Daniel Knowles
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dlknowles.bsky.social
Daniel Knowles
@dlknowles.bsky.social
Midwest correspondent at The Economist, in Chicago. Before that, in London, Mumbai, Nairobi and DC.

Buy my book: http://shorturl.at/BJOUV
Pinned
By me this week - the happiest thing I've got to report of late, with a glorious trip over the summer to Montreal

"Forget EVs. Cycling is revolutionising transport."

www.economist.com/internationa...
Forget EVs. Cycling is revolutionising transport
Pedal power is booming, spinning up a new culture war
www.economist.com
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
"My father remained at the Texas detention center until October. During those six months, he went completely blind in one eye and lost most of the vision in the other, because he wasn’t receiving adequate medical care for his Type 2 diabetes."
November 10, 2025 at 9:06 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
THEY PEPPER SPRAYED A BABY

THEY PEPPER SPRAYED A BABY

Please read this entire excellent piece by Caroline, which points out that a judge ordered the Feds (again) to stop doing **this exact kind of thing** and they are still continuing to do it all over Chicago
Arianna Sofia Veraza and her parents were driving to Sam's Club for milk, eggs and diapers yesterday when they heard helicopters and horns blaring yesterday. They had turned around to leave when a federal agent pepper-sprayed them through a car window.
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/09/c...
Pepper-sprayed Berwyn family rattled after getting caught up in federal blitz
Southwest Side politicians condemned Saturday’s pepper spraying and the federal sweep of Little Village as “state-sponsored terrorism” at a news conference Sunday.
www.chicagotribune.com
November 9, 2025 at 11:56 PM
Seems unsurprising that Senate Democrats would choose to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, tbh. Of all branches of the party it is the one that seems least able to realise that the world has changed badly
November 10, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Bleak, important piece by a federal judge about how Trump is destroying the rule of law

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
Why I Am Resigning
A federal judge explains his reasoning for leaving the bench.
www.theatlantic.com
November 10, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
This is how to write a headline about repeated liars.
Border patrol chief reprimanded for lying claims shots were fired at immigration officers in Chicago
Gregory Bovino was called out by a judge only two days earlier for lying about being assaulted by a protester
www.theguardian.com
November 9, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
Here’s video of federal agents doing a drive by pepper spraying that hit a father and his one-year old on Saturday when the Feds were hitting Little Village and Cicero
November 9, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
Read this excellent report about the Trump Hollywood- style propaganda team and how they brainwash the public.
The Chicago Sun-Times offers a detailed deconstruction of the ICE Joseph Goebbels-style political propaganda, paid for and broadcast with taxpayer funds all to vilify the people of Illinois. Nearly 2 months into Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, social media feeds from his
Watch how government ‘propaganda’ techniques portray Chicago as a city at war with the feds
The government’s social media storytelling doesn’t always match what’s happening in communities across the nation’s third-largest city and its suburbs. Nick Cull, a professor at USC's communications a...
chicago.suntimes.com
November 9, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
"However terrible the war and its consequent famine in Sudan is today, it can still get much worse"

From Alex de Waal, who knows Sudan better than anyone

www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/r...
Terror Returns to Darfur
Only American pressure can stop the killing in Sudan.
www.foreignaffairs.com
November 7, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
“These are people who did everything by the book, paid taxes, had no criminal records, opened businesses and contributed to their communities...now they have become collateral damage in this cruel, unjust and inhumane political game.”

www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
Venezuelans begin fleeing U.S. as protections end and threat of war looms
TPS expired for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans on Friday. Many are shuttering business, selling homes and boarding planes, or scrambling to find a way to stay.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 8, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Interesting to see these guys do seem mostly to be ICE, not CBP
Members of the community argue with federal officers during an immigration enforcement action in the Little Village neighborhood Saturday in Chicago.
November 9, 2025 at 5:21 AM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
Members of the community argue with federal officers during an immigration enforcement action in the Little Village neighborhood Saturday in Chicago.
November 8, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
More Bovino-led horror in Little Village today. Matt is a reliable leader in the community.

www.linkedin.com/posts/matt-d...
November 9, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
40 men Trump sent to CECOT tell the NYT they were beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted. The details are worse than you can imagine.

We can’t let them get away with this. Miller and the other architects of this sadism need to go to prison.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...
‘You Are All Terrorists’: Four Months in a Salvadoran Prison
www.nytimes.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:20 AM
I keep thinking I want to get hold of an old-school iPod like I had in 2007. I am succumbing to millennial nostalgia aren't I?
November 9, 2025 at 12:46 AM
I am... not convinced at all that the Border Patrol approach is actually about maximising numbers at all. It feels much about intimidation
I do think one of the biggest problems DHS has is that basically if they want to reach the numbers that Trump wants them to get, Border Patrol would have to essentially be deployed in every major city and use tactics like e.g. checkpoints or more extreme measures to...

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Infighting at DHS Is Complicating Trump’s Deportation Push
White House pressure to speed up the pace of deportations has led to internal discord in the Department of Homeland Security over tactics, people familiar with the matter said.
www.wsj.com
November 9, 2025 at 12:35 AM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
One thing I have marveled at is the way that crowds have been disciplined in capturing immigration enforcement’s lack of discipline.
Chaos erupted in Little Village.

/
November 8, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
“Next to the car, a man screamed and stripped off his shirt. Another woman spoke to him in Spanish, telling him to let her put water on his head. The man and the baby had both been hit by pepper spray.”
Shots fired at immigration agents in Little Village as residents confront Bovino, Border Patrol, authorities say
Community members once again confronted a convoy of Border Patrol agents led by Cmdr. Gregory Bovino as it moved through Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods.
www.chicagotribune.com
November 8, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
It was like two days ago where Bovino and other agents were found to have lied in a deposition about him being assaulted. Video showed the situation was entirely the opposite.
November 8, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
Bovino went into popular Carniceria Aguascalientes in heart of Little Village.
“They said they were just here to buy something,” said Elizabeth Gutierrez. “I told them we wouldn’t serve them and escorted them out. Bovino seemed upset, but I don’t care.” www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/08/c...
Shots fired at immigration agents in Little Village as residents confront Bovino, Border Patrol, authorities say
Community members once again confronted a convoy of Border Patrol agents led by Cmdr. Gregory Bovino as it moved through Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods.
www.chicagotribune.com
November 8, 2025 at 11:03 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
oh so these people do pay attention to who politicians follow on social media, they just don’t care that the vice president follows a bunch of actual neo-nazis
Axios tried to bust James Talarico for following adult content creators on Instagram and I'm genuinely impressed by his campaign's response
November 8, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Thuggishness on a just extreme level

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...
Immigration Agents Arrest Man in L.A. Raid and Drive Off With His Toddler
www.nytimes.com
November 8, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
latino voters swinging 60 points against trump is really something
Passaic County precinct analysis shows strong correlation between % Latino and swing

Some Latino Trump voters switched to Democrats, but swing also due to compositional change

Latino communities saw more churn in electorate — it looks like many Trump voters stayed home, and new voters broke D

2/3
November 8, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Reposted by Daniel Knowles
It me
New in PN: @donmoyn.bsky.social on "Purge, Merge, and Surge"

“The visible presence of overwhelming numbers of troops in the streets has a psychological component. You display dominance & make examples of people who resist — except instead of surging in Iraq, it’s happening here in American cities.”
Don Moynihan on "Purge, Merge, and Surge"
"Instead of surging in Iraq, it’s happening here in American cities."
www.publicnotice.co
November 8, 2025 at 6:57 PM