Kate Brannen

FIFA peace prize

Person who actually deserves a trophy is the artist who made the FIFA peace prize trophy look like everyone in the entire world holding their head in their hands out of secondhand embarrassment

Drones over French nuclear submarine base last night.

The Just Security 2025 Year-End Book Recommendations Just Security editors recommend books they read this year, including those that illuminated world issues and brought joy into their 2025.

(1/3) It’s time for one of our favorite annual traditions, end-of-year book recommendations from the Just Security community!

www.justsecurity.org/126111/just-...

Former Honduras president, convicted of trafficking, freed on Trump pardon A former DEA agent called the release “devastating”: “It means any attempt to work your investigations to the highest levels is meaningless.”

Ex-DEA agent who worked on the case against former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernandez calls his release "devastating":

“It means any attempt to work your investigations to the highest levels is meaningless”

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

"While Hegseth did not make an appearance in the briefing room, he and his wife made time to sit for a chummy interview inside the Pentagon with former Trump official-turned-podcaster Katie Miller, where she asked about his favorite chicken wings and the current shows they are binge-watching"

Expert Q&A on the U.S. Boat Strikes An expert Q & A on the Trump administration's lethal strikes against suspected drug trafficking boats on the high seas.

"If the United States were in an armed conflict (it is not), it would be illegal to target shipwrecked survivors at sea."

Expert Q&A on the U.S. Boat Strikes with @tessbridgeman.bsky.social, @mikeschmitt.bsky.social, & @rgoodlaw.bsky.social: www.justsecurity.org/126156/exper...

Killing Shipwrecked Survivors is Not Just Illegal—It Endangers U.S. Servicemembers If the United States chooses a path where killing defenseless survivors becomes acceptable, American servicemembers will pay the price for that choice.

Must read by @marknevitt.bsky.social on why killing survivors at sea is a moral & strategic disaster for all of us:

"If America chooses a path where killing defenseless survivors becomes acceptable, American servicemembers will pay the price for that choice."

www.justsecurity.org/125998/boat-...

I believe folks know the important work we're doing at @justsecurity.org, especially in these challenging times.

But we made this short video as a reminder!

We really need your support this #GivingTuesday.

For tax-deductible gifts: justsecurity.org/donate/

1) @washingtonpost.com reported Thursday on a controversial policy downgrading how nooses and swastikas are labeled in the Coast Guard.

2) Admin officials attacked The Post, falsely alleging the reporting of "fake crap."

3) The CG said it would review policy language.

4) The CG reversed course.

Mapping U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific An ongoing record of U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since Sept. 2.

The Post is keeping an updating map and list of the Trump administration’s extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific (Gift link)

wapo.st/4oNn8RJ

Tennessee Judge Temporarily Blocks National Guard Deployment in Memphis The judge said the case “raises important questions concerning the use of the state’s military forces for domestic law enforcement purposes.”

Breaking News: A Tennessee judge temporarily blocked the deployment of the National Guard in Memphis, which was ordered by the state’s Republican governor.

Trump, Border Patrol Retreat in Failure from Chicago Five important lessons of the first six months of Trump’s immigration raids — and why CBP’s Greg Bovino is the Nathan Bedford Forrest of the Trump era.

Greg Bovino is leading a rebel cavalry terrorizing America—and it's important to recognize that it's in retreat. While the trauma and terror Bovino’s raiders instill is real and damaging, it’s remarkable to note how ineffective the force has turned out to be. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/trump-bord...

Georgia Public Libraries generate $3.75 return for every dollar invested, new study finds Georgia's public libraries generated $1.06 billion in services in fiscal year 2024, supporting 5,488 jobs and producing $3.75 of value per public dollar.

We need libraries for so many reasons.

www.11alive.com/article/news...

A LinkedIn ad showing Jensen Huang shaking hands with some vague fashion executive: L'OREAL 6,204,444 followers Promoted We're thrilled to announce a collaboration with NVIDIA to supercharge beauty with next-gen Al. WELCOME TO NVIDIA L'ORÉAL GROUPE

I don’t want to seem out of touch but I don’t actually understand the economy anymore.

Faith leader, Michael Woolf, minister at Lake Street Church of Evanston, is detained by Illinois State Police during a protest against immigration actions, outside the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., November 14, 2025. REUTERS/Jim Vondruska

A masked ICE agent sprays David Black, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, directly in the face during protests outside the ICE processing facility in Broadview, Illinois. Sept 19 2025 Photo by Ashlee Rezin of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church in chicago being hit in the head with a pepper ball Sept 19 at the Broadview ICE facility

An unidentified federal agent fires a chemical weapon into Rev. Jorge Bautista's face during a protest outside of Coast Guard Island in Oakland on Thursday Oct. 23, 2025. Credit: David Bacon

ICE vs the clergy

Something that’s so striking in these emails is how…unimpressive Epstein is. He comes off as a pompous, sub-literate lech. Yes everyone is so mortifyingly solicitous of him! All fawning and flattery! Why?????

This week, though, prosecutors made the call to put Daniels on the stand. She described her experience with Trump in greater detail than she had on 60 Minutes, saying she’d reluctantly agreed to a dinner with Trump and, when she arrived at the hotel, was told to come up to his room—an echo of Weinstein’s tactics. After a long conversation about business—he was interested in the economics of the porn industry, she said, and suggested that she might appear on The Apprentice—she went to the restroom, and emerged to find him stripped down to a T-shirt and boxers. She was shocked: “I felt the room spin in slow motion,” she testified, and remembered thinking, “Oh my God, what did I misread to get here?” She went to leave, and he stood between her and the door. When she went to put on her clothes afterward, she said, her hands were shaking too hard to buckle up her shoes.

Anyhow this morning I'm just remembering Stormy Daniels's testimony about Trump during the Manhattan trial www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I think the situation room is for a particular kind of situation, not for situations generally, even though I agree that this is a situation.

The two questions I would like every one of these toadies to be asked is:
(1) How can you possibly know it isn't true? Were you one of Epstein's regular guests also? and
(2) Since you CAN'T be sure it isn't true, does it bother you even a little that you may be running interference for pedophiles?

Epstein Alleged in Emails That Trump Knew of His Conduct

What's up with this headline?

"Epstein Alleged in Emails That Trump Knew of His Conduct"

More importantly, Epstein alleged that Trump engaged in the same conduct he did. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...

U.S. troops not liable in boat strikes, classified Justice Dept. memo says In a classified memo, the Trump administration’s Office of Legal Counsel said that U.S. troops would not be liable for participating in boat strikes on alleged narco-traffickers.

POTUS + OLC have tried to create an alternate reality within the US executive branch in which the US is involved in make believe armed conflicts with alleged drug smugglers and therefore premeditated killing is somehow permissible.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Italian pasta exports to the U.S. could be 'virtually wiped out' by proposed 107% tariffs The U.S. has hit 13 Italian pasta exporters with an anti-dumping tariff of 92%, which would be added to the Trump administration's 15% blanket E.U. levies.

OK I don't mean to be hyperbolic but this might affect conservatively 65% of my diet

Zohran Mamdani says on NY1 he didn't get a congratulatory call from either Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams last night.

He says he got a congratulatory call from Curtis Sliwa, though.

"One former law enforcement official familiar with the matter, who spoke to Bloomberg on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities surrounding the case, said the probe lasted 18 months and turned up at least tens of millions of dollars in questionable financial transactions."

Trump v Reality From inflation to foreign wars, Trump’s belief that he can dictate reality is colliding with the one thing he can’t control: the truth.

Trump's "sense that he controls the truth...is leaving him blind to where the real world is refusing to be shaped to fit his vision."

I had fun writing for @elmirab.bsky.social's Interruptrr newsletter this week: interruptrr.substack.com/p/trump-v-re...

The Ranking Member of HFAC seems underwhelmed by today's closed briefing on the maritime strikes.

bsky.app/profile/hous...

New U.S. strike on alleged drug-smuggling boat kills 6, Hegseth says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said all six men on board the vessel were killed.

BREAKING: Six people were killed in a new U.S. strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat, Defense Secretary Hegseth says.

“Making Sense of the Federal Forces on the Streets,” with photos of how they’re uniformed and equipped

The New York Times publishes a handy guide to which federal forces are terrorizing us at any moment. This is America, 2025.

The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law

"Why is carrying drugs on a speedboat 1,500 miles from Florida...an imminent threat of death? Why is trafficking cocaine — not fentanyl — an armed attack on the United States?"

Must read from @charliesavage.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/u...

This is chilling. The President is asserting authority to kill completely outside of the law. And plans to keep at it.

We are not at war, and he is ignoring the criminal laws that actually apply (eg, murder).

No limiting principle stops him from doing this to others he labels "terrorists."

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