Vince Katter

If they win, Democrats will have to use their newfound authority to rethink, even dismantle, agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They may need to walk back the Bush-era decision to consolidate those agencies and others under a single department, given the wild abuses perpetrated under this administration and its predecessors. It will need to give serious thought to major political and social reform, including D.C. statehood, a federal ban on partisan gerrymandering, a new voting rights act and federal protections for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, including the rights of gender and sexual minorities. Democrats will also need to embrace the legislature’s constitutional authority to structure the executive branch and the judiciary, up to and including Supreme Court reform. If they win next year, Democrats will need to treat the next Congress not as a return to the status quo ante but as the beginning of a new era in which the principal task is to roll back the president’s effort to create and consolidate a personalist dictatorship. They’ll need to fortify the American political system against future attempts to play dictator and lay out a project of genuine democratic renewal. None of this is possible without a willingness to use power rather than just hold it. What we’ve seen this week is that there are still too many Democrats whose instinct is to retreat to normalcy rather than face the conflict at hand.

Jamelle was cooking.

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/o...

November 13, 2025 We are watching the ideology of the far-right MAGAs smash against reality, with President Donald J.

November 13, 2025

You know us. For years, you watched and listened to our coverage of the Chicago area. As journalists, we did our best to bring you accurate, objective information about the people, events and issues that mattered. We hope we gained your trust. So please trust us now when we say that what is happening in the Chicago area is wrong. The fact that some federal immigration forces may be leaving soon is cold comfort given the damage they’ve done and what they may do in other cities. We are retired, but our colleagues who are still on the job have shown you a brutal and illegal campaign against fellow Chicagoans, mainly Latinos: violent abductions, gutting families, using tear gas around children, roughing up witnesses, ramming cars and even taking a day care teacher from her school.

"You know us...So please trust us now when we say that what is happening in the Chicago area is wrong."

Powerful letter from retired Chicago broadcast journalists about what ICE/CBP is doing to our city: "it is terror"

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/13/l...

Remember the immigration raid on the apartment complex in Chicago almost two months ago? The one with the Black Hawk helicopter and federal agents rappelling on ropes? @ProPublica decided to take a deeper look. We found little evidence to support the government’s claims. 🧵

This makes 1000% sense to me.

NEW: @propublica.org investigated the Chicago apartment raid where kids were zip-tied and citizens detained for hours. They find:

- NONE of the arrested were criminally charged
- NO evidence the building was "filled with TdA terrorists."
- ZERO legitimate reason for DHS to rappel from a Blackhawk.

Liberalism's Positive Vision Must Be the Open Society Liberalism is not just the mitigation of dangers. It is also an active striving towards a world that is truly free.

.
Liberalism's Positive Vision Must Be the Open Society

Liberalism is not just the mitigation of dangers.
It is also an active striving towards a world that is truly free.

ts.com/liberalisms-positive-vision-must-be-the-open-society/

Good Lord - and the question is never phrased - 'should all wage income be exposed to SS taxes and thereby completely fund the SS trust fund thru 2070? Or should we continue to shield wage income above 174k and run out of money in 7 years?'

This infographic titled "Forests Remain the Most Cost-Effective Way to Capture Carbon" compares the weighted average price per carbon credit for various carbon removal methods in 2023, measured in dollars per ton of CO₂ equivalent ($/tCO₂e). The methods listed and their respective prices are: Forest management: $12/tCO₂e (the most cost-effective method). Reforestation or afforestation: $16/tCO₂e. Biomass burial: $111/tCO₂e. Biochar: $131/tCO₂e. Direct air carbon capture and storage: $715/tCO₂e. Direct ocean carbon capture and storage: $1,402/tCO₂e (the most expensive method). The infographic also features a graph showing the historical and projected growth in global carbon capture capacity from 2011 to 2035. In 2011, the capacity was 19 Mt/year, which is expected to triple to 52 Mt/year by 2023, and increase significantly to 1,180 Mt/year by 2035. Sources for the data are listed as "The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal 2024 (IIASA)" and "IDTechEx."

Forest and other biomass techniques might be the most cost-effective methods of CO₂ removal (CDR), but they're certainly not the most effective. But if you're only interested in greenwashing, why waste your money on real CDR?

www.statista.com/chart/35418/...

Yikes. USDA sent threatening letter to states telling them that if they sent out EBT money —which many states did during the window when a lower court said SNAP funds had to be released—they have to take it back (?)
Trying to sort out what this means and if states even can claw back the funds

we need something that would motivate the landed gentry in Congress as well - income-based speeding fines as the example.

Opinion | Trump Aid Cuts Kill More Christians Than Jihadists Do

Trump "has expressed such outrage at attacks on Christians in Nigeria that he has threatened military intervention there... but here’s the awkwardness: Trump’s aid cuts are killing far more Nigerian Christians than Islamic terrorists are." @nickkristof.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/o...

Elections in democracies determine who administers the government; they do not alter whom the government is for. Under any administration, Republican or Democratic, the United States government exists to serve the people of the United States, regardless of their partisan affiliation. Besides, Americans are not as easily divided as Trump might think. Millions of Republican voters live in New York, just as millions of Democrats live in Texas. He cannot tell whom he is punishing by glancing at an electoral map. But even if he could, Trump’s acts of extortion have no place in a democracy. They belong in a protection racket: If you support Trump, you are protected; if you do not, you are vulnerable. If you donate enough cash to Trump, you may receive favorable treatment, including immunity from the law. If you oppose Trump, you may be prosecuted.

This is not how a representative government works. It is how the Mafia works.

Went back to the history of the Sicilian Mafia to illustrate something obvious but worth stating explicitly: The Trump administration behaves like an organized crime syndicate running a protection racket, not a representative government www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

‘They destroyed us’: East Chicago woman with schizophrenia who opted for deportation now missing in Mexico When federal immigration agents raided Martha Porcallo Martinez’s East Chicago, Indiana home on June 12, they also arrested her 26-year-old daughter who has schizophrenia.

The feds raided an East Chicago home, arrested a mother and her 26-year-old schizophrenic daughter. She's been here since she's 2. In ICE custody, she had no meds and chose to leave the country. Now she's in Mexico, barely speaks Spanish, and her family can't find her.

ChatGPT encouraged college graduate to commit suicide, family claims in lawsuit against OpenAI | CNN A 23-year-old man killed himself in Texas after ChatGPT ‘goaded’ him to commit suicide, his family says in a lawsuit.

I fully believe in the corporate death penalty and believe we would be a better world if OpenAI lost its corporate charter and was forcibly dissolved.

www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...

Let's see how many First Amendment violations we have in this one edict:

Religion ✔️
Speech ✔️
Peaceably assemble ✔️
Petition the government for redress of grievances ✔️
Press ❓(not quite, but they'll figure out a way)

The Mafia Presidency Trump is saying, essentially, If you don’t want to get hurt, you’ll do what I say.

The longevity of the Mafia in Italy serves as a warning that, once this style of rule embeds itself in the state, it is “very difficult to extract,” @adamserwer.bsky.social argues.

Yeah - I wrote to them. Got a non-answer that really sounded like they are dimly aware that they are doing money laundering and would really prefer not to dwell on that, tyvm.

YouTube video by emptywheel It was not Merrick Garland's job

Me, on why the fuck are we still fighting about Merrick Garland (including why you're being duped if you were worried about a pre-election halt in 2022).

youtu.be/r9a7_FzpaPY

this looks like a .... grift?

The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes.

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

Pitchforks.

every campaign is different - every election is different. i'm not trying to do the pundit thing. but it feels vital that somebody can win a big election with a campaign that feels joyful, not based on fear, resentment, etc

Me Too was Pearl Harbor for elites. Most of them saw Harvey Weinstein and thought, "that could be me," and since then every hint of accountability for elites, or mass movements by peasants, has further convinced them they are facing an existential threat that must be destroyed at all costs.

i want to repeat this: mamdani and spanberger have run similar campaigns tailored to their respective electorates and it is maddening to watch political journalists attempt to create some broad contrast where none exist

Exclusive: Trump moves to fire watchdog of US housing regulator involved in crackdown, sources say The internal watchdog for the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency is being removed from his role, four people familiar with the matter said, at a time when the housing regulator is playing a role in President Donald Trump's targeting of perceived political enemies.

“Allen received notice of his termination from the White House after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors…The information he turned over was constitutionally required, two of them said…”

www.reuters.com/world/us/wat...

Trump Family Wealth Accumulation and SNAP Benefits The Trump family's post-election gains would cover a year's food stamps for more than 2 million people

Tens of millions of people are suffering from the shutdown, but at least Donald Trump is doing well with the money his family has made off the presidency. deanbaker22.substack.com/p/trump-fami...

Dayanne Figueroa was on her way to get coffee before heading to work when she encountered a chaotic scene in West Town: heavily armed, masked federal agents making arrests on a residential street. People yelled as vehicles honked their horn — a sign now used to alert neighbors that immigration federal agents are in the area — and witnesses said federal agents had arrested several landscaper workers presumed to be in the country without authorization. As Figuero tried to drive through the 1600 block of West Hubbard Street on Friday, Oct. 10, an unmarked vehicle driven by federal agents collided with Figueroa’s as it tried to speed away from a hostile crowd, multiple videos reviewed by the Tribune show. Seconds after the crash, agents abruptly stopped their vehicle and exited with weapons in hand pointing at Figueroa, a U.S citizen. Agents then forcibly opened her door and pulled her out of the vehicle by her legs without identifying themselves, presenting a warrant or informing her that she was under arrest. As bystanders yelled, “You hit her! We have it on video!” agents ignored the crowd and forced Figueroa into a red minivan and drove away. Her car was left behind in the middle of the road, her coffee still in the cup holder, and her keys in plain view.

In Chicago, a woman was driving to get coffee when a DHS vehicle fleeing an angry crowd crashed into her car. Armed agents jumped out of the vehicle, yanked her door open, pulled her by the legs out of her car at gunpoint, held her incommunicado for hours, then released her with no charges.

The thing that is convincing them is not TRUMP HIMSELF, or the repetition of these lines. It’s because they see other people they respect, in their social and parasocial universe, approving of Trump, praising him, laughing at what he says, playing along. They understand they are expected to, as well

Wow.