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Micah

@micahfolsom.bsky.social
412 followers 119 following 402 posts

Nuclear engineer, TV and gaming nerd, police abolitionist. @micahfolsom on other socials

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Reposted by Micah
Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 9h
Humans need friction. So does the economy. Wrote about Musing Ourselves to Death & what a future where the internet transforms into a place for AI assistants to perfect commerce. Spoiler: We talked to some smart ppl & it would be chaos! w/ @matteowong.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
theatlantic.com
Imagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper Towels
AI agents are doing our shopping for us, and wreaking havoc on the internet.
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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Adelson Family Foundation Apple Nvidia Lockheed Martin Microsoft Palantir Google Meta Amazon All gave millions. thehill.com/homenews/adm...
thehill.com
Trump ballroom donors revealed in Washington Post report
Major donors to President Trump’s White House ballroom project were revealed in a new list obtained by the Washington Post on Thursday. According to the Post, the list reveals more than $330 millio…
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Reposted by Micah
Sebastian Murdock @sebastianmurdock.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
JUST IN: Elon Musk has settled a class action lawsuit against him after he used his PAC and duped Trump supporters into giving away their personal information for the chance to randomly win $1 million. Turns out, the winners were predetermined. www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-m...
huffpost.com
Elon Musk Settles Class Action Lawsuit Over Duping Trump Supporters
Musk promised voters in the 2024 presidential election a chance to randomly win $1 million. The winners were predetermined.
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AmyAlexCA @amyalexca.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Important accountability reporting from @hammerandhope.bsky.social, especially since ZERO legacy news orgs are investigating how/why so many major orgs Capitulated to Racist 47’s anti-Black EO last year — and the toll it is wreaking on Black people in the U.S. hammerandhope.org/article/medi...
hammerandhope.org
The Economic Crisis in Black America
Life for most Black people in the United States is a scramble to get by in the best of economic times — and with Trump’s cuts to social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, the times are getting wo...
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
OpenAI continues to enshittify ChatGPT: OpenAI allows advertisers — or really anyone, I tested myself in 5 minutes — upload raw phone numbers or email addresses to OpenAI to then target those specific people and inject specific ads into their ChatGPT session www.404media.co/how-chatgpt-...
404media.co
How ChatGPT Targets Ads To You Based On Your Prompts, Phone Number, and Email
Most ChatGPT users probably don’t know you can be specifically targeted on the platform by advertisers based on your email, phone number, or unique phone identifier.
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Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
NEW: Yeah, not good
wired.com
‘Nightmare Scenario’: Zero-Click Spyware Is Infecting Phones via Targeted Ads
Researchers at The Citizen Lab have for the first time released technical evidence of sophisticated mercenary spyware being distributed via online advertising.
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Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Five hundred people on hunger strike inside a for-profit ICE concentration camp in Georgia.
thecurrentga.org
Approximately 500 participate in hunger strike at Folkston immigration detention center - The Current
Approximately 500 detainees at a private ICE facility in Folkston, Georgia, launched a hunger strike to protest poor living conditions and alleged asylum protocol violations while awaiting judicial he...
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Reposted by Micah
Lenticulus @lenticulus.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
“A dated, sourced record of Elon Musk's posts, replies and reposts about Black people” elonmuskhatesblacks.com
elonmuskhatesblacks.com
Musk Race Ledger
A dated, sourced record of Elon Musk's posts, replies and actions about Black people, with links to the original posts on X and to published reporting.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Excerpts from Michael Lewis on DOGE (Guardian article). 1. Gavin Kliger, white nationalist, refused to shake hands with the Black IRS staffer who briefed him on privacy issues. Or pay attention. Kliger now has a defense start-up valued at 1.4B thanks to DOGE. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Phyllis, who loved working for Kathleen and saw falling on hand grenades as part of her job, never told her how this one had felt. She knew Gavin had expressed enthusiasm for white nationalists, and he likely knew that she knew. She tried to break the ice by walking in with her hand extended; Gavin stared at it and declined to shake it, though he had shaken the hands of the white men who had offered them. “He was kind of cool towards me,” said Phyllis. Before she could even start the briefing, he said, You know, I’ve heard these rules before at other agencies. Yes, she said, but these rules are different, because no other agency is governed by this privacy law, and this law can get you thrown in jail very quickly. As she walked him through the basics – how you can’t use your personal phone for business, how if you happen to so much as glimpse a form 1040 with someone’s name on it you must avert your eyes – Gavin played on his phone. “He’s multitasking right in front of me, typing and texting,” said Phyllis. “It was, here’s a routine that I must endure.”
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Truthout @truthout.org · 14/10/2026
The average retiree will soon see average cuts of over $2,000 to their annual Social Security benefits if the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign is continued, according to a new report on the widespread economic consequences of the president’s inhumane agenda.
buff.ly
Trump’s Mass Deportation Push May Cut Retirees’ Social Security By $2k Annually
The program’s insolvency date was already pushed up to 2032, partly as a result of mass deportations.
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Sounds good to me
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
These things. They are still being accompanied by a human on a bike but I've had a few cut me off / ignore a stop light while picking up my kid
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
What do you think of the doordash delivery robots being tested across the Bay? Here in Fremont they are using the bike lanes, which seems like it'll inevitably lead to bike lanes becoming the doordash robot speedway
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Darwin BondGraham @darwinbondgraham.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Hundreds of people are outside of FedEx's massive warehouse in Oakland today. They say FedEx is shipping F-35 fighter jet parts from OAK to Israel and they want the company and airport to stop.
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854
Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from
Norway, 2021-2025
Marius A. K. Ring
WORKING PAPER 35854|
DOl 10.3386/w35854
ISSUE DATE October 2026
Whether imposing higher taxes on business owners adversely affects business activity by constraining investment and inducing capitalist flight is a central question in the ongoing debate on how to tax the ultra wealthy. To shed new light, I exploit a series of related Norwegian reforms during 2021-2024 that increased dividend tax rates, removed migration-related capital gains tax loopholes, and nearly doubled the effective marginal tax rate on business wealth. These reforms spurred international debate and, allegedly, an "exodus" of Norwegian billionaires (Financial Times,
2023). While I document clear effects on migration, these responses are concentrated among the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution and mostly confined to 2022 and 2023. My results indicate that at most 100 individuals left due to the reforms. I find no evidence of significant outmigration or reduced inflows of startup founders or inventors. I estimate that absent any outmigration, wealth tax revenues would have increased by 75% from 2021 to 2024. Reform-driven outmigration lowers the revenue gain to 71.5%. My findings further show that outmigrating owners' firms remain economically active and do not reduce investment. In a broader set of analyses, I examine whether business outcomes are affected, regardless of whether owners outmigrate, since firms may reduce investment both due to liquidity constraints or distortions to owners' savings decisions. I compare firms owned by Norwegian individuals subject to the wealth tax with firms owned by foreigners and other tax-exempt entities. By merging historical ownership data from Orbis with the Norwegian shareholder register, I perform these analyses on both Norwegian and foreign-domiciled firms.
Across settings, I find no evidence that Norwegian-owned firms pay out more dividends or invest less after the reforms,…
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Checking DystopAI to see if the water is safe to drink after another AI product released 10 years supply of fluoride into our drinking water all at once
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
I assume this means they're creating a suite of AI products to "help" you during the disaster scenario they are responsible for
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 09/10/2026
just to emphasize what's happening here: BMW (a company that used slave labor under the Nazis) refused to provide an official vehicle to the ultra right-wing AfD party, which is now asking Elon Musk to provide a Tesla instead Tesla literally becoming the Nazi car brand
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
The takeaway from Bo French suggesting Asian students are “foreigners” and the tepid GOP response is that the Trump-era Republican Party is increasingly explicit about its belief that the only good immigrants, and the only real Americans, are white. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...
The Afrikaner policy is illuminating, because it proves the catch-22 facing nonwhite immigrants: If you are poor, you are a moocher, and if you are gainfully employed, you are taking a job from a hardworking American. The only way to be a good immigrant is to be white and Christian.

Bo French, who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, has taken this idea a step further, suggesting that the only way to be an American is to be white and Christian.
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
You'd think "botched 3 executions" would be a deal breaker for the head of prisons, like, not having any botched executions seems like a basic requirement for the job And then he dresses like *that*??
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Reposted by Micah
Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
People voted for lower prices and fascism, and they got higher prices and fascism. www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/10/...
cnbc.com
Inflation on many everyday items was entirely due to tariffs, NY Fed says
Tariffs added 2.9 percentage points to inflation in 67 categories of goods by February 2026, researchers at the New York Federal Reserve found.
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Reposted by Micah
Bryce Covert @brycecovert.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Absolutely incredible reporting on the people who have paid the steepest price for Trump’s occupation of Memphis, the parents whose children have been shot and killed by the National Guard hammerandhope.org/article/trum...
hammerandhope.org
Trump’s Deadly Invasion of Memphis
A Black city tried to rein in abusive policing. Then Trump’s task force arrived.
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Look it's very simple. The bad things capitalism produces? Socialism. Cleaning my room? Socialism. Eating my veggies? Yep, also socialism
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
This guy in 10 years, divorced: "why won't my kids talk to me?"
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Aleksandra Vaca @transiticsnews.com · 07/10/2026
Arizona and Virginia, both of which are governed by Democrats, are ending Medicaid coverage of care for trans youth, Transitics has learned. The bans, which go into effect on October 13th, mark the most significant Democratic capitulation to Trump's anti-trans demands yet. Cowards.
transiticsnews.com
Democrat-led Arizona, Virginia Quietly End Medicaid Coverage of Care for Trans Youth, Acquiescing to Trump Demands
The policy changes, which go into effect on October 13th, see Arizona and Virginia join Kansas as states where Democrats have needlessly opted to restrict Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care.
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Nature @nature.com · 07/10/2026
None of this year's science Nobel Prizes have gone to women. The number of these prizes to go to women remains at 27 out of more than 600. See how many you can name in our quiz: www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Cops are able to break into locked iPhones, including those that have been rebooted by Apple's own reboot security feature Watch more, subscribe here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpzC...
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Not satisfied directly reaching into taxpayers' pockets to pay for his campaign ads, Trump is additionally directing many millions of $ to be spent in military munitions and operations to help his party's chances in the election
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Senator Ron Wyden @wyden.senate.gov · 07/10/2026
The Trump administration will start selecting lawyers for unaccompanied minors. Meaning the judges work for Donald Trump, the prosecutors work for Trump, and now the attorneys representing children will work for Trump. This is a rigged system that will result in more untold horrors for these kids.
cnn.com
Inside the Texas courtroom where toddlers face immigration judges | CNN Politics
Migrant children as young as 2 are showing up at immigration courts nationwide, many without attorneys, to try make their case to stay in the US and avoid deportation.
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Truthout @truthout.org · 06/10/2026
ICE operates a major surveillance center in rural Vermont that processes 1.55 million biometric and biographic queries annually. The agency communicates with more than 13,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the country, many of them through an expanding network of 287(g) agreements.
truthout.org
Activists Target What They Call a Major “Spy Center” for ICE in Rural Vermont
As ICE widens its surveillance dragnet, activists plan a week of action to disrupt a major data network.
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James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The GOP cut funding to the IRS because *audits work* and they fundamentally don't believe rich people should have to play by the rules.
Line chart titled "Revenue per audit," subtitled "In-person audits, 2010-2014." It plots average revenue and average cost per audit by taxpayer income percentile, poorer to richer, from the 0–5th percentile to the top 0.1%. Source: Boning et al. 2023, "A Welfare Analysis of Tax Audits Across the Income Distribution."

Across the bottom half of the income distribution, revenue and cost track closely, both around $3,000–$6,000 per audit. Above the median, revenue pulls ahead of cost: about $10,000 vs. $5,000 near the 90th percentile, and about $17,000 vs. $8,000 at the 95th–99th. At the top, revenue jumps to about $31,000 for the 99–99.9th percentile and about $90,000 for the top 0.1%.
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Emma Silvers @emmaruthless.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Last month, an email from SFUSD informed me that my 7yo would be taking a state-mandated test from a company called Amira, and it led me down a rabbit hole. Here's how big tech is infiltrating SF public schools — whether families & teachers want it or not. www.coyotemedia.org/sfusd-ai-ami...
coyotemedia.org
In Which I Decline to Let an AI Company Experiment on My Kid at School
Living in San Francisco means being a guinea pig for the tech industry — but I draw the line at my second-grader.
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Mamdani showing that you can get a lot of great stuff done when you don't spend all of your time watching TV, sexually assaulting your staff, and taking bribes
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
They love Republicans and want them to win, even when they're calling for the destruction of US cities and the deaths of 10s of millions of people
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Geoff Brumfiel @gbrumfiel.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The IceCube neutrino detector has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in physics. The Trump administration has proposed slashing its budget in half in 2027.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
The government *still* isn’t tracking how often immigration agents detain U.S. citizens. We are. 500+ Americans have been handcuffed, held at gunpoint or held against their will in Trump’s second term. Our tally is almost certainly an undercount. THREAD (content warning: violence) ⬇️
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Mike Ludwig @mludwig.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
See the moment when Border Patrol and militarized police cut down the sacred Grandmother Tree, a more than 200-year-old Cottonwood on private property and Indigenous territory. The tree sitter and many others are have been arrested, according to activists @ Tierra Libre anti-border wall camp
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I went to the grand reopening of the African American Civil War museum this week and the timing is just right — its mission to preserve Black history is more relevant now than ever
huffpost.com
The African American Civil War Museum Reopens To Honor The Black Soldiers Who Changed History
The museum recently held its grand reopening in Washington’s historic U Street Corridor.
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Mr. Dan Zak @mrdanzak.com · 04/10/2026
A Haitian man legally immigrated to Ohio, then was given an ankle monitor bc Trump withdrew his status. He threw himself in front of truck. The trucker, who voted for Trump, is haunted. “Pierre was doing what he was supposed to do. We did not do right by him.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
theatlantic.com
A Reckoning in Springfield
A truck driver out on his route confronts what the country has become.
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Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The fiscal year is over. The dying Social, Behavioral, and Economic division of NSF ended up awarding 90 total grants this year, as opposed to ~700-800 in recent past years. Source: grantwitness.org/nsf/analyses...
The graph shows the cumulative number of awards made by month across this fiscal year, as compared to the last 6 fiscal years. The line for this year is total flat until June, but then finally gets up to 91 by October. In prior years the increase starts building earlier and ends on average in the 700-800 range (with variability, last year was only between 400-500).
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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Sort of insane fact about how broken US urban planning is—America now spends more building *just the lights for roads and highways* than on all subways & ground mass transit combined Spending on roadway *pavement* is 18x transit spending
a graph of roadway and mass transit lights
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It's telling in this lazy analysis that only two examples of left wing violence are cited, both done by individuals, while the Republican party proceeds with using the weight of the US govt to conduct an ethnic cleansing campaign against minorities, murdering Americans in the street in the process
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Liliana Segura @lilianasegura.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The tortuous, botched execution of Christa Pike is truly horrifying. And while it feels unique in some ways, in reality it is also only the latest in a history of botched executions going back years — YEARS — in numerous states. Please know: this is the reality of the death penalty in this country.
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Data center construction has migrated to places of low resistance: poor, often Black areas where corrupt deals are commonplace and the harms to residents invisible. Lowndes County, Alabama, in the heart of the Black Belt, is one of those places. 🧵 prospect.org/2026/10/01/d...
prospect.org
‘I Know I Couldn’t Live Here’: Standing Up to a Data Center in Alabama’s Black Belt - The American Prospect
Faced with little transparency about a mammoth facility, Lowndes County fights back.
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Micah @micahfolsom.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Can anyone tell what it's saying at 1:35? It sounds like "that crowd looks pretty large, I could definitely [inaudible] through them"
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Truthout @truthout.org · 30/09/2026
The modern-day legal basis for the criminalization of immigrants largely rests on two anti-immigrant bills signed into law by Bill Clinton 30 years ago. The IIRIRA and the AEDPA further entrenched mass incarceration and laid the blueprint for the detention and deportation machine we have today.
buff.ly
Clinton-Era Laws Passed 30 Years Ago Enabled Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Agenda.
Clinton’s ‘96 laws provided the legal foundation for mass detention, rapid deportations, and the evasion of due process.
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Allen Orr @allenorr.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Trump did not retreat on mass deportation. He refined it. There are outsourced arrests, rushed hearings, and hidden cruelty. In darkness is the new strategy. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
From mass raids to quiet crackdown: a timeline of Trump’s strategic ICE pivot
After switching tactics, federal agents are detaining and deporting record numbers of people from the US
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Whitney Curry Wimbish @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The mortality reviews that ICE published late last week show that medical neglect is widespread in Trump's concentration camps — something immigrants, advocates and attorneys have said for years, and which ICE routinely denies. New from me in @prospect.org.
prospect.org
Disturbing Pictures of Neglect in ICE Mortality Reviews - The American Prospect
The federal government released dozens of mortality reviews of immigrants who died in detention in recent years. They show a uniform pattern of medical neglect.
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Alex Burness @burness.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Over a 20-year period, people were sentenced to prison more often, and for longer terms, in years when prosecutors were up for election, a Northwestern Law study finds. In other words, prosecutors were more eager to rob people’s freedom when they thought it would help them politically.
news.northwestern.edu
Prison admissions rose 3% in district attorney election years during 'tough on crime' era
New research from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law suggests that public sentiment associated with “tough on crime” politics may be tied to increases in the number of people admitted to state prison...
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Guardian US @us.theguardian.com · 29/09/2026
Public backlash against ICE climaxed after the January 2026 fatal shootings of two US citizens in Minneapolis. Since then, stealthier arrest operations have fueled enforcement that is quieter but just as ruthless. The 24 hours between the mornings of July 13-14 stand out as exceptionally deadly. 🧵
Blood is seen on the pavement near the scene of a shooting involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Monday, July 13, 2026 in Biddeford, Maine.
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