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ositanwanevu.com
Osita Nwanevu
@ositanwanevu.com
92K followers 3.3K following 2.8K posts
Contributing Editor | The New Republic
Columnist | The Guardian
Author | The Right of the People (2025)
Newsletter | ositanwanevu.com
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Osita Nwanevu @ositanwanevu.com · Jul 12
Tour dates for The Right of the People are out now! Hope to see some of you on the road.

Pre-order links and info here: t.co/CmNKNBtqcG
Tuesday, August 12 7:00 PM ET Red Emma's Baltimore, MD In conversation with Chris Lehmann and Max Alvarez Wednesday, August 13 7:00 PM ET Politics & Prose (Conn Ave) Washington, DC In conversation with Michael Tomasky Wednesday, September 3 7:00 PM ET Books Are Magic (Montague) Brooklyn, NY In conversation with Alex Shephard Thursday, September 4 7:00 PM ET Harvard Book Store Cambridge, MA In conversation with Ryan D. Doerfler Friday, September 26 4:00 PM CT Seminary Co-op Bookstore Chicago, IL In conversation with Alex Han
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
jacobtlevy.bsky.social
Cripes a’mighty people, Steven Miller is not staging a militarized ethnic cleansing and sending the border cops to murder people in the street to distract from the Epstein files. He’s doing it because he and Trump (and Vance and Homan and Noem etc) really really want to.
January 15, 2026 at 2:39 AM
ositanwanevu.com
It turns out that everything in politics is "soup de jour" or "bait" except talking about how you want to reduce health care costs by 0.05%.
andrewsolender.bsky.social Andrew Solender @andrewsolender.bsky.social · 4h
NEW: Kristi Noem is facing by far the most credible impeachment effort of Trump's 2nd term. Some House Dems are fuming.

"Noem is just soup du jour," one told @axios.com. "It's all performative bullsh*t."

Centrists say they want to focus on affordability. www.axios.com/2026/01/14/k...
"Performative bullsh*t": Some Democrats fume as Kristi Noem impeachment gains steam
"There's a frustration with all these impeachments," said one House Democrat. "Noem is just soup du jour."
www.axios.com
January 15, 2026 at 1:39 AM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
drleonardbright.bsky.social
Texas A&M decided to publicly cancel my Ethics class, and share a false statement that I declined to provide information, which made it impossible for [them ] to request an exemption. See for yourself, if this statement is true.

They are getting creative!
tamu-aaup.bsky.social AAUP Texas A&M-College Station Chapter @tamu-aaup.bsky.social · 11h
ETHICS IS NOW CANCELED AT TEXAS A&M

Statement from Dr. Leonard Bright....
Statement from Dr. Leonard Bright concerning the Bush School of Government and Public Service
January 14, 2026 at 10:12 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
resnikoff.bsky.social
Folks, Trump has brought the full force of ICE to bear on a mid-sized city and he can't even stop the demonstrations there. He's not going to be able to cancel the midterm elections by fiat or station his goons outside more than a handful of polling places.
January 14, 2026 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
fleerultra.bsky.social
remember when centrists confidently asserted that dems should avoid talking about immigration because it was a GOP 80/20 issue
usapolling.bsky.social Polling USA @usapolling.bsky.social · 5h
Trump Net-Approval On:

Immigration: -23%
Venezuela: -24%
Foreign Policy: -24%
Economy: -25%

AP-NORC / Jan 11, 2026
January 14, 2026 at 10:37 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Just want to stress that this was a woman who was simply trying to get to a doctor's appointment.
ryanenos.bsky.social Ryan Enos @ryanenos.bsky.social · 14h
We are so far past the Rubicon that it isn't worth having a discussion anymore as to whether Trump is acting as an authoritarian. The only question is whether we have the strength and courage to get back to the other side.
January 14, 2026 at 9:37 PM
ositanwanevu.com
More than an attempted coup, where a mob tried to seize Congress on live television did? There's not going to be an implosion about anything. It's either a slow slide towards oblivion where everything gets incrementally worse as people try to live normally, or a slow grind in the opposite direction.
sharonk.bsky.social Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 6h
i feel like if the president actually went through with invading greenland, it would implode America
January 14, 2026 at 9:56 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
wentrogue.bsky.social
And @mprnews.org’ Chris Farrell tried: www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...
MPR News also reached out to several major companies with requests for comment but received no response from UnitedHealth, Best Buy, Ecolab, 3M, General Mills, U.S. Bancorp and Hormel. Target, at whose stores ICE agents have been patrolling store lots, also did not respond to a request for comment.
January 14, 2026 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
ericlevitz.bsky.social
The sheer volume of white nationalist memes/allusions posted from official government accounts over the past year is staggering
www.vox.com/politics/475...
January 14, 2026 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
joshchafetz.bsky.social
Mike Johnson compellingly making the case for abolishing ICE ...
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 8h
Mike Johnson: "ICE is doing what ICE is designed to do"
ericmgarcia.bsky.social Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 8h
Mike Johnson comes out against additional guardrails on ICE as Democrats call for it.

“I think there's a lot of Democrats playing games right now with national security and with law enforcement. And I think it's dangerous. Ice is doing what ice is designed to do by its very name.”
January 14, 2026 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
ositanwanevu.com
I wrote about Renee Good, Venezuela, Greenland, and what it means to be a human being. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
America, JD Vance tells us, is merely a nation like many others ⁠– a “homeland”, he said upon accepting his nomination to the vice-presidency, for “people with a shared history and a common future”. That’s a vision of American identity that would have described bands of cavepeople in skins just as well or better. Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Miller’s laws are the laws of animals. It is true, obviously, that high ideals have long been deployed to obscure or justify predation, here and elsewhere. But Miller’s stance and the stance of the administration is that there aren’t, actually, any high ideals worth pursuing or even pretending to – that the human being, in itself, is nothing so much ⁠and that we are, fundamentally and forever, primitives. Against the demands and best aspirations of civilization – western or any kind – they tell us the human being is a creature that yearns for nothing more than blood and soil, which is, of course, just mud. The lust for mud has taken up many guises in our history and has been many given names of late – neo-reaction, post-liberalism, fascism. But the name familiar to most is evil. It was evil – the standpoint that only might matters, that human morality, and our sense of reality itself, must yield to the turfism of the primates with the biggest clubs – that ginned up the propaganda that provoked an act of terrorism against our legislature and the policemen defending it five years ago. It is evil that undergirds pronouncements from the same voices responsible for that attack, in defense of the man who shot Renee Nicole Good, that those who disobey the commands of law enforcement, however unsound or unjust, deserve summary execution – that implies, as Fox’s Jesse Watters and others have, that Good’s killing was of trivial significance because she was a lesbian “with pronouns in her bio”. It is evil that sends innocent men to foreign gulags, evil that condemns hundreds of thousands of destitute people abroad to death without a moment’s discussion or debate about what the country they had depended on might owe them, or the furnishing of alternative arrangements for their wellbeing. The gutting of USAID remains this administration’s worst and least surprising offense against the human conscience – a president who rejects the idea that we might have obligations to all within our society can’t be expected to wonder or worry about whether we have obligations to those outside of it. This is also why, after all the noise and nonsense about the need to depose the Maduro regime, the Venezuelan people are now being told that regime will be left in mostly in place for as long as it takes to secure and extract the country’s resources on our terms – that Venezuela will not see democracy unless and until it is profitable for the United States. Democracy has always been a useless abstraction to those who deny we have basic human entitlements – for those who believe, instead, that the idea of human liberty is a luxury for those wealthy and powerful enough to consider themselves our betters rather than the birthright of all. As many who’ve taken to the streets in protest have noted, the Trump administration’s assaults on liberty here at home are the kinds of abuses that spurred the revolution we will commemorate this year. But no grand revolution is in the offing this time around. The only just and plausible recourse for our situation is politics – understood not merely as the contest to win any given set of elections but as the broader fight to forge a republic that honors and strengthens our humanity. The American project must and will succeed. Its enemies stand for too little. Our lives are worth too much.
January 14, 2026 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
ericlevitz.bsky.social
ICE's official recruitment ads are suffused with allusions to white nationalist memes and books.

The government is openly trying to give guns and badges to supporters of ethnic cleansing. www.vox.com/politics/475...
January 14, 2026 at 6:27 PM
ositanwanevu.com
Asking the ICE agent beating a guy up on the pavement to hold still so I can scan his QR code that he was required to wear instead of a badge that can simply be read
ritchietorres.bsky.social Ritchie Torres @ritchietorres.bsky.social · 13h
I am introducing the Quick Recognition (QR) Act, which requires ICE and CBP officers to wear uniforms featuring QR codes. When scanned, the code would generate a digital ID displaying the officer’s name, badge number, and law enforcement agency.

ICE should be unmasked both physically and digitally.
January 14, 2026 at 5:11 PM
ositanwanevu.com
I wrote about Renee Good, Venezuela, Greenland, and what it means to be a human being. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
America, JD Vance tells us, is merely a nation like many others ⁠– a “homeland”, he said upon accepting his nomination to the vice-presidency, for “people with a shared history and a common future”. That’s a vision of American identity that would have described bands of cavepeople in skins just as well or better. Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Miller’s laws are the laws of animals. It is true, obviously, that high ideals have long been deployed to obscure or justify predation, here and elsewhere. But Miller’s stance and the stance of the administration is that there aren’t, actually, any high ideals worth pursuing or even pretending to – that the human being, in itself, is nothing so much ⁠and that we are, fundamentally and forever, primitives. Against the demands and best aspirations of civilization – western or any kind – they tell us the human being is a creature that yearns for nothing more than blood and soil, which is, of course, just mud. The lust for mud has taken up many guises in our history and has been many given names of late – neo-reaction, post-liberalism, fascism. But the name familiar to most is evil. It was evil – the standpoint that only might matters, that human morality, and our sense of reality itself, must yield to the turfism of the primates with the biggest clubs – that ginned up the propaganda that provoked an act of terrorism against our legislature and the policemen defending it five years ago. It is evil that undergirds pronouncements from the same voices responsible for that attack, in defense of the man who shot Renee Nicole Good, that those who disobey the commands of law enforcement, however unsound or unjust, deserve summary execution – that implies, as Fox’s Jesse Watters and others have, that Good’s killing was of trivial significance because she was a lesbian “with pronouns in her bio”. It is evil that sends innocent men to foreign gulags, evil that condemns hundreds of thousands of destitute people abroad to death without a moment’s discussion or debate about what the country they had depended on might owe them, or the furnishing of alternative arrangements for their wellbeing. The gutting of USAID remains this administration’s worst and least surprising offense against the human conscience – a president who rejects the idea that we might have obligations to all within our society can’t be expected to wonder or worry about whether we have obligations to those outside of it. This is also why, after all the noise and nonsense about the need to depose the Maduro regime, the Venezuelan people are now being told that regime will be left in mostly in place for as long as it takes to secure and extract the country’s resources on our terms – that Venezuela will not see democracy unless and until it is profitable for the United States. Democracy has always been a useless abstraction to those who deny we have basic human entitlements – for those who believe, instead, that the idea of human liberty is a luxury for those wealthy and powerful enough to consider themselves our betters rather than the birthright of all. As many who’ve taken to the streets in protest have noted, the Trump administration’s assaults on liberty here at home are the kinds of abuses that spurred the revolution we will commemorate this year. But no grand revolution is in the offing this time around. The only just and plausible recourse for our situation is politics – understood not merely as the contest to win any given set of elections but as the broader fight to forge a republic that honors and strengthens our humanity. The American project must and will succeed. Its enemies stand for too little. Our lives are worth too much.
January 14, 2026 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
leftistwonk.bsky.social
12+ hours later we finally get an estimate of how many Venezuelans were killed
January 3, 2026 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
kjephd.bsky.social
A concept I've been meaning to float to make sense of what's happened to the US Constitution is an idea from the British constitutional tradition: "implied repeal."

It's useful because it helps us to understand that Article I, & much else of the US Constitution, has been implicitly repealed.
January 3, 2026 at 7:35 PM
ositanwanevu.com
lol
burgessev.bsky.social Burgess Everett @burgessev.bsky.social · 11d
Schumer says Republican senators have "expressed a lot of troublesome comments about what Trump is doing and the way he is doing it" in conversations with Democratic senators today ...
January 3, 2026 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
davidjroth.bsky.social
So much of American history is just impulsive and extremely stupid elites, who don't believe in consequences because they have never personally experienced them, doing highly consequential stuff because they're bored or believe it might make them richer. I guess a lot of our culture, too.
January 3, 2026 at 7:22 PM
ositanwanevu.com
How it's going.
Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, put on a display of force and unity in a live address to the nation, sitting with powerful military officials and other key government leaders as she denounced the United States. As she introduced each figure on live television, they nodded toward her in a show of deference as she demanded that Maduro was the rightful president of Venezuela. The display of force and unity undermined President Trump’s earlier comments that Washington would work with Rodríguez to run Venezuela. “If there is one thing that the Venezuelan people and this country are clear about,” Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, said in an address to the the nation, “it is that we will never again be slaves, that we will never again be a colony of any empire, whatever its nature.” Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, speakinging in an address to the the nation, said Washington “launched an unprecedented military aggression” that “constitutes a terrible stain on the development of bilateral relations.” She said that with the invasion, “the masks had fallen off, revealing only one objective: regime change in Venezuela. This regime change would also allow for the seizure of our energy, mineral, and natural resources. This is the true objective, and the world and the international community must know it.” Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, demanded Maduro’s return, calling him the “only” president of Venezuela.
January 3, 2026 at 7:24 PM
ositanwanevu.com
Trumpism is the worst of the last 50 years of Republican politics, amped up, legally unbound, and garnished with some noise and nonsense about tariffs. That's all it is and all it's ever been.
January 3, 2026 at 6:31 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
ositanwanevu.com
Wearing one of these gives you Nostradamus-like powers of divination. Just don't think it can be denied at this point.
Cadet cap
April 11, 2025 at 11:56 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
ositanwanevu.com
The likelihood you've been right about the course of American politics over the last decade rises in direct proportion to how often you listen to Rage Against the Machine. Having studied political science hurts you a bit. Having worked as a political journalist hurts a lot.
ositanwanevu.com Osita Nwanevu @ositanwanevu.com · Apr 11
Not the first time I've said it, but I do think we should sit with the fact that the folks likeliest to have predicted we'd elect a reality TV president who'd create a fascist police state where people would be put into unmarked vans for criticizing Israel have been widely ridiculed my entire life.
April 11, 2025 at 11:43 PM
Reposted by Osita Nwanevu
dhnexon.bsky.social
JFC.
Maggie Haberman Jan. 3, 2026, 12:31 p.m. ET3m ago Maggie HabermanWhite House reporter Trump says that Rubio has spoken to the newly sworn-in Venezuelan president and she has said she would support what they are doing. Jack Nicas Jan. 3, 2026, 12:30 p.m. ET3 minutes ago Jack NicasMexico City bureau chief Trump’s suggestion that Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, would help the United States run the country was stunning because it came just as Venezuelan state television was playing a clip of her denouncing the U.S. military operation. “Faced with this brutal situation and this brutal attack, we do not know the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores,” Rodríguez said, according to a clip played by Venezuelan state television on Saturday. “We demand immediate proof of life for President Maduro and the first lady from the government of President Donald Trump.” But Trump just told reporters that Marco Rubio had spoken with her with a different result. “She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said.
January 3, 2026 at 5:35 PM
ositanwanevu.com
Rubio teasing Cuba now?
January 3, 2026 at 5:30 PM
ositanwanevu.com
The only sense you can make of any of this is that the administration is or hopes to be in touch with Rodriguez, expect her to capitulate fully, and expect her to maintain control of the country as we functionally annex Venezuela.
January 3, 2026 at 5:24 PM