Heather Sullivan

ICE not only looks and acts like a paramilitary force – it is one, and that makes it harder to curb ICE, created in response to 9/11, meets most definitions of paramilitary forces. Critics worry it’s gone beyond its writ of immigration enforcement.

And while you’re at it, check out this piece by my colleague @edebruin.bsky.social

Why ICE is responding to protests with repression Why ICE is responding to protests with repression. ICE’s institutional culture is the problem.

One year into the second Trump administration, ICE agents have become de facto protest managers. In this @goodauth.bsky.social piece, I explain why we should expect their repressive behavior to continue.

Really loved this one.

This is a great piece - so good I'll probably put in on my Latin America in the World syllabus that I should be working on instead of reading the internet.

The admin is proposing indefinite control of Venezuelan oil, but evidence suggests that Venezuelan cooperation will only extend as far as it‘s coerced - and can’t extend past what the crumbing infrastructure can generate. Meanwhile ordinary Venezuelans continue to suffer.
@goodauth.bsky.social

If you were just a savvier shopper! Maybe you could take a different totally random drug that's cheaper - that's what my insurance always suggests!

Then have to do the same 100 calls every year to re-up the prior auth/cost reduction. Sir, I do actually know how much my drugs cost because I have the pleasure of fighting w ins over them every year - a practice which weirdly hasn‘t made my chronic illness stop being chronic.

Good piece from @profsaunders.bsky.social on potential U.S. military strikes in Venezuela and the added risks brought about by Trump's inexperienced and highly centralized national security team

Trump's Attack on the White House The Disney villain he resembles. Plus all the links.

Alt-pitch: Trump, the WH, Jafar, the Genie, I love the Capitol...plus all the links! @adambonica.bsky.social @smotus.bsky.social @dcinbox.bsky.social @mirandayaver.bsky.social @hsulli.bsky.social @donmoyn.bsky.social and more goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/trumps-att...

Trump’s attacks on Venezuela won’t even serve Trump’s stated goals The attacks won’t stop the drug trade – or bring about a friendlier regime.

I actually think that they‘re having real mil/intel/law enforcement orgs LARP the fake ones in Sicario (which I explain in the end of my Good Authority piece from today)

Trump’s attacks on Venezuela won’t even serve Trump’s stated goals The attacks won’t stop the drug trade – or bring about a friendlier regime.

Wrote about the wave of U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean. Alarmed that possibly the best explanation for the attacks is that the administration thinks it's acting out the movie Sicario. The movie was good imho, but not a model of normatively or strategically good policy. @goodauth.bsky.social

Teaching soc movements and pol protest this semester and my late gen z students have not described anything as cringe (that’s prob slightly older folks), but keep calling things performative. Finally I was like: guys, it is performative...it’s literally a performance. This had not occurred to them.

Cages of budgies, love birds, and cockatiels joined by pigeons on the cages and the ground eating the caged birds’ cast off seeds

Read this essay in Santo Domingo, where everyday I walk by a pet shop/vet office with cages of budgies, love birds, and cockatiels always joined by a few to many pigeons on the cages and the ground nearby eating the caged birds’ cast off seeds.

What’s behind Panama’s mass protests? The government has failed to address the broad range of grievances bringing people out on the streets.

Panamanians have been engaging in mass protest in the face of repression since April. Lessons about protest can come from everywhere.
@goodauth.bsky.social @bridgingthegap.bsky.social

@indivisibleononcty.bsky.social

👎🏻

Just a heads up, if it’s chronic, in addition to celebrating, write down all the asinine things that you did that worked because you’ll have to go through it all again next year.

You want to live in a Freedom City? Take a closer look at Honduras. Próspera offers a cautionary tale on deregulation and charter cities.

Couldn’t figure out why 2 articles on the Honduran charter city Próspera recently came out in big msm sources. Then realized it’s because there’s a push from proponents to get “Freedom Cities” in the U.S. Read about Honduras’s experience with charter cities in my piece for @goodauth.bsky.social

Indeed

This has bothered me about the coverage of the Salvadoran CECOT - it’s not a gulag, it’s a modern prison. There are a million reasons we shouldn’t be sending people there, but not because it’s an institution out of some faraway and foreign past. It’s actually an exemplar of a heinous modern prison.

New life / Aging legs Ben Ehrenreich sweeps forward; dance class with Amy Chu

Soon by @benehrenreich.bsky.social in @flaminghydra.com

💯

My guess of what makes this an actual diplomatic problem- and another reason none of these people should be in CECOT- is because there’s no human rights monitoring and no one leaves so no info exists about actual unscripted conditions. Bukele would surely be pissed about such high profile release.

Just got around to this post and can't stop laughing imagining an advice blog for my 4 tendencies cat, someone who resists both outer and inner expectations. Perhaps finished phd/got tenure solely driven by a burning desire to avoid becoming a win for the patriarchy by falling out of the pipeline.

Potato Bread - Martin's Famous Potato Rolls and Bread Potato Bread - Martin's Famous Potato Rolls and Bread

True, but sometimes this white bread:

Why go after a group that's not a threat? Gang members in strong organized criminal groups are relatively hard to catch. They hide and fight back. But rounding up Venezuelans who have TPS or other legal status - i.e. people in the system living ordinary law-abiding lives - well, that's easy.

We have quite simply criminalized being Venezuelan. The whole 🧵 is worth a read.

The whole concept *is* wrong

Piece of cardboard with the words “Recall Elon” and a picture of a cybertruck that the bumper has fallen off of

#teslatakedown

And screaming for the people in the back, Tren de Aragua does not use tattoos. They don’t even fucking use tattoos - not as part of initiation or for identifying one another.