Letter from Trumpland: Chicago Edition 🚨

This is truly a harrowing letter from what seems like a faraway land, but it is in fact closer to all of us in the US than most of us want to believe.

dissatisfied by the New York Times coverage of Zohran Mamdani?

great news! I talked to the guy Thursday about his campaign’s success at bringing community together beyond this election, and contextualized how it’s potentially shifted youth engagement with politics by simply listening @teenvogue.com

Trump is holding a Great Gatsby/Roaring 20s-themed party at his private club in Palm Beach tonight as he tries to withhold SNAP and health care subsidies from millions of Americans. (via Kellie Meyer)

There is no possible democratic, constitutional interpretation of the presidency in which Donald Trump can unilaterally destroy the White House. Because he did, he sees himself as a monarch.

Read about it in today's Triad from @jvl.bsky.social: www.thebulwark.com/p/of-kings-a...

Merkley: "What we've seen is that democracies no longer die bc men w/guns go in and take it over. Instead, it's electeds who erode the separation of power. If you have a rubber-stamp Congress & courts that deliver more power to the executive, suddenly you have an authoritarian state. It's here now."

Trump’s rhetoric has crossed a line — from “Deep State” conspiracy to open fascist playbook.

open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...

The 13th largest military in the world is occupying and waging war on the people of Chicago.

“I think talking about this as an occupation is useful because it is so outrageous and abnormal,” says Jackson Potter, vice president of @ctulocal1.bsky.social.

"Gilded Rage" isn’t simply a rehash of existing reportage. What separates Silverman’s book from other writeups, and where his book truly shines, is in his attempt to get at the root of Silicon Valley’s anti-democratic lurch. www.thebulwark.com/p/why-our-te...

Octavia E. Butler saw the future—and warned us.

Aina Marzia reviews Positive Obsession by Susana M. Morris, a new biography tracing Butler’s journey to literary legend, showing how her vision transformed both sci-fi and Black liberation.

inthesetimes.com/article/octa...

“Much about what Ezra Klein argues is objectionable,”—including “the appeal to debate as ’persuasion,’ which confuses the mere appearance of giving and responding to reasons with the substance of good-faith rational inquiry,” writes columnist @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social.

The flip side of this exceptionalizing is to erase and excuse the slow and less spectacular violence of American political life. When ICE agents raid homes, when Medicaid is stripped from millions, both politicians and media speak of “policy” rather than “violence.” @eric-reinhart.com

This is, without any exaggeration, exactly how Putin and Orbán proceeded — using antisemitism to discredit the idea of civil society and political opposition, and as an excuse to undo the rule of law.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

Man alive. I have studied Right Wing authoritarianism for years and have watched some truly fucked up shit and today’s memorial service is maybe the most concentrated example of how messed up and disturbing that sector truly is.