Lydia Polgreen

It was short and less monumental, but for timing and impact I’d include publishing that scorching essay by Susan Sontag after 9/11.

'Hell on Earth': Venezuelans deported to El Salvador mega-prison tell of brutal abuse Deported under a little-known wartime law, more than 130 Venezuelans were sent from the U.S. to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Now released, several tell NPR they endured beatings, sexual a...

Andry Hernandez, the gay hairdresser sent to El Salvador, said he was beaten by three guards wearing masks and forced to perform oral sex on one of the guards. After a couple of hours, he was dragged back to his cell.
www.npr.org/2025/07/27/n...

I have a great idea, what if we didn't do this

YouTube video by ProPublica Beatings, Humiliation, Psychological Abuse: What Venezuelan Men Experienced Inside CECOT

"The United States sent sent us to El Salvador so that El Salvador could do the dirty work that the United States couldn't."

Listen to three men explain, in painful detail, what happened to them after we send them to a foregin prison.

Powerful video.

youtu.be/6KZRtCE2UcI

An extraordinary intrusion. Fighting anti-semitism has nothing to do with demonizing trans people but of course it was always a means to a much bigger end.

A photo of labor activist Chris Smalls, talking into a mic

A spokesperson for the Freedom Flotilla Coalition tells me:

“Chris Smalls is still in Givon Prison and despite repeated requests to meet with the U.S. Embassy has been ignored by his country after being abducted by the IOF in international waters.”

I think the idea of 1) dropping “advocacy language” and also 2) fighting for the dignity of trans children and adults and other people who are being targeted for dehumanization is a pretty smart approach in a D primary.

I have been waiting for the shoe to drop, for someone to revisit Eric Adams' ties to the N.O.I and Farrakhan. I am just glad that @lioneltrolling.bsky.social went there and examined it with sensitivity and care.

Opinion | Trump Is Doing Something No One Wants

I wrote about Trump, Lula and the central problem of American policy: can America elegantly dismount its unsustainable place atop a crumbling global order, and use its power and prestige to shape a more equitable one that still protect its interests? www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

Great piece. This is particular is very wise!

Why Obama’s Foreign Policy Gamble Fell Short When U.S. President Barack Obama took office eight years ago, his two overarching foreign policy goals were to oversee the winding down of America’s costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to repair ...

Like anything, it was historically contingent. We forget so many of the constraints he inherited.

Your piece gave me occasion to revisit this, which I wrote on Jan. 11, 2017, and I think it still expresses my assessment of his approach and efforts.

Thanks so much for reading!

we are so back

I don’t think he is necessarily committed to confrontation because he has no commitments. But his recklessness certainly seems more likely to lead to confrontation, IMO.

He definitely tried! And his approach was the right one, but events intervened…

" How does the president get out of this mess?" It's completely bizarre and amoral that this is the question the Washington Post talking heads are asking. Are they his lawyers? His press team?

Opinion | I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.

A powerful essay by @omerbartov.bsky.social that concludes, with care and precision, that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Others have reached this conclusion too. Bartov's piece explores some deep and important questions. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...

turning a big dial taht says 'Racism' on it and constantly looking back at the audience for approval like a contestant on the price is right

How Elon Musk retrained Grok

I think it is still a big issue in Europe but lower salience than it once was? It is probably a number of factors, but one is the general economic torpor, along with the fears about the social safety net. And just a stronger set of nation-state cultural anxieties.

We will never hear the end of this.

This is especially striking because concern about/opposition to migration has remained quite strong in many European countries since the 2015 shock, and despite plummeting numbers of arrivals.

Opinion | The World’s Best and Brightest Are Moving, but Not to America

I so enjoyed talking to my colleague Carlos Lozada about migration. It was a rich conversation drawing on our writing, reporting and personal experience. You can read (or even better, listen!) at the his gift link. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/o...

Opinion | Something Extraordinary Is Happening All Over the World

"People have moved for many reasons, but always because they sought something they wanted that they could not get at home. It’s an act of faith, fundamentally, kindled by the fire of human aspiration. It can never fully be snuffed out."

A great piece by @polgreen.bsky.social on migration

As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas

This is pretty freaking damning. This whole article is the degradation of public services to the point of death and destruction. | As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/u...

It’s exhausting to keep saying it but this sort of amateur racial theorizing - which always collapses down to declaring black people subhuman and inferior - is the true heart of the new right-wing radicalism. It comes from a small cluster of men on Twitter: Yarvin, Sailor, Lasker.

Trump World’s Wizard of Oz Problem Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon don’t speak for Trump or his base. So why do people think they do?

"The simple truth is this: There is Bannonism and Tuckerism, and perhaps, in a quiet corner of the Naval Observatory that has been repeatedly swept for bugs to ensure that the boss isn’t listening, J.D. Vance–ism. But there is no Trumpism without Trump." My latest on the scam of the Trump whisperer:

I want to be clear that this POV is not one I accept. In fact I abhor it. I shared it here only to explain how a person with my background might be shaped.

I absolutely reject and abhor this point of view, I was merely sharing what I was told as a child. It is not what I believe or how I understand my Black identity.

CEOs Start Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: AI Will Wipe Out Jobs Ford chief predicts AI will replace “literally half of all white-collar workers.”

If you think American politics are insane now, wait until they turn Marin County into Youngstown

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-w...

All of which to say: I can see why a political young man like Zohran might fill out his college application the way he did. Because if you are like me, you struggle to be known in this country. Our visual sorting is so simplistic and quite brutal.