Tried that in Scandinavia. Doesn’t really work. Mostly seems to be that giving people choice means fewer choose.
Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. Commenting generally on immigration law and policy. Retweets =/= endorsements, views are my own.
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Tried that in Scandinavia. Doesn’t really work. Mostly seems to be that giving people choice means fewer choose.
I think about this character too much.
It’s so good.
Birth rates are lowering *literally everywhere.* The only countries which keep growing in power will be the ones which continue to grow, and without immigration that will not be “the West.”
It’s from I Think You Should Leave. The sketch is great. youtu.be/7xS9Y_mjTjc?...
Vanessa Bayer’s delivery of this line never fails to make me laugh.
The Trump administration used Benny Johnson's claims that his house was "burned to the ground" and that "people were murdered in my front yard" to justify its federal takeover of DC. @kenbensinger.bsky.social found out that Johnson made it all up. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/b...
Jerry Nadler has had immigrants’ backs his whole career. His office in Congress has been working hard on positive immigration legislation for decades. I’m sad to see him go but I can’t help but feel glad he is able to leave in good health and with time to enjoy retirement.
A well-deserved retirement for a true mensch.
Here's the response from Paul Bryant, the Black veteran and lawyer whom the govt arrested in part bc he had a legal weapon in DC, to USG attempt to get him detained. It leans heavily into the lack of Body Cam proving he shoulder checked some Guardsmen. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Crime is literally lower than it has been in the entire life of every single non-senior-citizen American. If you are under age 65 you have never lived at a time with lower property crime rates, lower violent crime rates or lower homicide rates. Never.
$1,000,000 a day.
NEW: Counsel for the migrant children say that, as they understand it, all putative class members have now “been deplaned and returned to ORR custody.” As for the delay, they add that they inadvertently overlooked the part of the court’s order requiring them to file a report.
Fear of crime: an unholy alliance between politicians that need a cudgel, local news that needs clicks, social media's ability to share viral anecdotal crime stories, police that need justification to exist, and the fact that police/surveillance tech is a multi-billion dollar industry, and racism.
Bluesky is now among and often *the* highest referer to @motherjones.com. That’s traffic that has been additive. Only Twitter has dipped btw, the rest as fairly steady state (and instagram impressions and video views on all platforms up enormously.)
"Blueskyism" helped make The Onion one of the largest newspapers in the world in less than a year. If we had spent all of our time on Twitter, we'd be poorer, dumber and terminally ill with internet poisoning. He's just angry he's wasting away over there in a nazi agnostic lane that doesn't exist.
Yeah, I think they have a strong argument that ORR can play a role in creating a reunification process, but that would surely not be an *independent* process that doesn't interact with Title 8's removal structure.
Wish I’d been listening in. I am also confused. I had been under the impression that they were arguing that the OBBBA provision authorizing funding for the removal of UCs who withdraw their applications for admission.
Statute*
Prima facie, Elon Musk appears to be manipulating X platform for specific political voices he supports (as well as using his own account to amplify the far right & furthest right). In particular the platform dynamic has shifted & is helping Tommy Robinson to be amplified more than Nigel Farage.
This is also not one for my knowledge. Certainly, the idea that ORR could independently run its own repatriation service seems wildly wrong. My read of the statue suggests ORR could probably create some kind of voluntary process *in harmony with* Title 8, but not separate and parallel to.
It is pretty funny how transparent it is.
Courts still matter.
For today's "One First," I wrote about Friday's circuit-court rulings in the tariffs and Venezuelan TPS cases, and the procedural reasons why they're likely to be just the first of a slew of cases about the *merits* of Trump policies that #SCOTUS will have to address during the October 2025 Term:
Keir Starmer just appointed Tim Allan, a board member of the anti trans hate group, Sex Matters, to be his new communications director.
You guys see where this is going? Right?
Sorry, but wtaf? This does absolutely nothing but ensure that even more people, including children, have to use irregular crossings, and blocks people who even this government have recognised are refugees from being with their families. This is utterly sickening from Labour. 1/
Summer 2025 was warmest on record - and repeat is now 70 times more likely, Met Office says
It is insane to me that the richest man in the world is using his global megaphone to call for millions of British people to be rounded up and deported (including my family) and somehow this isn’t even news.
To be clear, the “official” here is a paralegal. The attorney general of the United States fired a paralegal. She also concedes that disrespecting the National Guard is disrespecting “law enforcement,” which … the military cannot do under federal law. Happy Labor Day, Pam Bondi!
My inexpert opinion is still that, on balance, this figure is likely too high by a large degree. That’s because the analysis relies on a presumption that immigrant survey response rates haven’t changed, and I’d bet dollars to donuts they have.
The false, explicitly bigoted “great replacement” conspiracy theory has inspired some of the biggest terrorist attacks in recent years, including in Christchurch, New Zealand and El Paso, Texas. Transnational white nationalism—oxymoronic, yes, but nevertheless real—is a top terrorist threat today.
At least Cameron had the decency to look embarrassed when he dumped a mess on the lap of Theresa May.
Pure distillation of Trump's view that positive-sum trade is literally impossible—buying = losing & selling = winning, automatically But also a good view into the inconsistencies of his trade "demands". He's mad at India for its tariffs, but even zeroing them wouldn't be enough?
It’s just so transparently fake, too? I follow British politics more than the average American but even from my non-expert external opinion the stench of inauthentic desperation is palpable.
as, you know, a historian, I don’t love appeals to Britain’s humanitarian past: but this is absolutely the time a Labour politician should be wheeling out Britain’s “proud history of welcoming people in need” or whatever
I mean, would the average Lib Dem or Green voter want a Reform parliament and PM in exchange for a temporary resurgence?
From the U.S., Kier Starmer really does come across as a perfect example of you cannot successfully try to ape reactionary conservative politics in the long term. Labour got a single win and Starmer proceeded to drive the party into its worst polling in generations by courting the right.
Musk now supporting the deportation of anyone who isn’t white. *Do not* use the term “remigration”. It’s an attempt to normalise Nazi hate.
This is what a regular traffic stop looks like in DC now.
NEW: 72 of the 76 Guatemalan children previously boarded onto planes have been returned to ORR custody, per DOJ, with the remaining 4 expected to be returned in the next 15 min. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Bleak: www.wsj.com/world/europe...
JUST IN: Judge who blocked the transfer of about 600 Guatemalan minors from US to Guatemala Sunday is keeping a very tight leash on the government. Echoes of Alien Enemies Act litigation simply deafening here. Earlier: www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
MORE: Judge Sooknanan order DOJ to file yet another status report. She sets 10:45 pm deadline for Ensign to address whether all of the children have been returned to ORR custody.
Very good profile of the lawyer who chose this path www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Remember the Goolsbee Rule, also called the “pathological irony of crisis”: If you lose credibility, your statements begin to mean the opposite of what you say.
Want to clarify: these Guard were doing NOTHING. They were standing around with long guns.
At least 50 National Guard with long guns around Audi field and Navy Yard metro station as I leave the Washington Spirit soccer game. Free DC.
Once more for those in back: They were never going to be able to implement a mass deportation program without prioritizing people like this. Criminals and gang members are too hard to find and apprehend. Regular folks who show up to work, church, and their scheduled immigration appointments are not.
NEW: DOJ says the Guatemalan children have been removed from the planes and are "in the process" of being returned to custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
wow
(I get that everyone, myself included, has no love lost for Ensign, but this not some completely irrational explanation. The case was filed overnight, and he had to make sure his clients knew what they needed to do. If they did it, I think the timing of his status report today becomes a non-issue.)
Anna has had excellent coverage of this developing case in which the Trump administration tried to use the holiday weekend to secretly and illegally deport children.
Pritzker: "No one in the administration -- the president or anybody under him -- has called anyone in my administration or me. It's clear that in secret they're are planning this invasion with US troops."
(During today’s hearing, the judge said that her clerks have also been up since around 2:30 a.m., when she called them about the emergency motion for a temporary restraining order.) bsky.app/profile/anna...
Rudy Giuliani suffered severe injuries in a car accident last night, according to his spokesperson
Pour one out for Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s clerks this Labor Day weekend
These two cases are really about the same thing: The Trump Administration wants to find as many ways as possible to just grab and deport people without any checks, due process, or judges of any kind.
Can we stop to talk about how remarkable the timing was? Compliant at 1am, Judge engaged at 2am, ex parte call to the Government at 2:30am (they did not answer), TRO at 4am? On a Sunday of a holiday weekend?!
The LGML case came very close to being JGG redux. But just before the hearing began, the judge decided not to wait. She entered a TRO barring removal of all the children. That made all the difference: DHS already had the kids loaded on planes. One plane even took off (then turned around).
Judge Sooknanan: As I said at the start of this hearing, I got a call at 2:36 am [last night] because the government chose the wee hours of the morning on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend to execute a plan to move these children. That's why we're here.
It appears the Trump admin may again be lying to a federal judge.
Sooknanan then says that she had an opportunity during the break to read some of the declarations filed by the named plaintiffs. She wants to read from them because they underscore the conflicting information she's received from the government about the children they want to remove.
Here's the complaint filed late last night. One of the named plaintiffs is as young as 10. Judge Sooknanan already entered a TRO to bar the removal of named plaintiffs, and a new TRO just hit the docket for the larger putative class. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
DEVELOPING: Advocates are seeking a court order to block the Trump administration’s effort to deport hundreds of unaccompanied minor children to Guatemala. Judge abruptly moved 3 pm hearing up to 12:30 after she was notified that some children “are in the process of being removed" today.
Ensign said he was not aware of the broader order Sooknanan just issued, so she urged him to check it and ensure it was circulated to the Trump administration so there would be no confusion. Sooknanan takes a 5 minute recess to let him do that. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
Not sure whose fault it is primarily that most people don't seem to know that the president is basically a manager whose job is to carry out the will of Congress, and not The Country's Boss
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
Those look great. Excellent interior!
I know! I love learning the history of food. Like that the ciabatta is a modern invention because Italy wanted to compete with the baguette.
I think this is an important and useful jumping off point! “man” can be in contrast to “woman” but it can also be in contrast to “boy”
Right but weren’t those loafs also hideously adulterated?
It’s funny because a nice white sandwich loaf is about the easiest bread to make at home, if my childhood experience of my parents buying a bread machine is any guide. It was almost set and forget and made a pretty decent loaf.
I’m no scholar on bread but I am aware that the modern enriched white loaf is a solidly 20th century invention, and most people ate whole grain darker loafs until the mid-20th century.
Does this woman realize she can still buy her bland enriched flour white bread if she wants? More to that matter, does she realize that the bread she thinks is some kind of tradition is itself a very modern invention in historical context?
The plan is completely illegal; it’s openly in violation of black letter law. Nevertheless, the Trump admin is trying to claim that the budget bill effectively amended the law; even though it was a budget bill, and cannot by definition amend the law.
BREAKING: A federal judge has *blocked* the Trump administration from abruptly deporting 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children — perhaps within a matter of hours — granting an emergency restraining order after advocates called the plan illegal + dangerous. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting 10 Guatemalan children back to their home country, and scheduled an emergency hearing on Sunday afternoon to determine whether the deportations were legal.
Not a very long path from "Why wouldn't you want the regime to deploy federal troops in your city when it reduces carjackings?" to "Why would you be opposed to the erection of internment camps for deviants when it reduces crime?" And a good chunk of mainstream media will just follow along.
I made a spreadsheet of all the federal cases filed as part of Trump's DC crackdown. It's not going great
Police arrest pastors protesting removal of St. Pete's "Black History Matters" mural - Axios Tampa Bay share.google/mVzXV5PqJUyM...
Ethnic cleansing.
The headline calls this unexpected consequences, but I would call this extremely expected consequences.
The thing about a lot of these never Trump Republicans is that, unlike a lot of institutionalist Dems who think the fever will break and we can all return to comity or whatever, these guys saw the rot up close and know the only appropriate response is to tear them out of government root and branch.
a bunch of you really believe that trump is the unstoppable god king who can do whatever he declares and it is dumb as hell
not just that he has no constitutional authority, there isn't even any particular legal or institutional mechanism by which the president can make anyone treat this as anything other than a weird advisory opinion.
“I love this city fiercely. It has given me every good thing in my life. It has given me my children. It has given me my friends who are now my family. It has given me purpose.“ thetriibe.com/2025/08/trum...
As our neighbors vanish daily, this serves as a meaningful way to honor them and highlight the extent of this issue throughout the city’s
In @nytopinion.nytimes.com Today, as the Israeli government “calls on tens of thousands of reservists to participate in the cruel re-occupation of Gaza City, I implore my fellow soldiers: Refuse to report,” Yotam Vilk writes in a guest essay.
The extent to which ICE is ignoring all civil rights and due process is astounding — and indicative of a culture where they’ve been told they can do literally no wrong. Agency and admin leaders must face sanctions and legal consequences.
For those keeping score at home, the Navy has sent 3 destroyers, a guided-missile cruiser, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine and an amphibious ready group with a Marine Expeditionary Unit to the southern Caribbean. New @taskandpurpose.com taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-sh...
Best (and spiciest) vindaloo I’ve ever had in my life was in London. The Indian food there is incredible for sure!
What the fuck. Article ends noting that there are now 46 fewer personnel fighting this fire than there were on Thursday. Washington state needs to look at every piece of data we share with any federal agency and not share it if it could potentially be used by immigration
Looks great too!
It was crispy on the outside with a nice slightly soft inner face. Perfection.
Ooh, good to know, we’re up that way from time to time.
I’m absolutely begging reporters to stop suggesting that Lisa Cook stated that she would use both properties as a principal residence on her mortgage APPLICATIONS Mortgage APPLICATIONS and mortgage AGREEMENTS are not the same thing We have no idea what she represented on the APPLICATIONS
Without congressionally approved funding, public media stations say communities will be left with aging infrastructure amid growing risks from extreme weather.
In DC you can get a good one at Spice 6 right around the corner from Gallery Place.