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Michael Prunka

@michaelprunka.bsky.social
56 followers 79 following 35 posts

Full time marketing professional, part-time problem. I write a newsletter about hunger and inequality: michaelprunka.substack.com

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Reposted by Michael Prunka
Thor Benson @thorbenson.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Homer Simpson: I sleep in a big bed with my wife
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
Pigeons fly alright
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
USA Women’s Hockey coach looks like he raided Ron Burgandy’s closet.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 06/02/2026
Mamdani: "I speak of Renee Good, whose final words to the man who murdered her were, 'I'm not mad at you.' I speak of Alex Pretti who died as he lived, caring for the stranger. ICE shot him bc he did something they could never fathom ... let us offer a new path: one of defiance through compassion."
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 05/02/2026
Wow! What sounded like the entire AEW Dynamite audience in Las Vegas tonight chanted "Fuck ICE! Fuck ICE!" in unison before the main event
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
I started writing regularly again about three months ago. Today I sat down with an idea and a rough outline and was able to crank out 700+ words in about an hour. Feels good to have that groove back.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Oh how I love you, Justin Sourdif.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Catherine O’Hara was truly one of a kind. This word will miss her dearly.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Imagine being offered a promotion, only to realize that saying "yes" would cost your family $5,000 a year. That isn’t a hypothetical. Many lower-income families have to navigate benefits cliffs. open.substack.com/pub/michaelp...
open.substack.com
When promotions make the poor poorer
We tell workers to climb the ladder, but our safety nets are designed with benefit cliffs that can turn raises into a financial disaster.
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David Pakman @davidpakman.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
What laws are being enforced when this ICE agent tells the person filming “if you raise your voice, I erase your voice?”
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
I believe I can speak for NC-13 when I say, with my whole chest: Fuck Brad Knott.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
But let’s be clear: silence is nowhere near enough. Knott is on the subcommittee for border security and enforcement. He can help launch investigations into Pretti’s execution. He can demand a moratorium on these operations until we understand why these agents are wholly incapable of deescalation.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
The sense I get is that Knott and many other Republicans know that what is happening with ICE is indefensible. The silence speaks volumes — especially when Knott was quick to parrot the Trump admin talking points after federal agents killed Renee Good a few weeks ago.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
It really speaks volumes that my US House representative, Brad Knott, who is one of the biggest Trump brown-nosers there is, hasn’t said a word about Alex Pretti’s execution now more than three days ago.
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Since July, I've tracked at least 2,300 cases in which federal judges have ruled ICE has illegally detained people without bond or due process. This is one that stands out: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 25/01/2026
Alex Pretti was an American hero. He saved lives. He protected people. He cared deeply about his community, unlike the murderous thugs who killed him. The very last thing he did was try to help a woman who had been pepper-sprayed and violently shoved to the ground by ICE. 1/
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David Pakman @davidpakman.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
The gun people say Americans need guns to defend against a tyrannical government. A guy with a legal gun shows up to confront a government acting tyrannical, and the government shoots him dead because he had a gun. Make it make sense.
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David Pakman @davidpakman.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Federal agents killing civilians with no consequences makes escalation inevitable. Someone will retaliate and an agent will be killed. I oppose all violence. Impunity plus street-level killings is a recipe for chaos, and this is entirely predictable. This has to stop.
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Brandy Zadrozny @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Alex Pretti "used to tell people off when they made sexist comments to female physicians. He bought me coffee when I had a really bad day as an intern...I laughed alongside him daily. He made a point to teach medical residents without judgement, but with a smile on his face and a joke."
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Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Abolish ICE is now the moderate minimum position, Prosecute ICE is where Dems should be at next.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
There is another angle where you can see an agent clapping as he backpedals away. That’s the kind of people that are swarming our cities — the kind who think they have a blank check to execute civilians at the slightest provocation, and then will applaud for doing so.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
“If you see this and you shrug, you are part of the moral rot and indifference that allowed this to happen.” - @davidpakman.bsky.social
apnews.com
Federal officers detain a 5-year-old boy who school official says was used as 'bait'
Federal agents have detained a 5-year-old boy and his father in Minnesota, taking them to a detention facility in Texas.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 22/01/2026
Wow -- Fanone coughs "go fuck yourself" to Trey Nehls as Nehls blames Capitol Police leadership for January 6
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LeCaffeinated @thetirednurse.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
Liam’s mom dressed him in all those layers to keep her little boy warm and safe in this frigid weather, packed his book-bag w/ everything he’d need for a good day at school, and then our govt stole him out of their driveway. Used her little boy as bait. These people are monsters.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
He is not swallowing it. He knows he’s not allowed to.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
But many essentials — clothes, food, energy, fuel — are imported. If the dollar doesn’t go as far in the international marketplace, that’s a real problem for those trying to stretch each and every last one.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Poor families aren’t thinking about the weakening dollar. They’re thinking about how to put food on the table this week, how to afford a new pair of cleats by baseball season, or what happens if something goes wrong with their car.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 20/01/2026
Mamdani: "I am in support of abolishing ICE. What we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist. We're seeing a government agency that is supposed to be enforcing some kind of immigration law, but instead what it's doing is terrorizing people."
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
My (not quite) 3-year-old speaks so well. What I wouldn’t give for RFK Jr. to hear him say “I want to use my fluoride toothpaste tonight!”
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
I have no doubt the current administration would have called him a "domestic terrorist," the same label used for Renee Good after she was killed by federal agents.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
I am reminded on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day just how sanitized the history of Dr. King has become. Now lauded as the gold standard of peaceful protest, Dr. King was labeled a dangerous "agitator" in his day — the same way protesters in Minneapolis are being labeled now.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was designed to be a trap that could kill SNAP in some states. That doesn’t mean we need to walk into it.
open.substack.com
Jamming the trap: How we protect SNAP
From a federal repeal bill to reinforcing state-level administrative firewalls, here’s how we can prevent a spiral that could threaten one of our most valuable safety nets.
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Philip Bump @pbump.com · 15/01/2026
When Google cuts off the headline at the proper place.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Short answer? Yes. Long answer? Yessssssss.
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David Pakman @davidpakman.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Has Trump’s plan all along been to foment violence on the streets by deploying ICE, using the chaos he causes to invoke the Insurrection Act, to cause more chaos and require a national state of emergency, to then mess with the ‘26 election which are now just months away? Or is he too dumb for that?
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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
The history of civilian mass detention on the basis of identity without due process or recourse (which is how I defined concentration camps in my history of them) shows that it invariably leads to permanent harm—and typically significant loss of life as well. The longer it goes on the worse it gets.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
“Maximum Carnage” was an appropriate moniker for last night’s AEW Dynamite based on the Darby-PAC and four-way tornado tag team matches. Crazy stuff!
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
And now they think the solution is sending even more armed forces in? Give me a break. Surely people can’t actually be falling for this.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
What’s more is that the backdrop of chaos and violence in Minnesota is literally of Trump’s own creation. This is a problem he, Stephen Miller, Kristie Noem, and the rest of the administration created by surging a trigger-happy, masked paramilitary force into American cities.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
A president doesn’t just float the idea of using the Insurrection Act. This isn’t some quaint policy debate like what the corporate tax rate should be. This is a threat to deploy U.S. armed forces against the very citizens they’re meant to protect.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
🫶
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
When you get an opportunity to cut off funding to the Gestapo, you ought to cut off funding to the Gestapo.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
When we measure food security, it’s often in calories or pounds. There’s data suggesting we’re missing a key ingredient. Human motivation research shows that giving people agency is, in many ways, as much a necessity as iron or Vitamin C. open.substack.com/pub/michaelp...
open.substack.com
The nutrition of dignity
We measure food security in calories and pounds, but the data suggests we're missing a vital ingredient. Human motivation research shows giving people agency is a psychological necessity.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
I’ve been spending a lot of time writing about hunger and food security on my Substack. While I absolutely believe it’s an important cause to advocate for, it also feels quaint in a way given everything else that’s going on.
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Joe Walsh @walshfreedom.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 15/01/2026
Walz: "What's happening in MN defies belief. News reports simply don't do justice to the level of chaos & disruption & trauma the federal govt is raining down... This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of MN"
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
"Argentina's done it. Russia's done it. Turkey's done it. Venezuela's done it. And Zimbabwe's done it. It's a thing that tin pot dictators do... right before starting a hyperinflation and destroying their own economies."
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Cathi Harris @cathiharris.bsky.social · 28/12/2025
Average annual earnings would top $150,000 if wages had kept up with productivity over the past 50 years. That additional value doesn’t just disappear if it isn’t being paid out to the working class. The top 1% of earners have seen their real wages increase by an order of magnitude.
open.substack.com
‘Affordability’ is really a wage crisis
American workers are 150% more productive than they were 50 years ago. If wages kept up, the average worker would make $150K. Fixing affordability requires acknowledging and solving wage stagnation.
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
Hi! I am just getting set up here on Bluesky and wanted to say thank you for sharing my work!
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Michael Prunka @michaelprunka.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
Hi! I am just not getting on the Bluesky train but wanted to say thanks for sharing my work!
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