meridian00.bsky.social
@meridian00.bsky.social
Reposted
If you want to read the full @propublica.org investigation into CIA-backed Afghan Zero Units, here's Lynzy Billing's award-winning piece from 2022:
November 28, 2025 at 5:12 PM
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Used to be that big news organizations would fight each other to get big scoops on an admin as scandal-plagued as this one. With Bezos taking over at WaPo and other similar situations elsewhere, that’s much less of a concern than staying in the admin’s good graces — and the rest of us suffer.
In another era, the political media would be shoveling dirt onto Trump's political grave as a hopeless lame duck and shifting their focus to the 2028 Presidential race. But in this era they'll keep rooting for the Reichstag Fire or other event to keep pretending he's popular
New Gallup poll shows Trump's approval hit a new low for his second term:
-36% approve
-60% disapprove

His approval among Republicans went from 91% in January to 84% in November
news.gallup.com/poll/699221/...
November 28, 2025 at 5:02 PM
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Greg Abbott has bent his views on state sovereignty to accede to the wishes of Trump.

Texas recently joined dozens of states in turning over voter roll information to the DOJ, despite long-standing resistance to federal oversight of state elections.

With @texastribune.org
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Long a Defender of States’ Rights, Embraces Trump’s Push to Expand Presidential Power
Defending Texas sovereignty has been central to Abbott’s political identity. Yet he has helped Trump erode states’ authority over elections, policing and deploying the National Guard.
www.propublica.org
November 27, 2025 at 3:45 PM
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I wrote 4000 words about Nuzzi/Lizza/RFK, please read it before it gets taken down by HR
The Olivia Nuzzi and RFK Jr. Affair Is Messier Than We Ever Could Have Imagined
Inside the most important, and also least important, story of our time
www.theringer.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:48 PM
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Watch our reporter Lizzie Presser discuss Tierra Walker's story on @msnowreports.bsky.social:

“What I want to be clear about is that this isn’t a bug in these [abortion ban] laws, this is a feature ... Anti-abortion activists have fought hard to keep health exceptions outside of these laws.”
November 21, 2025 at 12:21 AM
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“I want their morale as low as possible because a team with low morale is ineffective.”

Meet the veteran who chases ICE on a scooter
Meet the veteran who chases ICE on a scooter
Clifford “Buzz” Grambo patrols the streets of Baltimore to keep his neighbors safe—and make federal agents uncomfortable.
www.motherjones.com
November 20, 2025 at 2:00 PM
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NEW: ProPublica has found multiple cases of women with underlying health conditions who died when they couldn’t access abortions.

Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old mother, was told by doctors there was no emergency before preeclampsia killed her.
“Ticking Time Bomb”: A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion in Texas.
Walker is one of several women ProPublica found with underlying health conditions who died when they couldn’t access abortions.
www.propublica.org
November 19, 2025 at 12:00 PM
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This is easily an order of magnitude larger than the number of firings in the entire years-long 'cancel culture' panic.
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
November 19, 2025 at 1:49 PM
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It's ok to just say ICE is a menace to our communities, its employees are not public servants and it should be abolished at the first opportunity.

If you want to win a Democratic primary, this ain't it.
ICE should be cracking down on the cartels, not our communities.

ICE should be deporting gang members, not small business owners.

ICE should be hunting down human traffickers, not moms and babies.
November 17, 2025 at 11:54 PM
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Ms Rachel opposes the murder of children— super fans of three countries in particular become really angry. Wonder what that means.
Antisemitism is a lot like Qanon child abuse conspiracies in that there’s this real and bad phenomenon and, parallel to that, what can only be described as a large scale mass psychosis about a mostly fictional version of the same phenomenon
November 17, 2025 at 3:02 AM
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This is cool. COURIER has created a searchable database with all 20,000 of the files just released from Epstein’s estate.

Trump's name appears in them more than anyone else, in 1,628 documents.
couriernewsroom.com/news/we-crea...
We created a searchable database with all 20,000 files from Epstein’s Estate
Easily find every mention of Trump, Clinton, blackmail, and potential sex crimes in the thousands of private messages between Epstein and his close associates.
couriernewsroom.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:58 PM
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reminded of eric williams's observation about britain's relationship to its history with slavery. "British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it."
holy shit: “Among the 2,000 UK adults surveyed, 85% were unaware that Britain forcibly transported more than 3 million Africans to the Caribbean, 89% did not know that Britain enslaved people in the Caribbean for more than 300 years” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Caribbean reparations leaders in ‘historic’ first UK visit to press for justice
CRC mission will seek to deepen public understanding of Britain’s colonial legacy and its lasting impact
www.theguardian.com
November 16, 2025 at 11:11 PM
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NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.

Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.
November 16, 2025 at 11:43 PM
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some notable things in this excellent Bloomberg story - www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

how much of it connects through Harvard, and how many of these people are now in the AI field.
Jeffrey Epstein Leaned on His Elite Network for Help as Investigators Closed In
A cache of 18,000 messages shows the elite support the disgraced financier got in his “hour of terror.”
www.bloomberg.com
November 16, 2025 at 4:36 PM
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"[R]acist targeting of [Zohran] Mamdani, like the targeting of [Rashida] Tlaib and [Ilhan] Omar ... is a non-stop and coordinated pattern of incitement from powerful people in Congress. It is paired with very serious attempts to deport the subjects of their vitriol."
Leading up to NYC’s election, politicians launched a barrage of racist claims against Zohran Mamdani. Mainstream media outlets have barely covered it.

@ahjohnson.bsky.social reports on the Islamophobic vitriol, threats of deportation, & virtually no coverage.
Why is Mainstream Media Ignoring Overtly Racist Attacks on Mamdani from Congressional Republicans?
Non-stop Islamophobic vitriol, threats of deportation, and virtually no coverage from CNN, NBC, CBS, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post.
inthesetimes.com
November 16, 2025 at 1:01 AM
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As I often mention, the Republican platform is simple: they want to sexually abuse children, and they want you to pay for it. Since they rhetorically frame that as a return to an idealized past (“great again”), the NYT naturally has to frame systematic child sexual abuse as “the good old days”.
Rodney King Riot Videos Reveal a Lost Los Angeles
November 16, 2025 at 7:37 PM
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“New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible.” --Zohran Mamdani

For @hammerandhope.bsky.social I wrote about what comes next.

hammerandhope.org/article/mamd...
Zohran Got New Yorkers to Hope. What’s the Plan to Deliver?
Organizers who brought him to the verge of victory are looking ahead to the challenges of democratic governance.
hammerandhope.org
November 16, 2025 at 1:28 PM
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If women are underrepresented in STEM, it's at least partly because men like this offer mentoring, then embarrass themselves by assuming their mentees must be into them, then decide the best solution is to cut ties, which sends the signal to other faculty that the mentee must not be good enough.
The emails have Summers reporting to Epstein about his attempts to date a Harvard economics student & to hit on her during a seminar she was giving.
November 16, 2025 at 12:13 AM
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made a similar point on the opinions podcast this week in response to the idea that epstein is a dead end. not only are actual voters interested in this but it divides the gop and puts pressure on the president. it would be political malpractice to treat it as a sideshow
The usual suspects are telling Dems that Epstein won’t win elections, get back to “affordability” and I think my head might explode. www.offmessage.net/p/force-a-re...
Force A Referendum On The Epstein Coverup
It divides Republicans much more than "affordability" or any other economic issue.
www.offmessage.net
November 15, 2025 at 7:17 PM
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All I can say is I attended a Democratic Party event in DALLAS, TEXAS 10 days ago with officials and candidates and the biggest cheers were for Mamdani and the most questions/most frequent topic of conversation was Epstein.

We should not overthink this.
Pundits have said Zohran is a strictly-NYC phenomenon. But a DSA member named Kelsea Bond just got elected to the Atlanta City Council. I talked to her about how she won.
www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-dsa-ca...
The DSA Candidate Who Won Down South
An interview with newly elected Atlanta City Council member Kelsea Bond
www.hamiltonnolan.com
November 16, 2025 at 5:29 AM
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We found that a company with deep ties to Kristi Noem secretly got money from DHS contracts.

“It’s corrupt, is the word,” a contract law expert said. “Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer.”
Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts
The company is run by the husband of Noem’s chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Noem and her aides. DHS invoked the “emergency” at the border to skirt competitive bidding rule...
www.propublica.org
November 16, 2025 at 4:00 AM
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This is a straightforward Republican attack line, what the fuck is he doing
November 15, 2025 at 1:30 AM
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"The Democratic Party's role in undermining democracy doesn't just happen at the national level ... [Many] democrats are ruling through closed-door negotiations and shortened public engagement opportunities, outright ignoring community demands while entertaining business interests."
It is not just Trump we have to focus on. If we really want to defend democracy, we have to take the fight to right-wing democrats just as hard. And if Mamdani’s victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City shows us anything, it’s that we can successfully do so.
Dems Are Right: Trump Is Undermining Democracy. So Is Their Party’s Right Wing.
Democratic mayors in some US cities have taken anti-democratic steps to subvert the will of their constituents.
buff.ly
November 15, 2025 at 5:19 AM
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The Christian right has become an increasingly powerful force in American politics at every level, from school boards to the presidency. Its roots trace back decades.

By @phoebepetrovic.bsky.social
(Published Oct. 2024)
Tracing the Roots of the Christian Nationalist Movement That’s Influencing Modern Politics
The Christian right has become an increasingly powerful force in American politics at every level, from school boards to the presidency. Its roots trace back decades.
projects.propublica.org
November 15, 2025 at 4:00 AM
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In @huffpost.com: The Trump backlash that's transforming the Democratic Party in red states, blue states, and everything in between -- driven by @runforsomething.net & the 75,000 people who've signed up with us in the last year. www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...
The Trump Backlash That's Flying Under The Radar
In the past year, nearly 75,000 people have signed up to run for local and state office through Run for Something. And its candidates are winning.
www.huffpost.com
November 14, 2025 at 11:25 PM