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Rachel Strohm

@rachelstrohm.bsky.social
2.1K followers 259 following 504 posts

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

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Reposted by Rachel Strohm
The Palestine Project @palestineproject.bsky.social · 15h
The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, a South African jurist who chaired the United Nations commission of inquiry that determined in 2025 that Israel had committed genocide during the Gaza war.
aljazeera.com
2026 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Navi Pillay
This is a breaking news story.
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Reposted by Rachel Strohm
Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 8h
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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Rachel Strohm @rachelstrohm.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
This post and the comments are all very insightful 👇
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Reposted by Rachel Strohm
Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I think people should listen to what the administration trying to bring back spectacle lynchings, race riots, and middle passage-esque deportation voyages are trying to tell you about themselves. bsky.app/profile/bren...
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Isabel, booonyavirus wonk @isabelott.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Hey, this is that “study” that was previously cancelled after outcry at how monstrously unethical it was. It’s sentencing the poorest kids on earth to die of completely preventable liver cancer for white antivaxxers’ curiosity. How a medical doctor could co-sign this atrocity is beyond me.
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Samantha Michaels @samanthamichaels.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Another blow for unaccompanied immigrant minors. Now the Trump administration is taking over their legal representation. Yes, the same administration that is trying to deport them will also be the ones in charge of their defense. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
Trump administration plans to have its own lawyers represent migrant kids
Putting government counsel on both sides "makes me feel like it's all a farce," says one immigration attorney.
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JWexTheSpa @jwsidders.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Just got round to reading @samfr.bsky.social's piece on reversing Brexit. It is as good as billed. Basically, it all boils down to one thing: if EU member states want the UK inside the tent, a way will be found. But there is no way back without full and unconditional acceptance of the four freedoms.
samf.substack.com
The route back into the EU
Back in 2022 I wrote about the long-term prospects for undoing Brexit and made two predictions.
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United Farm Workers @ufw.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
"Joel" sent this vid of farm workers harvesting tomatoes in Gilroy CA. They earn 93¢/25lb bucket. Pickers carry two buckets as that allows them to work quicker. Walking over the uneven terrain with this heavy weight puts a lot of strain on their body. #WeFeedYou
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Michela Wrong @michelawrong.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
This is moving fast. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Tigray conflict: Eritrean troops move deep into Ethiopia as fighting escalates
Residents of Adigrat tell the BBC they have seen truck loads of soldiers from Eritrea moving south.
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Stephen Vaisey 🇺🇦 @stephenvaisey.com · 07/10/2026
BTW this means no funding for GSS, ANES, or PSID. GSS 2026 is in the field now, but then it looks like that's it. Devastating for social science.
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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Ah yes, the academic discipline most focused on decentralised markets and outcome based decision-making is also oddly the most concentrated and status driven.
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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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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Hammer and Hope Issue #12 is out now, available for free in its entirety here. A short thread featuring a few of the articles: hammerandhope.org
hammerandhope.org
Hammer & Hope
A magazine of Black politics and culture
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Jacob Kang-Brown @jkangbrown.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
New analysis of ICE detainers and arrests in 2026 with @bson.bsky.social for @prisonpolicy.org shows that law enforcement collusion tends to expand ICE arrests, and that the mass deportation project falters in places that resist. www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2026/10...
prisonpolicy.org
Cooperation with ICE doesn’t stop community arrests: New data on the results of state strategies
The Trump administration has demanded local and state collusion on immigration enforcement, and promised to pull back on community arrests in return. But our analysis ...
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If you know you know @privatechand.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The fieldwork for my monograph required me to talk to Hindu nationalists, casteists and bigots. The ethics I set myself for those interviews was to not hide my own politics. People still talked. That was research. I am not socializing with such people. Understanding does not require normalizing.
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Michela Wrong @michelawrong.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This is an important report which describes how Rwanda and the DRC have systematically outsourced and privatised violence since November 2021 in eastern Congo, in the process creating 10 million displaced people: centralafrica.globalinitiative.net/conflict-and...
centralafrica.globalinitiative.net
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worm @rfksbrainworm.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
If you ever wondered why visible light is those particular wavelengths, it's because life evolved to see in the narrow range where water is transparent
Diagram of absorption of emf by water. There's a gap right that dips in the 500 nm range
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"The current level of political animosity is exactly what one would expect to see if an extremist faction attempted to rescind the hard-earned rights of the vast majority of the country’s citizens." There are not enough exclamation points to convey how I felt reading this paragraph
Screenshot of article which reads: From this perspective, the “both sides” frame falls apart. The prob-
lem is not that the parties are divided. The problem is the existential 
threat that a reempowered ethnonationalist strain poses to pluralistic 
U.S. democracy writ large. The current level of political animosity is 
exactly what one would expect to see if an extremist faction attempted 
to rescind the hard-earned rights of the vast majority of the country’s 
citizens. The only way to re-oppress most of a country is to use anti-
democratic and authoritarian tactics. And the only way to oppose those 
tactics is to push back as a population and clearly reject them. This is 
the argument happening in the United States, and its pathology is not 
anger—it is the movement to undermine a generation of rights.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Writing something where I will be liberally citing @lilymasonphd.bsky.social's latest and realizing that I can't cite every single thing I would like to because then I'm just reprinting her work. So, I've gotta thread about it instead. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
Screenshot of the article website. Title is: Polarization Is Not the Problem. Author is Lilliana Mason. Journal is the Journal of Democracy, Volume 37, Number 4, October 2026. From Johns Hopkins University Press.
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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Dismantling ICE means dismantling the surveillance regime that powers it.
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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 02/10/2026
This is a better epilogue to my January story about the private equity firm profiting off of ICE's cruelest flights than I could have ever possibly hoped for. CHICAGO: You went to the mat and protected (at a minimum!) thousands of immigrants from torture. Take a bow. prospect.org/2026/10/02/i...
prospect.org
The City That Brought Down an ICE Airline - The American Prospect
In Chicago, progressive alderpeople held up a contract until a private equity firm was forced to dispatch Omni Air International, protecting thousands of immigrants from deportation.
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Mike Hixenbaugh @mikehixenbaugh.com · 02/10/2026
We’ve got the inside story of how Trump’s displeasure with seeing homeless people in D.C. became the first domino in a series of actions that culminated in the administration’s stunning decision to weaken the rights of millions of disabled Americans to live in their homes and communities.
nbcnews.com
How Trump’s homelessness crackdown became a sweeping retreat from disability rights
After issuing a memo making it easier to institutionalize homeless people, the Justice Department began abandoning cases protecting disabled people’s right to live in the community.
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Rachel Strohm @rachelstrohm.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Love the culinary vibes of the day before a long international trip, when you've eaten all the reasonable food in the fridge and are reduced to tofu with chili crisp + a side of banana bread for lunch
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Reposted by Rachel Strohm
Lee Crawfurd @handle.invalid · 02/10/2026
Georgia has made great strides in tackling lead exposure. How did they do it? @mariajot.bsky.social & Caroline Mallory investigate Blog: www.cgdev.org/blog/small-c... Paper: www.cgdev.org/publication/...
cgdev.org
A Small Country's Big Fight: Georgia's National Response to Childhood Lead Exposure
Our interviews and the evidence make clear that though Georgia has made real progress in tackling lead poisoning in children, work is not finished. About 15 percent of children still have BLLs above 5...
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John Springford @johnspringford.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Now that Andy Burnham has reopened the Europe question, free movement will be at the centre of debate. For @arguablymag.bsky.social I argue that it's a big benefit, not a price to be paid for a better trade relationship. www.arguably.uk/p/eu-free-mo...
arguably.uk
EU free movement is an opportunity, not a threat
Progressives need to rediscover the positive case for immigration
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Nick Ulivieri @nuphoto.com · 02/10/2026
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 · 02/10/2026
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 · 01/10/2026
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 · 01/10/2026
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 · 01/10/2026
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 · 01/10/2026
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 · 01/10/2026
"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 · 01/10/2026
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
But massive kudos to them for considering a move to PR, which might put Labour into coalition with the Lib Dems, SNP and Greens (where I've currently settled). This explainer from the Guardian was quite good www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-...
theguardian.com
How could Great Britain look under proportional representation? See the results for your area
These visualisations from exclusive polling modelling show how the UK parliament could change under different voting systems
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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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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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