Chicago Todd
chicagotodd.bsky.social
Chicago Todd
@chicagotodd.bsky.social
Hoping something fundamentally changes.
Pinned
This
Words/phrases Democrats should never use:

* bipartisan
* my Republican friends
* real, valid, legitimate, serious, important (to describe issue raised by Republicans)
* yea (when voting on Republican bills)
* distraction (to describe bad thing Republicans did)
* woke (in derogatory sense)
Reposted by Chicago Todd
Trump cutting US aid has killed more Christian Nigerians than anyone else ever could. And if we don’t stop him, it will get even more deadly.

He was never about protecting Christians. He was never about justice. He was always about white supremacy and oil. youtube.com/shorts/q5OeE...
Nigerian village Trump bombed to “stop Isis” says Isis has never been there
YouTube video by Qasim Rashid
youtube.com
December 27, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
The Trump administration is fast-tracking logging in Illinois’ only national forest. Good story from @wbez.org
www.wbez.org/environment/...
How the Trump administration is fast-tracking logging in Illinois’ only national forest
Facing pressure to increase timber harvests, the U.S. Forest Service is sidestepping rigorous environmental reviews and limiting public participation in a project in southern Illinois’ Shawnee Nationa...
www.wbez.org
December 27, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
Despite threats, billionaires don't leave the largest population centers, because it's where there is the most money to be had from the collective value generated by human beings, and despite what they insist, they don't generate wealth; they collect it.
December 27, 2025 at 11:26 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
I think this is called a robbery.
ICE Agents Arrest Man on Christmas Eve—and Then Steal His Groceries
Trump’s immigration agents are doing whatever they want.
newrepublic.com
December 27, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
I want some of that here.
Korean prosecutors seek 10-year sentence for ousted President Yoon in first martial law trial
An independent counsel has demanded a 10-year prison term for South Korea’s ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol.
bit.ly
December 27, 2025 at 2:44 AM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
If only someone had been screaming this from the rooftops for the last seven years. 👋🏼
Relatedly, we obtained an unpublished history of Stephen Miller's ancestors' immigration to the US, written by his grandmother. People like them were attacked in terms very similar to the ones Miller and MAGA use about today's immigrants:

newrepublic.com/article/2041...
December 26, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
NBC News actually published this: "While Trump’s peace plan appears to be holding, albeit with regular Israeli airstrikes, the crisis endures."

Just imagine NBC framing it this way if Hamas engaged in "regular strikes against Israel?"

This is how legacy media normalizes genocide & white supremacy.
December 26, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
Those who need therapy often have to pay out of pocket or go without care, even if they have health insurance.

Hundreds of mental health providers told us they fled networks because insurers made their jobs impossible and their lives miserable.

(Published Aug. 2024)
Why I Left the Network
Those who need therapy often have to pay out of pocket or go without care, even if they have health insurance. Hundreds of mental health providers told us they fled networks because insurers made thei...
projects.propublica.org
December 26, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
The CBS investigation portrays a modern concentration camp, similar to the Soviet GULAG (like CECOT, an acronym): sadistic guards, 24 hour lighting, isolation cells.
Americans once opposed this inhumane system.
The Trump administration sent innocent people there to suffer.
The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5
December 23, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
The thing that bothers me about our post-pandemic COVID discourse is how much of it isn't about how to do things better next time, it's playing Monday morning quarterback. It's not about learning, it's about spending years trying to win arguments that people had online from March 2020.
this is a good response to In Covid's Wake

what Kucharski gets right, crucially, is holding in tension the fact that the shutdown was brutally and inequitably costly, and the fact that not doing a shutdown would have been even more brutal and inequitable
www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-di...
Restrictions had unequal impacts, but the pandemic itself did too. - Boston Review
Adam Kucharski responds to Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee.
www.bostonreview.net
December 26, 2025 at 7:22 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
“Went viral” is an old stock phrase in journalism that really does not capture the dynamic of how X dot Com has been tuned to give people like the one specific legislator here the power to intentionally cause this kind of outcome
Texas A&M University will not reinstate a lecturer who was fired after a video of her teaching about gender identity in a children’s literature class went viral, despite a faculty appeals panel unanimously concluding that her dismissal was not justified.
Texas A&M won’t reinstate fired lecturer despite findings
A vice chancellor upheld the firing of Melissa McCoul, seen in a viral video being confronted by a student on her gender identity teachings, saying the termination was done with “good cause.”
www.texastribune.org
December 26, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
It's a choice to write this about Trump supporters in Northern California and not about Democrats in, say, central Nashville who have been without "their representative" ever since the GOP's TN gerrymander switched from packing to cracking? bsky.app/profile/bill...
Both devin nunes and kevin McCarthy were central valley CA Republicans

Yet somehow the times is only just now discovering conservatives exist here only by hiring a stringer like CA is Baghdad..
December 26, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
The Trump Country Diner trope has returned
December 26, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
Plato argued in the Republic that the 'tyrant,' or someone with unlimited wealth and power, would live the worst possible life because his soul would be devoured by lawless, unlimited desires that could never be sated. I think we've gotten confirmation of this from more cases than Trump lately
I always thought Plato was pretty pollyannaish on this point, but this is decent evidence for the view that a man of bad character will therefore be unhappy even with every external trapping of success and good fortune.
President Donald Trump gifted the world with nearly 200 Truth Social posts (and counting) on Christmas Day, where he amplified conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and called for a member of Congress to be deported.
December 26, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
don’t really have words to describe the suffering I want these goons to experience
ICE detain father shopping on Christmas Eve—then steal his family's groceries.

Then 3 agents divvy up his paid for food—taking what they want for themselves.

"Can I just get the wife's number to call and let her know?" woman asks.

"No, guess he should've complied," agent says.

Yakima, Washington
December 26, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
Two weeks after a Dem governor's win, the North Carolina legislature’s GOP supermajority fast-tracked a bill that would transform the balance of power in the state.
talkingpointsmemo.com/news/inside-...
Inside the North Carolina GOP’s Decade-Long Push to Seize Power From the State’s Democratic Governors
This post first appeared at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of...
talkingpointsmemo.com
December 26, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
Lovely piece in the @chicago.suntimes.com about how a reporter's love of @rebeccamakkai.bsky.social's novel THE GREAT BELIEVERS inspired her reporting and long article about Unit 371.

chicago.suntimes.com/news/2025/12...
How my love of fiction led me to report on the real impact of Chicago's first AIDS unit
The AIDS floor at Illinois Masonic Medical Center was featured in Rebecca Makkai's "The Great Believers," leading a reporter to tell the true story about Unit 371.
chicago.suntimes.com
December 24, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
UPDATE: Bari Weiss hilariously tells CBS News(Max) staff she yanked the story (without even discussing it with the team) to “win back the trust” of Americans.

(P.S. She means of Trump)

variety.com/2025/tv/news...
December 25, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
I worked for DOJ. I don't think people realize how dangerous it is for the White House to takeover the daily operations of the Justice Department.
December 25, 2025 at 5:05 AM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
Hello. It’s me again. Please take a look. Bebo got boosted by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Rachel Maddow.

Head to Chicagoshovels.org and let’s make this happen.
December 25, 2025 at 5:23 AM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
BREAKING: it is a gross violation of the 1st Amend. for State to target @imranahmed.bsky.social because of his & @counterhate.com fighting antisemitism & protecting kids in the digital sphere

That's why we @democracydefendersfund.org joined w/ @robbiekaplan.bsky.social &
an all-star team to sue!
Statement on the unconstitutional attempt to arrest and expel Imran Ahmed from the United States — Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH
Statement on CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed's unlawful deportation.
counterhate.com
December 25, 2025 at 4:06 AM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
Bangladesh opposition leader Tarique Rahman returns after 17 years in exile https://aje.io/3w4bma
December 25, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
Al Jazeera’s journalists continue their coverage despite the destruction caused by the relentless Israeli bombing, mounting casualties and intolerable working conditions across Gaza.

Watch the film, The Price of Truth EP 3: aje.me/thepriceoftr...
December 25, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Chicago Todd
This really is stunning to see compressed into a short narrative. It was truly four years of cronies whose only limit to how much taxpayer money they could steal was how amoral they could be.
December 24, 2025 at 2:26 PM