iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 15h

Just a reminder: Tillis persuaded the woman Hegseth allegedly raped to come forward with her story, and told her that if she did, it would sink the nomination. She did. At great risk to herself. Tillis then cast the deciding vote for Hegseth. Because he’s a goddamned coward.

ms.now

Outgoing Sen. Tillis regrets pivotal vote for Hegseth: ‘He’s an actor. He’s not a manager’

Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis spoke to MS NOW about regretting his vote to confirm Pete Hegseth and his strained relationship with Trump.

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Scott MacFarlane @macfarlanenews.bsky.social · 18h

NAACP files federal civil lawsuit, asking court to order Justice Dept to turn over records about its "election monitor program" NAACP argues Trump Admin is "searching for evidence related to unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud", rather than "ensuring access for voters"

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Heather Cherone @heathercherone.bsky.social · 20h

fourth (!) paragraph "Mr. Hastert admitted at his sentencing that he sexually abused teenage wrestlers as young as 14 whom he coached at Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Ill., where he worked from 1965 to 1981. The federal judge who sentenced Mr. Hastert called him 'a serial child molester.'"

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 21h

I hope someone smarter than me writes about piece for the youngs who may not know this, but Karl Rove's was the last real bid for immigration reform. He knew if the GOP locked up Latino support, they'd run the country. Yet here we are and he's speaking AGAINST GOP in his owns state bc of racism.

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Colliu @colliu.bsky.social · 23h

Key point: The news is not Putin trying to subvert “the West”: Brexit, AfD, Le Pen, Orban, everything remotely right wing he supported. The news is that the U.S. have turned. There is no “West” anymore. There is a fragile island of liberal democracies in Europe encircled by autocracies.

While I saw some real weaknesses in Biden's policy towards Ukraine (and still do), he remained absolutely committed to the Atlantic alliance.

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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 05/10/2026

for reference, in the Dobbs opinion, Alito was like, women generally don't _plan_ to get an abortion, so how could they have a reliance interest in abortion? which is kind of an extension of 'you want health insurance? what, you plan on being sick?'

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22h

it's such a perfect example of what is actually alito's hallmark as a justice, shoddy, sub-undergraduate thinking dressed up with five dollar words.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22h

what an asshole

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 22h

I repeat again: I think Lindsey Graham's death removed one guardrail against Trump's total capitulation to Russia. Iran is the one major thing left--and Putin will try to lure him there with a win-win peace plan.

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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 22h

After recapping yet another busy week of #SCOTUS news, today’s “One First” officially closes the book on the Court’s October 2025 Term with some final (and pretty mind-boggling) data about just how busy—and just how ideologically charged and divided—the emergency docket was:

stevevladeck.com

255. Closing the Book on OT2025

As the October 2026 Term begins, it's worth taking a moment to highlight the *real* final statistics for the Court’s output during the October 2025 Term.

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

An interesting paper given that Judge Perry just named Baude as amicus in the Broadview 6 case to write what I fully expect to be an argument about whether judges are helpless when DOJ breaks the law.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 04/10/2026

Again, the US isn't structurally racist because people *feel* it is. The US is structurally racist because empirical research across a wide range of fields, from history to sociology to economics, has *shown* it to be. This is the right way to think about US history, and people should be taught it.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 04/10/2026

The purpose of teaching is to deliver that correct knowledge to students while showing them how much remains unknown and contested. Why would we do research if we weren't supposed to communicate what is true to others? Oh yeah - this is why they want to end humanities & social science research.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 04/10/2026

I find this claim, which is now common in right-wing ed discourse, really astonishing. It rests at the core of the post-truth vision of "viewpoint diversity": we should not teach the conclusions that research shows to be correct; rather, we should validate empirically discredited ideas just because.

Fostering this civic orientation does not mean teaching students the “right” way to think or act
according to a preferred political or moral perspective. A transformative education is premised
on developing sound judgment, not on delivering correct conclusions.

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Just Jack @just-jack-1.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Schmitt: Did you attend a concert wearing an anti-Trump shirt? Smith: I wore a “No Kings” shirt. It used to be a bipartisan American sentiment.

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Caw Yar Bluff @j-leslie3k.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Russians have seen from earlier US and European response that they can commit extreme war crimes and nothing will change. From a strategic point of view not only do war crimes make sense the Russians are practically being encouraged to commit them. This is the war we have created in the modern world

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WuTangIsForTheChildren @wutangforchildren.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Jack Smith….man of the people at the Power to the People concert hanging out on the lawn….no fancy pavilion seats or backstage laminate pass

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

We really need to stop treating Chait as serious. He's a lagger on 50% of what he writes. He's nuts on the other 50%.

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Ruth Zakarin @ruthz.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The fraternity brothers in the group chat who cheer violence? That behavior is being modeled by the president of this country. I cannot stress this enough — Trump is teaching young men how to be abusive every time he opens his mouth.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

What a lie. Some of these people are being imprisoned indefinitely in squalid condition in African prisons. Others report being beaten and arbitrarily deported in violation of international law back to their home countries, where they face persecution or torture.

The indefinite nature of their confinement has taken a severe toll. In October 2025, a Cuban man who was on the July flight went on a hunger strike for a month-until he started showing signs of organ failure —to protest the conditions of his detention, including his ongoing confinement and lack of access to legal counsel.
Terrified of being imprisoned in Eswatini forever, another man repeatedly told his attorney that the prison there never lets people go. One man told his attorney that he feels like a caged animal with no end in sight. The prison does not have air conditioning, making the hot, humid summer months especially uncomfortable for the men.
Food is insufficient, medication is scarce, and requests often go unmet or are belatedly met.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 04/10/2026

the idea that rufo has, at any point in his public career, been a sincere advocate for “colorblind meritocracy” is brain dead

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Phillips OBrien @phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Also, more and more reports are confirming what should have been admitted for years. The Trump administration has business deals ready to go with Putin, once they can bully the Ukrainians into surrendering more of their land and people. This is the real Trump/Kushner win-win.

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Phillips OBrien @phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Free weekend update is out. Russia has a strategy for this winter--massive war crimes to make Ukraine unlivable. We need to speak the truth on that. One reason they need to do this is that they are struggling in other parts of the war--see Vivaldi. phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-up...

phillipspobrien.substack.com

Weekend Update #205: Russia’s Strategy In Two Words: “War Crimes”

Operation Vivaldi, Even More Robots; The Trump-Putin Quid Pro Quo

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George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

(qutoed in Woodward and Bernstein's “The Final Days,” p. 462)

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George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

“He’s gotta resign. … We have to let our own people and everybody else know why it had to be done—because of what’s on the tape, because he lied.” — White House speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan to White House chief of staff Alexander M. Haig, August 2, 1974

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This breathtaking NYT story about Trump's Russian entanglements includes three people who've been part of the operation to cultivate Trump since 2015: Bryan Lanza, Sheikh Tahoon, and Kirill Dmitriev. This is literally the culmination of the original plan. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/u...

nytimes.com

U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies

President Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of inter...

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Grace Garcia @givemegrace.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"What Boutros doesn’t mention are the 25 other people charged during that period. For good reason! Virtually all of those cases also fell apart... But they fell apart differently than Broadview 6. And that’s where...the decision to keep trying to indict it, should come under scrutiny."

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The same guy who has been using government records to launch phony investigations is firing the people who do actual investigations after the investigated him.

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James Fallows @jfallows.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And somehow I left out Thiel.

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James Fallows @jfallows.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Was talking with somebody last night about whether today's plutocrats were objectively "worse" than original Gilded Age. Them: "Well, what are your examples?" Me: "Big three: Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg. "Then Ellisons, Kochs, Singer, Schwarzman. Princelings like Lutnick, Uihlein. No contest."

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

@katiephang.bsky.social is having so much fun with this lawsuit and I'm here for it.

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Kira @kiragooddog.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

A remarkable story about Leonard Leo’s main funder.

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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 02/10/2026

This is a better epilogue to my January story about the private equity firm profiting off of ICE's cruelest flights than I could have ever possibly hoped for. CHICAGO: You went to the mat and protected (at a minimum!) thousands of immigrants from torture. Take a bow. prospect.org/2026/10/02/i...

prospect.org

The City That Brought Down an ICE Airline - The American Prospect

In Chicago, progressive alderpeople held up a contract until a private equity firm was forced to dispatch Omni Air International, protecting thousands of immigrants from deportation.

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Mike Hixenbaugh @mikehixenbaugh.com · 02/10/2026

Scoop: At a secret meeting this summer, an aide to Stephen Miller laid out Trump administration's plan to make it easier for states to round up and institutionalize mentally ill homeless people — by pushing a drastic policy change that would weaken the rights of millions of disabled Americans.

nbcnews.com

How Trump’s homelessness crackdown became a sweeping retreat from disability rights

After issuing a memo making it easier to institutionalize homeless people, the Justice Department began abandoning cases protecting disabled people’s right to live in the community.

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The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

4. According to new reporting last night by MS Now, the text messages from 2024 from Smith's team that Eric Schmitt presented at Tuesday's hearing were provided by the US Department of Justice, which is to say, by US Attorney General Todd Blanche. www.ms.now/news/eric-sc...

ms.now

Eric Schmitt was warned about the Jack Smith texts. He used them anyway.

As Republicans on Capitol Hill try to figure out how Eric Schmitt’s bombshell fell apart so embarrassingly, it turns out he was warned that the texts were unvetted.

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The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

From J6 insurrection to Schmitt's humiliation, there is a straight line. The latter covered up the former to confuse understanding of Trump's treason. A THREAD.

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@NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) @newsjennifer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Much needed reality check on Chris Rufo. The mainstream media gave this guy oxygen, treating him like he was raising legit questions when he's always been the nasty racist you see exposed here.

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Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Here's what Tucker Carlson is up to when he talks to his own audience, instead of interviewers from NPR or NY Times: Explaining that white people are facing extinction and the ADL is trying to cover it up. He concludes, "Noticing is hate. Noticing is violence." www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carls...

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Again, what possible interest would the Anti-Defamation League have in attacking whites in South Africa who say they're being killed, especially since there are many, many hundreds who have been killed? And that's documented. That's not a guess, and it's not a conspiracy theory. And every single one of them was killed by a Black South African. This is intra-racial crime, and it is racially motivated.And the testimony of almost every survivor corroborates that. So why is it in the interest of the ADL not simply to deny it's happening, but to attack the survivors of it and their family members? You have to ponder that for a minute.

Here's Wikipedia's response to this racial conspiracy theory. Quote, white genocide is a political myth based on pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and ethnic hatred, and is driven by a psychological panic often termed white extinction anxiety.

White extinction anxiety, often referred to as white extinction anxiety. So let's just, I don't know, get the demographic numbers, which are publicly available for the biggest white countries in Europe and North America, and ask a really simple question. Is the percentage, the proportion, of the white population going up or down? Say over the past 50 years, has it gone up or down? Well, it's not only gone down, it's bottomed out. United States went from nearly 90% white over 60 years to probably less than half white.

So that's white extinction anxiety? No. Those are facts. So again, it's not enough to pretend that it's not happening. Wikipedia, like the ADL, like CBS News, like ABC News, feels the moral obligation to attack anyone who happens to notice what's happening. The facts are themselves racist. Objectively, again Wikipedia, white people are not dying out or facing extermination. The purpose of the conspiracy theory is to justify a commitment to a white nationalist agenda in support of calls to violence.

Noticing is hate. Noticing is violence.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Listening to Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit wave away the sexual assault charges against DeShaun Watson — even saying “winning is the best deodorant” — was pretty jarring, especially this week.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The literal argument here is that you're not assimilated if white people are racist against you because of who you are or how you look. bsky.app/profile/jame...

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Asha Rangappa @asharangappa.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Former Westchester Cty DA @mimirocah1.bsky.social writes in this op-ed how lacking the Tomkins Cty. investigation was, almost as if the DA had an interest in downplaying this crime, aligned with Cornell’s institutional temptation to do so 2/ www.ms.now/opinion/corn...

ms.now

Opinion | How the Tompkins County DA set itself up for failure in the Cornell rape case

It appears the Tompkins County district attorney’s office failed to properly follow up with standard practices for cases involving sexual assault allegations when the initial complaint was made in 202...

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Not mentioned in here, but something I'm holding my breath for. Not ONLY is Harmeet Dhillon an Indian immigrant. But her policy of doing away w/affirmative action WILL RESULT in more Asians at UT (and everywhere else). At some point there will be enormous backlash, esp w/Rufo out there.

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Ira 'Bluebeard Homer' Goldman @kdbyproxy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is really good, both for its substance and the craft that went into creating it.

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