Marshall Herskovitz

Opinion | What PEN Doesn’t Understand About Free Expression

Kirchick has done a service by calling attention to this cowardly failure by PEN America. One can only hope that like @nytopinion.nytimes.com leadership in 2020 - after wrongly firing James Bennet for publishing a Tom Cotton oped - PEN will come to its senses.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/o...

White House grants ICE power to detain refugees for aggressive ‘rescreening’ A new DHS memo details plan to allow federal immigration officers to detain legal refugees in the US indefinitely

Sadistic: Trump will not only go after LEGAL immigrants now, but hold them in notoriously cruel detention INDEFINITELY.

Every day we're reminded that cruelty is not a by-product, but central to this administration's grotesque governing philosophy.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Opinion | The A.I. Disruption We’ve Been Waiting for Has Arrived

AI is about to devour our society.

The corrupt government is in bed with AI's corrupt creators.

There are 34 months before even the possibility of non-corrupt officials saving us.

Will AI destroy us by then, or is there a chance sanity will prevail?

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/o...

When will we hear if House Democrats are preparing Articles of Impeachment over Bondi's announcement that no more Epstein files will be released?

We truly live in the Upside Down when the DOJ is openly obstructing justice.

Opinion | A Very Dangerous Ruling in New Orleans

Even for those who support deporting millions of law-abiding immigrants who've been here for decades - a view held only by a small minority of Americans - the administration's cruelty should be abhorrent.

America is in moral collapse.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...

3) that non-citizen voting in federal elections is essentially non-existent, or that the SAVE Act is part of a pattern including Trump attempting to nationalize the elections and Republicans instigating mid-decade redistricting in order to rig the midterms.

2) don't have a registered birth certificate or passport and more millions of women who changed their name when marrying.
Nor does the piece mention that decades of studies show--

Why Voter ID Is Common Sense The left says voter ID laws are racist. But most Americans say it’s a vital safeguard for elections, writes Rachel Bovard.

1) Talk about a Strawman, @thefp.com does an entire piece on Dem resistance to voter ID when Dems already accept voter ID.
The issue is proof of citizenship - barely mentioned in the article - which would disenfranchise millions who--

Why Voter ID Is Common Sense
www.thefp.com/p/why-voter-...

Wow. Gallup polls can never be trusted again. And to think they entirely destroyed their credibility just in time for Trump to go down.

4) telling millions of people they can never have sex again. Or pray again.

We are being driven toward civilizational suicide by a group of emotionally stunted billionaire fools, and it's time conservatives like Douthat stood up for the timeless values he says he represents.

3) organizing principle of human lives forever. Our relationships, self-image, sense of worth are all inextricably intertwined with the ability to provide what our loved ones need to survive. Taking that away is exactly the same as--

2) energy and time to whatever it has taken through the ages: hunting, farming, building, fighting, planning, organizing, driving, fixing, healing, inventing, writing, selling, whatever it takes it has been the--

Opinion | A.I. May Put Progressives to the Test

1) The vast majority of Americans, including Democrats, understand what AI's creators don't: the "dignity of work" is not a slogan, it's the legacy of millions of years of evolution. The drive to provide is as primal as sex; we are wired to devote enormous--

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/o...

Massie on Howard Lutnick: "He should just resign. Three people in Great Britain resigned for less than what we've seen Howard Lutnick lie about. He clearly went to the island, if we believe what's in these files. He was in business with Jeffrey Epstein."

{gift link} www.nytimes.com/article/trum...

Opinion | Now We Know What All Those People Got From Epstein

Best description of the moral rot Epstein has revealed. He was a creature who could only have thrived in our neoliberal era, when our institutions' leaders have been so corrupted by greed and self-interest.

Only a great movement of reform can save us.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/o...

Prosecutors Began Investigating Renee Good’s Killing. Washington Told Them to Stop.

The rule of law is dead in America.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/u...

Opinion | Trump’s Claims About Noncitizens Voting Are False. We Can Prove It.

Now there is multi-state proof:
NON-CITIZENS DON'T VOTE.
It's not just illegal for them to vote.
THEY DON'T DO IT.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/o...

Shameful misinformation by @washingtonpost.com Editorial Board.
Police DO NOT release criminals in order to help them avoid ICE, as implied below. They simply don't cooperate with ICE, which is allowed under federal law.

"Blue States Banning Cooperation with ICE Will Backfire"
wapo.st/49XOorB

2) by the influx of 60,000 Haitian immigrants; instead, they boosted the local economy. Trump, Vance, and Noem have lied from the beginning about them.

Opinion | In Ohio, I Caught a Glimpse of the New Resistance

1) Trump had the right to end the Temporary Protected Status program, but taking it away from people who've already built lives here is intentional cruelty. These people entered the US legally.
And for the record, crime in Springfield, Ohio was unchanged--
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/o...

Stop asking if they’re “rigging the election.”
They. Already. Are.
But the most dangerous part isn’t the mechanics. It’s the message.
They’re doing it in public to make you swallow the real lie:
That voting is pointless.
If they can get you to quit before Election Day… they don’t even have to win.

It will be hard for Bezos to surpass the two most hated billionaires in America, Zuckerberg and Musk, but I must give him credit - he's trying very hard.

Most of the Washington Post’s tech reporters were laid off today, including me. I have loved my time at the paper, which is where I wanted to work from age 15. I take some consolation in not being among the survivors who will have to work harder with less for fewer readers. On to better things.

I expected the cuts would be bad but I'm honestly stunned and sickened seeing how many great journalists the Washington Post just lost. People who nailed huge investigations, documented war zones, exposed horrific crimes, dropped all at once for failures they did not cause.

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

DHS Hunts Down 67-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Who Criticized Them in Email The Department of Homeland Security is using a little-known tool to go after its critics.

Floored by this story. A man wrote a pollite email to a federal prosecutor objecting to the deportation of an Afghan seeking asylum. DHS responded with an administrative warrant to get the man's info from Google, then visited his home to intimidate him.

James Comer is bringing Hillary Clinton before his committee to testify about Epstein despite having zero contact with him, but not Epstein’s neighbor Howard Lutnick who lied about his connections to Epstein over many years which is proven in the files.

4) for the heinous crimes of the powerful. Punishing the weak for their susceptibility to Douthat's conception of sin can wait for a less terrible moment in the history of our republic.

3) for that matter, since it elevates greed to the status of a god.

Maybe if regular folks didn't feel so powerless and could imagine a bright future for themselves and their children, they might turn to "vice" a little less.
In the meantime, we're waiting for accountability--