iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Me chatting up strangers at an event: Look at me being so social and friendly and warm, what a joy I must seem! My face talking to strangers at an event:

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Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

What would be worse: Dems losing the midterms or winning them and concluding their current approach is sufficient? My latest with @derekjesq.bsky.social anatosaurus.substack.com/p/turn-out-f...

anatosaurus.substack.com

Turn Out for What?

The Midterm Question We Need to Be Asking

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

The ballot box still matters. But the ballot box alone won’t save us. Happening now at #NN26: @anatosaurus.bsky.social, @tarabuss.bsky.social, Fenika Miller and Scot Nakagawa on elections under authoritarianism and what it takes to defend our freedoms as MAGA rewrites the rules to hold onto power.

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Happening now in a packed room at @netrootsnation.bsky.social: “Wins Are Replicable: From Mamdani to Minnesota to Middle America” with @anatosaurus.bsky.social, @jlemonsk.bsky.social, @heyansa.bsky.social and Gabriella Zutrau

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Michael Podhorzer @mikepod.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Black voter participation soared right after the VRA passed in 1965. But not until 1992, after Congress strengthened the VRA to require majority-minority districts, did we start getting closer to proportional Black representation in Congress. Because Black votes finally counted more in the South.

Black representation in the US House, Confederacy vs. rest of the US: chart showing a brief surge during Reconstruction, then almost none during Jim Crow, then a big surge after the VRA (mostly in the rest of the US, not the Confederacy), then a big surge all over the US, especially the Confederacy. Only in the last 10 years has Black representation in the House grown to about the same proportion as the US black population.

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Get Free @getfree-mvmt.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

BREAKING: The Supreme Court’s MAGA Justices just green-lit discrimination against Black voters. By taking away key protections from the Voting Rights Act, the white supremacist faction is imposing Jim Crow 2.0 so they can control our elections and seize more power. apnews.com/live/voting-...

apnews.com

Live updates: Supreme Court weakens key tool of voting rights law in Louisiana case

The Supreme Court has weakened a key tool of the Voting Rights Act that has helped root out racial discrimination in voting since 1965. The case concerns a district in Louisiana.

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Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

We must understand that the Voting Rights Act was not merely about ensuring Black Americans rights, it was about democratizing America. This ruling is not just a decimation of Black rights and Black Americans’ ability to have representation, it is a fatal blow to multiracial democracy.

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Tara Buss @tarabuss.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

MAGA justices on the Supreme Court are doing everything in their power to help bring back Jim Crow. And many, many Americans understand that's exactly what the Callais does. www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/202...

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Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

The Roberts Court majority may be pretending they don't know the Voting Rights Act is what ended Jim Crow and their decision to gut it is license to take us back ("again") to stealing power from Black voters, but Americans do:

60% of voters believe that it's likely that if Supreme Court strikes down the Voting Rights Act, (Callais decision), "politicians redraw districts strictly to protect their own political party, at the direct expense of minority voters."

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Michael Podhorzer @mikepod.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

This conversation is worth a re-watch in light of the Callais decision.

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Michael Podhorzer @mikepod.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

A vitally important discussion with @andreapitzer.bsky.social and @anatosaurus.bsky.social. There are many ways concentration camp systems can end — but they never end on their own. We have to ask ourselves what we will tell our grandchildren we did to stop this.

weekendreading.net

Call Trump's Concentration Camps What They Are

Andrea Pitzer on the history we cannot allow to repeat itself.

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Now seems like a good time to remind everyone that the only way to destroy an entire civilization overnight is with nuclear weapons, and Donald Trump has the absolute power as President to follow through on that threat. It could take as little as 5 minutes. Here's how it would go down:

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Scott Cory @jscottcory.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Accurate, and terrifying. The system presumes that an incompetent or incapacitated President would be removed from power through either impeachment or the 25th amendment, neither of which is fit for purpose in the current circumstance. Thanks for compiling and clarifying, @derekjesq.bsky.social

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

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David Rothkopf @djrothkopf.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

In other words: We're totally down with the war criminal but condemn those who get hung up by things like the law, ethics and morality.

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

The writing this season is getting a little too heavy-handed.

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lowtax speedrun enjoyer @rickywlmsbong.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

bibi is just descriptively correct and the next dem needs to just sever all ties with israel. defense, trade, all of it. even thinking on utterly cynical grounds: israeli political leadership and overall politics is overtly opposed to the american left-of-center project

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Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

It is simultaneously true that Trump had (in the two elections he won) positioned himself as opposed to the wars of his predecessors while advocating for warcrimes, and we're again seeing that play out: violence without aims or rules in service of generating spectacle that plays well on TV & posts.

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Josh Gondelman @joshgondelman.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

"American innovation" now refers to making a kind of atrocity cronut by combining insider trading with war crimes.

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Kenneth Roth: It is a perilous world when the fate of entire countries rests on the whims of the likes of Trump and Netanyahu. I would love to see the Islamic Republic end, but not at the expense of a world where our destiny is dictated by the men with the biggest guns.

theguardian.com

Trump and Netanyahu’s attack on Iran is an illegal act of aggression | Kenneth Roth

Their actions are no different from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo

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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

The facts suggest two interpretive frameworks for Iran: a foreign war as a mechanism to destroy democracy at home; and a foreign war as an element of personal corruption by the president of the U.S. Join my live conversation with @phillipspobrien.bsky.social, 12:00pm ET, snyder.substack.com

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

If only someone could have predicted this.

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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 11/02/2026

Likely-historic photo by NBC News of all the Epstein victims asked to raise their hands if they've not yet been asked to meet with the DOJ as Bondi testifies in foreground

photo of Pam Bondi testifying in the foreground as a group of 7 women and 1 men raise their hands

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Patrick De Klotz @patdeklotz.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

We are murdering people and it is basically just background noise at this point. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/u...

nytimes.com

U.S. Boat Strike Kills 2 in Pacific, With One Survivor

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Elliott Payne @elliottpayne.org · 09/02/2026

Another classic post-Homan day where around school dismissal time we get a flurry of ICE vehicles all across our neighborhoods. Today one vehicle led an observer to their own home and pointed at it. This is a sick game to them, but we won’t be intimidated and we won’t stop until DHS is abolished.

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

“God bless America” 🇵🇷🇲🇽🇧🇿🇬🇹🇭🇳🇸🇻🇳🇮🇨🇷🇵🇦🇦🇬🇧🇸🇧🇧🇨🇺🇩🇲🇩🇴🇬🇩🇭🇹🇯🇲🇰🇳🇱🇨🇻🇨🇹🇹🇦🇷🇧🇴🇧🇷🇨🇱🇨🇴🇪🇨🇬🇾🇵🇾🇵🇪🇸🇷🇺🇾🇻🇪🇺🇸🇨🇦

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

The Venn diagram of people who want their own halftime show and people who want their own water fountain is a circle.

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

The Venn diagram of people who want their own halftime show and people who want their own water fountain is a circle.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 07/02/2026

Ossoff: "You're seeing what I'm seeing, right? The president posting about the Obamas like a Klansman."

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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

"By the end of the two-year period, 94% of participants reported they were housed." A million pilot programs show the same thing: when people are given enough money to afford housing, homelessness ends. Other supports matter, but housing comes first. Not policing. Not moralizing. Homes.

oregoncapitalchronicle.com

Homeless Oregon youth got $1,000 a month for two years. Most found housing after • Oregon Capital Chronicle

Oregon is the second of its kind in the nation to implement the direct cash transfer program after New York City.

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Another fact that bears repeating: These are concentration camps. There’s no better or more accurate way to describe this. And the reluctance to use that term — to say what is, to say what’s true — can only strengthen the regime’s hand by preserving a false and dangerous sense of normalcy.

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Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Our founders, though deeply flawed, understood that democracy requires an informed citizenry and a government accountable to it people. That’s why the press is the only profession protected by the Constitution. It’s also why autocrats and oligarchs seek to control and destroy it.

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Cathy Gellis @cathygellis.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Kafkaesque barely begins to describe the situation of the people DHS illegally deported without due process. Because of what it did, the government is basically saying their habeas petitions are functionally impossible to pursue.

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

“Have you tried unplugging it and counting to 30?”

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awkword @awkword.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

ICYMI: The US is currently holding three times as many people in immigrant detention as were detained in the Nazi concentration camp system in spring 1939 — six years into the Third Reich, and just before the start of World War II.

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Read the book Read Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) @jphillll.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

There’s a temptation to settle for less than abolishing ICE. The establishment certainly wants to stop at far less than abolishing ICE. But our future depends on its abolition. In Congress and in the streets we need to push harder than ever, not accept appeasement. www.jphilll.com/p/reject-app...

jphilll.com

Reject appeasement. Reject counter-insurgency.

We can stop at nothing less that the total dissolution of ICE

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

First, they came for the immigrants— And I spoke up because I know The rest of the fucking poem.

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

I know all eyes are on Minneapolis, but there's a fast-approaching nightmare in Springfield, Ohio. Trump is revoking protected status for tens of thousands of Haitians living there on Feb. 3. Reportedly, on Feb. 4, 1000 ICE agents are arriving to remove this population. Ethnic cleansing.

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Jeff Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

I’d be very interested in an expert opinion on the following question: can Trump as party to the case propose a settlement offer, and then as president direct the IRS to accept the settlement offer that Trump-as-party proposed?

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Derek Johnson @derekjesq.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

These are, by definition, concentration camps. And we should all be clear-eyed and brave enough to say so.

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Their leadership also refers to that restaurant as existing in a theater of war they’ve been deployed to

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Mia Sato @miasato.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

The violent occupation of Minneapolis started with a vlog. I've wanted to find a framework to describe Nick Shirley & others like him: "Influencer" is too quaint. "Journalist" is obviously wrong. I landed on "slopagandist." Gift link (open in a web browser) www.theverge.com/news/869824/...

theverge.com

What is Nick Shirley?

Slop doesn’t need to be AI-generated

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

"Do not forget the police departments that used physical force against nonviolent student protesters who stood against genocide. The system is rotten to the core and we must recognize that in this moment.” - McKenzie Forbes www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/j...

theguardian.com

‘Fascism is here now’: the US athletes pushing back on Trump’s America

World Series winner Sean Doolittle, Super Bowl champion Doug Baldwin and college star McKenzie Forbes have strong opinions on a troubled era

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