Clay Risen

FBI Director Kash Patel * ® @FBIDirectorKash X.com BREAKING: MSNBC still an ass clown factory of disinformation. Same circus animals that slobbered all over perp walks of Stone, Navarro, Bannon... MSNBC has no facts and no audience In this @fbi, follow the chain of command or get relieved. & Barb McQuade @ @BarbMcQuade • 15h DOJ policy prohibits "perp walks," in which arrestees are paraded before the cameras.

Among other things, it remains extremely weird that the [checks notes] director of the FBI uses phrases like “ass clown factory” in public statements posted on his official account

Comey should get a white T shirt that says RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES in big black letters and wear it continually to protect himself from this. They’d never parade him for cameras in that.

At least HUAC’s members were elected.

Didn’t realize the Riyadh Comedy Festival overlapped with the anniversary of the murder of Kamal Khashoggi!

I hope Bill Burr and Dave Chappelle and Tom Segura and company are having a blast!

When Trump says he’s going after “Democrat agencies” in the federal government, I’m reminded of the Fiorello La Guardia quote: “There is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets.”

We need a bigger national spotlight on this building raid, fam. Agents dropped from helicopters onto the roof. Citizens and non-citizens alike were dragged from their homes in the night. People who weren't kidnapped during the raid had their belongings seized after the fact. This is madness.

This was not a dumb question. It's not as if he'd ever been taught this in school. He knew vaguely what Stonewall was and even though he had put things together incorrectly, he was at least trying to put things together and asking good questions. Anyway, now I know who I'm writing the book for. >

It’s been a minute since the last time Albania stunted on us this hard 🇦🇱🇦🇱

a great Gilles Peress photo in NYT: Throwing stones at a British armored vehicle in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1972

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

EXCLUSIVE: NARA Ousts Eisenhower Library Director Over Proposed Trump Gift to King Charles The director, a historian and Army veteran, declined to allow the Trump administration to remove a priceless artifact from the library's permanent collection

BREAKING: sources say NARA has forced out Dr. Todd Arrington, the federal director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, after he declined to allow the Trump administration to remove a sword from the library for a gift to King Charles

lastcampaign.substack.com/p/exclusive-...

if you respect the law and the constitution, the trump administration has no use for you

McCarthyism in the 1950s took the form of the Red Scare AND the Lavender Scare. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavende...

One of the few things that gives me hope these days is when journalist-led news orgs like @hellgatenyc.com or @defector.com publish their annual reports like this and the numbers are... good. Very good.

If you're a New Yorker, you should subscribe. Right now.

If you've done in-person research at any of the following presidential libraries in the last 8 months, can you please follow me/contact me—soon—for a story I'm working on (can be off the record)?

Hoover
FDR
Truman
Eisenhower
JFK
LBJ
Ford
Carter

And either way, can you please share this request? 🙏

Ugh. The Way of All Flesh, or something like that.

Love that song. The video too — chill energy indeed.

Erasing history.

Court-watchers confirm this cruel ICE agent has been reinstated.

Last week, in the briefest moment of decency, violently throwing a woman to the floor was “beneath the men and women of ICE.”

This week, it’s back to business as usual. The cruelty, after all, is the point.

A lot of people think that every international student admitted means one fewer spot for domestic students, when the opposite is more likely true - the tuition revenue international students bring allows public universities to provide substantial discounts to domestic students, improving access.

Reminds me of the button in many elevators that reads “HELP IS ON THE WAY.”

An original 1950 copy of RED CHANNELS, with a page showing actors Zero Mostel and Jean Muir and all of their purported Communist associations.

So struck by @risenc.bsky.social's article on the blacklisting of actor Jean Muir that I found a copy of RED CHANNELS, the notorious 1950 compendium of "communist sympathizers in the entertainment industry." Check out the page listing Muir's associations—below those of Zero Mostel, star of THE FRONT

Louis Kahn, Jewish Bathhouse, Trenton.

ICE brutally detains U.S. citizen just for filming—knocking her unconscious.

"Agents took her to a side alley, beat her up, then called an ambulance," witness said.

"Then they kidnapped her from the hospital—without a formal discharge—and took her to Downtown LA Detention Center."

I wrote about a book about the Republicans who stood up to Nixon. It came out in 2018, and I would often disappoint people who showed up to my book talks when I warned them that history wouldn't repeat itself.

NYT Metro staff writer and former founding editor of Jezebel Dodai Stewart's PARIS HERE I AM, opening with the author's discovery of her Great Uncle Ollie's 1950s tour guide for Black Americans visiting Paris, right before she covered the Paris Olympics for the New York Times; pitched as a JULIE AND JULIA-style book retracing his years as the first Black WWII war correspondent and as an expat in Paris who befriended Josephine Baker, and weaving in her own story as a writer covering New York, to Emi Ikkanda at Tiny Reparations Books, at auction, by Jen Marshall at Aevitas Creative Management (world).

📖📖📖

some personal news: I'm writing a book!

Learn your history, or get ready to repeat it. Trump’s attacks on Colbert and Kimmel remind us of the Red Scare. Listen to our talk with author @risenc.bsky.social from earlier this year on Episode 199 of the Happy Hour, everywhere you stream Progress Texas Podcasts.

“The old ways.” Huh.

Kentucky trails nation on new climate and health scorecard • Kentucky Lantern Kentuckians lose more years off their lives from power plant emissions than people in most other states, according to a new national report.

"Kentuckians stand to lose more years off their lives due to power plant emissions than residents of almost any other state, according to a first of its kind national report. Only West Virginia ranked lower." @kentuckylantern.com

kentuckylantern.com/2025/09/26/k...

Censorship makes you dumber* It's a self-own for whoever does it.

Link:

open.substack.com/pub/steveins...