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Elaine Frantz

@frelaine.bsky.social
1.2K followers 1.1K following 70 posts

A historian with a recklessly optimistic view of human nature paired with always- low expectations for human actions. We meant well.

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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
At a great session on women’s expressions of power, conformity, and resistance through dress. #shgape2026
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Kate Birkbeck @katebirkbeck.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Brilliant roundtable revisiting the 1877 strike at 150 #SHGAPE2026 @shgape.bsky.social @frelaine.bsky.social
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
It’s not strange. Grown Americans in positions of power & authority called the police on to campuses, and threatened the future work and livelihood of 20 year olds because they dared to stand against the mass bombing of women and children. And they will never forget it.
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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Mary Wollstonecraft AGAIN CONDEMNS the scourge of bro capitalists we suffer under today: “An ostentatious display of wealth without elegance, and a greedy enjoyment of pleasure without sentiment, embrutes them till they term…. anxiety about the welfare of others, a search after misery.” -1796
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
I can't get over this number: in 2007, there were 360,000 newspaper jobs. Now, there are 80,000. "My local paper sucked!" Sure. What sucks even more? The void. "I get all my news from the Guardian!" No, the Guardian doesn't report on your town council, your school board, local cops.
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Jane Mayl🍷n 🍇 @janetrad.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
"As his post goes on, his language gets older. 100 years older with each jump. The spelling changes. The grammar changes. Words you know are replaced by unfamiliar words" Fascinating. So how far back in time can YOU go?
deadlanguagesociety.com
How far back in time can you understand English?
An experiment in language change
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John Collins @logicallyjc.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
This one hits hard.
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 21/02/2026
INBOX: the police chief of Quakertown, Pa., led a group of plainclothes officers to disrupt a peaceful high school student sidewalk protest yesterday. They threw an underage girl to the ground, choked her, and disconnected all calls to the detention center where she and others are currently held.
phillyburbs.com
Quakertown parents, groups demand release of students in police clash
Civil rights groups and parents gathered in front of the Quakertown Police Department Saturday demanding answers for the violent confrontation Friday.
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Annette Yoshiko Reed @annetteyreed.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
“Maybe the leaders of our nation’s wealthiest universities can’t think a generation ahead anymore, beholden as they are to board members who think in terms of the next quarter….” - François Furstenberg @publicbooks.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/the-misuses-...
publicbooks.org
The Misuses of the University - Public Books
Have the funds that might have trained the next generation of scholars at the nation’s first research university have been blown on ostentatious new buildings?
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functional moron @fiveburger.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
america could be such a cool fucking place if we’d just let it be
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
www.startribune.com/detained-by-...
startribune.com
Two women, detained by ICE, say they helped agent having seizure
The women say they guided agents through the emergency, later raising concerns about medical protocols, weapons safety and accountability.
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
I think we are a little frozen in shock and so not responding to this situation we are in . It’s time to face it.
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
What we’ve just done is created the capability for the federal government to violently control cities even if the local (and state) government is willing to resist with force and even if our military and National Guard would refuse to implement the violence. That’s new.
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
If you’re in PA, Dem committee seats open this spring. Now is a good time to find your local democratic committee, run for a voting seat on it, and fight to make the party what it is not, and absolutely needs to be.
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Jody DiPerna @jodydiperna.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
"A list of things I'd rather do than ask ChatGPT

Consult an oracle / Ask a crow / Dig
out my old Magic 8 Ball / Call my
grandma / Ask the void / Ask a brain
inside a jar / Talk to the old stranger
that feeds the birds / Ask the artists /
Ask the scientists / Listen to the 
screaming wind / Search my dreams
for answers / Flip through dusty, old
library books / Talk to anything, 
anyone with a soul"

Alex Dawson
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Sadly, the subject is always timely.
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
How Democrats Became the Party of the Well-to-Do www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | How Democrats Became the Party of the Well-to-Do
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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
CHICAGO…
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Ed Burmila @edburmila.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Fascism encourages you to think it’s a spectator sport and when it’s too late you realize you’re also on the playing field and always have been.
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Lara Putnam @laraputnam.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
The is a technical social science term for what @adambonica.bsky.social has laid bare here, and that is "absolutely fcking insane" Seriously. Read and weep.
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Dan Nexon @dhnexon.net · 30/07/2025
Unpopular opinion: we were better off when American masculinity was defined in terms of stoicism and self-restraint then whatever the fuck the neofascists are peddling. And we should make a concerted effort to promote it.
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Neil Flanagan 🧱🗃️ @jgbollard.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're interested in why American cities are *like that*, you need to get this book. Physically, even.
GOOD
PARENTS,
BETTER
HOMES
& GREAT
SCHOOLS
Selling Segregation before the New Deal
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Dheepa Sundaram, PhD (she/her) @themodsisyphus.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
Authoritarianism 101-Detain educators & public servants; portray them as anti-American. "Retes was...driven to...LA's Metropolitan Detention Ctr, where he was held by...US Marshals Service... He was booked..& placed in a holding cell with a professor...detained that same day" shorturl.at/oQU1Q
shorturl.at
US citizen, Army veteran detained at California immigration raid | CNN
George Retes, a 25-year-old Army veteran and father of two, had been planning his three-year-old daughter’s Minnie Mouse birthday party at the park for weeks.
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Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
You used to be able to google information and reliably get accurate info. Now you just have to swim through a soup of low quality websites (that also might be warped by AI) and try to figure out what's real
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Senator Chris Van Hollen @vanhollen.senate.gov · 01/07/2025
Update: We have now been at this for 22 hours and Republicans are still hard at work trying to kick 17 million Americans off their health care to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
I can’t believe this is my country. If we wonder “what we would have done” during the holocaust, now we know.
ktla.com
Masked men in U.S. Border Patrol vests brutally beat, take Santa Ana father
In a graphic video that has since gone viral on social media, about seven or more masked men wearing U.S. Border Patrol vests are seen taking part in a brutal beating of a Santa Ana father before f…
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Christopher McKnight Nichols @cmcknichols.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
War. Peace. Food. Drinks. People. Labor. Politics. And more! Check out the Gilded Age & Progressive Era podcast, been around for a few years, doing some amazing stuff & now with new hosts! @shgape.bsky.social @oah.org @shafrhistorians.bsky.social @historians.org 🗃️ shows.acast.com/gildedageand...
shows.acast.com
The Gilded Age and Progressive Era
with Michael Patrick Cullinane
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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
Have national Dems, who claim to want to "win back" the working class, said anything yet about ICE injuring and arresting the head of the SEIU of California? truthout.org/articles/ice...
truthout.org
ICE Arrests David Huerta, Beloved Labor Leader and SEIU California President
“We all collectively have to object to this madness,” said Huerta after his violent arrest for witnessing an ICE raid.
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Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
4-year-old Bakersfield girl facing deportation could die within days of losing medical care - Los Angeles Times Don’t ever tell me that Christians support the GOP. There is nothing Christian or Christ-like about this. Just plain old cruelty and callousness:
latimes.com
4-year-old Bakersfield girl facing deportation could die within days of losing medical care
In 2023, a Mexican girl, 4, was allowed U.S. entry for lifesaving medical care. She and her parents, who live in Bakersfield, have been told they must leave.
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Perfect day to head to the Valley Forge National Park. The rangers were so knowledgeable, and, seeing us coming w a wheelchair, grabbed a book to talk us through everything in the Washington’s HQ building. It was lovely.
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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
I’ve taught the 14th Amendment but only today did I fully grasp how radically inclusive Birthright Citizenship really is. What makes you American? Not race, not religion, not lineage. You’re born here, you belong here.
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David Huyssen @davidhuyssen.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Interesting how his racist & eliminationist EOs get framed as king-like declarations but when it comes to reining in drug prices suddenly "His Power Is Unclear," a real puzzler.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/12/us/trump-news
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
AOC: We need to be talking about ICE agents and the cowardly policy of covering their faces — and, in many cases, their identification… The idea that we’re going to allow a paramilitary force to bloom, one that isn’t accountable to the Constitution… we’ve got another thing coming.
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
According to a congressman present, ICE arrested the Mayor of Newark in his own city while he was outside of an ICE facility. He wasn’t protesting or trespassing—he was serving as Mayor. This regime is lawless, reckless and trampling on the constitution.
youtube.com
'Never seen anything like it in my life': New Jersey congressman reacts to Newark mayor arrest
YouTube video by MSNBC
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Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Early exit polls suggest the new pope did particularly well with male voters aged 45-79.
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Hope the hundreds of undergraduates who I caused to read Rerum Novarum over the years have a little flicker of recognition
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.chantal//RYAN @thoughtrise.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
unfollowing everyone on linkedin except this guy
linkedin post screenshot:

Ken Cheng - I want to connect with you, emotionally)

Al will never be able to write like me. Why? Because | am now inserting random sentences into every post to throw off their language learning models. Any Al emulating me will radiator freak yellow horse spout nonsense. 1 wiite all my emails, That's Not My Baby and reports like this to protect my data waffle iron 40% off. 1 suggest all writers and artists do the same Strawberry mango Forklift. The robot nerds will never get the better of Ken Hey can | have whipped cream please? Cheng. We can tuna fish tango foxtrot defeat Al. We just have to talk like this. All. The. Time. Piss on carpet
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Purported ICE agents raid a courthouse in Charlottesville in plain clothes without badges, ID or warrants, cart off two men without explanation. One of the three men was masked and the detainees were ushered into unmarked van. Video in the article. dailyprogress.com/news/local/c...
dailyprogress.com
ICE detains 2 men in Charlottesville courthouse raid
Three men who identified themselves as Homeland Security officers raided a courthouse in downtown Charlottesville Tuesday, detaining two men without explanation.
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Everyone paying attention here, folks? Safety inspections of milk doesn't sounds like waste or fat to me. WTF?
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
I’ve done some volunteer organizing, and while I’ve met so many excellent humans this way, and plenty of well-meaning people with too much on their plate to do much, we need to talk about shitty volunteers. These volunteers are actually counterproductive to the organization’s purpose. Here’s a few:
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Conor Lamb @conorlambpa.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
On June 6 veterans will march in DC to demonstrate that our oaths to the Constitution still hold. This is not partisan; it’s about service, particularly the essential work of veterans in the government and those who care for them. Unite4veterans.org www.military.com/daily-news/2...
military.com
Veterans Organizing 'Call to Action' Rally on D-Day Anniversary in Nation's Capital
The march, touted as a non-partisan, pro-veterans employment and benefits protection rally, is expected to draw veterans, advocacy organizations, musical groups and some celebrities.
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
This is good news if you think our banking system is too secure.
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Susan H Allen @susanhallen.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Newly installed 20-something Nate Cavanaugh the so-called Acting President of the DOGE controlled-USIP is trying to transfer the USIP building to the GSA! But USIP building was built with private donations for USIP. Not ok. See details in the court filing today: www.courtlistener.com/docket/69754...
courtlistener.com
Motion For Order – #14 in UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE v. JACKSON (D.D.C., 1:25-cv-00804) – CourtListener.com
MOTION for Order Pursuant to the All Writs Act to Suspend Transfer of Property and for Status Conference by NANCY ZIRKIN, GEORGE E. MOOSE, UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE, JOHN J. SULLIVAN, JUDY ANSL...
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Karen L. Cox 📚🏳️‍🌈 @drkarenlcox.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
ICYMI. In response to the EO that conflates Confederate monuments with “history,” @uncpress.bsky.social is offering my book on the history of these statues for FREE until April 11th. Here’s the link! www.book2look.com/book/SO9q2ZB...
book2look.com
No Common Ground (full reading copy) : The University of North Carolina Press
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Even if you accept the premise and decision, which I absolutely do not, it is the simplest thing to phone the visa holder, tell them their visa is revoked and say they have a month to leave the country. Accosting someone on the street like a kidnapping is just a spectacle of terror.
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Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · 18/03/2025
this district hasn't had a Democrat representing it in Congress since the 1960s
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Shana Gadarian @sgadarian.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
If you don't believe in civil liberties for people you dislike, you don't believe in civil liberties.
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Elaine Frantz @frelaine.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
This contemplation of the nature of spectacle is worth slowing down and stopping for.
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Joyce Chaplin @joycechaplin.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
The Philadelphia Eagles were named, in 1933, to honor Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration, part of the New Deal—the NRA’s Blue Eagle stood for protection of labor and federal oversight of the U.S. economy (pic: Library of Congress)
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