Ryan Janus

Over the past two weeks I've begun to realize that rich people only started funding chatbots once they could no longer email Jeffrey Epstein

If you won’t say this, you should not hold public office

He bought it, and tried to shape it to his own beliefs editorially, laundered on the earned institutional reputation. Once that was rejected, there was no reason to keep the institutional reputation anymore, is there?

Jeffrey Bezos is destroying the Washington Post for the same reason Musk destroyed Twitter and Ellison is destroying CBS—oligarchs oppose the free press when if it threatens their wealth and power.

They don’t want normal people to see what is happening in America.

I've never been a conspiracy theory guy, but you're never gonna convince me that there hasn't been a specific cabal of ultra-rich dullards trying to buy, strangle, and bring to heel all of the most important reality-shaping machines since the uptick in power labor had during COVID

Bezos isn't destroying the Washington Post because it isn't profitable. He's destroying the Washington Post because he's calculated that a robust free press threatens the ability of his class to warp society around their interests

worth noting that the second rich people stopped being afraid of mobs tearing them limb from limb, they stopped building libraries and opera houses and stuff and started ripping the copper wiring out of the walls of society instead

ICE agent wearing skull mask that is usually associated with the neo Nazi atomwaffen group

Fucking surreal that people dressed like this and carrying assault rifles are permitted to kidnap people off our streets

Trump is working hard to set/reinforce a frame that connects immigration, financial fraud, & election fraud. He and the right wing propaganda machine will keep producing “evidence” to fit this frame, then use it to justify attempts to suppress voters, kick voters off rolls, and delegitimize results.

The Real Reason ICE Agents Wear Masks Face-coverings may work less to protect federal agents from danger than to make it easier for them to do unconstitutional things.

No masks on cops. No masks on cops. No masks on cops. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

U.S. citizen injured by federal agents in Salem who demanded to see “papers,” union says - Salem Reporter A home care worker and union worker was pulled from her car and injured by federal agents Thursday according to a statement by SEIU 503. To comment on this story, use the form at the end of the repor...

4 federal agents pull over an elderly US citizen for the suspected crime of being brown, break her car window, throw her to the ground, then drive off after they find her US Passport in her purse. The Salem Police, when called, say there’s nothing they can do. www.salemreporter.com/2026/01/31/u...

I wonder if the New York Times will go after any of the prominent academics in the Epstein files for being rapists as hard as they went after Claudine Gay for being kind of sloppy with citations in her graduate thesis.

If not, why not?

every epstein file drop underscores how elite power operates through shared socio-economic networks, regardless of people's ideological differences, populist posturing, or public feuds

Let’s try this one in foreign correspondent voice:

State Security Forces Arrest Journalist Who Covered Protests Against Regime Official

the feds saying theyll end their campaign of terror against an american city if their demands are met is the biggest domestic scandal of my lifetime

In theater. So they think they’re at war.

Trump officials awarded Venezuela oil-sale contracts to firms tied to bribery The Trump administration awarded $500 million in contracts for Venezuelan oil sales to two firms with a history of bribery and corruption.

Two global trading houses that brokered an opaque deal with the Trump admin this month to sell Venezuelan oil were previously prosecuted for bribery schemes involving oil sales elsewhere… A senior trader at Vitol donated $6 million to Trump’s 2024 election. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Since we published this, Pam Bondi's X account has started posting mugshots of Minnesotans arrested for impeding ICE/CBP. Sharing a defendant's photo publicly in this way is forbidden under DOJ rules

My operating assumption is that he tried to do a hasty coup in 2020 that failed, and so everything he does in his second term should be understood as laying the groundwork for a second coup to succeed.

Once you start noticing it you can't stop: when the real Trump falters and is incapable of defending his administration (more and more frequent) the actual Trump is "subbed out" of news coverage for an invented, imaginary, often explicitly hypothetical version of Trump who is reasonable and cogent

This is Literally the Job Political journalists need to stop pretending they don't know what Republicans are going to do.

"They told us what they were going to do. They published it. They put it on a website. And when it happened, the press was surprised."

Hoo boy, everyone should bookmark this @parkermolloy.com piece & make sure everyone involved in media reads it.

Bovino’s retirement needs to be a cage. His command environment yielded Renee Good’s death, Alex Pretti’s death & Julio Sosa-Celis’ shooting. Failure to prosecute Bovino & everyone else materially responsible for these atrocities will be understood by ICE, CBP, etc as a green light for the next ones

The people of Minnesota have executed one of the most impressive civil resistance campaigns I can remember:

- Organized a city wide general strike
- Maintained nonviolent discipline amidst violence
- Mobilized 10,000s in subzero temps to protest and watch ICE
- Flipped public opinion against ICE

pretty wild statement re: Republican Chris Madel drop from race for MN governor:

"Saying he cannot support the national GOP's 'stated retribution on citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so."

Defensive caution can’t compete with right-wing propaganda Is it so hard for journalists to clearly state that the Trump administration is lying?

@sulliview.bsky.social did what I couldn’t.

“The right-wing media— led by Fox News, as always — was immediately spilling out its propaganda with, yes, passionate intensity…. A few hours after the shooting, I watched Fox’s coverage for as long as I could stand it…”

open.substack.com/pub/margaret...

Welcome to the American Winter In the frozen streets of Minneapolis, something profound is happening.

The Atlantic Magazine just dropped a tremendous story on the Minnesota Resistance. The author is a war correspondent & sees the echoes of leaderless community empowerment around the globe: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202... (supposed to be a gift link, might not work, it’s in Apple News, too.)

ICE Says Critical Evidence In Abuse Case Was Lost In 'System Crash' a Day After It Was Sued The government also said "we don't have resources" to retain all footage and that plaintiffs could supply "endless hard drives that we could save things to."

And what is happening inside ICE detention centers? 404 Media also learned that the federal government claimed that the day after it was sued for allegedly abusing detainees at an ICE detention center, a “system crash” deleted nearly two weeks of surveillance footage from inside the facility.

This administration is cooked. Literally no one is scared of them.

Once you understand that you're dealing with murderous liars, you stop entertaining what they say as possibly credible and legitimate. The fight against them is about stopping them from terrorizing and killing by any means, not winning debates about your reality versus theirs.

They killed him, and then they immediately set to concocting lies about him. I know the killing is worse, and yet I can't escape the thought that the lying is what reveals the deeper abyss.