I think it’s perfectly reasonable to read into the fact that Trump just openly posted footage of the military straight up murdering eleven civilians on his orders. He wants people to know he can do it
Life’s a bitch, then you die | NY Daily News editorial board member, @newrepublic.com contributing editor, @theverge.com temporary writer, NYU lecturer, half of BORDER/LINES, immigration wonk, other hats | Personal photography at Instagram.com/nycfelipe
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I think it’s perfectly reasonable to read into the fact that Trump just openly posted footage of the military straight up murdering eleven civilians on his orders. He wants people to know he can do it
Don't feel like doing a repost that puts the murder video on the timeline yet again but do feel like repeating the point that the president just straight-up assassinated 11 people for supposedly doing something that wouldn't be a death-penalty crime if they were caught and convicted
I remember these, and I remember what happened when they were first implemented
Having now seen the video, it's even worse. I figured they at least interfaced with the ship from another vessel but instead it looks like they just shot a missile at it from a predator. Are these international waters? Under what possible legal pretense could this be justified?
This kind of thing was a huge controversy during the so-called War on Terror and now it's barely a blip in the news. So the federal government has fully moved into granting itself the authority to kill foreign civilians anywhere, anytime as long as it nods to some sort of criminal activity, I guess
I’m not personally aware of any legal authority for the federal government to just shoot a torpedo or whatever at someone suspected of a crime?
Yeah I mean no political theorist or even serious observer would have thought that there was any real chance up until pretty recently, but I think a sober analysis now pegs it at certainly more than zero and far higher than comfort level
I think an actual shooting civil war is extraordinarily unlikely, no more than maybe 4 or 5% chance, but that's still a hell of a lot higher than it was six months ago
I don't want to be an alarmist here but if I'm Pritzker I might start giving some thought to differentiation of my own state National Guard's uniforms
Is there any precedent for a state sending its National Guard uninvited into another? I mean, that's skirting close to an attack
Ah it seems like this may not be federalization, but then again, aren't there a whole slate of other legal issues with one state sending its National Guard uninvited into another? bsky.app/profile/qjur...
I know that Breyer’s finding that Trump violated Posse Comitatus with the LA deployments is technically just focused on California but surely the admin cannot just legally deploy troops right for the exact same purposes that a federal judge just said were plainly unlawful?
I love how like last year some journalists were like “Elon’s layered politics, complex and indiscernible to even careful observers, a mystery of our time” and now Elon just basically says the fourteen words every other day
I know there’s so much about Obama birtherism that was insane and infuriating but for some reason the thing that really makes me lose my mind is the fact that he would *still have been eligible to be president if he’d been born in Kenya.* like even on its own terms it doesn’t make sense!
I’m at this restaurant and they’re playing this horrible shit that sounds like worst kind of Great Value Taylor Swift so we shazamed it and of course it is AI generated
It might seem small in the grand scheme but I think the DC Circuit Court’s derailing of Boasberg’s attempt at contempt proceedings against the DOJ will go down as a catastrophic moment
That’s your kink, buddy, and you’re doing it right out here in front of everyone. Have some shame
To turn your stupid idiom back at you, a right-winger is just someone who’s never been thrown against a wall by a cop or soldier who enjoys total impunity
Some day you’ll tire of the taste of boot, and you’d better hope it’s not too late then
Also, “crime” would be way down but theft, violence, and murder would all be common, except it would be the state and well-connected actors perpetrating it and there would be no recourse
To state the obvious, petty street crime would likely be very rare in a totalitarian state where the military could execute you on suspicion of shoplifting; doesn’t mean this should be seriously discussed as an anti-crime stately. “Lowering crime” is not the only prerogative in a civilized society
Like four months ago we were talking about domestic deployment of the military as some big red line and now we’re talking about it as like a new approach to street sweeping
I am generally driven to give my colleagues the benefit of the doubt but it’s just wildly disappointing to see supposedly serious journalists discussing a military invasion of the nation’s cities as if it were just another policy
As long as we finish the job this time
Not tonight, I already went to bed very late last night and if it happens I am going to have to be up all night
Almost just got run over by a guy who was preoccupied not even texting, but vaping. Now that would be an undignified way to go
It was! what got you listening to yesterday's show?
I have to say "it would be very humiliating if you pointed my crimes out, your honor" is at least a creative strategy
Kind of wild to get this as an official press release from the agency
I'm sure this is being cut up into Taliban propaganda as we speak, and it'll be pretty effective
Damn, OK, moving it to top of list
Should I watch Andor
"In 2025, the revolving door between the federal government & the corporations that encircle it has been 'Trump-sized.'" As @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social writes, offices on K St are filling up with Trump administration veterans just 7 months in, while lobby firms with Trump ties are rolling in cash.
This often gets framed as a boon for the tech industry, and it is, but I also would not be a journalist in the United States today without it. This will be strike many industries
WSJ: ChatGPT fueled a 56-year-old tech industry veteran’s paranoia, encouraging his suspicions that his mother was plotting against him.... On Aug. 5, Greenwich police discovered that Soelberg killed his mother and himself in the $2.7 million Dutch colonial-style home where they lived together.
If you thought gutting FEMA was bad, the administration is now staking its ground explicitly on the side of the fires
Easy to roll your eyes at this as pure lib-owning but the subtext is that the administration is saying to everyone who wants to do extrajudicial violence on its behalf: you are part of our army. This violence is legitimate use of force because you’re our soldier
I’m going to keep saying this. No one really wants to go there but we’re not far off
This is especially odd for a publication that tends to be as meticulous and locally grounded as Bolts!
Has been clear for some time now that federal government announcements that once would have been taken as basically authoritative should be viewed with skepticism now
They might have extremely different opinions on it and how it *should* work, but most people from hard left to hard right basically have similar understandings of how the system works, and they are both very wrong
If there’s one thing that pretty much every political demographic in the country, across the spectrum from left to right, holds in common is the conviction that immigration law and policy is *far* more liberal and less convoluted than it actually is. It is perhaps the most uniform political view
In @slate.com, I caution against lumping Abrego García’s case in with the administration’s general immigration clampdown. I think it is better understood as the endpoint of the same strategy employed against Lisa Cook: bringing down state power on enemies, with whatever the government can latch onto
In a bold move to cement its position, the new junta seized control of the main transport artery between the nation's political capital - which they now control - and its financial one, which they do not. Armed loyalists roam the site demanding to see freedom-of-movement papers. bit.ly/4fWlaKR
Let's be clear about what this is: it's an effort to maim and kill immigrants by cutting them off from necessary post-disaster aid. People will die, by design
Now that’s refreshing
I've definitely aired this gripe before but if you are described as a director of communications or marketing or external relations or whatever and it takes me in excess of one minute to find your contact information, you are not doing your job well
I hope the damages are unmanageable. I hope OpenAI collapses under the weight of the liabilities and Altman is left destitute. I hope it serves as a warning to the others
They really just turned these accounts over to 4chan Nazis
The double tap strike on Gaza hospital that killed multiple journalists was targeting… a Hamas camera, says the IDF. Not a terrorist. Not a fighter. A fucking camera. The world has lost its way if those responsible aren’t punished for this absurd atrocity. www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...
Journalists everywhere need to stand in solidarity on this killing spree and resulting news blackout. See below in this thread for some actions and stay tuned here https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hits-gaza-hospital-killing-least-20-people-including-five-journalists-2025-08-25/
If you know or have ever worked with Ricky Patel of ICE HSI, please get in touch. I’m at felipedlh.58 on Signal and happy to anonymize any info you might have. No work devices or accounts
This, as I’ve said before, is about much more than just this case. The government is signaling, pretty successfully, that if you piss them off they will come after you with everything and make your life untenable whether or not you ultimately might “win” your case. Best to just shut up, or else
Important addendum to NOT do this if you’re a noncitizen. You may have heard that a law was passed to allow noncitizen voting in local elections but that was struck down. Registering would be a crime, do not do it
A reminder that if you’re talking about crime rates in occupied cities, you’ve already lost
I’m sorry but we’re taking about troops in the streets, martial law, enforced disappearance. This is not especially complex and it should be pretty easy to figure out how to communicate about it, even if it is not an easy situation to deal with
I really, really don’t think what blue voters want to hear right now is “military takeover is redundant because we can crack down on crime more effectively.” They want to hear “this is fascism and we won’t stand for it” and vanishingly few national dems are doing that
Not sure I get the discourse over the word “crackdown.” To me it does not imply legitimacy. I think it’s accurate to call what Trump is doing a crackdown, no?
1) this is auto-golpe stuff and 2) is it just me or does he look like he’s kinda wasting away? He looks 30 pounds lighter than a couple months ago
Bumbling, preternaturally ignorant, power-drunk idiots stumbling around triggering mass suffering, chaos, and death, without caring or in many cases even realizing, knowing only that they’ll be rewarded for it and never face any repercussions
Few things: 1) these visas are generally easily revocable anyway so not sure what else they can really do here / this is likely for show 2) this includes millions of people outside the U.S. so good luck with deportability and 3) they want to Old Yeller what’s left of scientific research in the U.S.
I think we have different standards for what constitutes “cool”
I'm not totally convinced yet that these systems will work that well in general but I am totally convinced that this is the goal
I don’t know how it is for everyone else but I’m 30 and live in NYC and it’s actually a relative anomaly in my circles to meet people my age or younger who *are* planning on having kids
We are truly entering a golden age of fraud. You can do whatever you want, there's no consequence, go nuts!* *applies to white collar crime only
Over 200 immigrants have been arrested in DC since last week. We’ve heard very little about them, but a few bits of stories here: Christian Carías Torres from Venezuela; Gabriel Ravelo Torrealba, 22, from Venezuela, entered on CBP One; Jose Peña, from El Salvador, lives with his 16 year old son.
Just looked and unfortunately it does seem to be now sold out :(
Who else is gonna be at the 404 Media party tomorrow?
One pretty depressing consequence of all this is that there’s an expanding pool of areas in the U.S. that I feel like I probably just shouldn’t go anymore. Luckily I took a very nice trip to DC a few weeks ago
I’d be genuinely curious what happens if someone just refuses. The agents arrest them, or course, but assuming they’re a citizen with no outstanding warrants, on what charges could they possibly bring them up?
Plea for fellow reporters: can we stop reflexively referring to everyone the feds randomly arrest as “undocumented” or “in the country illegally?” We frankly have no idea who they’re detaining or what their status is most of the time, and there are *many* reports of people with status being detained
Also I’m not an expert on Chinese culture but I don’t think this is how it works? Also it sounds like there were, what, tops $300 in there? That’s kind of an insulting attempted bribe!
I’m sorry but the whole “this was a cultural miscommunication, nothing to see here” thing would be a lot more believable had she not *already been a city official who got embroiled in a straw donor investigation*
So… martial law?
Everyone who emerges from these schools without being a barely-functional illiterate moron will be lucky, though of course they'll all get big executive jobs anyone because they're on a conveyor belt to power
Believe it or not this one story has two of these guys
www.reuters.com/world/us/thi...
No way to read this except as setting the stage for militias, right?
Well, I suppose I should start getting ready to sue 🙃
They’re really gonna try this again after fielding hundreds of lawsuits and folding the last time?
Wrote for @newrepublic.com about how this was the obvious endpoint and not an aberration of the national security state, as many of us have been screaming for years. If we ever get out of this mess, we must recognize that leaving the tools of authoritarianism laying around means they’ll be used
ICE is about to hire every angry incel that couldn't make the cut for the military
This is the natural trajectory of a sick culture that has relinquished all claim to personhood or privacy
Rereading this @redford.bsky.social piece on this year's bitcoin conference because it is just that good
I mean, go for it, guys, but relatively few of these people are more than a smidge left of center
Like there’s a mention in passing that they did this exact thing — holding another crypto holder hostage at gunpoint demanding his assets — and then we just move along to them partying in New York. Was there… no consequence to that? Like were they even charged?
I’m sorry but the wildest thing about this piece is that it mentions that this was the *third* time this duo kidnapped someone at gunpoint and both prior times it was reported to the cops? I’m pretty cynical about what the rich can get away with but surprised “armed kidnapping” is up there
Lot of places now seem to have a rule that camera equipment must be “handheld,” which seems designed to prevent commandeering the space for photoshoots with strobes etc, but ignores that it’s effectively impossible to shoot trichromes or 4x5 handheld even if shooting *out* or on the periphery
More like Polatsuck
I’m actually pretty curious about this from a media crit perspective. A lot of these publications have ostensibly very strict standards for declaratory statements, especially on controversial issues. Why short circuits there when Bondi puts out a memo?
They can't even trot out the "this isn't actually a detention facility" bullshit with this one. Just straight up telling a member of Congress to his face that they have no intention of following black-letter law
I really feel like we ought to be able to say "this is insane authoritarianism" and move on rather than apparently have to have a big public discussion about the exact per-capita murder rate that justifies *militarily occupying the nation's capital*
The American press and public really need to figure out how to simply dismiss Trump's pretextual claims for authoritarian attacks and then resist the attack itself, not debate the claim. We have spent months asking "but is the Ivy League really antisemitic?" and now "but is DC really crime-ridden?"
I’m a little confused by all the headlines stating that Bondi has replaced the DC police commissioner. According to who? According to Bondi? So what? That doesn’t make it true
This cannot possibly be legal?
I wonder if a significant expansion of the New York State Guard could gain some traction among Albany lawmakers (not the state’s National Guard, but the state militia that is under solely the governor’s control)
The trouble is if I go and describe this in exact detail to a normie tuned-out person who isn’t following the news or terminally online, they straight up won’t believe me
I don't know who would run it, but I think a serious, respected journalist or commentator should write the “at some point, we are going to have to shoot them” piece, not as ideological bluster or macho wish-fulfillment but as a sober and somber examination of that fact and its grave consequences
Whey Standard 