Thank you! ❤️
she/her Book on sheriffs & democracy https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/707263/the-highest-law-in-the-land-by-jessica-pishko/ Repped by @rhaliterary DM for Signal or email jesspish@gmail.com “Women aren’t typically this crazy about politics.”
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Thank you! ❤️
So I veer towards the second, but I try to represent the visions of best practices that others have advocated very hard for.
it is crazy how there are barely any school buses any more! i remember everyone took the bus when i was a kid.
you are right.
oh true i was joking around. but you are right.
stfu i just died laughing
well have you see some people's hair?
i am not the best expert. i expect they have their own issues, but they are more governable because under a central authority and one set of rules. (I think mostly?) When I talk to intl scholars, they are usually confused why there are so many kinds of police doing whatever they want.
We're returning to the Cedar Rapids office of Homeland Security Investigations tomorrow morning. I'm given to understand the Goon Squad is preparing a reception to intimidate us, and hoo boy do they have another think coming.
Yeah there's a sort of cross-over because policing has fully rejected feminism instead of trying to live awkwardly alongside it.
Which is worse, bloody or bloodless. If you ask me, dead is dead is dead.
Is crime interpersonal -- attacks, assaults, murder, domestic violence, carjackings -- or is it the polite kind -- pollution, starvation, lack of medical care, substance abuse, destruction of the natural landscape.
curious as to his views!
And so it goes. You can say the same about genocide/ crimes against humanity. Many in the West will readily say Rwanda was a genocide because it was bloody and involved machetes. Starving the people of Gaza? Same result, less blood on specific hands. There's nothing clean about violence.
bulldoze the houseless and let them die or quietly send them to jails with little pillows so they can suffer elegantly.
oh yes absolutely
You can say the same about military conquest -- polite drone strikes that murder people -- not because of the religion or race natch but despite it -- from afar versus Eddie Gallagher executing Muslims with his knife and bragging about it afterwards. Conquest is conquest.
What I will say is that LEO themselves want the brute force model bc that's what they vote for every time. So perhaps that is all we need to know.
It's not surprising that a lot of people who are horrified by masked ICE agents acting with brute force want to turn to a technocratic "educated" solution that is more pleasing to the outside observer.
Most of the proposed sheriff reforms are designed to move sheriffs into more technocratic policing -- body cams, training, more qualifications, getting rid of elections, etc -- something sheriffs have proudly (if inconsistently) resisted. But there's not much evidence to suggest one is "better."
The debate is really over two visions of law enforcement: one is based on "race-neutral," technocratic policing that relies on "hot spots" and surveillance data. The other is brute force, street-smarts, never filling out paperwork. The problem is neither one works. www.vice.com/en/article/u...
lol at the raccoon. shoot it! shoot it!
It was easy to look at sheriffs acting mostly ridiculous attempting to overturn elections, and they were unquestionably kookoo. But people did (wrongfully) go to prison in AZ and FL and TX and there's a sort of cloud around a few issues.
the "drive fast, shoot things" mentality, as i call it
I get that; we don't want to concede ground. I don't always know myself how to balance it.
I will never not be amazed when cops refuse to stop high speed chases despite all the evidence being against them. They are so bad and so easy not to do.
totally kookoo
I agree with Bouie and many others to the extent that some people are all too willing to accept defeat/ complete military takeover and not try to resist. There is a way to defend against DOJ harassment and prosecution, which might be funding defense.
Not saying it is correct, rather that it is one prong to the strategy that cannot be ignored. If the feds come after you, it is very very very bad!
I think it's less impermissible than it looks. Both parties have used the DOJ for political purposes for decades. The War on Terror unleashed an entire regime where a group of people were harassed and jailed for no reason.
I think that it's easy to see incompleteness as failure, but that is not how MAGA does see it. OTOH, I also think knowing the strategy and learning from it can be resistance. Democrats kinda flopped on immigration bc they already ceded to propaganda.
Look at the AG's list of sanctuary jurisdictions right now. It has already made some places cave. Not all, but some. My theory is that many people don't realize how much pressure the DOJ and FBI can put on people. They cause folks to confess to fake terrorism plots!
I spent a lot of time reporting on this in 2020 and 2022 and 2024. Many of the efforts failed, yes, largely because the people doing it were not competent. But did real people go to jail? Yes. Did laws change? Yes. They take prior incompetent methods and refine them. AFL is doing it now.
I think the point is to say that the legal harassment sometimes works, albeit not completely. Can he completely outlaw mail in voting? No. But can he make it very very hard, ruining lives in the process? yes.
I agree with you -- there's the bullying/ harassment (cut off funding, lawsuits), the propaganda, and the legal mechanisms. I have the same concerns about sanctuary jurisdictions tbh; they are right now doing this strategy with sanctuary cities, which are also protected by law in theory.
i have seen a few videos of these and.... what will police NOT buy, is the question.
it's a wonderful book. my favorite of the year by far.
It can be okay! I did that too and it’s fine but not my fave (I need to get it touched up anyhow)
A Labor Day reminder: today there isn't a single city, metro area, or state in the U.S. where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest 2-bedroom apartment. Millions of people with jobs—even multiple jobs—aren't safe from homelessness in this country.
So glad to see him reelected, and y'know *in* office since they literally changed the locks on him I wrote about this town last year bc there was a lawsuit to make it have elections, which coincidentally stopped around when the Voting Rights Act was passed 🙃 ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...
Some won’t do other people’s designs for various reasons (sometimes bc it won’t wrap well on a human body— designs don’t transfer the same as on paper). Instagram. What kind of style — color/ no color. Don’t pick anyone with no wait list. 😂
Always bad 😂
same! i am not totally sure why.
I'm not trying to give them a pass at all. My interviews have shown me that they view their beliefs as genuine.
i think that's right; well said.
Without question a horrible thing.
I dont think people think they are inconsistent even though, of course, we are to some degree.
In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg's charitable foundations served to shore up election infrastructure. I doubt that will happen now. So who will fill that void? www.propublica.org/article/heat...
Also true.
The police really are everywhere, even amongst those nominally helping the public in disaster. stateline.org/2025/08/31/f...
I tend to feel the "hypocrisy" argument is rather unhelpful and outright false, but I hear your point.
💯 Cowie is great on this, and I can say talking to people, they do not think they are inconsistent. (Or, if they are extra-thoughtful, they would say they are no more inconsistent than liberals/ leftists, which, fair point.)
Yes, I think that's right. The coalition isn't a monolith and much smarter people than I have said (and I agree) that finding those fault lines will split it.
Respected, maybe, by force if needed, but probably not "liked."
Every 2A stan believes they are enforcing the law. None of them think they are breaking it. They believe Trump is enforcing the law.
i appreciate her brother's comment was something like "I figured." I mean, yikes.
lol. i talk to a lot of parents of boys, and i can see that it is genuinely something to be concerned about.
Said with respect, I genuinely do not think it is hypocrisy. The gun culture tells white men that they are police, protectors, virtuous warriors. See, for example, Ahmaud Arbery's murder. They do not see the MAGA government as tyrannical.
This plus Hope Florida would sink many a man.
i'm actually of the view that men suffer, too, especially if they don't look, walk, talk or act "manly." (or do pushups and other weight-lifting, evidently?)
Other states should think about this when they try to open their own state-run facilities because they are on the hook. (Hoping liability worries at least some state leaders?)
Remember how DHS very studiously and repeatedly said they DID NOT pay for this? (and they didn't) apnews.com/article/flor...
I think this story is nuts, if not a shocker. But also, people knew this whole time!
🤔
that was the logic of making women's prisons as punitive as men's.
There is always the feminist and the anti-feminist, the embrace of white feminine beauty, the rejection of it, all must be moms, dominating the most familiar role for women. Poised to be seen in contrast, a way to integrate women in the body politic without questioning the body politic itself.
I think it's interesting that these women archetypes continue to be admired. On the right, it's people like Pamela Bondi, Noem, barbie combat figures hiding their feminism beneath femininity. On the left, it's Spanberger, Slotkin, distinctly feminist technocrats who fail to see the contradiction.
I understand the appeal for women to do these jobs. Indeed, for my generation, I think it was seen as a way for smart woman to gain respect. I have no doubt they are smart and driven. But girlboss feminism doesn't alter the political reality of what these violence institutions do.
These are just the new "lady prosecutors" -- women who defend law-and-order but, because of their gender, are perceived as doing it with lady-like grace. Of course, the problem is, there was no grace to running blacksites or mass surveillance or drone strikes. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/o...
The lack of a draft really made it worse.
Yes, I think that's right although I do think the forever war brain has really seeped into the far-right to the extent that they see the enemy from abroad here at home, leading to the extreme nativism. (There was that after/ during Vietnam, too, but I think it's a bit more intense)
Oathkeepers, all those groups, are largely veterans. And, legitimately, some were very harmed by the forever wars, on disability, etc., And some got their start protesting "sharia law."
Michael Flynn as well, ousted from the Obama admin for being too racist (when Obama embraced the "violent extremism" approach).
It's kinda ironic that Democrats are embracing forever war architects, Spanberger, the Chaneys, and the GOP is embracing Laura Loomer, Eddie Gallagher, Hegseth, outright racists.
Yes, I think they would argue that mealy-mouthed bureaucrats forced them to be pc, which would include even George Bush. And I think it resonates with a lot of voters who (without perhaps outright admitting to racism) see people who served and were not treated well.
I think most of the new right does — Hegseth would say they failed in eradicating the existential threat beyond. The war was lost and now is here.
She crawls fast!
Experiments!
Yeah I think the right has done a good job fostering experimentation. 😞
I agree!
💯 not to say it doesn’t suck bc voting should be easy.
Not to disagree with the doomer point, but rather that resistance should account for all of these. IDK why but the Democrats haven't seemed to be very good at it!
The right takes a fairly standard and multi-pronged approach to all these issues. 1) Change and use the law to arrest and penalize; 2) Bully and harass via formal and informal methods; and 3) Propaganda to normalize.
It's true that people can ignore stationed ICE agents, but selective prosecution and/ or administrative decisions by some of these election-conspiracy folks are harder for the public to see. Hence why there were tons are articles about militias and very few about the ppl going to prison.
The people who did resist in the past few elections were clerks and government workers (who are mostly not that political), but elected recorders and secretaries of state are targets. nvm arresting people and charging them with crimes.
From what I've seen reporting on a local level, the biggest concerns are probably not armed agents stationed everywhere but 1) the use of snitches and informants and 2) targeting certain neighborhoods, types of people, and methods of voting for arrest and criminal prosecution (which does happen!)
Some are really small! (Like university police etc)
I don’t even know all the federal ones myself. I think there are like 35?
“We cannot judge by today’s standards”
I watched Eddington and… a veteran sheriff knows who decides his budget.
There are around 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the USA. Everything is carceral. You cannot interact with the government without interacting with police; this includes walking outside.
I appreciated this take and the moral stance it makes for immigrants. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/o...
It’s not shocking I suppose but I am endlessly fascinated with how much lore there is around “good guy who did bad things for mostly good reasons.” Killing your wife and covering it up kinda pops that bubble.
There’s a pretty good podcast but I haven’t seen the book…
an @lataco.bsky.social x @msnbc.com crossover is something I've been wanting to make happen for months. so much respect and admiration for what @eltragon.bsky.social and the team have been doing all summer documenting ICE raids in L.A. honored to have him on while I'm filling in for Steph this week.
Oh yeah no question.
The media, including social media, is a bit obsessed (imho) with portraying immigrants as helpless victims (or on the right, a threat) without also showing how immigrants made the pro-immigrant movement happen.
It’s hard to know where he was in the process but yes. U visas in my experience are kind of a sad joke.
Nothing will work. We should give up and just sink slowly into the autocratic abyss.
This is why dividing immigrants into “good” and “bad” just helps Trump. They will say this man broke the law when he tried his best not to, it seems. It’s a distinction without a difference.