Leonard Williams

Five corporations control 90% of the US media market.

Airlines merged from 12 major carriers in 1980 to 4 today.

Four giants control 80% of meat processing.

The evidence of corporate consolidation is everywhere.

It means more power for them and less freedom for you.

democrats should internalize that this is what their colleagues think of them and act accordingly

DoJ cases against protesters keep collapsing as officers’ lies are exposed in court String of embarrassing defeats for prosecutors as experts condemn DoJ effort to cast people as ‘violent perpetrators’

Arendt said that truth and politics are inherently at odds because power requires the suppression of inconvenient facts. All governments lie, and this one does it all the time. Not only does this regime lie about everything, it has been caught doing so repeatedly.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

FORT WAYNE AREA

This coming Tuesday, current students and recent grads will talk about today's college experience including issues such as academics, campus life, finances, job prospects and the political climate.

ALLEN CO. PUBLIC LIBRARY 6:30PM

My latest post - “Ruptural Transformations”

open.substack.com/pub/crosspol...

Gallup to stop tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years Public opinion polling agency says decision ‘solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities’

This is a loss for social science because a time series of data comes to an end. It’s a loss for US politics because the approval rating has been a metric that people relied on. It’s a loss for the democratic spirit as another institution obeys in advance.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Students Speak Out! 2/24

Higher education is one of the "Pillars of Democracy" that fascists try to undermine. Come out to our free event to learn more about how you can support and protect area higher education institutions! Organizers are still looking for students to give testimony.

America desperately needs a functioning and independent House as a check on Trump’s chaos and mania. It will never have that as long as Mike Johnson is Speaker. Every vote for a House Republican is a vote to give Trump unchecked power for two more years.

Voter fraud is yet another "issue" that isn't an issue at all. Through countless studies, systematic voter fraud has never been found to exist. Voter suppression is real, though, and there are libraries full of data.

Coming in two weeks …

i think this more than anything is what miller wants. vast detention camps with all of the suffering and death that means.

State violence against Black Americans laid the groundwork for fascism | Jason Stanley Fascism feeds on the arbitrary killings that have long plagued the US. Ending the horror starts with abolishing ICE

As Stanley notes, “the response to fascism must include the dismantling of the pre-existing structures that enabled and justified its rise.” Those structures? Racism, colonialism, militarism, presidentialism, and the national security state.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Before Trump 2.0, this was one of my biggest fears. With everything that's happened in the last year, it may seem like small news -- just another stream in the constant firehose of institutional destruction. But it's not. Effectively losing the professional federal civil service is a very bad thing.

Donald Trump prompts fury after posting racist video about Barack and Michelle Obama – US politics live The US president posted a racist video on Truth Social that included disproven allegations about ballot-counting

And the Klansman of the Year Award goes to …

www.theguardian.com/us-news/live...

Trump wants to take over voting. Mike Johnson is willing to help Trump raised the threat to the 2026 midterm elections to an entirely new level.

It is time we wake up and take Trump’s threats seriously and literally. Based on past behavior, if anything, what he said is almost certainly an understatement of how far he is actually willing to go. www.democracydocket.com/opinion/trum...

Amazon has cut a combined 28,000 jobs since October. Its CEO made $40M+ in 2024

UPS has announced 78,000 job cuts since last year. Its CEO made $24M.

HP announced up to 6,000 layoffs in November. Its CEO made $21M.

This is what I mean when I say the system is rigged.

Student traveling on a scooter on the campus of Texas Tech University.

Texas Tech Cancels Abortion Rights Advocate’s Speech After TPUSA Pressure https://bit.ly/4k6QZTn

How the Minneapolis killings look from Trump country The shooting of Alex Pretti and Renee Macklin Good by federal agents in Minneapolis have enraged many people across the country. NPR wanted to know what supporters of President Trump's immigration pol...

Intriguing comment from this story: “Protesting is standing off to the side and not interfering."

Such a view erases the entire history of protest, its roots in refusal and confrontation — picket lines, sit-ins, blockades, disruptions of business-as-usual, etc.

www.npr.org/2026/01/29/g...

WH strategy seems to be to blame everyone but the perpetrators.

🚨BREAKING: ICE unleashes ONSLAUGHT of flash bang grenades and chemical ammunition at unarmed Minneapolis protesters in WAR-LIKE attack. Several protesters struck. Our reporter @zdroberts.bsky.social struck in the head.

"I got hit in the head really bad." LIVE NOW ⬇️

Sen. Young caved, saying that he had received a “commitment that if President Trump were to determine American forces are needed in major military operations in Venezuela, the Administration will come to Congress in advance to ask for an authorization of force.”

Iranian government: protesters are terrorists.
U.S. government: protesters are terrorists.
Notice the difference?

177. Year One of the Second Trump Regime -- Leonard Williams Leonard Williams, who was my second guest on this podcast back in November of 2021, returns to talk about Trump's presidency over the past year, what it means, and what we can do to fight it. To hear...

Grateful for the opportunity to chat with Graham Culbertson again. I hope you might find our conversation useful.
www.everydayanarchism.com/177-year-one...

The most rational thing Trump ever said? “You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”

On 5 January, Stephen Miller said on CNN: “We live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

One could not craft a clearer, more explicit statement of fascist ideology.

Obviously, the Republican President is thoroughly committed to lowering the rhetorical temperature … so much so that he regularly delivers such racist, bigoted, hateful, and, yes, deplorable rants at one set of targets or another.

Political Despair and Moral Injunctions I often make reference to despair in the course of discussing something else.

This piece definitely speaks to my condition.

open.substack.com/pub/bmstudeb...

There’s a lot more energy and creativity on the pitch than in the previous few years.

No reconciliation without Truth

Save Higher Education — my latest for Cross-pollination.

crosspollination.substack.com/p/save-highe...