iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Highlighting the (automatic) Cost of Living Adjustment in a *headline* about inflation is a choice by NPR. Maybe they know all their listeners are on social security, but even then, a COLA is not news.

NPR: Inflation sizzled in September
-- and Social Security benefits will get a boost
Consumer prices in September jumped 3.7% from a year ago. The Social Security Administration said benefits will increase next year to help keep pace with the rising cost of living.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Amazon thinks I have an “ongoing academic reading habit”. I wish. Sadly browsing isn’t acquiring & acquiring isn’t reading. Plus, local bookshop can order most academic books.

Product Preferences:
Ongoing academic reading habit

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The conclusion that drones et. al. lead to stagnant conflicts and more attacks on "Factories. Infrastructure. 'Morale.' Individual human lives." is a gut punch that's hard to deny. From @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com at www.liberalcurrents.com/the-return-o...

This is why the Iran war will not end. Trump will sign no agreement; neither will his successor. There will be a status quo on the ground-some combination of bribes paid and platitudes mouthed to allow the Gulf's oh- so-valuable produce to flow through that pinched strait—interrupted by periodic raids, from one side or the other, attempting to nudge that status
quo further in their direction. Second point: with this blurring of boundaries between the state of peace and the state of war, we should also expect to see the blurring of boundaries between military and civilian targets. The era of mass mobilization aimed to directly destroy the enemy's armed forces in the field-to take the tools of violence out of their hands-occupy their territory, and impose the victor's will by force. The cutting-off way takes as its proximate target the enemy's ability to make war—largely made up
of what in modern times have been labeled "soft targets." Factories.
Infrastructure. "Morale." Individual human lives.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Lower percentage of daily requirements for sodium than I thought. Then again, 1942 servings per container. “INGREDIENT” (singular) is a flex

Nutrition Facts
About 1942 servings per container
Serving size 1/4 tsp (0.7g)

Total Fat 0g 0%
Sodium 280mg 12%
Total Carbohydrate 0g 0%
Protein 0g

Not a significant source of saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, dietary fiber, total sugars, added sugars, vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium

INGREDIENT: SALT

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The New Yorker clearly had an inside source . www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a62026

New Yorker cartoon of a king in a swimsuit going down slide into a moat with 2 advisors to the side. 1 says "Maybe not the best use of the defense budget"

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

3 non-white refugees and 10,255 white ones. This happened at the same time that the Supreme Court decided that political gerrymandering was not racial gerrymandering. From @austinkocher.com austinkocher.substack.com/p/this-week-...

99.97% The share of every refugee the United States admitted in fiscal year 2026 through July 31 who came from South Africa, 10,255 people out
of 10,258. The Trump administration abolished the refugee system, then reopened it for just one group: white South Africans. The fiscal year opened with a ceiling of 7,500, the lowest in the program's history, and an emergency presidential determination signed on May 21 raised it to 17,500 and allocated every one of the additional 10,000 places to Afrikaners from South Africa under Executive Order 14204. Total admissions were 38,102 in fiscal 2025 and 100,034 in fiscal 2024, so this is a program running at about a
tenth of its size two years ago and drawing entirely from one country. Just

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

My favorite bit from the conclusion

Rubin's report-and not mainstream journal sociology—displays all the hallmarks of politicization. She rejects others not because their arguments are inconsistent, their data cherry picked, their analyses unsystematic. Instead, she rejects those whose politics she dislikes, and supports this with arguments that are inconsistent, data cherry that are picked, and
analyses that are unsystematic.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Seeking courage in getting my book proposal together I came across this set of rejections for what became the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. (Of course nobody proudly posts the wall of rejections from a proposal that never amounted to anything.)

Corkboard with rejections from Ballantine, Doubleday, Houghton Mifflin, Free Press, Dutton, and Dial Press

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Art as "the food you eat at a funeral "is an intriguing metaphor. Sad that I did not know of Cat Frazier before reading her obit. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/a...

Ms. Frazier was keenly aware of the role her art could play in
helping people deal with pain, including her own. "I always describe it as the food you eat at a funeral," she said in a
2020 interview with the design publication AIGA Eye in Design. "It's nourishing, and we're all at this horrible event together, but
this is helping us cope so we can talk and laugh about it."

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

In Skardhamar's view the relevant battle is among disciplines, and soc loses by being short on credibility (anti-positivist, dismissive of causal modeling, data sharing), and behind on AI/computation. Some valid critiques, but is that really the battle? What are the rules of the game? Who decides?

The study programs, departments and seminars are like dojos, and the discipline's own journals, conferences and hiring practices are internal competitions, much like judo tournaments. Open competition means stepping outside the discipline, into other disciplines' conferences, journals, and the most influential interdisciplinary venues, where the discipline-specific scoring system is no longer respected, though these arenas remain academic. The real-world application is outside the ring altogether: policy, bureaucratic use, external problem solving, and public debate, where other standards apply and other rules count. This is equivalent to Fairbairn's gutter fight- ing: no referee, and the only standard that really counts is what works, with real-
world consequences for mistakes.

Sociology as a martial art should have a -jutsu orientation, making use of the
scientific tools of the present to make sociological claims credible in venues it does
not control, even as those venues change. The discipline should preserve its authority
over sociological topics. But methods and theoretical traditions should not serve as
markers of identity. When they do, methods developed in other disciplines are easily dismissed for reasons that have little to do with their merits. We should expand the
toolkit rather than defend a portion of it.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Not the sentence I would use to summarize Social Identity Theory, but I never expected to see Tajfel and Turner name dropped in The Athletic. www.nytimes.com/athletic/753... #sociology

In the 1970s and 80s, social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner developed the idea that humans do not only think in terms of, Who am I? They also ask the question,
Who are we?

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Neal Caren in Socius: "Overall, time with friends has fallen by more than half" since early 2000's. If one needs more evidence of what we lost from COVID. Makes me sad. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.....

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Best part of #ASA2026 being in NYC is learning about contemporary (?) forms of collective effervescence

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Yuck. Aside from everything else, how di these guys not give everyone the ick?

(Netanyahu's security team insisted that he stay in a six-bedroom hilltop villa, requiring one of Ellison's employees to move.) Ellison is building a house on the island for his good friend Elon Musk, a regular visitor.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Just deleted a post about how #LLM API calls that include Falun Dafa were being handled weirdly by Qwen, the Alibaba open weights model. They ARE handled weirdly when using "Qwen Plus" through together(dot)ai . But Qwen Plus is not actually open weights unlike other models they serve.

Screen shot of table

Topic
Result
Falun Dafa: Blocked
Uyghur / Xinjiang human rights: Blocked
Taiwan independence: Blocked
Tibetan culture: OK
Hong Kong democracy: OK
Irish-American (control): OK

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I hate headlines of the form "X is not what you think." Why do you presume to know what I think? Anyway, it's an instant unsubscribe.

Mail header: Katherine Courage, Vox
"Ultra-processed" foods aren't as bad as you think.
To: Mark Igra,

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Last thing I need is to add this to my spelling bee compulsion, but it’s quick & fun (I thought I did well but folks in the replies did much better) hankgreen.com/smush

Game board with 3x3 letter grid & 377 points.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Huge crowd watching the screen in the pier from overwalk and top of aquarium

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Strolled around Seattle during the match today — so many public watch parties. Love this guy who climbed up to get a better view of the screen & then watched on his phone.

World Cup watch party at Seattle Center. Man in foreground watching on his phone. Screen and base of space needle in background

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I like this bit where Damasio says people “cultivate pastimes that manipulate their emotions.” That self-manipulation is an important to understanding how - given resources - people choose their situations, rather than simply responding to them.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

A sad day: returning long-borrowed books to the library. Surprised me that Wong’s Boundaries of Obligation in American Politics had most stickies to remove. Probably had 1 cite in my diss.

Photo of 2 boxes of books. Mostly sociology: M
ATLAS OF MORAL PSYCHOLO
MEAD MIND, SELF & SOCIETY
Religion and Volunte
Calhoun CRITICAL SOCIAL T
IDEOLOGY an introduction TERRY EAGLET
THE GENESIS OF VA
Elsenberg Reykowski Staub
SOCIAL AND MORAL VALUES
MCADAM FREEDOM SUMMER
An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology
Pierre Bourdieu ond Loit J. D.
THE PEOPLE'S LOB
Handbook of the SOCIOLOGY OF EMOTION
Vasauez MORE THAN BELIE
MATERIALIST THEORYof RELIGI
WUTHNOW LOOSE CONNECTIONS
Living "Illegal
Michèle
Lamont
Money, Morals, & Manners
SELF, IDENTITY, AND SOCIAL MOVEME
Menjívar
Kanstroom
CONSTRUCTING IMMIGRANT "ILLEGALITY"
WELLMAN
EVANGELICAL US. LIBERAL
WONG BOUNDARIES OF OBLIGATION IN AMERICAN POL
The CIVIC LIFE of AMERICAN
LICHTERMAY & POTTS
Hans Joas PRAGMATISM AND SOCIAL THEO
DOVIDIO • PILAVN
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Advances in IDENTITY THEORY and RESEA
43071
2003
ON JUSTIFICATIO
2022
YUKICH
ONE FAMILY UNDER GOD

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

This was fun. Thanks to my committee (Kate Stovel, @sarahquinn.bsky.social and @profince.bsky.social ), my fellow grad students (a really impressive bunch), and UW Sociology for putting up with me all these years.

Me wearing purple PhD getup being hooded by Kate in UNC Blue (I think)

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

The biggest source of fake news in the NY Times is recipe cooking times. Yes I know a salad takes 2 minutes if I’ve already chopped the ingredients and made the dressing.

NYT Recipe
Cucumber, Melon and Watermelon Salad
By Martha Rose Shulman
Total Time 2 minutes

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

In 1954, Roy Cohn lied about a photo in the Army McCarthy hearings & it was a national scandal that helped bring him down.

Photo of Joe McCarthy with text from Wikipedia

Senator Joseph McCarthy of
Wisconsin
While the hearings went on, a photograph of Schine was introduced, and Welch accused Cohn of doctoring the image to show Schine alone with Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens. 14! On the witness stand, Cohn and Schine both insisted that the picture entered into evidence (Schine and Stevens alone was requested by Stevens and that no one was edited out of the photograph. Welch then produced a wider shot of Stevens and Schine with McGuire AFB wing commander Colonel Jack Bradley standing to Schine's right. A fourth person also edited out of the picture (his sleeve was visible to Bradley's right in the Welch photograph) was identified as McCarthy aide Frank Carr. 15]

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

In Ohio, the legislature made it illegal to disclose information from people they are providing tax breaks for (free link) www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/b...

From article: In December, state lawmakers passed a bill that forbids the release of information submitted by companies seeking tax breaks or other economic development incentives. That has made it more difficult for the public to weigh in.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Here’s how NYT buried the theft of 1.8B

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

"Blessed is the meek". Thanks for the grammar advice, Word. (Annoying grammar checks of direct quotes is one reason I didn't write my dissertation in Word)

Screen shot from Microsoft Word:

Grammar
Double-check that you're sticking to singular or plural

[Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit."]

With the word "are" highlighted and the suggestion

Consider: [is ]

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Wait isn't this time series on the cover of @rmcelreath.bsky.social statistical rethinking? Are they really doing better than the methods in an introductory bayesian methods book? (my favorite stats book ever).

Cover of Statistical Rethinking A Bayesian Course with Examples in R and Stan by Richard McElreath, showing charts of march temperature and Day of first cherry blossom bloom from 900CE to 2000 CE

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Why would the NY Times describe “J-pilled” as skepticism of Israel’s influence, when Israel starts with an I ? Why go soft on the anti-Semites? www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/s... (not wasting a free link on shitty journalism).

Just outside the hall, 20-somethings in rumpled suits were gathered in clusters, debating the merits of a ground invasion in Iran, the conservative backlash against those who were
"J-pilled" (far-right slang for skepticism of Israeli influence), the backbreaking costs of American life, and what they saw as the slow demise of the Trump era.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

This is so incredibly bleak. A must read about the great expertise extraction from highly competent precarious professionals. A giant sucking sound as brains get extracted by malevolent billionaires (Gift link) www.theverge.com/cs/features/...

Each of these data companies touts its stable of pedigreed experts. Mercor says around 30,000 professionals work on its platform each week, while Scale Al claims to have more than 700,000 "M.A.'s, Ph.D's, and college graduates." Surge Al advertises its Supreme Court litigators, McKinsey principals, and platinum recording artists.

That project soon ended and then came another. It was nearly identical to the first, which she had enjoyed, but now, on top of writing rubrics, she had to stump the model and complete the more difficult task in the same amount of time. She was also getting paid $8 an hour less. This is common at Mercor. Nearly every worker I spoke with reported that demands increased, time requirements shrank, and pay decreased as projects continued. Those who couldn't meet the new demands got "off boarded" and replaced by new recruits.

This is what concerns her more than the AI itself: that it's bringing to knowledge work the sort of precarious platform labor that has transformed taxi driving and food delivery. Meanwhile, she watches in horror the desperate gratitude of her colleagues as they rejoice at the 7PM announcement of incoming work.

Thousands of workers poured into the new Slack only to discover it was the exact same job, now paying 24 percent less. All but two of the Slack channels had been deleted, including the watercooler, support, and help rooms. The ability to direct-message one another had also been cut off. There were no team leads to be found. With no one to ask for assistance, workers flooded the main rooms with pleas and indignation.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

"The heat was hot and the ground was dry." Has there ever been a more heartfelt, deeply observed description of the desert than in the 1972 #1 hit song "Horse With No Name"? They just don't write em like they used to. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OTc...

On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds The heat was hot, and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

I saw this photo & I automatically tried to make that face since it seemed so odd. What emotion does that reflect? Pouty toddler?

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Associate Justice Brett Calvinball* *How was this not already a thing

Google search showing no results for Brett Calvinball

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Not only is it perfectly cromulent, it’s in Websters now.

NYT Spelling Bee with word Embiggen and message “not in word list”.

Simpsons characters with text it’s a perfectly cromulent word.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

It seems insane to me that Congress (or *maybe* state leg) has to pass a law so that you can sue to protect your rights against the executive branch. Does the president have to sign law that reins him in? What good are “rights” that the government is free to ignore?

The Supreme Court tried to address the gap in 1971 in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, allowing the victim of an unconstitutional search by federal agents to sue them. But the court has essentially abandoned that approach, saying instead that Congress must act if suits against federal officials are to be allowed.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Frickin A (nytimes poll, gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

"I think he must be doing something right when there are so many people opposed to him," said Paul Minihane, 77, a real estate broker who lives in Dedham, Mass. "I mean, Donald Trump could look at me in the face and tell me to go screw myself. And I'd say, "Thank you. I think that's good. I don't think he's looking to kiss everybody's ass. I think he's going to do what he thinks is the right thing.
And I think that's a positive thing"

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

July 2024, @adamserwer.bsky.social being prescient: A president unbound by the law is shackled only by the dictates of his own conscience, and a president without a conscience faces no restraint at all. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc... January 2026:

NYT Headline: Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only
by 'My Own Morality'
Subhed: On topic after topic, President Trump made clear that he would be the arbiter of any limits to his authorities, not international law or
treaties.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

I read this as “When Married FLING separately it will save you taxes” and was curious what the deductions were.

Ad by Intuit for TurboTax: When Married Filing Separately Will Save You Taxes. With photo of couple.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

This from M. Gessen is scary and smart. From their interview with Ezra Klein. (Gift Link) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/o...

So that's really the great question. I always think back to my series of interviews with this great Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov, who would show me these graphs of Putin's subjective economic well-
being and Putin's popularity. And for about the first dozen years of Putin's being in power, they moved in concert. So subjective economic well-being dips, Putin's
popularity dips. It rises, Putin's popularity rises — which is normal. And then subjective economic well-being takes a dive, and Putin's
popularity skyrockets. And his interpretation was that this is when people accepted a trade-off: You are going to be poor, but in exchange for being poor, you are going to belong to something great. And that's the totalitarian trade-off. People made it in the Soviet Union; people make it all over the world. Are people going to make it in this
country?

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

I’m sure @dieworkwear.bsky.social would know what to say about the fit of this suit. I wonder if those shoulder pads are inflatable like old Reeboks.

Photo of Donald Trump with hands folded on table and giant bulging shoulder pads on his suit.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Cihan Tugğal wrote this in 2007 in “Caring for the Poor.” Never thought of the far right as a Polanyian double movement before. But the NYT piece today argues that it’s true for some MAGA types. Being anti-neoliberal isn’t the same as being anti-capital. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

Highlighted text: We are indeed witnessing Polanyi's "double movement" again, but this time the anti-market swing of his pendulum lacks centrist and left-wing components: Society's self-protection is challenging deep liberalization, as Polanyians have predicted, but the only strong counter-liberal voices emerge on the far right.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Having just been in New York, the Rosh Hashanah display at my local #seattle grocery featuring *Matzah* made me feel out of place. Do they get points for trying? Shanah Tovah all.

Shelves with kosher wine, grape juice, and matzo in the store display. I think there’s some honey on the top shelf.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Ashland OR has free EV chargers in city owned parking lot - just plug in. 4hr limit. 9 x 9 kw chargers. Power ~8¢/kwh here so probably < $10/hr cost to city. People seem to love it. Seattle has some neighborhood chargers, but still have to pay via ChargePoint app.

Photo of sidewalk & trees & parking lot with 9 cars plugged into chargers.

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Nice to see my governor pushing back on Bondi: governor.wa.gov/sites/defaul...

STATE OF WASHINGTON

— OFFICE OF GOVERNOR BOB FERGUSON -

August 19, 2025

Pamela Bondi Attorney General 950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Attorney General Bondi:

I am in receipt of your letter dated August 13, 2025, which purports to notify me that Washington State "has been identified" as a "so-called sanctuary jurisdiction" — on grounds that your letter makes no effort whatsoever to explain.

You refer to unidentified "policies and practices" within Washington State that violate federal law-again, without any explanation. You baselessly invoke federal obstruction, conspiracy, and harboring statutes that carry criminal penalties with prison time. You even threaten that state officials "operating under the color of law, using their official position to obstruct federal immigration enforcement efforts and facilitating or inducing illegal immigration may be subject to criminal charges."

You are hereby notified that Washington State will not be bullied or intimidated by threats and legally baseless accusations.

In the America that I love and have taught my children to revere, we resolve our differences peacefully through public discourse and, if necessary, through the courts—not by threatening political opponents with imprisonment.

You take a different approach. You threaten me, police officers, state troopers, sheriffs, judges, and other officials with prison time.

Why? Because our state legislature passed a bipartisan law that appropriately and lawfully limits the diversion of our state and local resources to federal immigration enforcement.

Your threat to criminally prosecute state officials embarrasses and disgraces the office of the United States Attorney General.

U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi August 19, 2025 Page 2

Washington State is proud to be a welcoming community that values immigrants' and refugees' contributions to our economy and our cultural fabric. We do so while accounting for and complying with applicable federal law. If you really believe Washington State is in conflict with controlling federal law, you would make some effort to explain that. You did not, because you cannot.

In 2017, I was the first state attorney general to challenge President Trump's efforts to trample our Constitution in court, and I was the first attorney general to defeat him. I, along with my team at the Washington Attorney General's Office, went on to defeat the first Trump Administration 55 times. We were unsuccessful in just three cases.

Given that history, I am prepared to defend Washington from any litigation you wish to pursue. If you choose to challenge me and my state, be advised that we will defeat you and seek all appropriate costs and fees.

You seem to believe that cavalierly threatening criminal prosecution will result in me compromising the values of my state.

Never.

You seek to have Washington State bend the knee to a Trump Administration that, day by day, drags us closer to authoritarianism.

Never.

I am not intimidated by you or the President. I will defend our democracy, the rule of law, and the people of my state.

Always.

Bob Ferguson

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Mark Igra @markigra.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Half of US history in a single photo. Man in "We the people Defend Liberty" t-shirt depriving someone of liberty. From New Yorker photographer Mark Peterson: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Photo from back of muscled man in tight t-shirt that says "We the people DEFEND LIBERTY estd 1776" with image of skull between words DEFEND and LIBERTY, and badge clipped to his belt grabbing the arm of smaller man with dark hair wearing button up shirt with backpack

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