On the A train and five police just arrested a person sleeping on bench. One cop banged on the pole next to him to wake him up. Cops demanded that move. He was now just sitting there, doing nothing. Still they demanded he scoot over. Why? No idea, made no sense.
I know people are understandably on edge after yesterday. But harassing and arresting a person sleeping on a half-empty subway car to the horror of the passengers inside doesn’t make anyone feel safer. It was cruel and unnecessary.
When he left the subway the car, they let him walk 10 yards and then handcuffed him. The subway car was horrified or confused. A person next loudly asked the car, “Why would they arrest him?”
Mahua Moitra says she knows how to defeat Narendra Modi. Does her brand of unapologetic secularism represent the way forward for an embattled opposition?
This is a very good, terrifying piece. Combine Chinese surveillance tech with Modi's Hindu nationalism and Muslims in Kashmir could face dystopian oppression not unlike Uighurs in Xinjiang.
Great, revealing piece about appalling NYPD practices. Police swabbed hundred of Black men, used an unapproved private DNA lab, and then the Queens DA never admitted it in court.
An antifa group leaked an email database from the Sons of Confederate Veterans to
@jamesstout
: Not an insignificant number of .gov, .mil, and .edu email addresses. Plus, it turns out you can be a member of a neo-Confederate group and stay in the military.
Leading the NYT this morning was a headline claiming that Israel was scaling back its war on Palestinians. That's just not true—the war is escalating, becoming more deadly. The latest by
@attackerman
.
The signature 'D' in block caps is the most heart-breaking single letter I've ever seen. And the fact that this form exists is window into the routinization of horror:
"In 2022 Joe Manchin (and others) didn’t want to break the filibuster to reinstate the assault weapons ban after it passed the House, so I guess Americans suffered 648 mass shootings last year to preserve the Senate’s sacred traditions."
Courts have overruled the bump stock ban. This is not surprising. The hard truth is that gun bans, while practically effective, don't work as a legal proposition. Conservative judges simply won't let them work. (A)
My latest in
@thenation
The NYT should not be citing these sources. Setting up cameras to spy on sex workers and their clients?! As a friend recently put it, the drive to save women from exploitation and the drive to punish them come the same place: A belief that women shouldn't control their bodies.
UPDATE: Israel detains Jibril Rajoub as soon as he touches down. Israel's foreign minister had threatened Rajoub if he kept up his campaign to bar Israel from the Olympics and World Cup. As
@edgeofsports
and
@JulesBoykoff
report, Rajoub never let up.
Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestine Olympic Committee, told
@EdgeofSports
and
@JulesBoykoff
that he saw something hopeful in Paris: the warm treatment of the Palestinian athletes. Rajoub described them as being received “with roses.”
I've never been so insulted to win an award. In the past for special citations, it's been "the journalists of Ukraine" or "Afghanistan journalism workers"—but this isn't "journalists of Gaza"; this is so vague as to not offend—now includes vast swaths of the industry.
Everywhere I saw it was the police instigating violence and goading violence. After watching the police violently arrest someone, a person next to me started yelling that these officers were aggro mall cops.
We have a long night ahead of us in Brooklyn. Our sole focus is deescalating this situation and getting people home safe. There will be a full review of what happened tonight. We don’t ever want to see another night like this.
.
@rafiazakaria
has a piece about white feminism and Afghanistan on her pub day! Congrats on the book! She argues, "The enduring logic was that if white feminists thought military intervention was a good thing, then Afghan women would too."
Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, East Timor, Bangladesh, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Cyprus, the Kurds, Bhopal disaster, and many more. A shot for every world historical crime that Kissinger was involved in would kill you too.
"People have voted. People have marched. People have knitted hats. People engaged in wholesale civil unrest for an entire summer during a pandemic. Nothing has stopped the conservatives."
The Dobbs decision overruling abortion is extreme, but Republicans justices have been promising to do exactly this.
Now that the Court has issued its decision, the only question for the rest of us is if we will accept it.
My latest in
@thenation
.
@susie_c
has a terrific piece outlining how health care consolidation made us all more vulnerable to a pandemic. Our system isn't designed for care; it's designed to maximize profit:
Inaccurate framing to say at odds with "union management." It was media workers who researched and voted for this dues increase proposal. It was me and 57 other workers representing their shops who unanimously concluded this was the best way forward—not "union management."
The Guild is running low on money, and an abrupt proposal for a dues increase to mitigate the shortfall has put union management at odds with members from the two big legacy shops that pay its bills: Reuters and The New York Times.
This is a particularly cruel law. If you're unhoused, how are you supposed to find or get to a job? It's not like LA has a great mass transit network. Another way to punish and ostracize the poor.
The motion to ban poor people from having bikes has passed with a 11-3 vote. Only
@mikebonin
@nithyavraman
@CurrenDPriceJr
voting no.
You can’t be poor in public in Los Angeles
This isn't even close to the first time that Glenn Kessler has done a terrible job "fact checking." The Nation's first article pointing out how Kessler "cannot be bothered with facts" was a decade ago!
"The choice between Gandalf and Saruman wasn’t hard for the free peoples of Middle Earth and shouldn’t be hard for America."
@ElieNYC
weighs in on Biden and Trump's age.
.
@kenklippenstein
with another scoop. The military warned the Trump administration about a shortage of ventilators, face masks and hospital beds back in 2017: The White House, of course, did nothing.
"If Google’s drive to control the markets related to display advertising is left unchecked, it will have the power to decide which publishers live and which die."
The Bloomberg campaign is an absurdist comedy.
@kenklippenstein
gets pure gold from Bloomberg staffers: “I once had a woman chase me back to my car demanding that I say you can’t buy the presidency.”
Have you gone to one of the protests? Then the military may have it eyes on you. In seven cities, the Defense Department is tracking protests: Another scoop from
@kenklippenstein
.
Some good news for today. It's rare to see
@ElieNYC
this optimistic. "I do not expect Jackson’s confirmation hearing to be *that* hard. Her qualifications are impeccable, her decisions are mainstream, and her demeanor is serious yet charismatic."
Jane McAlevey is a force of nature—her focus on power analysis has influenced so many organizers. "The renowned organizer and theorist has a terminal-cancer diagnosis."
A new precedent has been set. Will it tear the country apart? Will it be seen by many as victor’s justice? Or will it become a moment of reckoning, a sign that even someone who was once the most powerful person on the planet is not above the law?
.
@chrisgelardi
combs through
#BlueLeaks
and finds that "when it comes to policing Black Lives Matter, cops will view anything beyond a docile protest march as a threat":
"The fact that bulldozers have cropped up in both India and Israel as a chilling symbol of state repression is no coincidence. … the far-right regimes that govern the two countries share a common vision of a ethnic-majoritarian apartheid state."
Prop 22 shows just how much Citizens United has perverted politics. "An early voting survey found 40 percent of Californians who chose 'yes' thought they were doing so to help workers." A $250 million disinformation campaign will do that!
Modi's India has closed
@tkwmag
, imprisoned its editor
@pzfahad
, and compelled other outlets to delete old articles. “We see fact, reality, and words disappearing," a Kashmiri journalist told
@suchitrav
. "We also have mass graves for memory now.”
A good thread that reminds us of what should be obvious: The war on women and the war on trans people is the same damn war. It's the exact same organizations curtailing trans health care and abortion rights.
As I told
@brianbeutler
here, I've been using inclusive terms like "patients" and "pregnant people" to refer to those who get abortions for years for a simple reason:
They're accurate.
It's also accurate to say that abortion fundamentally shapes women's role in society.
The IDF targeted
@MohammRafik
, who writes fearlessly from Gaza for The Nation and Al Jazeera, by name. He and his family fled their home. I'm so proud to have signed this letter demanding that Israel end its attacks on journalists.
Strong evidence for what most people intuitively know. The quality of journalism—especially local journalism—affects the quality of the democracy. Invest in/donate to/subscribe to the publications that matter to you. You’re helping everyone.
Bernard Schwartz is a real hero in this story. The 92Y canceled Viet Thanh Nguyen's reading over his support of Palestinians. Schwartz put on the event anyway and will almost certainly lose his job. LinkedIn shows he's worked at the 92Y for 18 years.
Alas this is true. It's been great working working with Ken—but it does mean we're hiring. The Nation's DC correspondent is a storied position attached to some of the great names in journalism and also Ken Klippenstein: Please apply!
"We as workers must not forget the position we are in. It is our skills that create goods and services. And we must not allow outsiders to prevent us from doing the things we like to do and do so well." Karl Marx? No. Former Trail Blazer Bill Walton.
To hire Ronna McDaniel and then layoff actual reporters, some of whom worked to debunk her dangerous lies, is an insult to the journalists who work there and to the audience who tunes in. Just embarrassing.
Two weeks before
@NBCNews
proudly announced the hiring of Ronna McDaniel, execs illegally terminated 13 union journalists.
@Cesarconde_
never offered an explanation for the layoffs, but actions speak clearly — NBC prioritized an election denier over its own reporters.
This is a terrific profile of Elizabeth Warren's foreign policy adviser. But
@DavidKlion
does something else important here; he shines a light on the cautiousness of the Warren campaign.
Just thinking about some
@chick_in_kiev
's great lines in her review of Bari Weiss's book: "Weiss’s sole gift as a thinker is her ability to smuggle right-wing talking points into the perspective of a self-described 'reasonable liberal.'"
The left needs to face the truth: Maduro lost. If those who backed or still back the Bolivarian Revolution are to have any credibility going forward, they must first defend the popular sovereignty of Venezuelans. By
@AleVelascoNYU
.
Britney Spears "is experiencing an extreme abrogation of her civil rights that remains unquestioned, difficult to break, and hidden from public view."
@slooterman
on why
#FreeBritney
is a disability rights issue.
Britney Spears' attorney says she is afraid of her father, and will not resume her musical career so long as he has power over her. At a hearing, James Spears' attorneys said he has done an exemplary job and the conservatorship should stay in place.
A moving piece right til the end by
@unkyoka
. He reveals that ICE has been secretly incarcerating children in juvenile jails for months, even years at time:
there is a gruesome ostentatiousness to israel’s crimes over the past few days. al-shifa, the embassy, very obviously targeting aid workers—they’re showing off, putting on a display of their impunity. and the core of that impunity comes from one person: joe biden.
New:
@samthielman
talks with
@kenklippenstein
about the value of talking to rank and file bureaucrats, how he uses FOIA, and being the "Steve King guy"
There are many reasons why Shinzo Abe was terrible—his war-crimes denialism comes to mind—but he was also incredibly sexist—once calling feminist scholars "reminiscent of Pol Pot's faction." It wasn't just rhetoric, his economic policies were sexist too:
I really like
@HadasThier
's profile of Jamaal Bowman and his race against AIPAC. She captures two things especially well—Bowman's "principal energy" and the stakes, which couldn't be higher.
A moving interview with the mom of a Sandy Hook victim. "If you’re talking about gun violence, that [activism] was expected of us early… It tells us a bit about who we are as a nation, that we demand a certain level of performance of the people least equipped to do so."
On this day in 1876, an army of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho defeated Custer's 7th Cavalry. At the time, much of the media cried for vengeance. But The Nation contained a different take. "Who shall blame the Sioux for defending themselves?"
"
@tomtomorrow
was born in Wichita, Kans., in 1961, back in the days when the future still existed." Great first sentence in a very strong piece by
@HeerJeet
.
.
@rosemarieho_
has a terrific interview with Wu of
@RedCanarySong
. What needs to happen to make sex work safe? "Aside from the complete and total downfall of capitalism… access to health care."
Authorities in Jammu and Kashmir arrested
@pzfahad
, a Nation contributor and founder of
@tkwmag
, for publishing "anti-national content." The Nation stands unequivocally in support of Fahad.
Kshama Sawant let protesters into Seattle city hall. Here she is talking about the cruel logic of real estate capitalism. She's long been fighting economic barbarism:
What AOC is talking about here: "Right now, with the support of Twitch, gamers with the US military are spending hours with children as young as 13, trying to convince them to enlist." By
@JordanUhl
.
@AlxThomp
@allymutnick
@MaxRose4NY
Ah yes, the classic limousine liberal trope of not wanting 12 year olds to be targeted to complete military recruitment forms on video game platforms
Barbara Ehrenreich inspired me and nearly every journalist that I admire working today. She was funny and indefatigable. She was a member of
@thenation
editorial board and wrote dozens of pieces for us. Including some all-time greats:
You FOIA or get a leak, and you're sitting on hundreds—maybe thousands—of pages of documents. How do recognize a story? Learn from the best,
@kenklippenstein
, and decode a Homeland Security doc.
Have you been at a rally where the police have outnumbered protesters? Have you been kettled by the police? If you live in NYC and attend protests, you almost definitely have. Under a settlement agreement, the NYPD are not supposed to be doing this.
In this Debate on whether Biden should drop out,
@ettingermentum
makes a good point about why Kamala Harris would be the better candidate—but the reason why Harris would be an improvement is also why Biden might be willing to drive the country off a cliff.
“There is no music that you can play on the main stage during this convention that’s going to make us forget the sounds and the tears of all of the children that we saw laid on the hospital floors.”
@sarahlazare
on the doctors traveled to the DNC.
"Just as Miller regurgitated war propaganda on behalf of the George W. Bush administration, the Times is now serving as a mouthpiece for Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet."
The 92Y has effectively dismantled the Unterberg Poetry Center in a day—why would a writer of any conscience speak there? Who would work there? A sad day for American letters.
It's a classic anti-union tactic to rhetorically separate the union from the workers—but the union is us. After looking at the numbers, we realized that for the first time in this union's history we needed to raise dues. It's the best way we can protect our members.
Please subscribe to The Nation, if for no other reason that we're trying to be the opposite of The Atlantic. Think The Atlantic is the 2020s version of 1990s TNR? Then subscribe to The Nation.
It's tiny in the swing of things, but I do think it's indicative of astonishing mainstream cowardice. I obviously don't deserve a special citation—Gazan journalists do. And specific named Gazan journalists are deserving of many other awards, not just a special citation.
Sports editor
@EdgeofSports
and Oregonian
@JulesBoykoff
reviewed audio recordings and police documents. They come to a very different conclusion than the MLS's "independent" "investigation." Timbers management owes Portland and then actions:
#RCTID
"I’ve met frogs giving rides to scorpions who’ve made wiser choices than Democrats picking judges."
@ElieNYC
on the LaSalle debacle. Why—no really, WHY?—is Hochul so insistent on this judicial pick?
Strong piece by
@benschwartz_
on the economics of the Great Delete. The destruction of the archives of shows like The Daily Show is a huge loss for fans, historians. It also makes new episodes much harder to write.
Would strongly recommend
@mcmansionhell
on the "greigification" of homes and what that has to do with capitalism). Not a coincidence that these all gray and greige room look almost computer generated.
Kissinger’s career courses through the decades like a bright red line, shedding spectral light on the road that has brought us to where we are now, from Vietnam and Cambodia to the Persian Gulf to Ukraine to Gaza.
I found this q&a fascinating—anyone who cares about ties between movement work and party politics should read. It explores the crucial questions: How can movements obtain power, and what do they have to give up?
My sister works at one of Portland's biggest hospitals, and they're running out of masks. She went onto every Facebook page she could think of to beg for mask donations, and is currently picking up N-95s from porches around the city.
Morning, Chicago friends! Please vote for Brandon Johnson. There are many reasons to vote for Johnson and against Vallas, but a major one is Johnson has a rigorous plan to reduce crime while Vallas would make Chicago a more dangerous place. Here's why:
@rachsyme
I'd kill for a high-budget HBO version of Alexander Chee's The Queen of the Night. A wild glittering lavish story with clothes, sex, singing, and an air balloon scene over the siege of Paris.
This is a crucial moment, and Nancy Pelosi is in a position of power.
@AdyBarkan
pleads with the speaker to prioritize the needs of the undocumented when negotiating the bill:
Fact checkers have more dirt on reporters than anyone. If you want stories about how well-known writers treat people or how robust their reporting is or what their prose is really like, just start buying fact checkers drinks.