Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sarah Burnes

@sarahburnes.bsky.social

Uh oh Trump really is sick isn’t he?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3h

JD Vance: "I serve under Donald Trump, who is very healthy. If I served under Joe Biden, I'd probably be worried every minute of every day that he was gonna croak and that I'd have to become president."

November 14, 2025 at 3:20 AM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Kevin M. Kruse

@kevinmkruse.bsky.social

If you have tenure at Texas A&M and aren't maliciously emailing the president a dozen times every day to ask if you can say this or you can say that, then what's the point in having tenure?

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 7h

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — Texas A&M adopts policy requiring professors to get OK from school president to discuss certain race and gender issues.

November 13, 2025 at 11:18 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Victor Ray

@victorerikray.bsky.social

If you have to get permission to teach in your area of expertise from people who are definitionally not qualified to adjudicate your expertise then you are no longer working at a university.

You’re working at a state propaganda factory.

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 7h

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — Texas A&M adopts policy requiring professors to get OK from school president to discuss certain race and gender issues.

November 13, 2025 at 11:48 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Robert Reich

@rbreich.bsky.social

Priorities.

November 13, 2025 at 7:31 PM

Sarah Burnes

@sarahburnes.bsky.social

This is a pattern.

Video evidence from Broadview was also deleted. These people know what they are doing is illegal!

bsky.app/profile/juli...

DO NOT REPEAT THIS POPEHAT @kenwhite.bsky.social · 9h

Jesus Christ, I would have been fired into the sun by the US Attorney if I pulled this shit

November 13, 2025 at 9:26 PM

Sarah Burnes

@sarahburnes.bsky.social

There is a very, very, very strong throughline in today's news stories.

(And yet women ruin the workplace?)

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 11h

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/w...

bsky.app/profile/rpsa...

November 13, 2025 at 8:52 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Sarah

@sosomanysarahs.bsky.social

Thinking today how homelessness runs through this story, through Epstein's (Virginia Guiffre had been homeless before meeting him), and even through Gaiman's (his nanny was sleeping on the beach when Palmer recruited her, and he used threats of homelessness against another victim).

Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 11h

The woman whom the House Ethics Committee determined Matt Gaetz paid for sex when she was 17 years old was living in a homeless shelter, working at McDonald's, and needed the money for braces www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...

She was 17 and a high school junior in Florida. She was working at McDonald’s. And she was living in and out of a homeless shelter.

Hoping to save up to buy braces to fix her teeth, she falsely advertised herself in 2017 as 18 years old on a website that matches men looking for “companionship” with young women looking to make money.

What followed would set off a chain of events that would have a dramatic impact on her life and help upend the political career of one of the men she would encounter, Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican.

November 13, 2025 at 6:56 PM

Sarah Burnes

@sarahburnes.bsky.social

A reminder that these are the guys who DO NOT WANT TO PAY TAXES. They want power without responsibility for the society they sit upon.

Fuck that. A wealth tax NOW.

November 13, 2025 at 6:17 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Radley Balko

@radleybalko.bsky.social

According to the car wash owner, agents arrested employees before they could obtain their documentation from their work lockers. So many were likely here legally.

Here's hoping this article on Zac boasting about how he ruined some immigrants' lives follows him around for a very long time.

BU College Republicans president says he called ICE to ‘detain these criminals’ at Allston Car Wash

The president of Boston University College Republicans wrote on X he called the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement requesting it detain employees at Allston Car Wash, the site of a Nov. 4 raid w...

dailyfreepress.com

November 13, 2025 at 4:03 PM

Sarah Burnes

@sarahburnes.bsky.social

When you've lost MAGA

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 16h

GOP Rep. John Rose on GOP senators' taxpayer-funded payouts: "I'm calling on senators to disavow this, including Marsha Blackburn, who unfortunately apparently telegraphed she's planning to take advantage of this opportunity to put millions of dollars in her pocket at the expense of the taxpayer"

November 13, 2025 at 5:23 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Dave Lee

@davelee.me

The Democrats lost the election because they weren't relatable to everyday Americans

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 16h

Eric Trump: "You can send $500 million worth of bitcoin on a Sunday night at 11pm while having a glass of wine with your wife for virtually zero fees."

November 13, 2025 at 3:48 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Tim Onion

@bencollins.bsky.social

Michael Wolff, Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein taking time out of their day covering up the world's most famous pedophile ring to complain about Ta-Nehesi Coates.

From: Steve Bannon I
Sent: 4/23/2019 4:06:36 PM
To: Michael Wolff _________________________________1
CC: Jeffrey Epstein [jeevacation@gmail.com]
Subject: Re: Announcing the 2019 Hillman Prize winners
Importance: High
Fix always in
On Apr 23, 2019, at 9:06 AM, Michael Wolff <
> wrote:
Look at the judges on this thing: the right-thinking establishment to a tee (to a Ta-Nihisi).
On Tue, Apr 23, 2019 at 2:57 PM Steve Bannon < wrote:
Pile on

November 13, 2025 at 3:56 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social

NEW: @propublica.org investigated the Chicago apartment raid where kids were zip-tied and citizens detained for hours. They find:

- NONE of the arrested were criminally charged
- NO evidence the building was "filled with TdA terrorists."
- ZERO legitimate reason for DHS to rappel from a Blackhawk.

As a Black Hawk helicopter roared overhead, the slender, 28-year-old immigrant from Venezuela answered softly, his eyes darting to a television crew invited to film the raid. Next to Caicedo, masked Border Patrol agents inspected another man’s tattoos and asked him if he belonged to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has designated a terrorist group.

Until that moment, Caicedo’s only interaction with law enforcement in his two-and-a-half years in the United States had been a traffic stop two weeks earlier for driving without a license or insurance, according to the records we reviewed. Chicago police had run a background check on him and found no prior arrests, no warrants and no evidence that he was in a gang. Caicedo said he had a pending asylum application, a steady job at a taco joint and a girlfriend whose daughter attended elementary school across the street.

None of that mattered. The U.S. government paraded him and his neighbors in front of the cameras and called their arrests a spectacular victory against terrorism. But later, after the cameras had gone, prosecutors didn’t charge Caicedo with a crime. They didn’t accuse him of being a terrorist. And after a brief hearing in immigration court, the government sent him back to the country he had fled nine years earlier.

“I lost everything,” he said in a phone interview from his mother’s home in the Venezuelan city of Valencia. “For those fools, everyone from Venezuela is a criminal.”

November 13, 2025 at 2:08 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Mark Copelovitch

@mcopelov.bsky.social

Congrats again, everyone

November 13, 2025 at 2:27 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@aoc.bsky.social

You just know that “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” bit would have done NUMBERS in this little clique

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 1d

Something absolutely perfect about Larry Summers riffing about the scourge of woke cancel culture being unfair to predatory men in a friendly email to his pal JEFFREY EPSTEIN.

November 13, 2025 at 3:26 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Meredith Shiner

@meredithshiner.com

I’m going to think about watching this moment unfold in real time for a long time.

for all the horrors coming out of Chicago and its metro area, the principled courage of everyday people, in the face of such intimidation, never ceases to astonish. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/12/k...

Most of the hearing was routine. At one point, however, Straw's attorney, Christopher Parente, lodged a largely symbolic objection over his client having to turn in his passport, calling him a "boring suburban dad" and saying his whole reason for going to the protest in the first place included objecting to the government checking people's passports and papers.
Parente said it wasn't fair for Straw "to sit here now and ask him to turn his passport over to the government for no reason other than they think they can," adding that "landscapers arrested by ICE cannot stand up to the government."
"Mr. Straw can, and your Honor can, too," Parente said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg said the passport was about bond conditions, not about what ICE is doing on the streets, and that defendants have turned in their passports "in every case I've had for 19 years."
After McShain decided Straw did not have to turn in his passport, Mecklenburg said she'd drop the requirement for all defendants to ensure Straw was not receiving special treatment.

November 13, 2025 at 2:59 AM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Scott Horton

@robertscotthorton.bsky.social

The Kremlin disguised a nearly $100 mn payment to Trump in the form of a brokered real estate deal... and both Jeffrey Epstein and William Pulte were involved in the deal. That's very interesting.

November 12, 2025 at 9:56 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Clara Jeffery

@clarajeffery.bsky.social

uh, holy shit? apnews.com/article/trum...

November 12, 2025 at 11:33 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

May-lee Chai (she/her)

@mayleechai.bsky.social

Meanwhile, “did women ruin the workplace?”

The New York Times
(Screenshot of headline:)
INTERESTING TIMES WITH ROSS DOUTHAT
Did Women Ruin the Workplace?

November 13, 2025 at 12:13 AM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar.com

AOC: "It is unconscionable that what we are debating right now is legislation that will give 8 senators over $1 million a piece & we're robbing people of their food assistance & healthcare to pay for it. How can we vote to enrich ourselves by stealing from the American people?"

November 12, 2025 at 10:39 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

Ari Drennen

@aridrennen.bsky.social

“would you like photos of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen?” -Jeffrey Epstein

November 12, 2025 at 7:54 PM

Sarah Burnes

@sarahburnes.bsky.social

This, this right here 🎯

Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 1d

My takeaway from every new Epstein revelation is that some powerful people victimized many powerless young women, many more knew, some actively enabled it--and we're still being told that MeToo and accountability for sexual violence have gone too far

November 12, 2025 at 8:58 PM

Reposted by Sarah Burnes

emptywheel

@emptywheel.bsky.social

Here's what I mean when I say it's very clear Ghislaine lied.

A few weeks after Blanche's chummy interview, in which Ghislaine (among other things) denied there were cameras at Epstein's brownstone, this unsourced NYT article that did not mention Blanche posted pics making it clear there were.