Matt deTar

Cory Booker’s long speech offers a strategy for Trump opponents in a fragmented media landscape The length of Booker’s speech grabbed headlines, but the senator’s media strategy helped sustain attention afterward while disrupting Trump’s public spotlight.

Erik Johnson and I wrote about how Cory Booker's speech offers the beginnings of a media strategy to counter Trump. If you've been following (dwindling) media coverage of this speech, you're probably already familiar with how headlines repeat a unified message about the speech's meaning.

ProPublica withholding names and identifying details of US academics is both responsible and a clear statement of the end of free speech rights in the US.

All of the Trump Administration’s Major Moves in the First 100 Days (Gift Article) The New York Times is tracking the actions and significant statements of President Trump and his administration during the first 100 days of Mr. Trump’s second term.

This sortable tracker of the Trump Administration's actions to date is both genuinely useful and an innovation in doom scrolling

This is 💯 right. Who's turn is it next, Senators?

One thing about this kind of thing is that if it works to get attention and energy, the next step is to do it again. And the step after that is to do something bigger.

The Long Speech: Rhetorical Abundance in Circulation This essay analyzes excessively long speeches in order to argue that circulation naturalizes rhetorical processes that govern meaning within texts. In our view, abundant acts of address unsettle do...

Cory Booker is 16 hours into a speech that's still going. I wrote with Erik Johnson about how these kinds of performances in history disrupt and redirect media. Is that still possible? www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Middle East Studies Association In the current national climate, as institutions of higher education and their mission of critical inquiry face unprecedented attack, MESA unequivocally supports efforts to stand up for freedom of exp...

If your academic professional org hasn't gotten its act together to say anything about federal (and state) attacks on higher ed, an important reminder: "Anticipatory obedience is neither a defense against repression nor a viable strategy to avert risk." mesana.org/advocacy/let...

Why Corporate DEI Is Such a Perfect Target for Trump It’s an attack on labor. But he can frame it as something else.

"The fact is, the battle over “DEI” has always been a fight about labor, work, and who has access to the jobs and political institutions that build and protect wealth. If we ever forgot that, we’re learning it again now."

me for @slate.bsky.social

slate.com/news-and-pol...

one great mystery of our age is how the only way to motivate rich people to work is to give them loads of money for no reason but the only way to motivate poor people to work is to take away loads of their money for no reason

Universities Have Been Doing Trump’s Work for Him The University of Chicago, despite its free speech reputation, has laid the groundwork for the president's threats against students who protest for Palestine.

Just a Valentine's Day Eve reminder that "speech that must be authorized is not free" www.thenation.com/article/acti...

“Don’t feed the trolls” also extends to bad opinion pieces in papers of record.

They run them bc people react to them the most.

If we stop linking to bad columns and instead post thinkers we find valuable (& generate convo around it), incentives change.

It’s not easy and takes constant practice!

Right on cue Democrats will spend a week eating each other alive over the pardon while Trump keeps setting up the most unfit government in history to rip apart lives on Day 1 unfettered by a coherent opposition.

I taught about the '80s salmon hats last term. Humans are good at anthropomorphizing or at least centering themselves in the unknowable. It's almost like our own species' perspective is the only one available to us.

Lol. Not a specific question, so an opening salvo of facts: Benjamin Bunny and Peter Rabbit, both 4, aka Fluff Bros., the sweetest, snuggliest cats I've ever had; Katniss, 14, easiest hisser I've ever had, loves me and tolerates the kittens. I miss them when I write about them, so that's all rn

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hopefully minus the averted eyes, crossing the street, and speeding up to avoid you

Oh! I'm new too. It's a "save for later" pin. If you put this emoji on the comments of a post, I think you can create a feed in BlueSky of the posts that you have put this pin on. I've haven't quite figured out how to create the "save for later" feed yet, but this was my first pin!

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Ten book covers: How We Get Free, Hope in the Dark, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Palestine in a World on Fire, Let This Radicalize you, Socialism... Seriously, The Black Antifascist Tradition, Elite Capture, Class Struggle Unionism, and Unbuild Walls. More details at the included link.

For the next two weeks, we’re offering ten free ebooks for getting free

Another world is possible if we fight for it

www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/517-te...

I finished Parable of the Sower last night for the first time. Trying to reflect on advice for how to manage in an unimaginable future.

When a woman underscores the need to phase out fossil fuels, will we celebrate her intellectual contributions? A very smart & clear interview on language & negotiations at COPs

Politico quote saying Biden’s admin opposed the ceasefire because it would allow journalists to illuminate the devastation and turn public opinion against Israel.

lol Biden was opposed to the ceasefire because he thought it might allow people to see more of how bad Israel is.

If you read Ministry of the Future you might remember the central role that discount rates play in galvanizing efforts to act on climate change.

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