Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Asha Rangappa

@asharangappa.bsky.social

Creating a military conflict with Venezuela gives this administration a legal "hook" to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. In other words, the foreign war is being manufactured in order to facilitate court deference for its domestic mass deportation policy. It's a Stephen Miller Special.

November 29, 2025 at 4:38 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Adam Parkhomenko

@adamparkhomenko.bsky.social

Jamal Khashoggi. Say his name.

November 18, 2025 at 4:26 PM

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jamelle

@jamellebouie.net

you could fact check this — there aren’t 30 million illegal immigrants and there is no evidence that the presence of an immigrant in say houston has any impact on housing in madison, wisconsin — or you could note straightforwardly that this is just nazi rhetoric

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 19d

JD Vance: "A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens."

November 13, 2025 at 10:12 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

@theradr.bsky.social

Absolute queen shit

Rep Yassamin Anasari has set up a table and a sign saying "Mike Jonhnson is starving families and gutting healthcare to cover up the Epstein files, CHANGE MY MIND" outside Johnson's office.

November 9, 2025 at 6:30 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D.

@sarahmackattack.bsky.social

This year we have sold 31% of the advent calendars that we sold last year 😓

The art is so pretty and colorful 🥺
The facts are so good 🥺
Eels are so cool 🥺

Get an eel facts advent calendar at EelFacts.net

Sarah holds up an eel facts advent calendar in front of blooming flowers on her sidewalk. It says eel facts an advent calendar. It has 24 boxes with orange and yellow zigzags and yellow circles in the middle with numbers one through 24 in the middle of the boxes there are six eels depicted on this calendar, one green Moray, two splendid garden eels, one blue and yellow ribbon eel, and one American eel and one European.

November 9, 2025 at 2:24 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Prisonculture

@prisonculture.bsky.social

Someone give Lex $2 million so they can launch a politics version of Teen Vogue. Do it now. No strings attached.

November 3, 2025 at 8:01 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

NY Times Pitchbot

@nytpitchbot.bsky.social

We wanted to understand how young New York City voters feel about Zohran Mamdani. So we talked to three retired cops at an Outback Steakhouse in Staten Island.

October 17, 2025 at 5:03 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

NY Times Pitchbot

@nytpitchbot.bsky.social

Whether it's young Democrats expressing their support for DEI or young Republicans saying "I love Hitler,' both sides have expressed controversial opinions.

October 14, 2025 at 6:10 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

George Gantsoudes

@pedsortho.bsky.social

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

October 13, 2025 at 12:42 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Mueller, She Wrote

@muellershewrote.com

September 14, 2025 at 8:01 PM

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani

@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

Good morning! I'm in Uganda to visit family and friends.

But depending on your perspective, don't worry or I'm sorry: I'll be back by the end of the month.

See you soon, NYC.

July 20, 2025 at 2:37 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Karl Bode

@karlbode.com

The NYT story on the Colbert firing doesn't even mention the fact that CBS is now owned by the right wing billionaire Ellison family, a very close political ally to Trump.

Kind of relevant, yeah?

CBS Canceling ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ After Next Season

www.nytimes.com

July 18, 2025 at 6:11 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Jesspooka Kant 🎃

@jessdkant.bsky.social

The governor of Puerto Rico has signed a ban on all gender-affirming care under 21, marking an enormous escalation in the war on trans people. Conservatives are banking on using PR as a test case, and those behind this have been clear they oppose GAC at any age.
www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-...

The law approved late Wednesday applies to those younger than 21 and calls for 15 years in prison for any violators, as well as a $50,000 penalty and the revocation of all licenses and permits of medical staff.

July 17, 2025 at 4:08 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Tom ‘Beardo’ Hilliard

@tomh4.bsky.social

The hilarious thing is that Andreessen is not nostalgic about his hometown at all, says @rickperlstein.Bsky.social. “I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet,” said the man who now calls them “my people.” prospect.org/power/2024-0...

My Dinner With Andreessen

Billionaires I have known: Part One of a three-part series

prospect.org

July 13, 2025 at 3:55 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Adam Gurri

@adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com

Marc Andreessen went to a goddam state school! Stop bitching about Stanford (about which he’s delusional) and just promote your damn Alma matter! Why is this so hard?? www.liberalcurrents.com/marc-andrees...

July 16, 2025 at 3:15 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Sarah Tuttle

@niais.bsky.social

I don't know which members of the press have time tomorrow, but it seems like having a many people as we can tracking this FTC event about gender affirming care for minors would be a good idea.

www.ftc.gov/news-events/...

FTC Releases Agenda for Workshop on Unfair or Deceptive Trade Practices in “Gender-Affirming Care” for Minors

The Federal Trade Commission

www.ftc.gov

July 8, 2025 at 7:56 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Sarah Dohl ❌👑

@sarahdohl.bsky.social

The SCAM PACs are coming out of the woodwork again. And it's just everything wrong in politics. If you see anything from "The No Kings PAC" here are a few things you should know. 🧵

June 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

CHOAM for the holidays

@samthielman.com

I’m sorry, “yes we sourced a story using stolen personal data about a nonwhite politician brokered by a neonazi BUT the story illuminates the complex nature of racial identity” does not pass the laugh test

July 5, 2025 at 1:12 AM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Tom Scocca

@tomscocca.bsky.social

An opinion writer is not allowed to criticize the paper on social media for using a Nazi source but the reporter who worked with the Nazi source was free to leave a long social media trail being buddy-buddy with the Nazi in public

July 4, 2025 at 3:34 AM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Alex

@purplechrain.bsky.social

it’s absurd that NYT forced him to delete these skeets, which … convey the factual information that Zohran Mamdani is, in fact, a man of South Asian descent who was born and raised in Africa, and that the pseudonymous source of the hacked material is a white supremacist eugenicist.

bouie’s skeet, deleted at the direction of the NYT:
“he is a south Asian man born in Uganda?”

bouie’s skeet, deleted at the direction of the NYT:
“and the source is a eugenicist who opposes affirmative action because he thinks brown people are an inferior race! cool!”

bouie’s skeet, deleted at the direction of the NYT:
“I think you should tell readers if your source is a nazi”

July 4, 2025 at 3:05 AM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

El Norte Recuerda

@elnorterecuerda.bsky.social

The entire Latino population in the U.S. is 65 million. She means all of us.

Laura Loomer‘s tweet: Alligator lives matter. The good news is, alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we get started now.

July 2, 2025 at 5:49 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Billie Jean Sweeney

@billiejsweeney.bsky.social

The nyt is eager to declare victory over trans ppl.
Bullshit. Here’s another take:
“The notion that the trans rights movement was wrong to push this court challenge is both a departure from facts and the story the Christian-right legal movement would prefer be told”

newrepublic.com/article/1972...

What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About SCOTUS’s Trans Rights Ruling

The Skrmetti decision to uphold a state ban on gender-affirming care for minors was not as sweeping as it seems—nor is the trans rights movement to blame for it.

newrepublic.com

June 29, 2025 at 11:55 AM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Daniel Radosh

@radosh.bsky.social

I feel like I'm losing my mind. Here is the transcript of what Zohran Mamdani actually said about the phrase "globalize the intifada." This is his "refusal to disavow it." This is what has people terrified. Just fucking read it.

Source: podscripts.co/podcasts/the...

Q: So I wonder what you think about that, about the phrase “globalize the intifada” and what we've seen as some anti-semitism coming from the left-wing protesters.

A: The first thing as you were saying is anti-semitism is a real issue in our city and it's one that can be captured in statistics, the ones that you're citing. It's also one that you will feel in conversations you have with Jewish New Yorkers across the city. And I remember one conversation I had with a friend of mine after the horrific war crime of October 7th. He was telling me that he went for Shabbat services at his temple and he was facing forward when he heard the door open. And he turned back with a chill going up his spine because he didn't know who was coming in. And that's more than a year ago.

And then just a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a Jewish man in Williamsburg who told me that the same door he would keep unlocked for decades is one that he now locks out of a fear of what could happen in his own neighborhood. And I think that this is something that has to be the focus of the next mayoral administration, is not just talking about it, but tackling it. And these are the conversations that have informed our commitment around increasing funding for anti-hate crime programming by 800% in our Department of Community Safety.

To the question of language that's being used. I am someone who I would say am less comfortable with the idea of banning the use of certain words and that I think it is more evocative of a Trump style approach to how to lead a country. And-

Q: Does that just make you uncomfortable? Like the phrase globalizing intifada. And like the phrase from the river to the sea, does that make you uncomfortable? Or do you think-

A: Okay, those are different. Those are super different.

Q: They're not really.

A: Those are like different genres.

Q: I'm sorry, I'm asking so wrong. Then they're not really different to me. And to some people they are not different.

A: I know people for whom those things mean very different things. And to me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights. And I think what's difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw ghetto uprising into Arabic because it's a word that means struggle. And as a Muslim man who grew up post-911, I'm all too familiar in the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning. And I think that's where it leaves me with a sense that what we need to do is focus on keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe. And the question of the permissibility of language is something that I haven't ventured.

June 26, 2025 at 7:50 PM

Reposted by Madeline Bergstrom

Bill Grueskin

@bgrueskin.bsky.social

The Trump admin has freed Jose Hernandez Reyes because he can testify against Abrego Garcia.

Hernandez, who has been deported 5 times, has also been arrested for:

—DUI w/ a handgun;
—cocaine possession;
—illegally transporting migrants; and
—drunkenly firing a gun.

Free link: wapo.st/40i4Ttt