Music: Snarky Puppy — ‘Mean Green’
Echoes of Eichmann: The industrialization of mass deportation
The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is seeking contractors to help it overhaul the United States’ immigrant detention system in a plan that includes renovating industrial warehouses to hold more than 80,000 immigrant detainees at a time, according to a draft solicitation reviewed by The Washington Post. Rather than shuttling detainees around the country to wherever detention space is available, as happens now, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement aims to speed up deportations by establishing a deliberate feeder system,…
Trump’s immigration nightmare is going to get much, much worse
Radley Balko writes: With astonishing speed, the administration has toppled the most cherished pillars of a free society. Masked secret police now tear-gas entire city streets, jump out from unmarked vehicles to abduct and detain suspected undocumented people, and demand that foreign-looking people (mostly Latino) produce papers on demand. These deportation forces have been told by the president and his advisers to cast a wide net, that immigrants are “animals,” that the activists defending them are “domestic terrorists,” and that…
Chasing an economic boom, White House dismisses multiple risks of AI
The New York Times reports: It was early November, and the stock market had grown jittery as investors recoiled anew over the enormous bets the nation’s largest technology companies had placed on artificial intelligence. But the skittishness playing out on Wall Street that day barely registered at the White House. Asked whether he harbored any fears about an emerging bubble, one that could damage the economy if it were to pop, President Trump brushed aside all doubts. “No,” he quickly…
The danger of AI agents’ access to your personal data
Wired reports: For years, the cost of using “free” services from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and other Big Tech firms has been handing over your data. Uploading your life into the cloud and using free tech brings conveniences, but it puts personal information in the hands of giant corporations that will often be looking to monetize it. Now, the next wave of generative AI systems are likely to want more access to your data than ever before. Over the past two…
Trump’s claims to Venezuelan oil are part of broader ‘resource imperialism’, experts say
The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s recent claims that the US should keep Venezuelan oil from seized tankers are part of a broader belief in rightwing “resource imperialism”, experts say. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has escalated pressure on Venezuela, invoking drug-trafficking claims. This month, the US intercepted two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and began pursuing a third, while intensifying its campaign against the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Critics have compared the offensive to the Iraq war, citing a familiar…
The Gaza genocide radicalized the world
Tareq Baconi writes: October 7, 2023, marked a paradigmatic rupture in how Palestine is discussed and imagined. Until that moment, international discourse had been trapped in the vocabulary of statehood and peace processes. The Palestinian question was framed as a conflict to be managed rather than a structure of domination to be dismantled, but October 7 forced the world to confront the realities Palestinians have long named: settler colonialism, the ongoing Nakba, Zionism, and Israeli apartheid. This rupture is not…
Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is getting closer and closer to irreversible collapse
Wired reports: Known as the “Doomsday Glacier,” the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers on Earth, and its future evolution is one of the biggest unknowns when it comes to predicting global sea level rise. The eastern ice shelf of the Thwaites Glacier is supported at its northern end by a ridge of the ocean floor. However, over the past two decades, cracks in the upper reaches of the glacier have increased rapidly, weakening…
Music: Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest — ‘The Curtain’
Russia and China pledge support for Venezuela as Trump drives up pressure on Maduro
The Guardian reports: China and Russia have expressed support for Venezuela as it confronts a US blockade of sanctioned oil tankers, while Donald Trump continues to ramp up his pressure campaign on the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Amid reports of slowing activity at Venezuelan ports, the US president again called for Maduro to leave power, and reiterated that the US would keep or sell the oil it had seized off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks. Asked…
Judges who ruled against Trump say that subsequent threats have changed their lives
NBC reports: In his almost 45 years as a federal judge, John Coughenour has seen it all, including high-profile criminal trials that put his own safety at risk. But this year, the 84-year-old senior district judge did something he hadn’t considered for a long time: He retrieved a gun he had stored at the federal courthouse in Seattle years ago and brought it back to his home in case he needed it to defend himself. Coughenour is one of dozens…
How aggressive immigration tactics swept up American citizens
A video analysis of one early morning raid in Los Angeles revealed the vast web of consequences brought by new aggressive Border Patrol tactics.
Inside CECOT: The 60 Minutes story the Trump administration doesn’t want you to see
Sen. Cory Booker: “This is a 60 Minutes Story about how the Trump administration violated our constitution and people’s basic human dignity. Acting like this does nothing to make us safer, and in fact only makes it more likely that American citizens are put at risk.”
Trump regime rewards tech fascists with travel bans on European tech regulators and researchers
The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is barring five prominent Europeans from the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Tuesday, accusing them of being involved in online censorship of Americans, a claim they have disputed. The action sharply escalated the administration’s fight against European efforts to monitor content on major social media platforms, including Elon Musk’s X as well as Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta. The five include Thierry Breton, a former member…
DOGE isn’t dead
Wired reports: Since the beginning of the Trump administration, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the brainchild of billionaire Elon Musk, has gone through several iterations, leading periodically to claims—most recently from the director of the Office of Personnel Management—that the group doesn’t exist, or has vanished altogether. But DOGE isn’t dead. Many of its original members are in full-time roles at various government agencies, and the new National Design Studio (NDS) is headed by Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia,…
Charlie Kirk’s memory is the only thing uniting Turning Point USA
Joe Lowndes writes: The first time I came across TPUSA was at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where I met a pair of bespectacled college students wearing matching light blue T-shirts that read “Socialism Sucks.” When I asked them about the shirts, the Turning Point representatives told me that their main concern was limited government and the free market. They did not have many allies in what was, at that time, a right-wing populist revolt in the party,…