Catherine Lutz

The Companies Behind ICE Sludge built an interactive map of every ICE contractor working with the Trump administration.

The Companies Behind Ice: Mapped Here is the data to help us know and protest the ICE budget profiteers in our states. readsludge.com/2026/01/16/t...

It's in the Commandments, Mike. Thou shalt not lie and thou shalt not kill.

YouTube video by The Home Front The Costs of War with Brown University Professor Catherine Lutz

Costs of War co-founder @cathylutz.bsky.social talks to @reedgalen.bsky.social about how popular opinion is against forever wars.

“Popular opinion is one thing, but it’s when that popular opinion gets mobilized that we have any hope of something changing.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9GE...

Authoritarianism Feeds on a Bloated Military Budget | Common Dreams Squeezed domestic spending and extravagant military spending have widened inequality, with dire consequences for democracy.

High Pentagon spending has boosted inequality and paved the way for authoritarianism, writes Costs of War co-founder @cathylutz.bsky.social and @lutzfernandez.bsky.social. www.commondreams.org/opinion/auth...

Reminder: ICE has a budget bigger than most militaries around the world.

It has increased its spending on weapons by 700% since Trump took office.

Trump is building his own personal military to terrorize American cities, trample on civil rights, and intimidate his opponents.

Many journos & pundits feel obliged to praise--even as they critique the purpose(s) of the Venezuela war--the competence of the military operation. How does that not make it *worse*? It seems quite bad that we a highly competent, gigantic, overfunded military ready to serve these chaos agents.

Combine militarism and the lawlessness and ignorance of Donald Trump, and this is what you get. Many Venezuelans died last night and many more lives are at risk as a consequence. Impeachment now.

There’s nothing stopping the people in Washington DC from naming their own things after the president

The Donald J. Trump Dumpster

The Donald J. Trump Port-a-Potty

The Donald J. Trump Municipal Waste Disposal Facility

We need to pay attention, as this astounding review does, to what is happening to our children in schools as the long reign of MAGA madness has maimed their education.

“This is not the beginning of a war…”

No, it’s a reminder that the US remains at war in Syria.

Authoritarianism Feeds on a Bloated Military Budget | Common Dreams Squeezed domestic spending and extravagant military spending have widened inequality, with dire consequences for democracy.

“Year after year, trillions are spent on military affairs…just 25% of Trump’s 2026 budget request is left for Americans’ other needs, including transportation, housing, disaster response, cancer research, education, and more.”

Authoritarianism Feeds on a Bloated Military Budget | Common Dreams Squeezed domestic spending and extravagant military spending have widened inequality, with dire consequences for democracy.

Authoritarianism Feeds on a Bloated Military Budget www.commondreams.org/opinion/auth...

Trump Dangles Cash Payments to Buoy Voters’ Views of the Economy

Bonuses are the favorite tool of cheapskate bosses. Much better than honest salaries and earned and fair benefits.

They can be dangled to motivate and withheld to punish but "given" (or regifted) at whim with grand gestures that make them feel all yummy inside.

www.instagram.com/stories/elin...

reedgalen.substack.com/p/the-costs-...

A great conversation with Reed Galen about the forever wars and their latest installments.

Accomplishing Project 2025: K-12 Edition The year has been chaotic but a few themes emerge

A devastating timeline of all the damage Trump has done to our public schools in 2025 but a hopeful message, in closing, that"Our largely decentralized school system makes this fight winnable for children... Public schools are our heritage, the inheritance we’ve been handed to grow and pass on."

Entire Chain of Command Could Be Held Liable for Killing Boat Strike Survivors, Sources Say Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s actions could spark investigations for war crimes or outright murder, sources told The Intercept.

The Intercept reporting on this has been spot on from the beginning. It also keeps the whole legal picture in mind: all the strikes, not just the "double tap," are crimes.

Entire Chain of Command Could Be Held Liable for Killing Boat Strike Survivors, Sources Say
theintercept.com/2025/12/02/h...

We Ain't Buying It - Target, Home Depot & Amazon

Give the oligarchs a heave-ho this week. Thanksgiving-Cyber Monday, ditch Target, Home Depot, & Amazon. I'm tired of corporations enabling this administration ditching DEI, allowing ICE to terrorize our communities, & get tax breaks. Join me! #WeAintBuyingIt 🚫 app.sosha.ai/s/UTZ2quyN

Ask Americans — they don't want a war on Venezuela Reports say the president is preparing to attack, as lawmakers ignore their constituents and refuse to stand in the way

responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-war-ve...
We Americans don't want to go to war with Venezuela, my brilliant writer sister, Anne Lutz Fernandez, and I write in Responsible Statecraft this morning. That should matter in a democratic and humane society.

The President of the United States just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed. "HANG THEM", he posted.

If you're a person of influence in this country and you haven't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.

Ecuadorian voters reject proposals to host foreign military bases and rewrite the constitution Ecuadorians have struck down a proposal that would have let foreign countries run military bases in the South American country where drug gangs are extorting communities and killing politicians as the...

apnews.com/article/ecua... voters reject proposals to host foreign military bases and rewrite the constitution

A trillion dollars is an obscene amount of money, and Elon Musk will do huge damage if he gets it. But we can stop him. Tesla is reeling. We can take it down and his whole empire with it. #teslatakedown #NoTrillionaires #MuskMustFall

Get in on the action👇
actionnetwork.org/event_campai...

Boycott Home Depot

I am tired of seeing @HomeDepot be a place of large immigration raids. This is not keeping our communities safe. Until @HomeDepot breaks their silence I will no longer be giving them my business! Join me in demanding they end their silence! #BoycottHomeDepot homedeportation.com/s/HsrFXlNs

Holy crap.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) shakes hands with Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) in the House chamber during the final vote on a budget reconciliation bill for President Trump's legislative agenda at the U.S. Capitol July 3, 2025. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

NEW: The military spending portion of the reconciliation bill, or H.R. 1 (“One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) will primarily benefit military contractors, according to a new joint brief with the @stimsoncenter.bsky.social. [THREAD]

Car repossessions approaching record high as delinquency rates soar If current trends hold, 2025 car repossessions could reach levels last seen during the financial crisis.

welp

"A near-record number of cars are being repossessed as Americans continue to fall behind on their auto loans amid mounting financial strain...over three million cars could be repossessed in 2025, a level only reached in 2009 during the Great Recession."

Chart showing that over the past 15 years, auto loan delinquencies have grown in every income group.

This is a telling chart. The automakers and auto loan makers have been pushing Americans at all income levels to overspend on vehicles.

More Americans are falling behind on their auto loan payments. Here's why. A new study by VantageScore found that auto loan delinquency rates have increased more than 50% over the last 15 years.

When @cathylutz.bsky.social and I wrote Carjacked, we were hoping America had reached "peak car."

15 years after its publication, new car prices have risen to over $50K and delinquency rates have risen over 50%. 🫠

Photo by Heidi Levine (July 30, 2025) showing an aerial view of Gaza destruction, taken during a Royal Jordanian military flight for a humanitarian aid mission.

BREAKING: The post-10/7 wars have killed or injured at least 236,505 people in Gaza alone. The U.S. has spent over $31 billion and counting in the wider region since Oct. 7, 2023, where millions have been displaced, according to new Costs of War research. [THREAD]

Photo Credit: Heidi Levine, 2025

@StephenM on X: Legal insurrection. The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life. (There are more local law enforcement officers in Oregon than there are guns and badges in the FBI nationwide). This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.

Everyone is trying to have a normal Saturday night and the president's top advisor is on X announcing that civil war is necessary