Naomi Schalit

Why ‘The West Wing’ went from a bipartisan hit to a polarized streaming comfort watch over 2 decades, reflecting profound shifts in media and politics ‘The West Wing’s’ transition from broadcast TV behemoth to ‘bittersweet comfort watch’ in today’s streaming era reveals how much media and political landscapes have changed in the past 25 years.

Have you been bingeing West Wing? You're not alone. @kvanderson.bsky.social & @marxnick.bsky.social write about what its "transition from broadcast TV behemoth to bittersweet comfort watch" tells us about the US today theconversation.com/why-the-west...

"I do not understand the figure of Mr. Bezos. Nice man, met him, always treated as kind of business visionary, and fair enough! But what is he about right now? I can’t believe the fourth-wealthiest person in the world (and in history) would dash his own historic reputation to curry favor with the Trump administration. For what, more contracts? He’s got enough contracts! It’s so small-time, so penny-ante. What matters is honor, that’s the thing that lasts, what history says of you, how you helped your country."

Peggy Noonan is brilliant on why all Americans should be worried about the killing off of @washingtonpost.com (h/t @democracyeditor.bsky.social) www.wsj.com/opinion/a-la...

There’s a competition crisis in America’s state legislatures – and that’s bad for democracy In dozens of states, an increasing number of legislative seats are going completely uncontested by one of the two major parties.

Add to the list of crises affecting American politics: "In dozens of states, an increasing number of state legislative seats are going completely uncontested by one of the two major parties -- a genuine crisis for political representation" from @charlesrhunt.com theconversation.com/theres-a-com...

Clarence ‘Taffy’ Abel: A pioneering US Olympic hockey star who hid his Indigenous identity to play in the NHL Despite being a foundational figure in American hockey, Taffy Abel – who hid his Ojibwe heritage so he could pass as white – has been largely erased from national memory.

The first American to win an Olympic medal in ice hockey + the Stanley Cup.
The U.S. flag bearer at 1924 Olympics.
Yet largely forgotten from public memory.
Why? Because he fought racism & stood up for labor dignity a century ago.
Me in @theconversation.com today

theconversation.com/clarence-taf...

Clarence ‘Taffy’ Abel: A pioneering US Olympic hockey star who hid his Indigenous identity to play in the NHL Despite being a foundational figure in American hockey, Taffy Abel – who hid his Ojibwe heritage so he could pass as white – has been largely erased from national memory.

"Despite being a foundational figure in American hockey – an Olympic silver medalist and a two-time Stanley Cup champion – Abel has been largely erased from the national memory," writes historian @michaelsocolow.bsky.social. There's a reason, and it's ugly theconversation.com/clarence-taf...

ICE and Border Patrol in Minnesota − accused of violating 1st, 2nd, 4th and 10th amendment rights − are testing whether the Constitution can survive In Minnesota, can constitutional protections withstand the actions of a federal government seemingly intent on aggressively violating the rule of law?

"Constitutional stress test"-- How what's going on with immigration forces in MN constitutes a full-on assault against the Constitution, including the First, Second, Fourth and 10th Amendments, write Yohuru Williams and Michael J. Lansing theconversation.com/ice-and-bord...

Intellectual city: My brother Joel has been covering anti-government/anti-fascism protests in Torino, and when I saw this photo of his, I thought: I don't think I've ever seen a protest against the repression of CRITICAL THINKING thebattleground.eu/photo/

Can we also shut down the massive overuse of the word “narrative“ especially when using it in a wordy, pretentious description of lies, as in “controlling the narrative“ or “false narrative” — Orwell is rolling his eyes

I’m a former FBI agent who studies policing, and here’s how federal agents in Minneapolis are undermining basic law enforcement principles A policing scholar and former FBI special agent lays out the established principles of policing and constitutional law that govern how federal immigration enforcement efforts should be carried out.

"Publicly available facts and evidence raise significant questions about whether federal agents acted contrary to established principles of policing and constitutional law in the deaths of Good and Pretti" -- Luke William Hunt, scholar, lawyer, former FBI agent theconversation.com/im-a-former-...

Anti-ICE protesters are following same nonviolent playbook used by people in war zones across the world to fight threats to their communities Americans are learning and doing the kind of work that civilians in war zones worldwide have done for decades: dealing with threats by organizing to help protect their neighbors and communities.

From Portland, ME to Portland, OR, citizens are organizing to protect their communities; @oliverkaplan.bsky.social says the nonviolent groups he's studied in war zones teach lessons about surviving danger that Americans have discovered instinctively theconversation.com/anti-ice-pro...

Repeated government lying, warned Hannah Arendt, makes it impossible for citizens to think and to judge When officials lie time and again, people don’t know what to trust. And when this happens, citizens cannot deliberate, approve or dissent coherently, because a shared world no longer exists.

Administration lies @ Minnesota led Sam Martin to Hannah Arendt: "The normalization of blatant dishonesty & systematic withholding threaten democracy & corrode the factual ground on which democratic consent is built." A distrustful public is "less able to act." theconversation.com/repeated-gov....

‘We want you arrested because we said so’ – how ICE’s policy on raiding whatever homes it wants violates a basic constitutional right, according to a former federal judge Since the republic’s beginning, it has been uncontested law that to invade someone’s home, the government needs a warrant reviewed and signed by a judicial officer. ICE is turning that law on its head...

ICE says it only needs an administrative, not judicial, warrant, to enter a home and arrest someone. Former federal judge & Dickinson College President John E. Jones III says that turns settled law "on its head" - it's unconstitutional theconversation.com/we-want-you-...

A government can choose to investigate the killing of a protester − or choose to blame the victim and pin it all on ‘domestic terrorism’ Renee Good’s death was the consequence, writes a First Amendment scholar, of a kind of politics in which the state survives by making dissenters illegitimate as citizens.

Can democracy tolerate persuasion? Sam Martin writes "the constitutional tradition of free speech says go ahead and speak. The alternative is a politics in which the state survives by making dissenters illegitimate as citizens. That’s what happened to Renée Good" theconversation.com/a-government...

Trump’s Greenland ambitions could wreck 20th-century alliances that helped build the modern world order How the US treats its allies has been a crucial question for every president. What evolved over the centuries into an official embrace of friendly nations is now being reversed by Donald Trump.

Tracing the history of US alliances since the American Revolution, former diplomat Don Heflin @fletcherschool.bsky.social asks whether Trump will now abandon the fruitful postwar cooperation that characterized the 20th century theconversation.com/trumps-green...

The Insurrection Act is one of at least 26 legal loopholes in the law banning the use of the US military domestically Can the president use the Insurrection Act and send the military into U.S. cities? A web of legal provisions try to balance presidential power with the power of state leaders.

Does Trump have the authority to send the military into US cities? asks con law expert Jennifer Selin. "The answer to this question involves a web of legal provisions that ... simultaneously try to balance presidential power with the power of state leaders" theconversation.com/the-insurrec...

Searching reporters’ homes, suing journalists and repressing citizen dissent are well-known steps toward autocracy President Donald Trump’s threats against independent media and free speech look a lot like the actions of autocrats elsewhere intent on undermining the institutions meant to keep them in check.

On a day when the FBI raided a Washington Post reporter's home, here's a story about how "most modern autocrats have worked to silence free speech and crush independent media," writes Konstantin Zhukov theconversation.com/searching-re...

George Washington’s foreign policy was built on respect for other nations and patient consideration of future burdens For the nation’s first president, friendliness was strategy, not concession: the republic would treat other nations with civility in order to remain independent of their appetites and quarrels.

Maurizio Valsania: how Trump's harsh vision of US national interest diverges from Washington's respectful, modest one "Washington...forged a vision that treated restraint, not self-justifying unilateralism, as the truest measure of American national interest" theconversation.com/george-washi....

Congress takes up health care again − and impatient voters shouldn’t hold their breath for a cure Why does health care reform keep failing despite decades of attention and expanding costs? A scholar of Congress has some answers.

"For Congress’ most intricate issues" -- especially health care -- "rank-and-file members do not have the time, resources or, frankly, the interest to dedicate to meaningful problem-solving," writes SoRelle Wykoff Gaynor theconversation.com/congress-tak...

Today Venezuela, tomorrow Iran: can the Islamic Republic survive a second Trump presidency? Perhaps no one outside of Venezuela should care more about the US invasion and capture of President Nicolás Maduro than the Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

What's next? "Perhaps no one outside of Venezuela or Cuba should care more about the U.S. capture of nominal President Nicolás Maduro than the Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei," writes Aaron Pilkington @uofdenver.bsky.social theconversation.com/today-venezu...

Can the US ‘run’ Venezuela? Military force can topple a dictator, but it cannot create political authority or legitimacy If Washington governs by force in Venezuela, it will repeat the failures of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya: Power can topple regimes, but it cannot create political authority or legitimacy.

"Removing a leader – even a brutal one – is not the same as advancing a legitimate political order," says Monica Duffy Toft @fletcherschool.bsky.social. Force "may deliver short-term obedience, but is a counterproductive strategy for building durable power" theconversation.com/can-the-us-r...

Rubio remains vague on transition plan for Venezuela “We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction, because not only do we think it's good for the people of Venezuela, it's in our national interest,” he says.

So did an editor miss this (clear/unclear), or was it on purpose: “…Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday made it clear that it is somewhat unclear what’s next for the Latin American country” www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

I wrote a book on the politics of war powers, and Trump’s attack on Venezuela reflects Congress surrendering its decision-making powers Congress has a legal, constitutional and even moral responsibility to assert itself as a branch when it comes to military actions by the US, says an expert on war powers.

Congress has "a legal, constitutional, one might even say moral, responsibility to assert themselves as a branch" and say, “We have a role here" says war powers expert Sarah Burns in an interview with me about the US attack on Venezuela theconversation.com/i-wrote-a-bo...

The Orwellian echoes in Trump’s push for ‘Americanism’ at the Smithsonian Donald Trump aims to rewrite America’s official history, including at one of the nation’s key sites of public history-making: the Smithsonian. George Orwell would recognize Trump’s impulse.

With more Trump administration pressure on the Smithsonian this week to sanitize US history, George Orwell, via historian Laura Beers, helps you understand what's going on: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” theconversation.com/the-orwellia...

As DOJ begins to release Epstein files, his many victims deserve more attention than the powerful men in his ‘client list’ Powerful men connected to Jeffrey Epstein are named, dissected and speculated about. The survivors, unless they work hard to step forward, remain a blurred mass in the background.

Headlines in the past focused on unidentified elites who may be exposed or embarrassed, rather than on the people whose suffering made the case newsworthy in the first place: the girls and young women Epstein abused and trafficked, writes Sam Martin at Boise State theconversation.com/as-doj-begin...

Deception and lies from the White House to justify a war in Venezuela? We’ve seen this movie before in run-ups to wars in Vietnam and Iraq Two US wars based on lies, in which tens of thousands of American troops and millions of civilians died, offer a cautionary tale about the rush to war.

Are Americans about to be led again into a war with Venezuela based on misrepresentations and lies? It’s happened before, writes Betty Medsger, who describes the run-ups to the wars in Iraq and Vietnam theconversation.com/deception-an...

Karoline Leavitt’s White House briefing doublethink is straight out of Orwell’s ‘1984’ A historian analyzes how White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s claims about her boss and his administration are ‘doublespeak’ straight out of the pages of George Orwell’s ‘1984.’

What to do when Orwell is all I can think of while watching Karoline Leavitt? Ask Orwell expert @fieryparticle.bsky.social
to analyze the "transparency," doublespeak, doublethink & constant reminders of “WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” theconversation.com/karoline-lea...

Karoline Leavitt’s White House briefing doublethink is straight out of Orwell’s 1984 A historian analyzes how White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s claims about her boss and his administration are ‘doublespeak’ straight out of the pages of George Orwell’s ‘1984.’

Orwell expert @fieryparticle.bsky.social finds the Orwell in Karoline Leavitt's White House briefings: "In Leavitt’s usage, “transparency” has become a form of Orwellian “doublespeak,” a word or phrase ...that... had come to encompass its exact opposite meaning" theconversation.com/karoline-lea...

Epstein’s victims deserve more attention than his ‘client list’ Powerful men connected to Jeffrey Epstein are named, dissected and speculated about. The survivors, unless they work hard to step forward, remain a blurred mass in the background.

Headlines about the Epstein files "focus on unidentified elites and who may be exposed or embarrassed, rather than on the people whose suffering made the case newsworthy in the 1st place: the girls and young women Epstein abused and trafficked," writes Sam Martin theconversation.com/epsteins-vic...

Epstein’s victims deserve more attention than his ‘client list’ Powerful men connected to Jeffrey Epstein are named, dissected and speculated about. The survivors, unless they work hard to step forward, remain a blurred mass in the background.

As reporters and the public wait breathlessly for more Epstein files to be released by the end of this week, Sam Martin says Epstein’s victims deserve more attention than his ‘client list’ theconversation.com/epsteins-vic...

Trump administration replaces America 250 quarters honoring abolition and women’s suffrage with Mayflower and Gettysburg designs US coins showcase American identity and public memory through their designs. The America 250 coins just unveiled reflect the nation’s divided politics and history.

Trump politics infect the US Mint's America 250 coins sethographer.bsky.social writes. "The Black Abolition, Women’s Suffrage & Civil Rights quarters were replaced with quarters that commemorate the Mayflower Compact, Revolutionary War & the Gettysburg Address" theconversation.com/trump-admini...