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Sasha Abramsky

@sashaabramsky.bsky.social
7.2K followers 444 following 694 posts

Freelance journalist, Nation magazine correspondent, teacher, book author, tennis fan and skier. Send me a chat message if you have tips for stories.

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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 13h
Let this sink in: Trump has just gifted the Russians a huge amount of bloodmoney by promising to buy their sanctioned diesel oil -- simply to lower at-the-pump prices in US in run-up to election. Meanwhile, he demands Ukraine replace its wartime president for opposing this gift to Russia. Shameful.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Trump's Kool Aid-drinking followers are being asked, by the mad MAGA man to take evermore extreme positions and to absorb ever-greater humiliations. My Authoritarian Watch column for the Nation breaks this all down. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
Trump’s Die-Hards Are Taking Their Cultishness to New Lows
I’m finally starting to understand why Jim Jones’s lieutenants didn’t try to stop him.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The Trump admin has practically hung a shill up saying "pay to play." It is most corrupt administration in US history. Yet, as I write in my latest Santa Fe Reporter column, it is gaslighting the American people by wrapping its every illicit action in oversized flags. sfreporter.com/columns/lett...
sfreporter.com
Corruption Season is Open
Just in time for the midterms, Big Orange and friends aren’t even hiding it
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Latest episode of the podcast Unrig America, with Sasha Abramsky. In this episode, I'm in conversation with Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget and Policy Center. We covered a lot of economic and policy ground. Hope you find it interesting. open.spotify.com/episode/3vxt...
open.spotify.com
Ep. 4: Chris Hoene, Ex. Dir. California Budget and Policy Center
Unrig America with Sasha Abramsky · Episode
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Imagine GOP and conservative media's reaction if a Democratic president had advocated Iran take out two major American cities, saying it would just be a small price to pay. That's what Trump stated today,saying Iran could take out LA or San Diego. Utter insanity. www.latimes.com/california/s...
latimes.com
Trump suggests letting Iran 'take out' Los Angeles and San Diego at campaign rally
Trump made the remarks during a rambling speech in which he said gas prices would be lower soon, touted his ouster of Venezuela’s dictator, and made attacks on news outlets.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
A superb New Yorker article by Eyal Press on the moral quandary facing DoJ officials: should they stay and try to ameliorate the damage, or should the resign in disgust at what they are being asked to do? www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Government lawyers who think that the Trump Administration is subverting justice are facing a quandary: Should they stay or should they go?
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
And Amazon driver, security guard and member of Black Workers United, Royal Scott-Bryant. open.spotify.com/episode/4twz...
open.spotify.com
Episode 3: Royal Scott-Bryant, EBASE, Black Workers United
Unrig America with Sasha Abramsky · Episode
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
And Sarah Anderson, of the Institute for Policy Studies. open.spotify.com/episode/4pSa...
open.spotify.com
Episode 2: Sarah Anderson, Dir. Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies
Unrig America with Sasha Abramsky · Episode
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
So far, I have hosted Tia Orr, SEIU California executive director. open.spotify.com/episode/4MXX...
open.spotify.com
Episode 1: SEIU California Executive Director, Tia Orr
Unrig America with Sasha Abramsky · Episode
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Unrig America can be listened to on Spotify, open.spotify.com/show/7pN6R8U... on Apple Podcasts, and on other streaming platforms. The visual version of the interviews is on Youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TWn...
open.spotify.com
Unrig America with Sasha Abramsky
Podcast · SEIU California · Welcome to the Unrig America podcast. Host, author, and journalist Sasha Abramsky will be talking with policy experts, advocates, and workers about what rising inequality i...
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I am hosting a new SEIC California podcast titled Unrig America. It is a twice monthly series of discussions with workers, with policy advocates, and with activists about inequality in America, why it matters, and what policies can rein in the new oligarchy.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Trump administration is trying to seize control over California Coastal Commission so as to foist off shore oil and gas wells on California. My Truthout article explains the impact this could have. truthout.org/articles/tru...
truthout.org
Trump’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” Regime Is Now Targeting California’s Coastline
The US Commerce Secretary is bullying California with an audit that could strip the state of control over its own coast.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Trump's "paid for by the US government" campaign ad, AI nightmares, Big Tech lickspittling... my latest Authoritarian Watch column for the Nation: www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
Trump Is Trusting Tech Companies to Self-Police AI. What Could Go Wrong?
Trump’s refusal to heed the warnings from within the tech industry might end up being his most asinine legacy.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Two stories on same page of NYT: 1) hundreds of thousands of LEGAL immigrants, including refugeees, being kicked off of Medicaid. 2) State Dept replaces flags of world's nations with 190 US flags in its atrium. This mix of cruelty and jingoism is what passes for patriotism in Trump's America.
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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
We need to get a full accounting of every dollar each media company accepted of our money stolen by Trump to run his partisan political ads on their channels. Companies who accept these ads are receiving property stolen from the American people & are a disgrace for accepting them
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Using the UN as a podium to push for fascist policies at home and abroad, attacking free press, preparing for mass deportation of children... all in a day's work for America's wannabe-king. My latest Authoritarian Watch column for the Nation details what's at stake. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
Trump Impersonated Hitler at the United Nations
It was just one more of many examples of the president mirroring a fascist leadership.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Every day Trump attacks another pillar of the constitution. This week, it's the First Amendment, and his assault on the WH press corps. My latest Santa Fe Reporter column details each Constitutional Amendment Trump has attacked. sfreporter.com/columns/lett...
sfreporter.com
Trump’s Assault on the Constitution By the Numbers
The Big Orange coup d'etat is happening right now
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
This morning WH correspondents for MS NOW and CNN were denied access to WH and had their press passes seized. This attack on press is absolutely antithetical to democracy. Thought: What would happen if entire WH press corps walked out in solidarity? Why give these fascists the oxygen of publicity?
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Fascist is as fascist does. I sincerely hope the entire WH press corps walks out in solidarity. apnews.com/article/trum...
apnews.com
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The rails are off on Trump's erratic, cruel presidency. But don't expect his lickspittle cabinet, staffed with quacks and grifters, wedded to conspiracy theories and junk science, to rein him in anytime soon. My latest Authoritarian Watch column, for the Nation... www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
Trump Is a Runaway Train—and Nobody’s Pulling the Brakes
Everywhere you look, the president is causing chaos and destruction.
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 10/09/2026
Lie after lie
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
In the days of Tammany Hall, corrupt politicians tried to bribe handfuls of local voters with beer. In the days of Trump, corrupt politicians try to bribe the entire country with BS promises, that will never materialize, of $5000 per person if the country re-elects the crooks.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Trump wants to rename New Mexico as New America. He also wants to rename the Strait of Hormuz as the Trump Strait. He's getting more insane by the minute, with consequences for all of us. My latest Santa Fe Reporter column explores the escalating political madness. sfreporter.com/archives/op-...
sfreporter.com
The Troll on The Hill Takes Aim at the Mexico in New Mexico
Covering for the chaos he created in Iran, Big Orange turns to trolling the Land of Enchantment
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
In the last two days, Trump has leaned into Neo-Nazi language to praise AfD's state election win in Germany; posted a map of most of the Western Hemisphere owned by the United States; generated AI superhero imagery of himself; and further insulted Canada... This is breathtakingly malignant politics.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Yes, there was that whole "Deutschland Uber Alles" thing. It didn't work out too well for Germany or for the rest of the world first time around... How shameful that the US president is now spouting avowedly Nazi phrasing.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Look at Trump's fevered vision of an expanded US covering the hemisphere, and the map that he posted is really no different from Hitler's Third Reich vision of an expanded Germany covering continental Europe. Birds of a feather... newrepublic.com/post/215149/...
newrepublic.com
Trump Sparks Diplomatic Incident With His “USA” Map
Iceland has summoned the U.S. ambassador.
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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 06/09/2026
This is an update from the April allegations that led to Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation—that she had an affair with a member of her security, asked staffers to buy alcohol for her throughout the day, and used taxpayer funds to throw herself a birthday party. trib.al/NGKwxkS
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
What happens when the US government fires firefighters and shutters regional fire resources? No surprises... there are more fires and those fires take longer to put out. My Truthout article on this: truthout.org/articles/wil...
truthout.org
Wildfires Are Sweeping North America. Trump Fired the People Who Fight Them.
As climate change worsens wildfires, a gutted US Forest Service is struggling to keep up.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
The warning signs are flashing red about Trump's willingness to go to extreme measures to prevent a midterm election loss. My latest Authoritarian Watch column in the Nation plays out these scenarios. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
The Shadowy Powers that Trump Could Use to End American Democracy
Two Washington insiders are sounding the alarm about what could happen if Trump activates the top-secret Presidential Emergency Action Documents.
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KPFA Radio @kpfa.org · 01/09/2026
They were legal residents. They had work permits. Then the government changed their status and began rounding them up. Sasha Abramsky discusses Trump’s war on Haitians and the politics of racial exclusion on Background Briefing. Listen at KPFA.org KPFA. Radio with Guts. @sashaabramsky.bsky.social
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The state-backed attack on Haitians communities in the US, especially in Springfield, OH, take Trump's war on immigrants to a whole new fascist level. My Nation column breaks down what Haitian community is experiencing this month as arrests and deportations ramp up. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
Trump Is Waging War on Haitians
In Springfield, Ohio, ICE agents are targeting a community that Trump has been villainizing since 2024.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
So, while world burns, Trump is preoccupied with entirely meaningless name changes of lakes and musings about renaming oceans as well. Glad the most powerful man on earth is using his power and time so sagely. Imagine what a pickle we'd be in if he wasn't so focused on the important big picture...
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Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
What is important right now for the Democrats to do is to discredit the political project of a Republican Party captured by far right extremists, and to kill dead any attempt at Redemptionist politics.
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Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 23/08/2026
It's hard to fathom that anyone thinks ICE can be reformed or retrained. ICE needs to be dismantled and then cauterized so it can't grow back. #AbolishICE
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
As Trump trains his ire on allies -- Oman, South Korea, Canada -- while praising dictators to the skies, my Santa Fe Reporter column explores the political and moral implications. What happens when the "leader of the free world" behaves like a common garden hoodlum? sfreporter.com/columns/lett...
sfreporter.com
Trump Turns His Ire Toward US Allies
Oman and Canada will need to work on their boot-licking to get back in good graces
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I don't know if Chief Justice Roberts has ever read his history. But, if he has, I'm sure he is smart enough to realize that one day he and his colleagues will be written about with the same derision that historians today write about the Nazi and Soviet judges.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
This is how dictatorships are established -- with the political connivance of cowards in Congress and the judicial connivance of cowards in the highest echelons of the judiciary.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The USPS, which has literally no method of accurately determining the citizenship status of mail recipients, will now be able to simply not deliver ballots to those it deems have a question mark over their status. By the time those decisions are challenged, as like as not the election will be over.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
For 250 years, states have been in charge of their voting systems. Now, SCOTUS has allowed for Trump to unilaterally curtail mail-in-voting, which is how tens of millions of people now vote, and to disappear people off voter rolls simply by claiming, no proof necessary, that they aren't citizens.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
SCOTUS has all-but-annihilated Voting Rights Act, green lighted GOP gerrymanders, opened the political system to limitless corporate donations, allowed PACs to donate limitless funds to candidates. Today, its six hard-right members allowed Trump to massively curtail vote-by-mail.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
All is being done with the approval of SCOTUS, which has given Trump king-like powers, and has eviscerated the rights of millions of ordinary citizens.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
In the US today, we have NSPM7, which allows for catch-all political trials; ICE hunts immigrants and gratuitously terrorizes communities based on skin color and ethnicity; groups who had legal status yesterday are criminalized today; and voting rights are, seemingly by the day, curtailed.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
All of this was legitimized by supine judges doing the Fuhrer's bidding, and by commissars in the USSR who were contemptuous of the popular will and desirous only to do the General Secretary's bidding.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
In USSR, article 58 provided for catch-all prosecutions of those deemed enemies of the state. In Nazi Germany, concentration camps were established, citizenship rights abridged, people kicked out of jobs and homes because of their ethnic or religious backgrounds, and the Fuhrerprinzip established.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
In both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, appalling abuses of human rights and civil liberties were done entirely legally, through capture of the political and judicial systems, and through reliance on the cowardice of those who, in theory, could have reined in Nazi and Soviet leaders.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
The way Trump is talking about Canada is absolutely disgusting. If any country talked about the US that way, it would basically be a caucus belli. It is bullying, ignorant, rude, nakedly imperialist. The Canadians should tell Trump to shove it. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/b...
nytimes.com
Trump Threatens New 50% Tariffs on Cars, Trucks and Steel as U.S.-Canada Trade War Unfolds
President Trump vowed to increase tariffs on cars, trucks, auto parts and steel to 50 percent starting Jan. 1, as the countries edged toward a full-blown trade war.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
As Trump's anti-vaccine madness intensifies, my Nation column explains how this is of a fit with the rest of his authoritarian project. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
Trump Is Trying to Sabotage the Health of All Our Kids
His executive order on vaccines is classic Trump: authoritarian, nonsensical, and deadly.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Last week, Trump got his consigliere confirmed as Attorney General. My Santa Fe Reporter column explains the implications of this shameful appointment. sfreporter.com/columns/lett...
sfreporter.com
The Don, At Last, Has His Consigliere
Trump's corruption poised to reach new lows with Blanche confirmed as Attorney General
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I spent much of the spring working on a feature article for the Nation on protecting access to the ballot in the face of escalating threats from the Trump administration. The article is in the Sept issue of the magazine. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
“Nobody Is Resting”: Meet the Grassroots Advocates Defending the Right to Vote
At a time when the US president is actively interfering in elections, these groups, activists, and officials are protecting their local systems from federal sabotage.
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Sasha Abramsky @sashaabramsky.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
I've been traveling around Argentina for past two weeks. In 1970s and 1980s, the junta disappeared its domestic opponents. My Nation column on the entirely predictable chain of awfulness that follows when a govt -- any govt -- dehumanizes entire groups of people. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
thenation.com
The Right-Wing Terrorism Miller and Rubio Conveniently Neglected to Mention at Their DC Summit
At their July event on “The Resurgence of Political Terrorism,” the secretary of state and the White House deputy chief of staff selectively presented information to malign the left.
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