Carla Murphy

Who Is Russell Vought? How a Little-Known D.C. Insider Became Trump’s Dismantler-in-Chief Reporter Andy Kroll explains Vought’s rise from a congressional staffer to the man piloting everything from Trump's layoffs and agency closings to his shutdown strategy, controlling the fate of trilli...

ProPublica spent almost a year chronicling Vought’s rise from the mailroom of the U.S. Senate to his perch as one of the two or three most influential players in the current administration behind only Trump and, arguably, Stephen Miller.
www.propublica.org/article/vide...

Column: Information is the most human thing you can study "This detective work, this human ability to read between the lines and see what’s missing as well as what’s there, is the real work of information and library science. The information is all the littl...

www.dailytarheel.com/article/opin...

How I talk About the American Mainstream Why "place" matters for truth-telling about our nation

"I also aim to help move the discourse around media, pluralism and democracy beyond interventions at the level of content. Our media infrastructure now disappears “place” in storytelling, at scale."
open.substack.com/pub/carlamur...

I know people on here are scandalized that someone might classify a public school teacher as "working class" because she might have a masters or even PhD in education but can we agree it's at least as weird to call the guy who owns the local Wendy's franchise "working class" because he has a GED?

Love this.

Why I gave the world wide web away for free My vision was based on sharing, not exploitation – and here’s why it’s still worth fighting for

Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Tim Berners-Lee

Cover of The City of Our Dreaming by Laleh Khalili, V. Mitch McEwen, Gabriela Leandro Pereira, & Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. With an introduction by Christina Sharpe. The title and authors are in a black capsule shape that is slightly offset in the middle, surrounded by a red background. On the left side the words The Alchemy Lecture appear vertically.

In "The City of Our Dreaming," the 3rd Alchemy Lecture, @lalehkhalili.bsky.social, V. Mitch McEwen, Gabriela Leandro Pereira, and @biidaasamose.bsky.social imagine ways to organize city life. Read the intro by @hystericalblkns.bsky.social, for free on our website now! buff.ly/zjH8Y4w

Exactly this

Amid billionaires taking over the whole society, Democratic pundits & operatives have launched a billionaire-funded Abundance movement, a billionaire-funded Substack & a billionaire-funded think tank.

We have to understand this as all part of the oligarch takeover of whatever remained of democracy.

It's unjust to group academics @CarlaMurphy.bsky.social, @jnelz.bsky.social, @suerobinsonuw.bsky.social, @taliastroud.bskysocial, & @andreawenzel.bsky.social, as each has their specialties and projects, but their collective rigor provides the framing and evidence that all our work desperately needs.

Saw these new (to me) teethy turnstiles to stop fare beating -- and thought about this era's quiet disappearance of, say, a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or a Lina Khan.

This.

The only thing I can say about this paragraph is read it. Sit with it. Read it again. @michaelharriot.bsky.social

Listening to this press conference it seems clear that Trump is mentally gone and that his team is consolidating power for President J.D. Vance.

Journalism, democracy and “pluralist sight” The challenge for journalism in a new century

open.substack.com/pub/carlamur...

One of my deeply held beliefs is that if we could condition people to accept how chance affects their lives, they’d be much better equipped to recognize how systemic things impact them.

The reason this isn't going away is because the US is home to far more survivors of childhood sexual trauma than anyone wants to admit or who have been steeping in silence, shame, anger and quiet isolation.

They identify with those victims in ways they sometimes barely realize and they are PISSED.

My approach to surviving these days…

He's such a "city kid". Which is a throughline for all of us I don’t care if you're from Bensonhurst, Gun Hill Road or South Side Jamaica.

“The River House Broke. We Rushed in the River.” The July 4 Texas flooding ripped our Kerr County home from its pillars, pulling us into the water and into the night. Then morning came.

“I don’t know how long it took—ten seconds, maybe fifteen—for the house to come apart."

During the early-morning hours of July 4, the Guadalupe River pulled senior editor Aaron Parsley and six members of his family into its waters. Read his firsthand account:

I think your guidance also applies to (what remains of) journalism. It makes sense for tech to corner the market in knowledge-creation. It doesn't make sense for journalism and academia to cede their foundations.

An exceptionally dark 4th of July this year. I am rapidly losing my relative “optimism” about the short-term future of U.S. democracy and society.

Perhaps the most depressing part is that it is being dismantled so easily by a rather incompetent force.

people come up with all kinds of fanciful math to justify billionaires' wealth but imo present political moment demonstrates conclusively that we need to tax billionaires at whatever rate will keep them focused on their own fucking business rather than our Medicaid and pediatric cancer research

Opinion | Why we fly the Mexican flag at the L.A. protests What unsettles people isn’t the flag itself; it’s what it reveals about being American.

"The Mexican flag isn’t necessarily a symbol of separation or rejection. Sometimes, it’s a claim: We are both. We are Mexican and American, not divided but layered. This is what our identity looks like," Enrique Acevedo writes. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | These Internal Documents Show Why We Shouldn’t Trust Porn Companies

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/o...

Opinion | Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ Deal Made Hollywood Lose Its Mind The obsession with a Black director’s ownership package reflects the themes of his film.

“They will make you feel like you have to be so grateful for everything that you’re not allowed to ask for anything. Ask anyway. Ask for what you need.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/o...

#81: notes on developing a civic heart an updated view on news habits and citizenship

"Even in the stormiest seas, like today’s news cycle, I think there is space within us to hone our ability to listen, to hold space, to gather people, to lay down the front and to act."

#81: notes on developing a civic heart -- Jihii Jolly. open.substack.com/pub/jihii/p/...

David Olusoga: 'I don't blame people for supporting Reform - we've let them down' Launching his first podcast, the historian talks about Trump, 'culture wars', and why history itself is under attack

"I wish there weren’t people supporting Reform but I don’t blame them, because we’ve enormously let those people down. Why would people be convinced this system is working when it demonstrably isn’t working for them?”"
inews.co.uk/culture/davi...

What Comes After D.E.I.? Colleges around the country, in the face of legal and political backlash to their diversity programs, are pivoting to an alternative framework known as pluralism, Emma Green reports.

"For years, college administrators claimed that minority groups felt literally endangered by the ideas of Trump and his allies. And yet, to take just one example, roughly fifty per cent of Latinos under the age of forty voted for him. “"
What Comes After D.E.I.?
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...