Shel B ⚓

Chart showing detention population, among those arrested in the interior, by criminal record, May 2019 through present. There are three lines shown. (1) Prior conviction (which rises from around 9,000 in January 2025 to just over 16,000 in November 2025), (2) Pending criminal charges (which rises from around 5,000 to 15,000), and (3) No criminal record (which rises from around 1,000 to 21,000).

NEW: ICE has finally released post-shutdown detention data. The latest data reveals that a full 40%(!) of people arrested in the interior and held in ICE detention have no criminal record; no criminal charges or prior convictions. That is up from just 4% when Trump took office.

Fox News hid its brutal Trump job approval number from viewers — while showering him with praise

After Fox News’ pollsters found that Trump’s job approval had plummeted, the network buried the results while puffing up the president as the “ultimate dealmaker” who is doing “incredible things” and promising that “the whole world” will soon “come kiss the ring of the king.”

Trump trying to change the conversation about his relationship with a notorious pedophile by suggesting a group of Democrats should be hung is next level disgraceful.

NEWS: During a hearing in federal court in VA, prosecutors confirmed that the operative indictment in the case against James Comey was never shown to or voted on by the entire grand jury before it was presented in open court.

Defense counsel argued that’s a complete bar to further prosecution

Oh wow @reuters.com got the photo here:

Epstein files reveal his obsession with Trump The president is mentioned over a thousand times in sex trafficker’s emails

NEW: President Trump mentioned over 1,000 times in Epstein files, more than anyone else. (gift) www.miamiherald.com/article31290...

Wait, Are the Epstein Files Real Now? The White House’s responses get curiouser and curiouser.

Newly-released Jeffrey Epstein emails have prompted Donald Trump and his allies to update their defense of the president—but their new narrative makes no more sense than their old one did, @jonathanbchait.bsky.social argues.

Yes there's a lot of denial, but I've seen it: when it snaps, it snaps hard.

"Powerful men covered up child sex abuse" isn't outlandish when you've seen that happen in church, boy scouts, school athletics, and every other social pillar of your conservative middle-class life in the past few decades.

Van Gogh sometimes painted halos of light.
They weren’t religious symbols but expressions of intensity—his way of showing the eternal through color.

Important to understand the Epstein stuff and the fascism and the corruption are, in a lot of ways, really all the same story from different angles: powerful men who can and do abuse vulnerable people around them because they can, and because systems of elite accountability catastrophically failed

The AP tracked down details of some of the people killed in President Trump's military strikes on drug smugglers he describes as narco-terrorists.

They were, with one exception, not high-level criminals. One was a fisherman. One was a bus driver; another a taxi driver.

apnews.com/article/trum...

The Slow Death of Special Education The government has abandoned its commitment to an equitable education for all children—if it ever had one.

The Trump administration has abandoned its commitment to an equitable education for all children, Pepper Stetler argues. But this attack isn’t new—Congress has been weakening the transformative law that governs education for disabled students for decades:

The Deadline for a Major Shutdown Casualty Roughly 42 million Americans may not get their SNAP benefits on Saturday.

Due to the ongoing government shutdown, SNAP is set to run out of money for the first time in its history. “It’s not that the administration can’t pay up” to fill the gap—“it’s that it has chosen not to,” @willgottsegen.com argues in The Atlantic Daily.

A male Wood Duck with the light bringing out the colors in his fancy mullet. These ducks are my favorite waterfowl to photograph.

An Algorithm Deemed This Nearly Blind 70-Year-Old Prisoner a “Moderate Risk.” Now He’s No Longer Eligible for Parole. A Louisiana law cedes much of the power of the parole board to an algorithm that bars thousands of prisoners from a shot at early release. Civil rights attorneys say it could disproportionately harm B...

Two months before Calvin Alexander’s parole hearing date, he was told he was no longer eligible.

Why? An algorithm had deemed the nearly blind 70-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, a “moderate risk,” barring him from speaking to the parole board.

(Published April w/ @veritenews.org)

More pointedly, the pope said, "Someone who says, I'm against abortion, but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. Someone who says, I'm against abortion but I'm in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don't know if that's pro-life."

What a line from the Pope! I am so pleased he is carrying on Pope Francis’ advocacy for immigrants.

How Ordinary Americans Can Stop Trump’s Revenge Spree The Founders intended jury nullification to be a tool to resist tyranny.

“Now that President Donald Trump is perverting the Justice Department into an instrument of political persecution, jury nullification may be one of the only mechanisms that everyday Americans have to protect the rule of law,” Adam Serwer argues:

A Red-winged Blackbird wearing a small stick on his noggin. Very fashion forward.

Veterans’ Care at Risk Under Trump as Hundreds of Doctors and Nurses Reject Working at VA Hospitals Amid concerns about the stability of the agency, records show nearly 40% of the doctors offered jobs at the VA from January through March of this year turned them down — quadruple the rate of rejectio...

The VA is down 600 doctors and about 1,900 nurses so far this year, the first time the agency has seen net losses in years.

At several facilities, more than a third of the positions for doctors are unfilled.

By @davidarmstrongx.bsky.social @vernalcoleman.bsky.social @ericumansky.bsky.social

Who to Trust If You Can’t Trust the CDC No American institution is equipped to replace the agency. But a few trusted resources can help.

"...professional medical organizations are among the most trustworthy sources for vaccine information right now... Medical organizations form their recommendations based on their review of the scientific evidence, not the CDC’s"...

www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/...

There are 600,000 of you who now follow us on Bluesky 🦋

As journalists ourselves, we understand that regularly reading stories about broken systems can take a toll, and we never take the community here for granted.

Thank you to all of you who care deeply about the work we do.

Decrying violence against political opponents rings a bit hollow when you pull Secret Service protection from your political opponents.

I know Charlie Kirk valued debate and free speech because he blocked me for fact-checking his lies on Twitter and then put me on his organization's Professor Watchlist for writing a book he didn't like.

/7 So I question the proposition that just because Charlie Kirk didn't go around killing people, but went around belittling and demeaning and dehumanizing them instead, that he's inherently admirable. Would I be a hero if I said I will debate ANYONE about whether black people are human? No.

Vase with Zinnias and Geraniums - 1886 #artbots #vangogh
https://botfrens.com/collections/46/contents/3109348

settings > content & media > autoplay video & gifs = off

Shooting down the drones is the minimalist response.

NATO has no teeth and Putin knows it. Put some action behind your words of condemnation, you pansies.

Arguably the most anti-religious administration in history. Just nakedly hostile to those who wish to practice their faith.

Swaggart, MacArthur & Dobson in less than two months. #theycomeinthrees