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Jacques Leslie

@jacquesleslie.bsky.social
48 followers 55 following 59 posts

LATimes contributing op-ed writer. Wrote Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People & the Environment. Expelled from two countries, evacuated from a third. Named Enemy of the Week by American Spectator. Riding out Trump catastrophe in VT.

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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
This is beyond appalling. I await the day when Trump is convicted and sent to the Central African Republic. He can take Stephen Miller with him. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/w...
nytimes.com
Women Who Fled Iran Are to Be Deported to Central African Republic, Lawyers Say
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
For this vital piece I don't need to write my own headline. This one works: "This Is the Formula That Defeated Orban. It Would Defeat Trump, Too." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | This Is the Formula That Defeated Orban. It Would Defeat Trump, Too.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
My latest, on a forgotten atrocity by US troops in Vietnam with many times more casualties than My Lai that packs a lesson for Trump and Netanyahu: www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...
latimes.com
Contributor: Almost-forgotten atrocity in Vietnam War holds lessons for the Trump era
Given President Trump’s expressed openness to bombing Iran 'back to the Stone Ages,' Americans should acquaint themselves with the U.S. Army campaign that killed some 7,000 civilians.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Important piece! Whether the 2026 elections will take place, and its results accepted, are much bigger questions than most people realize. This may be why Trump doesn't try to change course or seem appropriately panicked by the drubbing he'd get in honest elections. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | ‘When You Think of It, We Shouldn’t Even Have an Election’
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Fantastic piece. "It really makes those midnight chats with the love bot sort of bittersweet to know that the orgasms are measured in metric tons of melted glacier." www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Don’t Use A.I. to Do This
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 25/02/2026
Russian embassy, Washington DC. To mark the fourth anniversary of the full scale invasion
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
Here's my latest, a departure from my usual water- and environment-related stories, about the emergence of tiny home villages as a solution to the homelessness and housing crises. lawmagazine.bc.edu/2026/01/no-p...
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Here in Woodstock, VT, residents and visitors have been protesting Trumpist authoritarianism every day for more than a year. Here's what appeared yesterday-- and stay to the end to see the glorious Leslie Leslie's sign! Thanks to stellar videographer Marion Abrams of madmotion!
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The Daily Beast @thedailybeast.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
OPINION | Even by Trump’s standards, his latest letter is so dangerous and so delusional that there is no longer any question that the president is mentally “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” as laid out in the 25th Amendment.
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Trump’s Insane New Threat Leaves No Doubt: It’s Time for the 25th Amendment
There is no longer any denying the president is unable to carry out the demands of his office.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Insanity. Trump throws a tantrum over not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, which he deserves about as much as Pol Pot, threatens to turn the last of our allies into enemies, and Repubs say "Sure, that makes sense." Is there not an ounce of courage in the GOP? www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...
washingtonpost.com
Trump ties Greenland takeover bid to Nobel Prize in text to Norway leader
Trump’s push to take over Greenland and unleash a trade war with European nations has sparked the greatest transatlantic crisis in generations.
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Crawford Kilian @crof.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Krugman: The Stupidest Trump Move So Far open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
open.substack.com
The Stupidest Trump Move So Far
Just kill me now. Or tariff me. Whatever.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Here's my latest, about the inadvertent weakness built into the Endangered Species Act and the way that the Trump administration is poised to bulldoze the Act. dornsife.usc.edu/icw/2026/01/...
dornsife.usc.edu
The Endangered Species Act Meets the Klamath River Basin - Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
Jacques Leslie is the author of Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for its “elegant, beautiful prose....
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Maduro’s Ouster Plays Right Into Putin’s Hands www.nytimes.com/2026/01/04/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Maduro’s Ouster Plays Right Into Putin’s Hands
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Peter Head @peterheadcbe.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
The rate of global mean sea level rise has increased from ~2.1 mm/year in 1993 to ~4.5 mm/year in 2023. www.nature.com/articles/s43...
nature.com
The rate of global sea level rise doubled during the past three decades - Communications Earth & Environment
Global mean sea level rise amounted to 4.5 mm per year as a result of warming oceans and melting land ice, more than twice the rate of 2.1 mm/year observed at the start of satellite data in 1993, base...
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
If there's one thing that works better than colonial rule, it's certainly remote colonial rule.
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
This is obviously more bad news re: the AI bubble and coming bailouts, stated or unstated. The more personally invested Trump is in the hype cycle, the more he will use public money to delay truth time. But for now he has a notional technology saving his failed media company. Good times!
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
My latest L.A. Times op-ed: the triumph of salmon vs. Trump's sabotage. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...
latimes.com
Contributor: Salmon's comeback pits nature against Trump administration
The Trump administration is using illegal funding cuts and questionable regulatory sleight of hand to divert water to farmers and away from tribes.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
Release of the complete Epstein file is to Trump what going to prison is for Netanyahu. Both prospects are so intensely resisted that making sure those things don't happen becomes the foundation of their policies. N. comes up with endless war; T. embraces a passel of harebrained schemes.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
This prison is the ultimate embodiment of Trump's (and Bukele's) sadism, ineptitude, and ruthlessness. www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
theatlantic.com
No One Was Supposed to Leave Alive
Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration say they were tortured during their four months in CECOT.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
A piece about the Yurok tribe's lawyer that was a pleasure to write. He's a graduate of Boston College Law School; thus the story in the BC Law School Magazine. With brilliant photography by Jordan Gale. lawmagazine.bc.edu/2025/07/the-...
lawmagazine.bc.edu
Boston College Law School Magazine | The Tribal Victory of the Century
With discretion and respect for Native Americans, a BC Law alum helps restore a river, its salmon, and its people to their rightful places.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
Fascinating, revealing conversation about the mostly unacknowledged conflict between agriculture of all kinds and a healthy climate and environment. We obviously need food to survive, but the way ag is conducted now won't work much longer.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Here's my latest, a story about the Klamath River basin that, for a change, is upbeat. e360.yale.edu/features/kla...
e360.yale.edu
A Win for Farmers and Tribes Brings New Hope to the Klamath
In the long-contentious Klamath River watershed, an experiment that turned a barley field into a wetland not only improved water quality. It also offered a path forward for restoring populations of tw...
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 16/06/2025
The extraordinary elite propaganda effort on behalf of nuclear power has worked: public support for nuclear power is at record highs. This took place during a period in which the only nuclear plant built in the US is 10s of billions over budget. Pretty impressive.
news.gallup.com
Nuclear Energy Support Near Record High in U.S.
Americans support nuclear energy and offer mixed views on fracking and offshore drilling, while a diminished majority prefer renewable energy development over more fossil fuel production.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Please let us not try to overthrow the Iran regime, however odious it is. The U.S. might succeed in pulling off a coup, but it would lose the aftermath. Most people don't like having foreigners pick their governments for them. Whatever govt. emerges would be stained by its association with the U.S.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
"Our stadiums are monuments to the poverty of our civic ambitions and our inability to summon the collective will to use the land we have for the things we need. They are distractions from our inability to build anything else." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Sports Stadiums Are Monuments to the Poverty of Our Ambitions
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
The Trump admin is gambling that its laughably ill-suited but creepily telegenic cabinet members will not deliver up a catastrophe such as an epidemic fueled by lack of vaccinnation, an undetected hurricane, a gruesome plane crash... Not a bet I would take. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | A Hurricane Season Like No Other
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
The #Trump admin's assault on Harvest is meant to show that if it can destroy Harvard, it can take down any other university. Leaders of other fields, particularly those Trump considers insufficiently supportive, such as, say, The New York Times, would be wise to get prepared.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
"Half of Yemen’s children under 5 are malnourished — 'a statistic that is almost unparalleled across the world,' UNICEF says." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The $7 Billion We Wasted Bombing a Country We Couldn’t Find on a Map
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
The indispensable Naomi Klein passes on some insights about our global predicament. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
rollingstone.com
Naomi Klein: 'What They Want Is Absolutely Everything'
The ‘Shock Doctrine’ author explains the dark logic of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s path of destruction and why billionaire oligarchs are so angry.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
The U.S. is now on the Civicus monitor watchlist of repressive regimes for "unprecedented executive orders designed to unravel democratic institutions, rule of law, and global cooperation." monitor.civicus.org/watchlist-ma...
monitor.civicus.org
Watchlist March 2025 - Civicus Monitor
CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist: 5 countries where there has been a decline in civic freedoms
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Here's my latest L.A. Times op-ed, out today, on how the Trump administration's funding freezes and personnel layoffs have replaced hope and optimism in the Klamath basin with fear, uncertainty, and anger. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...
latimes.com
Contributor: DOGE and Trump quash a Klamath River basin comeback
The president's slash-and-burn funding cuts are betraying California and Oregon tribes, farmers and salmon along the Klamath River.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
#Trump will insist over and over that his tariffs are permanent right up until the moment when he decides they aren't. The current situation is so volatile that tariffs aren't likely to stay in place-- too many forces will align against Trump, including, I can even imagine, some elected Republicans.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
"Hydro‑Québec’s main transmission line into New England stopped exporting any meaningful amount of power two days after President Donald Trump’s tariff on Canadian imports went into effect." www.canarymedia.com/articles/hyd...
canarymedia.com
In New England, Canadian hydropower has slowed to an ominous trickle
Whether due to drought, prices, or politics, the weekslong disappearance of Canadian hydropower from New England’s grid exposes risks for the region.
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 23/03/2025
If you ever wondered how the KGB manipulated foreigners and got them to repeat Soviet propaganda, spend some time listening to Steve Witkoff talk about his wonderful conversations with Vladimir Putin.
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Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
You want to know how bad Canadian-US relations have become? There's a serious discussion in Canada about developing nuclear weapons. This is one of the US's longest, closest, and best ally. And in one month, Trump has destroyed that relationship. Insane and reprehensible.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
This is shameful.
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Wajahat Ali @wajali.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
If it isn't obvious, you aren't safe in this Trump Administration. Dictators come after anyone and everyone deemed a threat, including their former allies and loyalists. Your white skin, American accent, Christian background, Rust Belt zip code, and/or GOP voting record won't save you.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
What an ugly, disagreeable, disreputable country we've become. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/u...
nytimes.com
Canadian Who Was in an ‘American Pie’ Video Says ICE Held Her for 12 Days
Jasmine Mooney, 35, said she was put “in chains” after immigration enforcement officers flagged her visa application paperwork. The former actress was finally allowed to return to Vancouver.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Here's my latest, an 1,800-word piece for the New York Times' opinion section about the consequences of the world's largest dam removal project in the #Klamath basin and the calamity that the #Trump administration has abruptly and unnecessarily caused there. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | A Story About Salmon That Almost Had a Happy Ending
How tribal leaders, commercial fisherman and a few small environmental groups won an uphill campaign against dams.
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Elon Musk told Joe Rogan, “The fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy.” All you need to know-- this guy should be kept a million miles from government.
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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Interesting statement on Russia and Ukraine from leadership at the George W Bush Presidential Center. www.bushcenter.org/publications...
bushcenter.org
America First should not put Russia second | George W. Bush Presidential Center
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
The abrupt dismembering of USAID is beyond appalling, as Gawande explains in this grim, powerful interview. The Trumpies who've perpetrated this should be aware that they will be remembered for their cravenness, their blatant disregard for human life. insidemedicine.substack.com/p/usaid-upda...
insidemedicine.substack.com
USAID update, with Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr. Jeremy Faust.
February 24, 2025. An in-depth and up-to-date deep-dive on where things really stand in the Trump administration's assault on USAID, which has long been one of the United States' greatest assets.
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Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Donald Trump hallucinating and babbling complete nonsense at the National Prayer Breakfast. There is zero water coming from Canada to California, and nothing he's said or done changes that. He's "opened up" nothing. He must think because Canada is north of the US that it's "uphill."
Trump babbling nonsense at the National Prayer Breakfast said "The water comes down from the northwest parts of Canada, I guess, but the Pacific Northwest. And it comes down by millions and millions of barrels a day and uh, I opened it up. It wasn't that easy to do. But I opened it up and it's pouring down."
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 05/02/2025
Murphy: "We need to act like a real opposition party in the middle of a constitutional and democracy crisis. That means we should not be moving forward nominees or legislation in the Senate. Ds should not be giving votes to nominee or legislation in the Senate until Rs get serious about this crisis"
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
This 2-year-old piece gets at an underlying cause of the Trumpian maelstrom: we are paying now for the disappearance of civics and govt from schools over the last generation in the susceptibility of Americans to scams, conmen, and harebrained ideas. www.lockhaven.com/opinion/colu...
lockhaven.com
Should we still be teaching civics?
Civics education in this country is dying, and if we fail to resuscitate it, our whole democracy may die with it. I know that may sound dramatic, but I have been teaching high school for 20-plus years...
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Jacques Leslie @jacquesleslie.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Trump's "flood the zone" strategy will fail, because it creates chaos, not success. Read Ezra Klein for some good reasons for hope. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Don’t Believe Him
Look closely at the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s second term and you’ll see something very different than what he wants you to see.
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Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
For a photo op & a bragging media post, Trump minions at the USACoE have thrown away millions of gals of #water farmers were relying on for later this year. This water will not be captured, will not be useful for cities or farms or firefighting. It is now lost. www.latimes.com/environment/...
latimes.com
Acting on Trump's order, federal officials opened up two California dams
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just opened up two California dams. A spokesperson says the flows are 'controlled' and being coordinated with local officials.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 01/02/2025
🧵 THREAD: Trump and Rubio have arrested the international humanitarian aid system and forced lifesaving aid programs to completely halt operations — despite an announcement earlier in the week claiming they had changed course. 1/
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
This should be 25th amendment level conduct. The president ordered water to be released from a random dam in California nowhere near the wildfires and then claimed it would help. That’s literally Mad King behavior.
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David Rothkopf @djrothkopf.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
I do not recall a 24 hour or one week news cycle with more disturbing news about the state of the presidency and the US government in it than those of today and the past seven days. January 6 was nothing compared to this. But make no mistake, this too is the gov't being torn apart by a mob of thugs.
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