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ZhiZhu

@zhizhu.bsky.social
359 followers 379 following 208 posts

"All mimsy were the borogoves..." Avid reader, occasional world traveler, raises chickens in Texas. Interested in #Journalism #News #USPolitics #Books #SFF #Photography #Travel #Nature #Science #Ukraine, etc. Also at @ZhiZhu@newsie.social in the Fediverse

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 7h
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"This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.
 
The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.
 
Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.
 
To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity."
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CREW @citizensforethics.org · 5h
Corporations that have capitulated to Trump's corruption should *absolutely* be held accountable. Period.
politico.com
‘We don’t want to turn into a banana republic’: Dems preview rift on Trump corporate crackdown
Democrats are united by the idea of aggressive oversight of the administration but at odds over how far to go after corporate America.
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CREW @citizensforethics.org · 1h
Months ago, we called for an IG investigation into a $620 million Pentagon loan to a Trump Jr.-linked company. Now, Trump's sons' investments are tied to over $6 billion in active or promised government contracts. This is exactly why we need answers.
abcnews.com
Trump sons' investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election
The contract for a new plant in Baltimore is the latest linked to the brothers.
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Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 1h
Important @chicagoreader.com story on Silverio Villegas González: Portage Park restaurant owner remembers the quiet, hardworking cook who was killed by an ICE agent. chicagoreader.com/food/a-year-...
chicagoreader.com
A year without Silverio - Chicago Reader
A Portage Park restaurant owner remembers Silverio Villegas González, the quiet, hardworking cook who was killed by an ICE agent.
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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 2h
TEXAS — @jamestalarico.bsky.social : “Why do we have a trillionaire when veterans are sleeping on the streets? The reason poverty exists is not because we can’t feed the poor, it’s because we can’t satisfy the rich.” (From @teamtalaricohq.bsky.social )
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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Founders, repeatedly: so just to reiterate, and I cannot stress this enough, the president is absolutely not a king and can be removed, charged, or even executed if they start to do king things (250 years later) Alito: getting a lot of king vibes from this document
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 06/10/2026
i also read his op ed on originalism in the WSJ and i would love to know how presidential criminal immunity emerges from the structure of the constitution, especially when the literal authors of that constitution insisted that a president could he tried and even straight up executed
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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
13/ Collectively, these cases show that as the administration has relentlessly pursued immigrants, federal agents have run roughshod over the constitutional rights of citizens too. Read our investigation:
projects.propublica.org
More Than 500 U.S. Citizens Have Been Detained, Including Handcuffed or Held at Gunpoint, in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown — ProPublica
The government doesn’t track how often immigration officers detain U.S. citizens. So ProPublica did. We’ve found more than 500 Americans who were held against their will during this Trump administrati...
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
12/ We spent months compiling every case we could find of immigration agents detaining Americans. We did it because the government hasn't. And now, we're sharing every one of those cases with you. Explore our database: propub.li/4egbSK2
Screenshot of database titled "Explore All Incidents Where Citizens Were Detained." Text below explains that this is every incident ProPublica could find in which one or more citizens were reportedly detained between January 2025 and September 2026. There are 506 citizens' cases in the database, and users can sort by what the incidents involve, where the incident is located, and the recency of the case.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
8/ Amanda Trebach, a nurse and member of an immigrant advocacy group, was detained in California while filming and protesting immigration enforcement operations. Trebach says she was held for almost 36 hours without access to a phone call or a lawyer.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
7/ Among the most jarring trends we found: 36 U.S. citizens were not allowed to contact their family or a lawyer.
36 U.S. citizens held for at least a day without being able to contact a lawyer or their family.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
6/ Others were arrested while trying to protect colleagues. Quentin Williams, a staffer at Minneapolis' Roosevelt High, was trying to help a teacher when he was shoved by Greg Bovino and tackled by agents. He was charged with assault, but like others, his case was dismissed.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
5/ Hundreds of Americans were also held while they were engaging in their First Amendment rights. 60+ were held while they were filming.
60+ U.S. citizens detained while recording
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
4/ Fernando Vasquez, an 18-year-old citizen, was on break from work when agents chased and handcuffed him, then put him in their truck. After realizing their mistake, the agents left the teen alone in the woods, with no way to get home. Then they threw his ID out of the truck.
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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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FunkmasterP @funkmasterp.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Punishing the guy for NOT being an 'illegal'. They failed to get their bounty and it pissed them off.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
We live in a police state now
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Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
NEWS: A plastic surgeon whose Illinois license was suspended following a @chicagotribune.com investigation finding eight patient deaths connected to his Chicago clinic is now suspended from practicing medicine in his home state of Michigan. W Christy Gutowski www.chicagotribune.com/2026/10/06/p...
chicagotribune.com
Illinois plastic surgeon with 8 patient deaths suspended in second state
The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs temporarily suspended Dr. Ayoub Sayeg’s medical license, meaning he cannot practice in the state.
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CREW @citizensforethics.org · 06/10/2026
Trump reported more than $2.2 billion in revenue he brought in during 2025—and CREW analysis shows that more than a third of that revenue came from dozens of companies Trump had just incorporated months before.
citizensforethics.org
Trump incorporated dozens of new companies in lead up to second term—and never stopped - CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Trump filed a financial disclosure in June revealing he brought in more than $2.2 billion in revenue during 2025. We found that more than a third of that revenue came from dozens of companies Trump…
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Common Dreams @commondreams.org · 06/10/2026
"The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives."
commondreams.org
'Deranged and Dangerous' Trump Decried for Inviting Iran to 'Take Out' California Cities
San Diego's mayor and other Democratic leaders are outraged after Trump suggested Iran could attack their city. Gas prices are high, troops are being sent to the Middle East, and Trump's comments are sparking calls for the 25th amendment.
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Rep. Judy Chu @chu.house.gov · 06/10/2026
This is outrageous. The millions of American lives in L.A. and San Diego are not “a small price to pay.” This is not normal, and this is not leadership.
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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5nark Twain @5narktwain.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
#DV1 #ProudBlue He said it in Nebraska. Crowd cheered. The sentence he actually spoke names two American cities as the thing that gets taken out. LA and San Diego metros are more than 13 million people. Kids. Swings. Palm trees, friends, family, neighbors, fellow Americans
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Rhuta Bhayga @rhutabhayga.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
This is not dementia. It's treason. Betraying his oath of office to protect his citizens. Making us sacrificial lambs for a war he started. This fucking piece of shit stood on a stage and said millions of Americans dying is a “small price to pay.” And the crowd CHEERED. It's inconceivable.
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Wajahat Ali @wajali.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Trump said Iran could wipe out major American cities yesterday. Invited them to do it. Not even a headline.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Not that anyone needs a reminder but this man has the nuclear codes. Far too many people will just shrug this off or find some way to justify it. But Trump is unwell, incoherent, and a danger to us all.
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Dr. Jack Brown @drjackbrown.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The same guy who tore up the JCPOA, the same guy (along with his entire party) who claims that we had to go to war with Iran in order to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons – is now inviting that same country to annihilate our cities. Treasonous beyond measure.
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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 06/10/2026
California leaders are furious after the president suggested that losing the two cities is a “small price to pay.” trib.al/VHUP652
trib.al
Trump Suggests Letting Iran “Take Out” Los Angeles and San Diego
California leaders are furious after the president suggested that losing the two cities is a “small price to pay.”
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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
This is such a sick, evil thing to say. Especially because he’s not saying this as a joke. Just as sick that his supporters are laughing at it
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CREW @citizensforethics.org · 05/10/2026
Public outrage and pushback against Trump's corruption still works. But can be hard for the public to keep up with every story, and the members of Trump's party who are still in power have been unacceptably permissive. We NEED to keep calling it out.
nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/04/us/politics/trump-moving-ethical-lines.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share
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CREW @citizensforethics.org · 05/10/2026
NEW: Threats against judges, appointed by presidents of both parties, are intensifying. That's why the AO, Judicial Conference and Congress should consider reforms to protect judicial security. CREW President @donaldonethics.bsky.social and Judge Jeremy Fogel sent a letter urging action.
citizensforethics.org
Growing judicial security risks deserve innovative solutions - CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
The judiciary and Congress should consider structural reforms to address judicial security, especially with regard to USMS.
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 05/10/2026
Today, on World Teachers’ Day, we celebrate the teachers, educators, and child care providers who care for the future of New York and invest in our children every day. New York City doesn’t move without our teachers. We are grateful for their work today and every day.
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CREW @citizensforethics.org · 06/10/2026
The public needs records about the Trump administration’s noncitizen voting claims to evaluate whether eligible voters are at risk of being removed from the rolls on the basis of unverified matches. So we sued: www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action...
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CREW @citizensforethics.org · 06/10/2026
As midterms approach, the government is spending millions of taxpayer dollars on partisan propaganda ads featuring Trump. That's not okay. Congress should be the check on this kind of behavior.
theguardian.com
Americans are paying millions for a batch of pro-Trump ads | Margaret Sullivan
The spots, including a recycled campaign ad, are funded by taxpayers and present the president as a hero
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MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 05/10/2026
Spot the difference
Side-by-side comparison of three social media posts announcing the death of former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert at age 84. On the left, Fox News posts, “BREAKING: Dennis Hastert, longest-serving Republican House speaker, dead at 84,” above a photo of Hastert raising his hand at a microphone. In the center, CBS News posts, “Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who represented Illinois for two decades in Congress and was later jailed for violating banking laws, has died,” above a photo of Hastert walking through the U.S. Capitol. On the right, MeidasTouch posts, “Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican Speaker in history, has died at 84. Hastert admitted in federal court to sexually abusing boys he coached as a high school wrestling coach. A federal judge called him a ‘serial child molester.’ He was a registered sex offender.” The MeidasTouch post includes an image of Hastert speaking from the House floor with a C-SPAN chyron identifying him as Speaker of the House.
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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Hegseth also removed the olive branches, a traditional symbol of wishing peace, from the Department of Defense seal. This, in addition to changing the name to "The Department of War," shows the dangerous belligerency that comes from appointing a frat bro who values testosterone over statesmanship.
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Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Outside Mother of the Americas church in Little Village, crosses commemorating immigrants have died in immigration custody or during enforcement actions in the United States
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Americans picked Trump II, and their biggest objection is high prices. Hungary chose Orban, and their eventual big objection was corruption. Erdogan and Modi won multiple terms. Brazilians about to go Bolsonaro again. Not always free and fair, but yeah, millions want it. Wouldn’t work otherwise.
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I do think this should put some of the hand-wringing over the uniquely sinful American electorate, uniquely feckless institutions, etc in perspective. The truth is that there is a large trans-national constituency of people who actively want this. They aren’t deceived. They want this.
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Roger Parloff @rparloff.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
In her last hours as DHS Secy, Noem's agency bought 5 planes from a donor at markups. In all, DHS gave $900M in contracts to that donor’s companies during her term. One plane had electronic bidets, 2 bedrooms, bar, wine chiller, a manta-ray skin table. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/04/u...
nytimes.com
Kristi Noem’s Agency Gave Her Donor a Lucrative Contract Just Before She Left (Gift Article)
The Homeland Security Department signed a multi-million dollar agreement to buy five aircraft from a company owned by a political contributor of the secretary on her last day, documents show.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Noem demanded personal control over all DHS contracts over $100K and should be held responsible for the waste and (likely) graft that followed, which conservatively ran into the hundreds of millions. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/governing-...
From what we know of Kristi Noem, the head of DHS at the time, she was focused on micromanaging some aspects of government operations. Not workforce planning, but — you guessed it — the flow of grants and contracts. Any contract worth more than $100,000 had to be personally signed by her. And some of that spending was pretty questionable, such as a $200 million ad campaign prominently featuring Noem. There was no competitive bidding process and Noem directed money to Republican firms with long-term personal and professional ties to her. (The fact that Noem had previously led a “Meth: We’re On It” campaign did not seem to stop anyone from questioning her public relations skills).

DHS also bought 11 empty warehouses that it said would serve as detention centers, overpaid for them, and has since sold seven of them. Apparently Noem told officials to buy the warehouses within 30 days, leading to a rushed acquisition process. After the DHS spent nearly $500 million via no-bid contracts on 10 jets, officially for deportations, the planes are mostly unused, or reserved to ferry Trump officials around. So more likely to be incompetence than corruption in this case.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
A 10K contribution and a $900 million return. The scale of the graft in Homeland Security is a) off the charts and b) possible because no-one believes they will face any accountability
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Do their actions merit impeachment? Yes. Many times over. Would impeachment weaken them, and reduce their ability to abuse power? Yes. At minimum by taking up time and attention. Would it stop valuable lawmaking from happening in Congress? No. And the White House is breaking laws. So... why not?
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Removal after impeachment would be better, yes, and there are enough anti-Constitution Republicans in the Senate that convicting Trump, Hegseth, Vought, etc. is unlikely. But why would that make letting crimes slide, and acting like there's nothing wrong, better than investigating and exposing?
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Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Trump plan would remove protections for national forests like Shawnee: “We stand to lose our solitude.” www.chicagotribune.com/2026/10/04/r...
chicagotribune.com
Trump plan would remove protections for national forests like Shawnee: ‘We stand to lose our solitude’
More than 170,000 acres in the Midwest could be opened to roads, logging and mining, threatening fragile ecosystems.
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JDG @cottonmather.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A huge chunk of elite poli-tastemaking is writing essays from the unstated perspective “Let’s just act as if this obvious liar is being genuine,” like people’s lives are just the score in a debate competition.
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Peter Butler @peter-butler.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Many stories. It's a very hard article to read www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202... archived: archive.ph/6snOL
theatlantic.com
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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Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 01/10/2026
This is the most heartbreaking stories I’ve heard in a long time. ICE detained 2-year-old Orlin Hernandez Reyes’ mother. She begged to be reunited with him before deportation. ICE refused. What happened next is horrific. No matter how you feel about immigration, normal people don’t like cruelty.
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Irritated Math Geek @snausageofdoom.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I prefer to taint them with "backed by the guy who decided to kill 3+ million children by shutting down USAID www.thelancet.com/article/S014... ", but Crab's idea saying Musk wants to produce naked pictures of your children helps too.
thelancet.com
Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis
USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...
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