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Rachel Strohm

@rachelstrohm.bsky.social
2.1K followers 258 following 502 posts

📝 Occasional commentary on global politics + policy 📍 London / Chicago / Nairobi 🌐 rachelstrohm.com

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Reposted by Rachel Strohm
Nick Ulivieri @nuphoto.com · 7h
Took a (very) rainy walk through the Loop tonight. I was absolutely soaked, but my camera stayed dry enough.
The pavement in Chicago is wet from a day-long rain. Street and traffic lights reflect on the stored in vivid colors. In the foreground, a person with an umbrella is an out-of-focus silhouetteCalder's Flaming - an orange, abstract metal sculpture in Chicago stands in a wet, reflective plaza. The sculpture is reflected in the rain coating the plaza's stone pavers in the evening with buildings in the background
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Haroon Akram-Lodhi @ahakram-lodhi.bsky.social · 10h
This is outrageous. Benjamin Davis, who has led a dynamic Division within @fao, has not had his contract renewed because he stood up for human rights. A senior FAO official on the price he paid for speaking out on Gaza: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/interview/20... (@newhumanitarian.bsky.social)
thenewhumanitarian.org
A senior FAO official on the price he paid for speaking out on Gaza
Benjamin Davis says the FAO forced him out because of his work on Gaza. In an interview, he discusses why he’s not staying silent and what others can do.
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stevelevitsky.bsky.social @stevelevitsky.bsky.social · 14h
Lucan Way and I have been writing about competitive authoritarianism for more than 25 years. We never thought we'd write this piece. www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/com...
journalofdemocracy.org
Competitive Authoritarianism in America | Journal of Democracy
The United States has slid into competitive authoritarianism. The slide has been modest and remains reversible—but it is real. Even after Donald Trump, American democracy will remain fragile.
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National Foundation for American Policy @nfapresearch.bsky.social · 18h
A judge struck down the $100K H-1B proclamation & its recent renewal. The Trump admin claimed companies lacked standing to sue unless DHS denied their “national interest” waiver but (1 year later) DHS still hasn’t adjudicated any. @mclem.org @douglasrivlin.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...
forbes.com
Judge Strikes Down Latest Version Of $100,000 H-1B Immigration Fee
A federal judge has struck down the $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa holders and invalidated the Sept. proclamation that renewed it.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 19h
All of this. I also want to add that, in my research, I found that a lot of “inconsistencies” in a victim’s story actually came from gender bias affecting investigators’ record keeping and interview methods.
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Rachel Strohm @rachelstrohm.bsky.social · 20h
Very good piece from @kopalo.bsky.social about the structural drivers of the conflict in Ethiopia, including a thought-provoking bit about the challenges of federalism in an ethnically polarised state www.africanistperspective.com/p/on-the-esc...
africanistperspective.com
On the escalation of war in Ethiopia
The coming proxy wars will be devastating for civilians and do little to improve governance and human welfare in Ethiopia and the wider Horn
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shawn @mulchy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
from 2020:
npr.org
Gasping For Air: Autopsies Reveal Troubling Effects Of Lethal Injection
For decades, states have claimed that lethal injection is quick, peaceful and painless. An NPR investigation — and legal battles across the country — tell a different story.
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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 22h
"There’s no moral or practical justification for the death penalty no matter how you do it. It’s cruel and arbitrary and it doesn’t act as a deterrent. It brutalizes the people who carry it out and traumatizes the families of victims, and the pattern of its application is openly racist."
welcometohellworld.com
Waiting for the next Mr. Death
I don’t want to see anybody hurt, anybody tortured
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Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 01/10/2026
I will never forget all the cynical gainsaying and disinformation about the strike on Al-Ahli hospital ten days into Israel’s destruction of Gaza. ‘Fog of war’. Almost three years later, fewer than half of Gaza’s hospitals remain even partially functional and there is no fog. Only dust and rubble.
theguardian.com
New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza
Satellite imagery shows further destruction of homes, businesses and places of worship since fragile ceasefire
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Json Momoa @jotatx.eurosky.social · 22h
One of the issues highlighted here on this piece is how Marco Rubio diverted 1 million usd to a campaign to smear and dismantle the trust in the Brazilian supreme court and interfere in our elections, with more resources from untraceable channels expected to follow suit. clear US aggression here.
theguardian.com
Trump administration diverts human rights funds to push far-right agenda abroad
Support such as for white Afrikaners and anti-communism reveals how US is redefining what qualifies as human rights
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Prof Bill McGuire @profbillmcguire.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
“What we are seeing now is a complete explosion of these melt rates, leading to the disintegration of glaciers. They’re really just falling apart" Europe's glaciers are accelerating even faster on the road to oblivion www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years
Alpine regions in Europe experiencing extreme glacier collapse due to heat-trapping effects of fossil fuel pollution
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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This is heroism. This is resistance.
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Rachel Strohm @rachelstrohm.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Insightful from @jdportes.bsky.social 👇 While I'm very excited about Labour's post-conference policy direction overall, I've found that immigration is a hard line for me - I couldn't vote for a party which has such evident disdain for non-white immigrants
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Andrew Sparrow @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Annual homelessness deaths in England and Wales have almost doubled over past decade, ONS says - www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...
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Lindsay Beyerstein @beyerstein.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Normalcy bias is all that's keeping Pete Hegseth from being universally recognized as a mass murderer.
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.
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Rachel Strohm @rachelstrohm.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Insightful thread 👇
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Reposted by Rachel Strohm
Kate Manne @katemanne.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I wrote for @thecut.com about the Cornell case and what it says that, at my institution and many others like it, protesters are often punished more harshly than sexual assailants www.thecut.com/article/what...
thecut.com
What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now
As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.
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Travis @someforeignfield.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
In another world Israel's offensive in Gaza petered out in November/December 2023 as they expended their entire strategic stockpile of aerial bombs, as the US followed its own laws and moral obligations and did not provide new supply.
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Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 26/09/2026
We need organized people power to win and protect the midterms. At the next No Kings on October 17, we’ll kick off the voting season with our communities and continue to build a nationwide movement ready to activate at the first inkling of election sabotage by the Trump regime.
nokings.org
No Kings
For more than a year, millions of people have come together to send a clear message: in America, we have no kings. Power doesn't belong to billionaires, strongmen, or politicians who think they're abo...
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
New post from @ldfreedman.bsky.social On the still ongoing, horrific, but little covered war in Sudan. How it illustrates the difficulties of ending wars, and whether there is any route to ending this one. (Free to read) samf.substack.com/p/the-sudan-...
samf.substack.com
The Sudan War: is there any way out?
Since April 2023 Sudan has been consumed by a vicious war that gets far too little attention in the West.
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The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 28/09/2026
Donald Trump’s rush to deport as many immigrants as possible is creating a new family-separation crisis, @caitlindickerson.bsky.social writes. She reports on the babies left behind in America:
bit.ly
The Babies Left Behind in America
The United States is deporting parents without their children, creating a whole new family-separation crisis.
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Rachel Strohm @rachelstrohm.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Interesting insights on the expansion of drone warfare in Africa and the key role of Türkiye as a supplier africanarguments.org/2026/09/turk...
What makes drones a unique tool of warfare is that their low cost and ease of manufacture make them accessible to poorer nations as part of their military arsenals and more broadly to meet their needs for the modernization and development of their military industries. Türkiye has emerged as one of the leading countries in the international landscape of drone technology. The country has a history of drone manufacturing dating back to the 1990s through the drone trial using the UAV-X1 projects at the time. The technical breakthrough happened in the 2010s. An example is the Bayraktar TB2 drone system (three drones plus a ground unit) that was widely used in the war in Ukraine and which made its maiden flight in 2014.

An interesting topic of analysis is Türkiye’s role in transforming the military industries of African nations and in lowering the cost of air superiority. That enabled African states to have strike capabilities without relying on expensive fighter jets deals. This contributes to changing both internal power dynamics and regional conflicts in ways that no one yet fully understands. A three-drone system has provided Africa nations with a strike capability they could never previously afford. It costs the same price as a single used fighter jet. Africa is the first continent where this development can be seen most widely.
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Duncan Hothersall @dhothersall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
If attendance at a major women's conference was down 80% due to a boycott fighting against trans *inclusion*, it would be all over the Times, Telegraph, Mail etc. This last weekend, attendance at a major women's conference was down 80% due to a boycott fighting against trans *exclusion*. Crickets.
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Adam Vaughan @adamvaughan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Installing solar panels and a battery in a UK home saves £681 a year on average, the first study of its kind has found: www.thetimes.com/uk/environme...
thetimes.com
Solar panels and a battery cut energy bills by two thirds
Private installations reduce costs even during winter months and would pay for themselves in 17 years, researchers found after analysing data from bills
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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026
“In Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, where the swell was strongest, they amplified their reach through partnerships with sheriffs and state highway patrol officers. In Democratic strongholds, they intensified their activities despite laws meant to restrict them.”
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Africa Confidential @africa-confidential.com · 28/09/2026
Read our #Ethiopia correspondent’s account of why the peace accord broke down and how the new regional alliances will affect the course of the war. 🇪🇹 Africa Confidential is now on Substack 👇. africa-conf.com/substack-for...
africa-conf.com
Former enemies unite against Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa
Tigrayan and Amhara commanders are fighting a common adversary but they have yet to resolve their competing claims in western Tigray
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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"The UK’s annual contribution to the World Food Programme (WFP) Palestine fell from $18m (£13.6m) in 2024 to $9.3m (£7m) last year and just $4m (£3m) this year, The i Paper has learned"
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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Final point on this. There’s nothing new to HO wanting lower numbers and HMT wanting higher numbers. Was ever thus (eg May vs Osborne). What is more surprising is that Mahmood never gets asked about this and the relative silence of Govt ministers (other than Rayner) on positive side of immigration.
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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
You see this with Trump as well, a weird refusal to accept that having a knowledge based economy is "winning."
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 27/09/2026
Google finally updated some of its satellite images of Gaza and my god, it's horrific. The entirety of Rafah has been demolished. The majority of Khan Younis is in ruins. Entire towns completely leveled and erased of the map.
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Gönül Tol @gonultol.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
And Turkey, which has invested significantly in Ethiopia.
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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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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The problem isn't rogue #AI models, it's *negligent companies*. If a biomedical firm put their product in public water supply because they wanted to test it 'in the real world', they'd be treated as criminal at corporate & individual level. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
OpenAI halts training of latest models as reports mount of AI agents going rogue
Decision follows disclosures that OpenAI agents searching government websites had acted in unexpected ways
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Dr Matt Winning @mattywin.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Looking forward to reading this
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UAW @uaw.org · 26/09/2026
ICYMI: "Wages for typical workers have been largely suppressed since the 1970s while wages for the top 1% skyrocketed. This was not inevitable. It was a policy choice." Economic Policy Institute 📰 www.epi.org/publication/wage-suppre…
epi.org
Wage suppression in 10 charts
Wages for typical workers lag far behind productivity growth. It hasn't always been this way and does not have to be this way. These 10 charts outline the historical context of workers’ wage trajectories, and what can be done to fix the gaping disparities.
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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I think we all expected this and it's yet another reason tribunals and special investigatory bodies will be required to get justice for Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and ever other person murdered by Trump's brownshirts.
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Rayner is correct: these proposals are economically damaging and politically counterproductive. Pretty clear that view is now almost universal in the Cabinet/Labour Party and the informed public. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...
thetimes.com
Angela Rayner condemns Labour’s migrant visa crackdown
Speaking before the party conference, the housing secretary says Shabana Mahmood’s immigration plans would affect care workers
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"RKF took money earmarked to provide health care for Black infants and spent it on his personal security detail" is a ludicrous headline. Comic book villainy.
wsj.com
Exclusive | RFK Jr.’s Enhanced Security Was Funded With Money From Minority Health Office
The cost of the health secretary’s security grew from roughly $10 million in fiscal year 2025 to $17 million in fiscal year 2026.
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Africa Confidential @africa-confidential.com · 25/09/2026
After pushback on his referendum plan, #Tshisekedi now needs provincial diagnoses and the national synthesis to call for constitutional change and give him more time to pursue his mission to secure a third term. africa-conf.com/opposition-demands-talks-on-their-terms
africa-conf.com
Opposition demands talks on their terms
A dispute over who should be at the table has prompted opposition leaders to reject President Tshisekedi’s proposed Dialogue
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Abu Aardvark @abuaardvark.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We haven’t even begun to see the impact of the region’s wars on political stability
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Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
UNCTAD: "Gaza has experienced the world’s most severe economic crisis on record" New report here: unctad.org/system/files...
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🌬Breeze @cool-summer-breeze.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This is the Stolen Neighbors Quilt. Each of the 11,000 squares represents a person taken by ICE in Minnesota.
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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I wrote this about Palestine, Germany, Israel, genocide, Uganda, and the recent fallout from the Robert Kraft/Ed Sheeran/Macklemore affair. If of interest, please share. www.musaokwonga.com/takes/genoci...
Genocide. We should probably start there. Genocide, the act that Israel is still committing against Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank, is something which - as someone whose family comes from the north of Uganda - continues to shape my life. Our ethnic group endured a genocide at the hands of the Ugandan government that lasted twenty years, and the world didn’t care. It still doesn’t care, because the victims were poor and black. When Ed Sheeran’s tour began to disintegrate, as I read the response to his actions and comments, I was reminded that the greatest crime of Palestinians, committed in 1948, was to exist on the soil that Israel wanted for itself. Israel has never forgiven them for that, and perhaps it never will. It never forgave them for the Great March of Return, the 2018 protest that ended in a hail of bullets and hundreds of Palestinian deaths, a fifth of which were children.
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
JUST IN: A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction upbraiding ICE for mass arrests that have strained detention facilities and forced detainees all over the country into "overcrowded, squalid, and degrading rooms for excessive periods of time" www.nysd.uscourts.gov/sites/defaul...
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Incredible. First Secretary Mullin claimed that DHS had identified 15,903 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter roll. Then DHS officials told a skeptical Nevada, no no no, that’s just people we flagged. Here are the names of 185 people we KNOW aren’t citizens. All 185 were citizens. DHS got 100% wrong.
When the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 names last month that it claimed identified noncitizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, state election officials got to work.
On Tuesday, the state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen.
"As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens," Greg D. Ott, a deputy attorney general in Nevada, wrote, according to a copy of a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security officials obtained through open records requests.
"You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise."Following the meeting, Ms. Vogt sent a clarifying email to Nevada officials. "I also wanted to be sure I clarified that we did not reduce the 15,903 to 185," she wrote. "We've manually reviewed some of the 15,903 and confirmed 185 are not U.S. Citizens."
Now, Nevada officials are saying even that 185 number is wrong. They also took issue with a letter D.H.S. sent them in early September, in which the agency reiterated its initial claims about nearly 16,000 noncitizens on the rolls and pressured state officials to review each case in a letter to Nevada officials in early September.
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Climate Science Legal Defense Fund @csldf.org · 24/09/2026
Scientific expert witness work is one important way researchers can help discredit anti-science efforts and safeguard future research. Although there are potential legal risks related to this work, they can be mitigated with the help of our Climate Litigation Toolkit: www.csldf.org/resources/cl...
csldf.org
Climate Litigation Toolkit - Climate Science Legal Defense Fund
Our Climate Litigation Toolkit explain the best practices for safely and effectively engaging in scientific consulting work.
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Pema Levy @pemalevy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
In destroying the Voting Rights Act and gutting the 14th and 15th amendments, the Roberts court is recycling legal arguments once advanced by Confederates and white supremacists to destroy Reconstruction. From me and @ariberman.bsky.social
motherjones.com
Jim Crow was on the ash heap of history. Then came the Roberts court.
The disaster the justices have unleashed has its roots in one of the darkest periods of our past.
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