Tori Smith Ekstrand

Charlotte-Mecklebburg Schools, according to reports, saw 15% of its students absent today amid Border Patrol operations in Charlotte. If that percentage of 15% happens Tuesday in Wake County due to the Border Patrol coming to Raleigh, 24.000 students could be absent from school. #nced #ncpol #wcpss

Can my subscribers pay on the Substack iOS app? Substack now includes external links in the iOS app that take readers to the web to complete their purchase. Subscriptions made this way are treated like standard web purchases—creators receive the...

Attention chumps: If you, despite all our dire warnings, decided to put your newsletter on Substack, the untrustworthy asses who run the company just did what we all knew they would, and made it impossible to take your subscribers with you if you want to leave. support.substack.com/hc/en-us/art...

White House says National Guard could carry weapons in DC as Mississippi, Tennessee pledge to send troops Mississippi pledged to send about 200 Guard troops. About 160 Tennessee Guard troops will depart this week. They could carry weapons in the city.

Other states sending troops to the capital include Ohio, West Virginia and South Carolina.

Read the full story:

A JLTV rolls along the streets of Washington, D.C., carrying National Guard troops. The U.S. Capitol building can be seen in the background. (Missy Sterling/U.S. Air National Guard) White text: White House says National Guard could carry weapons in DC as 3 more states pledge to send troops; Stars and Stripes logo

BREAKING: Three more states are sending National Guard troops to the nation's capital, with the White House stating they could be armed.

Mississippi pledged to send about 200 Guard troops. About 160 Tennessee Guard troops will depart this week. Louisiana has promised to send 135 troops.
#Flashes

I've now been allowed and asked to share more details about what's going down at the University of Oregon, which involves imminent announcement of firings, among others, of tenure-track and tenured faculty. Given the units impacted (see below), please share this with your professional networks in related disciplines and start getting ready to put pressure (or begin putting pressure already) on the University of Oregon upper admin to abandon this alleged plan before they finalize it. It appears that, with no prior consultations, the departments of Religion and Classics (two separate units), and the programs in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, German & Scandinavian, Judaic Studies, Arabic Studies, and Holocaust Studies (the latter five all parts of a previously-consolidated mega unit called the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages) are facing imminent announcement of elimination (expected the week of Sept 7), with layoffs of pre-tenure, tenured, and career faculty in these units. The reason given is "financial exigency" -- upper administrations of several universities across the country (and in blue states like Oregon also) appear to be giddy to use the context of Trump attacks on higher ed to dismantle the humanities. Faculty at OU won a faculty union not long ago; this may be, in part, a retaliation for that, I've been told. The union is working with AAUP, etc.; my understanding is that the maximum spotlight is needed at this point.

A massive attack on several humanities units (Arabic Studies, Judaic Studies, Holocaust Studies, Classics, Religion, German & Scandinavian, Russian/East European/Eurasian Studies) *and* tenure now unfolding at the University of Oregon (a blue state!). Closure of units and faculty layoffs threatened.

Insurance is one of those things you just can't bullshit or fake, as authoritarians try to do with many other things via control of information.

Losses are losses, and when they're bigger than expected, the firms go broke

Job growth is decelerating as huge amounts of policy uncertainty from POTUS reduces businesses’ willingness to invest:
+128K/mo over most-recent 12 months
+81K/mo over most-recent 6 months
+35K/mo over most-recent 3 months
+73K this past month

When you strip away humanity

This is a good read

This is well done. Jessica Grose once had a piece titled "Human Contact is the New Luxury Good." I couldn't put it better.

The US DOD announces OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI have won DOD contracts, each with a $200M ceiling, aimed at enabling agentic AI workflows and more (Deborah Sophia/Reuters)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Bluesky is rolling out age verification in the UK Bluesky users in the UK can verify their age using their face, ID, or payment card.

Starting July 25, Bluesky will require users in the UK to scan their face, upload an ID or verify their identity with a bankcard.

I realize that platforms feel they have no choice but to comply with the government surveillance schemes, but shocking nonetheless.

Minnesota Lawmaker and Her Husband Remembered for Their Shared Legacy

We are still so heartbroken. May their memories inspire us to change.

Zohran Mamdani’s win has inspired over 3400 young people to raise their hands to run for office just since Tuesday. It’s now @runforsomething.net’s biggest candidate recruitment moment since the election.

A new generation of leaders is here.

People in wheelchairs are getting arrested right now in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC. They showed up to tell Congress not to cut their Medicaid, because they cant afford health care without it. If you look closely you can see the zip ties on their hands. #WeWontGetOverLosingMedicaid

A lot of people will say "it's obviously fake" but that's missing the bigger problem. We're now having to expend more and more mental effort to ensure the media we consume is real. The ultimate effect is that everyone will distrust everything they don't want to believe. It only helps authoritarians.

The refusal to publicly offer evidence to justify the *use of military force* is a key step toward autocratization because it rejects the notion that this government owes the people it rules an explanation of its actions.

"No Kings Day" protests turn out millions Our unofficial estimate is that around 4 million people attended a protest event yesterday. Anti-Trump resistance is outpacing 2017.

Based on crowd-sourced records of No Kings Day event turnout, and extrapolating for the cities where we don't have data yet, it looks like roughly 4-6 million people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday. That's nearly 2% of the U.S. pop!

Mobilized anti-Trump resistance is exceeding 2017 levels

Looks like it may be AI. Why not?

They sound squeaky.

The cover spread from a one page zine printout. The left (back cover) features images of a scale and gavel, with notes on First Amendment and filming rights, and the advice to “shut the fuck up.” On the right is the cover, a megaphone with the title text “PROTEST SAFELY.” Behind it are faceless protestors. The subtitle notes, “A brief collection of tips from around the internet.”

A spread from one page zine printout. On the left is an illustration of a protestor with the title “What to Wear,” including a helmet, goggles, ear plugs, gloves, a mask, a backpack, and layers/long sleeves/pants. Each have additional notes explaining their use. On the right is “What to Bring,” featuring illustrations of a backpack, money, water bottles, a mask, a granola bar and bag of trail mix, a first aid kit, folded shirt and pants, and an ID, with “DIY Defense” listed underneath it showing one protestor using a luggage case, one holding a trash can lid, and one using an open umbrella as a shield.

A spread from one page zine printout. On the left is “Protect Your Identity,” advising to cover up identifying features, avoiding photography of protesters, deactivating biometric phone-unlocking tools, and writing emergency contact and counsel numbers on your arm. On the right is “Be Like Water,” the motto of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, and the text “BEWARE THE BAIT” with images of a palette of bricks and a masked man holding a crowbar toward a protestor with a sign, “Psst, free crowbar?” encouraging the reader not to engage with traps and undercover agents.

A spread from one page zine printout featuring the hazards of protest opposition, including tear gas, rubber bullets, and LRAD sound cannons and flash bangs. Caution tape images accompany the text explaining the dangers of each, how to flush out eyes that have been maced/etc, and how to extinguish a gas canister with a traffic cone.

I did my best to compile as many protest safety notes as possible into a one page foldout zine! Coincidentally…it seems the file has breached containment…like it’s available for anyone to print or hand out 👀⚖️

toonyart.com/s/PSZine.pdf

How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance Law enforcement has more tools than ever to track your movements and access your communications. Here’s how to protect your privacy if you plan to protest.

We've just updated the @wired.com guide to protecting your privacy while attending protests with the latest best practices. @agreenberg.bsky.social and @lhn.bsky.social report: www.wired.com/story/how-to...

Asking questions is what I have been doing my entire career.

“Senator Padilla is currently in Los Angeles exercising his duty to perform Congressional oversight of the federal government’s operations in Los Angeles and across California. He was in the federal building to receive a briefing with General Guillot and was listening to Secretary Noem’s press conference. He tried to ask the Secretary a question, and was forcibly removed by federal agents, forced to the ground and handcuffed. He is not currently detained, and we are working to get additional information.”

Statement from Sen. Alex Padilla's office:

We are apparently just that comfortable or just that, well, unaware. Or a lot of both. 😭😭

Never hurts to repost.

Sitting US Senator Alex Padilla forcibly wrestled to the ground and arrested by the FBI for attempting to ask a question of DHS secretary Kristin Noem.

We’ve leapt over a lot of red lines in the last week. But one I find most worrying is Trump/MAGA/ICE have ceased even pretending to claim some criminal pretext for cracking down on protected speech. It’s just straight up “if you criticize us, you’re getting throttled/arrested/disappeared.”

L.A. Protests Prompt Calls for Police Restraint After Journalist Injuries

Amazing how hard it is to write: “Police shoot at journalists.”

"If you saw all this in any other country — soldiers sent to crush dissent, union leaders arrested, opposition politicians threatened — it would be clear that autocracy had arrived."