Stephen Barnard

The Hollowness of This Juneteenth The holiday was always an implicit warning that what had been done could be done again.

"transforming Juneteenth into “Juneteenth National Independence Day” against the backdrop of the past few years of retrenchment simply creates another instance of hypocrisy. What we were promised was a reckoning, whatever that meant. What we got was a day off."

19.06.2025 20:57 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

But winning an election doesn’t give a president a right to simply ignore the law – indeed Trump swore an oath to uphold it just nine days ago. And the government spending in question was contained in laws passed by Congress – which, under the Constitution, controls the power of the purse. Trump has the chance to write and propose new laws but can’t simply ignore those on the books. A similar disregard for the law was evident in the president’s summary dismissal of prosecutors who investigated him under former special counsel Jack Smith. The career prosecutors are not political appointees and therefore enjoy civil service protections that govern the terms of their employment. Trump and his allies have long argued that large corps of liberal bureaucrats frustrate the goals of Republican presidents. And the dozen or so officials thrown out of the DOJ were told that they could not be trusted to carry out Trump’s agenda – even though prosecutors are meant to follow the law not political agendas. The White House insists that the president’s Article Two constitutional powers mean he’s within his right to fire anyone. This is an argument headed for the courts too. Trump’s effort to repeal birth right citizenship as part of his immigration crackdown also appears to fly in the face of the Constitution – which the president lacks the powers to amend. Trump’s firing of more than a dozen watchdog officials from inside government agencies late last week seems to follow a similar principle – that a law on the books doesn’t apply to him. The statute requires Trump to give 30 days’ notice to Congress of such terminations, which he declined to do. But Miller told Tapper that the law that has been on the books for generations is unconstitutional. “Absolutely it is. I don’t even think so. I know it is,” he said. But presidents and their advisers are not kings and don’t get to decide what is constitutional. If they did, the system of US democratic governance would collapse.

CNN commentary that is willing to be much clearer than what we're seeing in the big newspapers.
www.cnn.com/2025/01/29/p...

29.01.2025 16:28 — 👍 53    🔁 13    💬 4    📌 0

‘Essential’: nearly 800 incarcerated firefighters deployed as LA battles wildfires The firefighters earn $5.80-$10.24 per day plus $1 an hour when responding to active emergencies, according to CDCR

Hundreds of incarcerated folks are fighting fires in California— earning between $5.80 and $10.24 per *day* plus $1 per hour during active emergencies. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

11.01.2025 15:40 — 👍 30    🔁 9    💬 3    📌 0

And just like that, we're back to the era of color-blind racism (and other -isms) at Meta. Not surprising, but definitely disappointing....

10.01.2025 20:52 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

This is how we .win! Capital-building and media manipulation practices on The_Donald Scholars have grown increasingly interested in the ways media and communication technologies facilitate the spread of problematic information as well as how their affordances manifest in practice. ...

I've also published a related article in Information, Communication & Society, which may be of interest to anyone looking for a briefer discussion of the topic: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

07.12.2024 02:32 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Analyzing data from prominent political events, Hacking Hybrid Media shows how members of Trump's "digital army" use Facebook groups, Reddit forums, Twitter hashtags, YouTube channels, mass media, and more to shape the flow of disinformation in American media.

07.12.2024 02:32 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

With a focus on the messaging strategies employed by Donald Trump and his most vocal online supporters, the book provides a theoretically oriented and empirically grounded analysis of the ways today's media afford deceptive political communication. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

07.12.2024 02:32 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I'm excited to announce the official release of my newest book, Hacking Hybrid Media: Power and Practice in an Age of Manipulation. The book, published by Oxford University Press, is based on five years of mixed method research examining manipulative media practices.

07.12.2024 02:32 — 👍 8    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0