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Reposted by Ken Syring

Dr. Damien P. Williams can't think of a fun display name right n

@wolvendamien.bsky.social

Please read this extremely thoughtful & careful post on Tim Walz, Anne Frank, & the US Holocaust Memorial Museum from Martin Shuster, philosopher, Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, former Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellow, & scholar of genocide, the Holocaust, & authoritarianism:

Martin Shuster
sdSreptoon1hm9t97235g2u5796glgh0435l6iaf05it1l232lc20cllf4g0 ·
So apparently on Sunday Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said in a press conference that "we have got children hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside ... many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s gonna write that children’s story about Minnesota.”
Then on Monday--one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day--the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tweeted in response that: "Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges."
As someone who spent a year at the Museum as a fellow doing research, I feel embarrassed for the institution. First, it is very clear that Walz wasn't drawing an equivalence, he was drawing an analogy. So this kind of response reminds me of the atrocious positions that the ADL has started to carve out, and why it has become mostly a sycophantic joke, now seemingly mostly geared towards currying favor with MAGA.

Not unrelatedly, I am noticing that a lot of--oftentimes even well-intentioned--people are spending time trying to delineate exactly which historical referent best captures what's going on now, as if we have to pick only one. There is the now well-circulated meme that says: no, ICE isn't the Gestapo, it's actually American--it's slave catchers. But this is a kind of odd distinction: the Nazis were themselves influenced by the Americans (if you're curious read the excellent book by James Whitman, _Hitler's American Model_). Nazis came here and studied American legal systems and statutes ... and remarkably a group of "liberal" Nazis decided that they couldn't make German laws as *extreme* as American ones (and this "liberal" group in fact won the day; German laws weren't as extreme as many of ours). Equally, Nazi jurists and theorists like Carl Schmitt were deeply influenced by American notions of manifest destiny. So the Nazi and American contexts were already fused. The idea of foreign/domestic is already quite complex in this context. (And this is before we even speak of the many actual Nazis that existed here and the many people who materially supported Hitler and the regime).
We can complicate this picture more by noting that Nazism itself, even apart from these American influences, wasn't something that sprouted up out of thin air: it, too, had a(n experimental) history. Many of its barbaric practices and aims were developed and tested on colonial and imperial victims (as I have written elsewhere: there is a direct line from Shark Island concentration camp [called frequently simply "Death Island" where the Germans committed genocide against the Herero and Nama people] to the entire Nazi camp system). Thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire drew our attention to this already in the middle of the last century.

In noting this, let me be clear that this does not erase or make less relevant the centuries of European antisemitism that fed into the Nazi project. That's the whole point: these are all related phenomena. European antisemitism influenced the way in which European colonialism and imperialism operated against indigenous populations in the Americas. Strikingly, as innovations mounted in "administering" the Americas, antisemitic policies also evolved in Europe. Administrators (oppressors) would sometimes even move from one sphere to the other and back. They were all synergistic (a brilliant examination of some of this is María Elena Martínez's _Genealogical Fictions_). (And one could, btw, also tell an important story about the development of Islamophobia in this very same orbit, since policies stumbled on in the Americas came back to oppress both Jews and Muslims in Europe).
This is all to say: Walz's analogy is not at all far fetched. The history of oppression doesn't move in any kind of neat or purely linear fashion. It is oftentimes recursive, shifting, necessarily granular. Neither is it a competitive history. It is, in the words of Michael Rothberg, a *multidirectional* history. Drawing these analogies in fact *helps* us understand all the involved phenomena better.
At least this is what "Never Again" has meant and means to me: it does not mean only never again for me or other Jews. And it does not mean never again only something that looks exactly like the Nazi genocide. I think also, btw, that this is what it meant for Otto Frank, who spent time *editing* his daughter's diary so that it could be available to anyone, not only to Jews.

For ultimately the Nazi genocide--any genocide--is a highly mediated phenomenon: it consists of many diffuse events, marshals an immense amount of people and institutions, relies on sometimes conflicting or contradictory cross-sections of society, and, indeed, emerges out of a process that does not neatly, especially as its happening, have a clear beginning, middle, and end, but rather arranges for itself a kind of constellation that harnesses a range of actors, perspectives, and also histories (this is one way to understand how German colonial projects or anti-communism or ableism were no less crucial to Nazism than European antisemitism). The genocidal outcomes emerge from the structural forms society adopts. And all of this without in any way eliding the special role that Jews played in the apocalyptic Nazi worldview.

January 30, 2026 at 1:24 AM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Mike Masnick

@mmasnick.bsky.social

This... is not the role of ODNI. This is so fucked up in all sorts of ways that will have lasting implications.

I recognize it's not going to happen, but this is something that Congress should freak the fuck out about.

Dustin Volz @dustinvolz.bsky.social · 1d

New: Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is leading an administration-wide effort to probe the 2020 election for fraud and regularly briefing Trump and top White House officials on her progress. Officials are discussing EOs on voting ahead of midterms.

www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

Exclusive | Spy Chief Tulsi Gabbard Is Hunting for 2020 Election Fraud

The director of national intelligence earlier this week joined the FBI search of an election center in Georgia.

www.wsj.com

January 29, 2026 at 8:22 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Ron Filipkowski

@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social

Bovino is just the patsy - a noxious and odious fall guy. Stephen Miller is the architect and prime mover of the whole thing. Everything they do is at his direction - often after his threats. As long as he runs policy in the WH, nothing will change no matter how many Bovinos come and go.

January 27, 2026 at 12:17 AM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Mike Boylan-Kolchin

@mbkplus.bsky.social

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced the Democrats have to push their hand immediately. The parallels with the delays and subsequent failures after January 6th are blaring warning signs about what will happen if they don’t go after the issues with ICE and CBP at the root RIGHT NOW.

January 26, 2026 at 11:35 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Yoni Appelbaum

@yappelbaum.bsky.social

BREAKING: The Border Patrol's Greg Bovino has been ousted from his role of "Commander at Large"—and Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski could be next to lose their jobs, sources tell @nickmiroff.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

January 26, 2026 at 11:39 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

James Fallows

@jfallows.bsky.social

This piece by @jonrauch.bsky.social is very much worth reading. (Yes, I know, even if your reaction to the title is, "Gee, you don't say!") He lays out the case more carefully, clearly, and systematically than I have seen elsewhere.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Yes, It’s Fascism

Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.

www.theatlantic.com

January 25, 2026 at 9:33 PM

Ken Syring

@kensyring.com

I’m a former police officer. If you’re thinking “body cams and extra training won’t fix this,” you’re right. The problem isn’t a gadget—it’s institutional legitimacy.

January 25, 2026 at 2:44 AM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Timothy Snyder

@timothysnyder.bsky.social

So important. What they say is not the story. That is never the story. What happened is the story. Write what happened.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 6d

Media: do not lead with the false government framing of what happened

January 25, 2026 at 12:05 AM

Ken Syring

@kensyring.com

My colleagues at The Steady State are correct to call this what it is: paramilitary force, not policing.This savagery is to provoke a reaction.

Disciplined, peaceful, relentless engagement is the only way out of this spiral. Don't give them the war they want; starve their chaos of fuel.

Hold fast.

The Steady State @thesteadystate.org · 6d

1/ “The Steady State unequivocally condemns the fatal shooting earlier today in Minneapolis by ICE paramilitary officers…

steadystate1.substack.com/p/statement-...

Statement on the January 24, 2026, Minneapolis Shooting

The Steady State

steadystate1.substack.com

January 24, 2026 at 11:46 PM

Ken Syring

@kensyring.com

If you feel angry and afraid today, you are not alone. If you are having conversations about whether it's time to leave, you are not irrational. We’re all feeling the ground shift.

I’m re-sharing this essay because I refuse to let fear or anger be the only voices. I still believe there is hope.

It Can’t End Like This

If violence or exile become our only options, America’s story will end. The only way forward is choosing each other.

open.substack.com

January 24, 2026 at 9:05 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Bellingcat

@bellingcat.com

Federal law enforcement agents shot and killed a man in Minneapolis on Jan. 24 according to local police officials. DHS told Fox News that the man was “armed with a gun”. A video of the shooting appears to show that a gun was taken from the man before the first shot was fired. x.com/BillMelugin_...

January 24, 2026 at 7:01 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Eliot Higgins

@eliothiggins.bsky.social

Looking at the video footage so far I think its questionable whether he was armed at the moment he was killed.

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 6d

Even presuming this is true, possessing a gun is completely legal if he had the appropriate permit. They're not even claiming he pulled it or brandished it, just that he had one. That's no reason to execute someone.

January 24, 2026 at 5:07 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn.bsky.social

This is correct. MN officials are the ones appealing for calm. The White House is demanding obedience.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 6d

Pritzker: "An American president should be standing up, calling for calm. That's not what this president ever does. In fact, he wants the temperature to go up. Why? Because what he's looking for is an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, to bring actual troops into American cities."

January 24, 2026 at 6:35 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Governor Newsom Press Office

@govpressoffice.gov.ca.gov

Trump is literally erasing our nation’s history.

Philadelphia Inquirer @inquirer.com · 8d

President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered content at national parks that “inappropriately disparage” the U.S. to be reviewed and potentially removed.

The slavery exhibits at the President’s House have been removed following Trump administration push

www.inquirer.com

January 23, 2026 at 12:46 AM

Ken Syring

@kensyring.com

I remember back in the police academy when a lieutenant teaching us about warrants once said, “If you find yourself standing in someone’s living room, and they didn’t consent to you being there, you have no warrant, and no other legal exemption, YOU ARE GOING TO PRISON.”

No wonder they’ve hid this.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 9d

ICE secretly told its officers that any time someone has been ordered removed, ICE can break down their door.

It has been accepted for generations that the only thing which can authorize agents to break into your home is a warrant signed by a judge. No wonder ICE hid this memo!

May 12, 2025

MEMORANDUM FOR: All ICE Personnel

FROM: Todd Lyons Acting Director
SUBJECT: Utilizing Form I-205, Warrant of Removal

On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion, directing the Secretary of Homeland Security to "ensur[e] the successful enforcement of final orders of removal." 90 Fed. Reg. 8443, 8444 (Jan. 20, 2025) (E.O. 14159). Essential to the removal of aliens subject to final orders of removal is the ability to locate and arrest them. To this end, certain supervisory immigration officers within both Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) are authorized to issue an administrative warrant, Form I-205, Warrant of Removal (Form 1-205), for the arrest of an alien with a final order of removal. 8 C.F.R. § 241.2(a)(1). All U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents and deportation officers are authorized to execute Forms 1-205. 8 C.F.R. § 287.5(e)(3)(iii) - (y)

Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose. Accordingly, in light of this legal determination, ICE immigration officers may arrest and detain aliens subject to a final under of removal issued by an immigration judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), or a U.S.

Arrow) district court judge or magistrate judge in their place of residence.23 ICE immigration officers should consider all available enforcement mechanisms, including the use of a Form 1-205 to arrest an alien in their place of residence, to achieve the requirements of E.O. 14159 in accordance with applicable law and policies. This guidance informs the use of Forms 1-205 and provides to ICE law enforcement personnel a reminder of the general limitations and exceptions that may apply when effectuating arrests in an alien's residence. General Guidelines ICE law enforcement officers receive extensive training on the legal and procedural requirements for making administrative and criminal arrests. ICE personnel must remain cognizant of all existing laws and policies pertaining to arrests when carrying out civil immigration enforcement actions. Prior to entering a residence to conduct an administrative immigration arrest pursuant to Form I-205, officers and agents must ensure the Form 1-205 is properly completed and is supported by a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge, the BIA, a U.S. district court, or a magistrate judge. This is essential because that order establishes probable cause. Officers and agents must also have reason to believe that the subject alien resides at and is currently located in the address where the Form I-205 is to be served.

January 21, 2026 at 11:20 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Acyn

@acyn.bsky.social

AOC: The president has been acting in increasingly erratic ways. It is really damning when we think about the degree to which media outlets reported on Joe Biden, yet we are seeing behavior from Trump that is alarming and everyone is pretending this is normal.

January 21, 2026 at 10:49 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar.com

Brooklyn Park police chief Mark Bruley: "We're hearing people being stopped with no cause & being demanded to show paperwork to determine if they're here legally. We started hearing from our police officers the same complaints. Every one of these individuals is a person of color... it has to stop"

January 20, 2026 at 5:31 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Eliot Higgins

@eliothiggins.bsky.social

I’ve been reading Trump’s "Board of Peace Charter," and despite the name, this isn’t a multilateral institution, it’s a centralised structure built entirely around the authority of one person (Trump).
www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-ch...

Full text: Charter of Trump’s Board of Peace

No mention of Gaza, which bolsters ToI's reporting that US also envisions panel helping resolve other conflicts worldwide; member countries must pay $1 billion for permanent spot

www.timesofisrael.com

January 20, 2026 at 9:26 AM

Ken Syring

@kensyring.com

Neville Chamberlin redux.

Murshed Zaheed @murshedz.bsky.social · 11d

“Give us a chance to give [Trump] a way out of this that comes to the right ending. … I don’t know if that’s possible.” - @durbin.senate.gov to Danes in Europe.

Can the Senate Dems sound any more limp, facile and impotent to Europeans across the Atlantic?

Punchbowl screenshot

“COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A bipartisan group of lawmakers who traveled here on an urgent mission to reassure Danish leaders amid President Donald Trump’s escalating threats to acquire Greenland had a straightforward message.
In an interview between high-level meetings, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin summed it up this way: “Give us a chance to give [Trump] a way out of this that comes to the right ending.”
Durbin added: “I don’t know if that’s possible.”
The four-decade veteran of Congress, who’s been on dozens of CODELs, wasn’t just referring to Trump’s apparent determination to take over the Danish territory at all costs, or Republicans’ hesitation to openly defy him. Durbin was giving a sobering assessment of Congress as a supposedly coequal branch of government.
Over the span of several decades and under the leadership of both parties, lawmakers have ceded their authority to the executive branch on everything from war powers to tariffs to the power of the purse. Hill leaders have prioritized avoiding politically difficult votes or been slow to react – or done nothing – as presidents repeatedly pushed the limits of their own power at the expense of Congress.
“It’s not just this moment or this president,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who co-led the delegation. “What makes this moment so hard is, if Congress can’t stand up in the face of something where there is no strategic value and lots of strategic harm…is Congress really willing to exert its authority at all?”
That’s what made this particular CODEL so uniquely difficult — and surreal.”

January 19, 2026 at 7:20 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Sharon

@sharonk.bsky.social

mad king moment

from the PBS Newshour correspondent

NEW: @potus letter to @jonasgahrstore links @NobelPrize to Greenland, reiterates threats, and is forwarded by the NSC staff to multiple European ambassadors in Washington. I obtained the text from multiple officials:

Dear Ambassador:

President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

January 19, 2026 at 5:09 AM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn.bsky.social

Me too. There is a whole research lit on how performance quotas in the public sector generate bad outcomes.

Jessica Lussenhop @jlussenhop.bsky.social · 12d

I am really interested in what federal officers’ daily quotas in Minnesota are www.wsj.com/us-news/the-...

January 18, 2026 at 8:23 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Mueller, She Wrote

@muellershewrote.com

She is an expert on authoritarian regimes, in case you're wondering whether peaceful protests matter.

George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 13d

January 18, 2026 at 1:53 AM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Asha Rangappa

@asharangappa.bsky.social

Training cannot correct for deficiencies resulting from a lack of vetting. Remember what federal LEOs are normally screened for (CARLA F. BAD):

Character
Associates
Reputation
Loyalty
Ability
Finances
Bias
Alcohol/Addictions
Drugs

ICE is not being vetted against any of these. Shut it down.

Mueller, She Wrote @muellershewrote.com · 13d

No. We don’t need to “modify ICE training.” We need to close DHS. Dismantle it. It’s an outdated expensive bureaucracy that’s been usurped by violent white supremacists. Shut it down.

January 18, 2026 at 1:32 AM

Ken Syring

@kensyring.com

It’s hard to fathom the stupidity of this argument. Not only do we have full access, but the US and Denmark are NATO allies. If Russia or China tried to take Greenland, they’d be at war with all of us to stop them. The only logical reason Trump wants to own it is if he doesn’t plan to stay in NATO.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 13d

UN Ambassador Mike Waltz on Greenland: "Denmark just doesn't have the resources or capacity to do what needs to be done in the northern region. And to the Democrats who say 'they're giving you full access,' everybody knows if you're renting a place you treat it differently than if you own it."

January 17, 2026 at 9:18 PM

Reposted by Ken Syring

Bob Cesca

@bobcesca.bsky.social

Complaining about Star Trek being woke is like complaining about Star Trek being set in space. And I'm not sure who he thinks Jim Kirk is, but FFS, the most successful Shatner Star Trek movie is about how Kirk literally saved the whales in an allegory about the climate crisis. Stupid Stephen.

Laurie Ulster @floobish.bsky.social · 14d

Yeah I don't want him even talking about it. And yes to SFA's first episode being great. And William Shatner doesn't WANT creative control of Star Trek, hahahaha.

January 16, 2026 at 1:54 PM

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