Brendan P. O'Malley
banner
bomalley500.bsky.social
Brendan P. O'Malley
@bomalley500.bsky.social
Public school teacher in Worcester, MA. DSA🌹. Holden DTC Chair. Historian of immigration politics in the 19th-century US. NYC history. CUNY GC PhD. Sloppy indie rock drummer. Massachusetts politics. He/Him/His. Diss topic essay: https://tinyurl.com/cm55m
Pinned
Still can't believe this happened! One of my favorite things about 2024 was playing with Love Child again after a 31 year hiatus, and this took the cake. Huge gratitude to @actualylt.bsky.social, whose set with Marc Ribot was transcendent. Still smiling about the surprise appearance by Swamp Dogg.
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
Immigration enforcement is usually thought of as a federal issue, but ICE's work is intertwined with state law in a number of ways. @aliciabannon.bsky.social examines recent state litigation WI, NY, and CA that will shape the relationship between ICE and the states & localities in which it operates.
State Challenges to Immigration Enforcement Practices
Recent lawsuits in Wisconsin, New York, and California explore questions about the role of state law in federal immigration enforcement.
statecourtreport.org
November 26, 2025 at 7:18 PM
The BBC censoring a line from Rutger Bregman's Reith Lecture saying that Trump is the most openly corrupt president in US history--a blatant and undeniable truth--is insane to me. Only complete and utter cowards would see this as controversial. www.linkedin.com/posts/rutger...
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor the opening lecture of a series they invited me to deliver. They removed the sentence in which I describe Donald Trump as “the… ...
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor the opening lecture of a series they invited me to deliver. They removed the sentence in which I describe Donald Trump as “the m...
www.linkedin.com
November 26, 2025 at 6:16 PM
We're going to need some full-scale domestic Nuremberg Trials when these folks are out of power. We need to see Noem, Bovino, Lyons, et al. in the docket.
A Chinese immigrant named Chaofeng Ge died in ICE custody. He was found hanging with his hands and feet tied behind him in the “hog tie” position. Unexplained deaths in ICE detention have exploded since Kristi Noem became secretary of DHS.
November 22, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Aside from looking like it was cellophane-taped on to the side of the building, the font gives moldy-carpet-smell-at-a-past-its-prime Cancun resort vibe, which is a pretty good metaphor for the United States right now.
November 11, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Today's shit list contains no suprises: John Fetterman, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, Tim Kaine, Jacky Rosen, Dick Durbin, Catherine Cortez Masto & independent Senator Angus King.
November 10, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
November 8, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Never believed the idea that people grow more conservative as they age. The only thing tempering my youthful radicalism now is an appreciation of how easy it is to destroy things, how long it takes to build things, and an appreciation that we won't all live to see destroyed things replaced.
November 2, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
Well, an acquaintance who relies on the ACA marketplace for insurance just received a notice explaining that their fee for coverage will be rising. Right now they pay $180 a month. The new price?

$2733.15 a month.
October 31, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Smallest Halloween candy ever. Thanks, Trump!
October 31, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
It’s kind of like how immigrants don’t take peoples jobs— they can’t. employers are the ones who have the power to fire you and hire someone else.
October 30, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
So you should really watch this. Just 2 minutes. But a window into the truly radical nature of the people Trump is nominating.

When pressed today, the nominee to be Ambassador to South Africa refuses to oppose reinstituting laws to prevent black people from voting in America.
October 24, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
“.. They are the asylum seekers, the rule followers. They go into the federal building holding papers .. hoping for a measure of due process. Some leave the courthouse with a hearing date set months or years from now. Others disappear into ICE’s prison system.”

@nymag.com
nymag.com/intelligence...
October 20, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Same energy...
October 20, 2025 at 8:51 PM
I do not even know what to say to my Gov & Politics students about the AI poop video tomorrow. It’s certainly a major watershed—or maybe “poopshed”—in American politics. It will be the first thing they ask about!
October 19, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Had fun arguing with APUSH students yesterday: If Hamilton was alive today, he would be on the side of Jeff Bezos. I stated the cuddly Lin-Manuel Miranda version has warped their sense of who he really was.
October 17, 2025 at 11:08 AM
1/ This admin's decision-making is more frequently based on a timeline divorced from "real time" reality. Trump sending troops into Portland seems based on his mental images generated in the 2020 George Floyd protests (or pehaps fake AI-generated ones he is being fed)....
October 11, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
ICE just blatantly violated the law and arrested sitting Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes while seeking to illegally arrest a patient in a hospital. Fuck these fascists.
October 3, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
In the American system of government, a legislature of the people’s elected representatives decide how to allocate the people’s money, then an unelected appointee in the executive branch called “OMB Director” decides if he feels like distributing the people’s money that way or if he’d rather not.
October 5, 2025 at 12:13 PM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
I think this is new informationn and if confirmed to be true … deeply disturbing!
Kathy Roy is endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC the only school committee member they endorsed in the state. Why aren’t we talking about this??? She is a sitting school committee member.
October 2, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
yeah they're just murdering random people on these boats
I think the Trump admin assumed no one would try to find out who the people on the boats they blew up really were
September 29, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Brendan P. O'Malley
In which a top US Border Patrol official, incredibly, tells my tall and Anglo colleague @chipmitchell1.bsky.social that he's not the type they're looking for as they go about downtown Chicago arresting people based on "how they look"

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...
Feds in military gear flood downtown Chicago; top border official says arrests based on 'how they look'
The immigration agents were spotted making arrests in downtown Chicago and River North neighborhood early Sunday.
chicago.suntimes.com
September 28, 2025 at 11:49 PM
Evidence from the exercises we did yesterday indicates that ALL of my AP Gov students have a much deeper and subtler understanding of the US Constitution after one month of this course than the current POTUS.
September 27, 2025 at 3:06 PM