Disillusioned Optimist

More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And near...

BREAKING from PP

We found immigration agents have held more than 170 *citizens*

The govt doesn't track citizens held. So we did. We tallied:

Nearly 20 kids, two w/ cancer

More than 20 citizens held for day or more, incommunicado

www.propublica.org/article/immi...

by @nicolefoy.bsky.social

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

I've been wondering why Dominion Voting Systems suddenly reached settlements with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and One America News.

Turns out, it's been purchased by a Republican-owned election tech firm that insisted on it, per Axios.

www.axios.com/2025/10/09/d...

Director of Eisenhower Library in Kansas ousted after refusing to give Trump administration a sword The director of the presidential library and museum in Abilene, Kansas, said he was suddenly told to resign or be fired. He refused to give the Trump administration a historic sword from the museum’s ...

An administration of petulant toddlers. www.kcur.org/politics-ele...

Paramount Officially Acquiring The Free Press and Making Bari Weiss CBS News Editor in Chief: Report Paramount Skydance will be officially acquiring The Free Press and hiring its founder Bari Weiss as editor in chief of its CBS News division, with the deal to be announced this coming Monday, accordin...

In case it wasn’t clear, the anti-DEI crusade has never been about merit. Zero news experience. Never been a reporter. Elevated to Editor in Chief of CBS News, one of the most storied news institutions in the nation. www.mediaite.com/media/news/p...

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.

Feds in military gear flood downtown Chicago; top border official says arrests based on 'how they look' The immigration agents were spotted making arrests in downtown Chicago and River North neighborhood early Sunday.

In which a top US Border Patrol official, incredibly, tells my tall and Anglo colleague @chipmitchell1.bsky.social that he's not the type they're looking for as they go about downtown Chicago arresting people based on "how they look"

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

So exhausting..

2 people dead and several injured in a shooting and fire at a Michigan church, police say The shooting happened Sunday at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, about 50 miles north of Detroit.

Shook by this bit in the AP article on the Mormon church shooting which seems distressingly American.

“Some striking nurses at nearby Henry Ford Hospital left the picket line and ran the short distance to the church to help first responders...”

apnews.com/article/morm...

Pioneer Square Webcam in Portland Pioneer Square Webcam in Portland

This is Portland right now. We’re“under siege” by pollen and potholes, that’s about it. We have a ton of live webcams if you want to watch us go to the farmers markets or walking our dogs, we love dogs.
Release the Epstein files.
www.camscape.com/webcam/pione...

Photo of DOGE staffer Nate Cavanagh, a 28-year-old white man in a blue pullover, carrying a black backpack.

Photo of 53-year-old Afghan scholar Mohammad Halimi. He is sitting, wearing white pants and shirt with a brown vest.

On the left: Nate Cavanagh, a 28-year-old DOGE staffer and college dropout.

On the right: Mohammad Halimi, a 53-year-old exiled Afghan scholar.

This is the story of how DOGE targeted Halimi on social media.

Then the Taliban took his family. 🧵

Bonus 173: The Election of 1864 At the lowest moment of his presidency (if not the Civil War), Abraham Lincoln was committed to protecting the people's right to vote him out in favor of a negotiated end to the war—and the Union.

For today’s bonus “One First,” I wrote about Abraham Lincoln’s commitment to holding the Election of 1864—even when he thought he’d probably lose and his successor would sue for peace, thus ending the war (and, likely, the Union).

Respecting and preserving the will of the people was more important:

For 15 yrs, I’ve co-organized informal, volunteer, peer mentoring for women in my college to help them navigate being outnumbered in dept, sexist colleagues, or professing while pregnant.

We’ve been told to stop b/c it’s exclusionary.

No word on if sr men vs jr men’s tennis matches also cancelled.

“Nobody’s talking about Rockbridge, and that’s exactly how they want it.”

Ashley on the Private Club for Billionaires where Vance, Thiel, etc. map out the right-wing takeover 🇺🇸

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this fascinating exchange Colbert had with Dua Lipa, when she asked him about the role his faith plays in his comedy.

It’s rich seeing major outlets who originally declined to write about FEMA’s shitty response in Texas just now publishing stories and without crediting my original reporting.

everyone will see the initial images of them trying to project force, but they got chased out by a bunch of normal americans bearing fruit and foul language

How #democracy transforms to #autocracy: lessons from the #NurembergTrials.

The transcripts from the Nuremberg Trials and the defendants' statements help us understand how the democratic Weimar Republic transformed into a totalitarian Third Reich.

Below is a thread with selected excerpts.

1/n

Spot on. This is the clearest explanation I’ve seen. It ‘s relatable, and humanizes the issue in a way everyone can understand.

Ryan’s statement makes clear that the fed government had threatened to withhold unrelated university funding & student visas in order to coerce his resignation

All individual university leaders now have targets on their backs

Another point: Many know the Dred Scott decision but aren't as familiar with the aftermath and how states, courts, and politicians responded. 5 examples:

1) Many Northern/Midwest states just ignored the decision.
2) Maine’s high court said Black Americans could vote in state/federal elections. /1

when history reflects on how trump managed to so quickly and so thoroughly kneecap democracy, the role of the Roberts Court cannot be overstated. trump's an amoral monster, but his biggest successes were only possible thanks to conservative justices who would bless them

I want to reiterate that countless conservative judges issued universal injunctions against the Biden administration, and the Supreme Court never halted the practice. Now, barely five months into Trump's second term, the court puts an end to these injunctions. A brazen double standard.

*Biden tries to forgive student loans*
SCOTUS: Whoa there, that is, uh, a major question. Which means you can't do it.

*Trump revokes part of the constitution*
SCOTUS: Obviously, we got to give the President the benefit of the doubt on this one.

So am I reading this court decision correctly? We now have 50 micronations with their own laws interpreting the U.S. Constitution wholly separate from one another? But there's one guy with private law enforcement who is immune from all punishment who can do whatever he wants in those 50 states?

this court says that allowing EPA to regulate carbon emissions is a "major question" that demands congressional debate. but allowing the president to, with a flick of the wrist, end a straightforward constitutional right is something that must be allowed to stand?

No one wants to hear that <checks notes> Iran currently has a more active & functional parliament than the United States of Just This One Guy Can Do Whatever He Wants Because No One In Congress Who Swore Oaths Will Do Their Damn Jobs

We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time." Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history - which is no doubt true - but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks.

From Hunter S. Thompson’s ESPN page 2 column one week after 9/11.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.