Dr. Amy Tiemann

Populist governments cause more damage and stick around longer:

www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Idaho Banned Vaccine Mandates. Activists Want to Make It a Model for the Country. The Idaho Medical Freedom Act makes it illegal to require anyone to take a vaccine or receive “medical intervention.” Leslie Manookian, the activist behind the law, hopes to make it a “societal norm” ...

South Carolina schools recently sent home unvaccinated kids to stem a growing measles outbreak. It turned out 5 of them were infected and, if they'd been at school, could've unwittingly spread it to their classmates for days.

That kind of precaution is now illegal in Idaho.

White House begins demolishing East Wing facade to build Trump’s ballroom The president had claimed construction of the $250 million ballroom wouldn’t ‘interfere’ with the existing White House structure.

This is insane.

“It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of," Trump said in July. “It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

When the Nazis came to power, a writer began collecting people’s dreams and uncovered the effects the regime had on the collective unconscious. https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/how-dreams-change-under-authoritarianism

This is great stuff from @jamestalarico.bsky.social, running for Senate in Texas:

“The most dangerous form of government is theocracy — because the only thing worse than a tyrant is a tyrant who thinks they're on a mission from God.”

There’s no B actor too small for revival in season 2 of the greatest sh*tshow on earth

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Remembering how the media reported that the Trump campaign not only denied intent to follow Project 2025, but insisted that anyone associated would be barred from the administration.

@politico.com had a big piece about it.

It really should not go unremarked that Mike Johnson *just admitted that the President of the United States is unwell.*

Just noting that a university that signed this compact would be agreeing to gut clinics and institutes like, say, the Knight Institute, whose mandate is to promote free speech and press freedom. What would it even mean for us to be “neutral”?

ICE agents raid South Shore apartments; Trump says Chicago could become military training ground ICE agents raided a South Shore apartment building overnight as the city braces for a possible military deployment.

Chicago, Illinois, 2025:

"They had the Black people in one van, and the immigrants in another van."

"They was bringing the kids down, had them zip-tied to each other."

"I kept asking, 'What is the morality?' One of them laughed. He said, 'Fuck them kids.'"

abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chi...

I know we're desensitized, but it's important to note, again, that today's events would have led to the immediate impeachment & removal of any president from at least Truman to at least Obama. We're hundreds of miles on the interstate past Richard Nixon's high school prank-level crimes compared to 👇

In case you're not aware, Carole Cadwalladr is the journalist who exposed Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal in The Observer. Very excited to see what she and her peers will do over at The Nerve! www.thenerve.news Independent journalism is so important.

US farmers are saying they "just need temporary help, until things get better."

Here's the thing. US farm exports- which are mostly soy- CANNOT get better.

Other countries expanded their soy industries to fill China's demand.

We've walled ourselves out of the global market, folks. This is it.

You have to hand it to the generals. Unlike so many other people in this country, they know how to conduct themselves in public. They know they are supposed to be apolitical. So they greeted Trump's political speech with silence. And you could have heard a medal drop when Pete Hegseth finished.

I just called* and learned from the after-hour outgoing message:

Counselors are usually available:
M-F
9am to 6pm ET
+ some evenings and weekends

*(I've made it a habit to dial numbers I'm unfamiliar with before sharing them.)

Good question—relates to how much dementia he has!

How Trumpworld inflates the perceived danger of the left It is stipulated at the outset that there have been gruesome acts of political violence in recent months that appear to have been motivated by hostility to right-wing politics or the administration. T...

It really can not be emphasized enough that "exaggerating the danger of the left" is a key, central tactic of aspiring fascists. Look back at every country that slid into authoritarianism & you'll find a campaign like this preceding it. Every time. It's part of the script.

Ezra Klein Accidentally Shows How the Media Brought Us Trump The prominent liberal pundit made up a fake version of Charlie Kirk to praise, laundering his reputation the way a lot of mainstream media launders MAGA

"And they are adamantly opposed to recognizing bad faith, so they let themselves be used, over and over, in an endless attempt to find reasonable common ground with political forces bent on division."

Laurels and Darts: The Washington Post's writer flight. On WaPo’s self-inflicted talent exodus. Plus: In Hawai‘i, it pays to get probed; YOLO journalism at the University of Georgia; and Trump’s bigly error-ridden lawsuit.

"Reading the once-vibrant Washington Post opinion section, under its new editor, feels like choking down a spoonful of congealed Cream of Wheat..."

www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

Trump couldn’t understand why “people didn’t understand that Palm Beach in the 90s was a different time.”

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

Robby Starbuck is a far-right activist. Meta putting him in the position of being a "bias advisor" for its chat bot is insane.

Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

“.. the stony faces and occasionally audible gasps are those of the assembled world dreading the fate of what diplomats call the ‘international community minus one.’” 🇺🇸

@opinion.bloomberg.com
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

A felon in the White House is making crime legal Meanwhile, he's creating fake crimes to punish the law abiding.

the Tom Homan bribery scandal is the latest example of how a felon in the White House is making crime legal

SCOTUS majority says Trump can ignore precedent if the majority doesn't like it This is no way to run a court, let alone a country.

NEW: SCOTUS majority says Trump can ignore precedent if the majority doesn't like it.

A 90-year-old precedent meant nothing to the majority allowing Trump to fire an FTC commissioner during litigation. This is no way to run a court, let alone a country.

Tonight, at Law Dork:

This is it, but people are too gullible and mindless to realize it.

This is what an actual popular front against fascism looks like; not accommodating people who agree that you’re beneath them but fascists are impolite