including robots, drones and flying cars — all infused with artificial intelligence.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
NYT: One estimate finds that DOGE’s “firings, re-hirings, lost productivity and paid leave of thousands of workers” will actually COST taxpayers “upward of $135 billion this fiscal year.” @nytimes.com 🤡 www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/u...
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Sounds like it’s a mistake to leave public goods in the hands of billionaires who can decide at any moment they’re bored and don’t want to support them anymore bsky.app/profile/clar...
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 24/04/2025
They're going after the accreditation of universities and threatening to revoke the ability of accreditors if they don't crack down on DEI and LGBTQ people in academia. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
whitehouse.gov
Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 04/04/2025
DOGE targeting black workers specifically it seems
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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
This is functionally what the Cass Review was in the UK and lots of people in prestige media swallowed it whole while accusing trans people ourselves of "politicizing science" by pointing that out
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Sander @sanderregter.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
3 dead so far at Krome ICE detention center in Florida. Max capacity was 500, they have over 4,000 and not enough water and food. Reports say they get 1 cup of water per day. These are already death camps. eu.usatoday.com/story/news/n... english.elpais.com/usa/2025-04-...
eu.usatoday.com
Immigrant women describe 'hell on earth' in ICE detention
No shower for days, cameras trained on the toilet, women crammed into cells 'like sardines,' among the allegations.
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Hanno Hauenstein @hahauenstein.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters - my latest @theintercept.com theintercept.com/2025/03/31/g...
theintercept.com
Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters
Four Gaza protesters in Germany are set for deportations despite objections from an immigration official that none were convicted of crimes.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Trump is basically pressing all the “do not touch” buttons simultaneously: mass layoffs, increasing prices, undermining consumer and international confidence. Not sure what else he could be doing to trigger a recession, let alone longer term US decline
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dr. caitlin m. green @caitlinmoriah.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
“politically motivated” lmao these guys just wilt the second they experience actual standards
Greg Lukianoff reposted
Emil Kirkegaard ©
@KirkegaardEmil
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Finally joined the cool kids retraction club!
My first politically motivated retractionAbstract
Retraction: E. Dutton, and E. Kirkeggard, "Do Conservatives Really Have an Advantage in Mental Health? An Examination of
Measurement Invariance," Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 66, no. 1 (2025): 76-84, https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop. 13065.
The above article, published online on 24
August 2024 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair; The Scandinavian Psychological Associations; and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Following publication of this article, concerns were raised by third parties about the conclusions drawn by the authors based on the data provided. The publisher and the journal have investigated these concerns and have concluded that the article contains major errors involving methods, theory, and normatively biased language. These errors bring into doubt the conclusions drawn by the authors.
Therefore, the parties agree that the article must be retracted. The authors disagree with the decision.Abstract
Many studies have found that conservatives show an advantage in mental health and happiness and various causes of this have been debated (e.g., religiousness, ideology, or genetics). However, not much attention has been given to examining whether this advantage is psychometrically real, or whether it is due to test bias. We analyzed data from two large Finnish surveys of adults (Ns=848 and 4,978) from Lahtinen (2024), that measured general anxiety and depression symptoms, as well as a new wokeness scale. Using differential item functioning tests, we found no evidence for measurement bias in these scales. The correlation between index scores of wokeness and mental health (internalizing) was -0.36, which increased to -0.41 when measurement error was removed. The association between wokeness and anxiety (r=-0.33, adjusted r=
0.37) was stronger than wokeness and depression (r=0.20, adjusted r=0.22).
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Solomon @solomonrmissouri.com · 29/03/2025
“A Texas children's hospital is now treating children for vitamin A toxicity after RFK Jr. touted the vitamin as a measles treatment.” www.huffpost.com/entry/rfk-jr...
huffpost.com
As Doctors Predicted, RFK Jr.'s Bogus Vitamin A Claims Are Making Some Measles Patients More Sick
A Texas children's hospital is now treating children for vitamin A toxicity after RFK Jr. touted the vitamin as a measles treatment.
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 28/03/2025
I mean… Yeah. Yeah they do. For entirely known and warned-about reasons. Yes. www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
AI models miss disease in Black and female patients
Analysis of chest x-rays underscores need for monitoring artificial intelligence tools for bias, experts say
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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
The median voter is unlikely to be shipped to an El Salvadoran torture prison so I don't see how this issue plays well for Democrats. by Matt Yglesias
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
The minute the New Deal started conservatives were like “it’s only a matter of a few years before we go full communism” and yet, somehow, we never got within earshot of full communism. Meanwhile, all it took was electing one Black president and within a few years we’ve got Nazi salutes at CPAC.
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
AOC: Fox News and the right-wing would have you believe that these American values are something out of The Communist Manifesto. But let me tell you Fox News, I don’t believe in healthcare, labor, and human rights because I’m a Marxist.. I believe it because I was a waitress.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
American civil society is full of abject cowards, that is the issue. The government is a mafia state but it is winning because most American elite institutions are devoid of anything resembling integrity and are folding rather than stand on principles that were little more than marketing.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
‘No Way to Please Everyone’ Says Only University Where Students Are Regularly Kidnapped
wsj.com
‘No Way’ to Please Everyone: Columbia’s President Confronts Trump’s Ultimatum
With Trump intent on making an example of Columbia, Armstrong is at the center of a fight over the future of higher education.
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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
I know this first hand. When I was a child, my entire community was branded as spies and sabateurs, justifying our internment inside barbed wire camps for years without due process, trial or charge.
X post by Timothy Snyder (@TimothyD
...),  posted 6 hours ago. The post reads, "The people Attorney General Bondi is calling 'terrorists' have had no trial and no chance to defend them. We do not know they are. Ignoring the Constitution does not make us safe. It puts us all in peril."
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
Trump, Rubio, Musk and the his DOGE employees, Luke Farritor and Gavin Kliger, collectively chose to kill these people. Through orders, indifference, and through pushing buttons that meant that some of the most vulnerable people in the world would have their lives sniffed out.
Rubio had decreed that certain critical programs — such as aid to Ukraine and Syria and costs related to the PEPFAR program to combat HIV in Africa — would continue to be funded. Several times, USAID managers prepared packages of these payments and got the agency’s interim leaders to sign off on them with support from the White House.

But each time, using their new gatekeeping powers and clearly acting on orders from Musk or one of his lieutenants, Farritor and Kliger would veto the payments — a process that required them to manually check boxes in the payment system one at a time, the same tedious way you probably pay your bills online. Meanwhile, AIDS clinics shuttered and staff found themselves stranded in unstable countries such as Congo. A pregnant woman in an undisclosed country has sued the Trump administration because she was denied a medevac helicopter. In another case, I was told, an employee in southern Africa who needed chemotherapy was also denied a chopper because no one would authorize the money.
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Men are shifting right because Republicans are making their lives worse and telling them to blame women and immigrants. Democrats should be pointing out this *extremely obvious* dynamic, not trying to peddle a lighter version of the same narrative.
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Benjamin Park @benjaminepark.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
It’s impossible to state how spineless, ineffectual, and dumb Schumer is as leader. Just reprehensible. AOC should announce she’s primarying him right now and she’d have enough donations by tomorrow for the rest of her career.
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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Schumer told the NYTimes what he would do before telling Dem voters. It also seems Schumer hasn't read the bill he's voting for, which authorizes the very thing he says he's avoiding "if a sequestration is ordered by the President." www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/o... www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...
First, a shutdown would give Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk permission to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now. Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have wide-ranging authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff members with no promise they would ever be rehired.

The decisions about what is essential would, in practice, be largely up to the executive branch, with few left at agencies to check it.

Mr. Musk has reportedly said that he wants a shutdown and may already be planning how to use one to his advantage.(b) If a sequestration is ordered by the President under section 254 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, the spending, expenditure, or operating plan required by this section shall reflect such sequestration.

(c) The departments and agencies to which this section applies are as follows:

(1) The Department of Agriculture.

(2) The Department of Commerce, including the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

(3) The Department of Defense, other than for amounts made available in section 1101(a)(3) and title IV of this division.

(4) The Department of Education.

(5) The Department of Energy.

(6) The Department of Health and Human Services.

(7) The Department of Homeland Security.

(8) The Department of Housing and Urban Development.

(9) The Department of the Interior.

(10) The Department of Justice.

(11) The Department of Labor.

(12) The Department of State and United States Agency for International Development.

(13) The Department of Transportation.

(14) The Department of the Treasury.

(15) The Department of Veterans Affairs.

(16) The National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

(17) The National Science Foundation.

(18) The Judiciary.

(19) With respect to amounts made available under the heading “Executive Office of the President and Funds Appropriated to the President”, agencies funded under such heading.(20) The Federal Communications Commission.

(21) The General Services Administration.

(22) The Office of Personnel Management.

(23) The National Archives and Records Administration.

(24) The Securities and Exchange Commission.

(25) The Small Business Administration.

(26) The Environmental Protection Agency.

(27) The Indian Health Service.

(28) The Smithsonian Institution.

(29) The Social Security Administration.

(30) The Corporation for National and Community Service.

(31) The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

(32) The Food and Drug Administration.

(33) The Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

(34) The United States International Development Finance Corporation.

(35) The Architect of the Capitol.
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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
AOC on senate Dems caving and backing the CR: “A wide sense of betrayal.”
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Senator Bernie Sanders @sanders.senate.gov · 13/03/2025
The CR passed in the House will provide a blank check for Trump and Musk to continue their savage war against working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor in order to lay the groundwork for massive tax breaks for billionaires. This is a bill I cannot support.
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Read the book Read Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) @jphillll.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Chuck Schumer selling us all out will be the last straw for a lot of people. And they need to be organized into organizations and into a project that will outlive the Democratic Party.
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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
NEW letter to Columbia from Trump admin lists demands for “continued financial relationship” with the US government”: —Suspend or expel students for Hamilton Hall protest —“Time, place, and manner rules” —Mask ban —Address “anti-Zionist” discrimination —Reform admissions —MORE
Letter to Columbia admin from Trump admin listing demands for them to continue a financial relationship with the govt Letter to Columbia admin from Trump admin listing demands for them to continue a financial relationship with the govt
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
No. Christians feel persecuted because there is a vast media apparatus telling them that they are persecuted. There is no evidence whatsoever of large-scale discrimination against Christians in this country.
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Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
A recent report showed that the destruction of just one USAID program, the anti-AIDS PEPFAR initiative, would lead to the deaths of one million people *every year* www.vox.com/future-perfe...
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Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
“Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett joked to hundreds of people about sending explosive devices to dissenting event attendees at a talk at the Harvard Business School on Thursday, according to six people present at the discussion.”
thecrimson.com
At Harvard Talk, Former Israeli PM Joked He Would Give Exploding Pagers to Protesters | News | The Harvard Crimson
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett joked to hundreds of people about sending detonators to dissenting event attendees at a talk at the Harvard Business School on Thursday, according to six ...
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
As markets plummet again today from Trump's chaotic economic policies, ask yourself: Why would billionaires back policies that tank their own stock values? It’s the taxes. I wrote a step-by-step explainer of how billionaires avoid paying taxes. People are often surprised when I explain it.🧵
open.substack.com
Buy, Borrow, Die: How Billionaires Legally Avoid Paying Taxes While the Rest of Us Can't
A Step-by-Step Guide to How the Ultra-Wealthy Minimize Their Tax Burden While Their Fortunes Multiply
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Dave Zirin @edgeofsports.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
A massive story in Canada is that damn near the entire country is turning on national God Wayne Gretzky because he refuses to stand up for Canadian sovereignty due to his desire to keep getting invites to Mar A Lago. An entire country choosing dignity over star-f*cking. We could take a lesson.
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Lindsey Boylan @lindseyboylan.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
Good time to remind everyone that this piece of shit harassed and abused his own state trooper who dedicated her life to protecting him. This man is no supporter of law enforcement.
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 08/03/2025
Columbia called the cops on students— *like trump wanted*— & this is how Trump responds. One should never comply with evil, but if even your complicity with evil will not save you— & it will not— then why comply? Do not comply; not in advance, not at all. Fight for the right thing, no matter what.
columbiaspectator.com
Trump administration cuts $400 million in federal funding to Columbia
<i>This is a developing story. Check back for updates.</i>
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 08/03/2025
This is... not a good response from Columbia. I mean, wtf? Do they not realize what's going on? Do they really think that suppressing more speech will get the admin to leave them alone? Columbia has plenty of 1st Amendment talent. This embarrasses them all.
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Joshua Erlich @joshuaerlich.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
i am once again saying that if you allow polling to define rights, you don't have any real rights at all
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Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
I’m not watching nonsense.
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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
"Trump’s taxes on imports (tariffs) from Canada, Mexico, and China will cost people in the United States somewhere around $400 billion a year, or around $3,000 a household."
truthout.org
Trump’s Tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China Will Cost the US $3,000 a Household
Trump is hiking taxes on the working class, and he is doing it in a way that doesn’t require congressional approval.
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Keira Havens @highcountryrose.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Objection to Unanimous Consent isn't unusual or taboo or difficult. It's just not being used by the Democrats. @schumer.senate.gov speechified how McMahon was an unfit candidate to lead the Dept. of Education and then just.... didn't object to the UC request to fast-track the nomination. Wtf.
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
America's workers are not "falling" into homelessness. They're being pushed. My essay for @nytopinion.nytimes.com:
nytimes.com
Opinion | America Is Pushing Its Workers Into Homelessness
The working homeless are casualties of our prosperity.
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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
This Russian long game of using compliant U.S. leaders to ultimately destroy our nation and democracy is very important to keep front of mind. It’s not like Putin and advisers haven’t made long game clear, and now they have men on inside, not to mention so-far accommodating congressional leaders.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
my armchair sociology: you have people who were invested in traditional masculinity who also enjoyed the very aestheticized, entertainment versions of it (e.g. WWE, UFC) and you have a group of people whose only contact with masculinity was the latter, and this is broadly a class split
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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
OK folks--here is the answer. They are not simply removing programs because of their political biases--they are terminating existing NIH grants. Yours or mine could be next! 🧪
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Amanda Lefer @amandalefer.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
Funny we actually have them in parts of Brooklyn and Queens too- I believe due to some snafu at JFK where an exotic bird shipment got loose.
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Martin Matishak @martinmatishak.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
EXCLUSIVE: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions. On @therecordmedia.bsky.social therecord.media/hegseth-orde...
therecord.media
Exclusive: Hegseth orders Cyber Command to stand down on Russia planning
The secretary of Defense has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions, sources tell Recorded Future News.
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