Deb Vargas

After Liberal Democracy - Critical Times Reflections on Authoritarian Times Trump’s win surprised few political realists. What has taken nearly everyone by surprise is the rapid rollout of chaotic authoritarian governing facilitated by a de...

wendy brown, "after liberal democracy: reflections on authoritarian times"

ctjournal.org/2025/05/15/a...

Baraka Arrested for 'Trespassing' at Controversial Immigrant Detention Facility - Insider NJ Authorities with Homeland Securities Investigations at the ICE detention facility Delaney Hall this afternoon arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka

“The controversial 1,000-bed facility is owned by the private prison company GEO Group, which entered into a 15-year, $1 billion contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in February.”

$1 BILLION dollars lining the pockets of a private prison company.

www.insidernj.com/baraka-arres...

Today ACLS, AHA, and MLA filed a lawsuit in federal district court seeking to reverse the recent actions to devastate the National Endowment for the Humanities, including the elimination of grant programs, staff, and entire divisions and programs. bit.ly/4lWubq5

We joined the AAUP to defend science — and you should too Lauren Tompkins and Alyssa Burgart urge Stanford professors to join the American Association of University Professors, arguing that the University needs to defend its programs and research in the scie...

"The AAUP is leading that fight, but it cannot do so alone. Every professor who joins strengthens our ability to push back against the dismantling of scientific teaching and research in higher education. All faculty, regardless of tenure-line and academic staff are eligible to join the AAUP."

You can tell who the Good Guys are because they're the ones smashing a car window to drag a mother away from her child while wearing ski masks.

“How can we inculcate academic values like risk-taking, deep reading and honesty when it’s this cheap and easy to bypass them?”

The shame of Columbia University In surrendering to Trump, it's opening all universities to Trump's tyranny

The Shame of Columbia: violating academic freedom

“Not even during the communist witch hunts of the early 1950s did a university agree to put an entire academic department under special oversight because of what its faculty researched or taught.”
open.substack.com/pub/robertre...

Suspended for Pro-Palestine Speech: My Statement on Yale Law School’s Embrace of AI-Generated Smears 1/3

Controversial immigrant family detention center in Texas to reopen The reopening of the Dilley facility in Texas reverses a Biden administration policy.

A detention center will resume operations as a controversial immigrant family housing facility under a new agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, private prison company CoreCivic has announced www.axios.com/2025/03/06/c...

$12.3 million worth of classes, programs, and scholarships to terrorize our students and colleagues

"Elon Musk is going to pay for his tax cut with your Social Security."

@lindsayowens.bsky.social breaks down the billionaire's unprecedented takeover of key government functions, including trillions in Treasury Department payments.

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/3/elon_musk_gov

If the NSF complies with President Trump's illegal executive orders on DEI and "gender ideology", I will refuse to review any grant proposals or participate in any panels, and I call on all my colleagues to join me in this.

YouTube video by ISSADE ISSADE - Colonizada (Official Video)

For folx interested in learning about the wonderful music coming out of urban Caribbean beyond Bad Bunny, allow me to recommend Issade, a queer anticolonial feminist Dominicans that’s really impressed me. Here is her son “colonizada” youtu.be/z1mNHsex4QM?...

ICE records show Biden administration planned detention expansion months ago Proposals going back to September show the Biden administration was prepping its own expanded detention.

Documents obtained by the @aclum.bsky.social show that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (under Biden) is considering proposals to expand its immigration detention capacity in at least eight states

That may give Trump a head start on mass deportations
www.axios.com/2025/01/15/i...

for marx & hall nerds, an excellent discussion of hall’s marxism that includes recordings of hall’s extrapolations, denvir & denning's interpretations, & nuances hall's methodology, stakes, & what he meant by 'complex unity structured in dominance'

Universities and the Coming Storm It’s difficult for colleges to defend democracy if they aren’t run democratically.

prospect.org/education/20...

CIA releases docs on Latino civil rights-era surveillance The documents confirm Latino civil rights pioneers' long-held suspicions about surveillance.

SCOOP: The CIA monitored Mexican American and Puerto Rican civil rights activists fighting for equal education and to honor the late Martin Luther King, Jr., — and against police brutality and the Vietnam War.

“Rape Club” Prison in California: U.S. Gov’t to Pay $116M to 103 Women “When you’re in prison, the retaliation starts. … I don’t think my judge sentenced me to go through this.” The U.S. government has agreed to pay a record-breaking amount of nearly $116 million...

"Rape Club" Prison in California: U.S. Gov't to Pay Record $116M to 103 Women Who Sued over Abuse

A Mexican American writer explores refugees' plight in the Middle East Stephanie Saldaña is a U.S.-born Latina writer based in the Middle East who has earned acclaim for empathic reporting.

Journalist and religious scholar Stephanie Saldaña's book about refugees from the Middle East celebrates remembering — something she says her Mexican American family lost during their migration story to Texas www.axios.com/2023/08/24/t...

Evie Shockley, “anti-immigration”

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/151252...

Older people "are the fastest-growing demographic of student debtors," says @astra.bsky.social of @DebtCollective.bsky.social, who notes that 9 million people over 50 owe $400 billion. "People are aging into their student loans, not aging out." https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/17/debt_relief

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour Colorado community braces for possible mass deportations under Trump

President-elect Trump said he is willing to enlist the military to deport migrants and is open to new detention camps to facilitate those deportations. A Colorado community prepares for it, @NewsHour Stephanie Sy reports youtu.be/P7Ge97_4RLw?...

Underground Railroad to Mexico project is using major grant to archive history The Underground Railroad to Mexico was a loosely organized path allowing enslaved Black people in some states escape bondage.

A project honoring Silvia Hector Webber, known as the "Harriet Tubman of the Underground Railroad to Mexico" in Texas, is using a $150,000 grant to create an interactive mapping project and infrastructure improvements at a cemetery in Texas www.axios.com/2024/12/10/u...

Revealed: Biden lays groundwork to expand immigration jails as Trump readies for office In the past year, the Biden administration has extended contracts for private sector jails before Trump’s plan for mass deportations

“It is deeply concerning that Ice would expand private detention facilities now – just months before the inauguration of a president-elect who has promised to terrorize immigrant communities by detaining and deporting millions of people,” the senator Cory Booker said in a statement to the Guardian.

Amnesty International Investigation Concludes Israel Is Committing Genocide “We will look back and say, ‘Why did we not do more earlier?” Amnesty's director tells Zeteo.

Everyone should be sharing this story about the Amnesty International report because yes many of us have long acknowledged that it’s a genocide but there are still people who need the validation of a report from an org like Amnesty to believe it’s true zeteo.com/p/amnesty-co...

Latinos helped shape Critical Race Theory from the beginning and haven't stopped in 50 years Latino Critical Race Theory scholars known as LatCrits aided in starting the movement and aren't backing down today

Critical race theory is an academic framework that examines systemic racism in the U.S. legal system. Richard Delgado, the son of a Mexican immigrant, helped develop the framework five decades ago www.axios.com/2021/12/02/l...

This I believe in the core of my being.

Number One in Football, Last in Faculty Salary The United Academics faculty union says the University of Oregon will not move an inch on salary increases after nine months of bargaining. In response to this, UA President Mike Urbancic says the …

“Number One in Football, Last in Faculty Salary” - I am so disappointed with #universityoforegon #ducks eugeneweekly.com/2024/11/14/n...