I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out:
www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...
NEW: A recently developed Defense Department program was meant to reduce civilian harm during military operations.
But months before the Iran war, the mission was dissolved as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority.
By @hannahallam.bsky.social
A high-powered Chicago law firm announced a plan Monday to push for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and potentially charge the agents who carried out Operation Midway Blitz.
@sophiesherry.bsky.social reports: chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2026/0...
One day the NYT's editors will read these stories again and be ashamed of themselves. Mamdani called the attack "heinous," "criminal," "reprehensible," "terrorism," and "the antithesis of who we are." The insinuation that he's conflicted about this is disgraceful. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/n...
I think Trump is cooked—and it’s helpful for us to say so, repeatedly and often.
Authoritarians use fear to compel obedience. Once people start thinking about what they’ll do once he’s gone, they’re much less likely to obey his commands.
I’m so tired of seeing people bash Bluesky for being an echo chamber when X is an actual intentionally constructed echo chamber that is demonstrably radicalizing people across the political spectrum who still use it
EXCLUSIVE: At more than 30 installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been “inundated” with more than 110 complaints.
One NCO said they were told the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus…
Breaking WaPo:
Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.
But this isn’t just a regular account. Johnny MAGA appears to actually be a White House staffer named Garrett Wade who works for the Trump administration as a rapid response manager, helping to run the very same White House account his anonymous MAGA account amplifies. A phone number associated with Wade is linked to Johnny MAGA, according to a WIRED review of publicly available records, and the connection was confirmed by a source close to the White House. Wade and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The Johnny MAGA account was created in September 2021, according to its X profile. (It originally used a different handle, which referenced Wade’s birth year, according to records reviewed by WIRED.) While the account’s earliest available posts focused on NFTs, it has been a consistent pro-Trump presence since at least 2022. The operator of the Johnny MAGA account has not disclosed an official relationship with the White House while operating the Johnny MAGA X account. Multiple media outlets, including Mother Jones, TownHall, and the New York Post, have all linked out to posts on the Johnny MAGA account seemingly as organic reflections of public sentiment on political issues.
This is very good reporting that sheds light on just how small the extremely pro-Trump online right really is. The online right is totally astroturfed. The White House's own staffers are running meme accounts to make them look more popular than they are. www.wired.com/story/a-whit...
Wrote a piece about many looking at the Epstein case all wrong: He's not the thing that connects a network of rich and powerful men; he's the lens that shows us how they were already connected.
newrepublic.com/article/2068...
IMHO, it is important that Woke 2 be deemed "excessive" by historians, "sweeping too broadly" with "punishments too severe." It cannot be merely a course correction, it must be an overcorrection. Nothing less will serve as an adequate deterrent against the fascists and their collaborators.
"Their deaths, linked to immigrant men, became flash points in Republicans’ push for hard-line immigration policies. Led by Donald Trump, the party is using these deaths to call for policies like mass arrests, detention camps and militarized deportations"
From 2 years ago, feels apt tonight, too!
"the largest act of mass murder of this decade, and of this century so far, was not perpetrated by militaries or militias, but by the world's richest man in Washington D.C.'s Eisenhower Executive Office Building."
www.liberalcurrents.com/what-elon-ha...
Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it.
Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:
The rise of the far right is not a problem unique to the US. Our elite impunity problem, however, seems to be on an order of magnitude worse than a lot of our peers.
"An Associated Press reporter was beaten by the police and detained along with three other journalists on Tuesday in Cameroon while reporting on a secretive Trump administration program to deport migrants to the Central African country, according to two of the people detained." (gift link)
ICE is crushing Minneapolis economy. On the pod, Mayor Jacob Frey tallies up damage:
$203 million overall
$80 million small biz losses
$5 million hotel cancellations
75K people food insecurity
"Impact is staggering," Frey tells us. Bleeding city for being diverse:
newrepublic.com/article/2066...
BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.
This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.
NEW: ChatGPT and other chatbots are feeding users' fixations on real people, reinforcing users' delusional ideas and obsessions about others as they descend into unwanted harassment, stalking, and/or domestic abuse — traumatizing victims and profoundly altering lives.
futurism.com/artificial-i...
An early Valentine's Day gift for y'all. @evansutton.bsky.social takes over CARD today. He helped takedown Tesla and now he's coming for X. www.altrightdelete.news/p/dump-your-...
Trump nominated a legit white nationalist to a top post at the State Department. I asked him some basic questions about his belief in the “erasure of white culture”. Watch this embarrassing, fumbling answer. Like he has never before been asked to explain his views.
“When Citizens United was decided in 2010, billionaires had spent $18 million on the 2000 election, $13M 2004 and $16M in 2008. Then came the deluge. In 2012 it was $231M, and nearly doubled again in next three election cycles —to $682M in 2016, $1.2 billion in 2020 and $2.6 billion in 2024.” Gift:
From my reading, it seems impossible to have a miscarriage and not somehow run afoul of the law in abortion ban states
Fuentes, yesterday: “Our #1 political enemy is women because women constrain everything, every conversation, every man, everything. They have to be imprisoned. They are the ones that are hurting the fertility rate. They're the ones making us sympathetic to poor people, which are also brown people.”
![UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
MARK KELLY,
Plaintiff,
Civil Case No. 26-81 (RJL)
V.
PETE HEGSETH, et al.,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
February 12, 2026 [Dkt. #2]
United States Senator Mark Kelly, a retired naval officer, has been censured by
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for voicing certain opinions on military actions and
policy. In addition, he has been subjected to proceedings to possibly reduce his retirement
rank and pay and threatened with criminal prosecution if he continues to speak out on these
issues.
Secretary Hegseth relies on the well-established doctrine that military
servicemembers enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental
obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces. Unfortunately for Secretary
Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over
the military. This Court will not be the first to do so!](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:36eqtmzysqf7wsslczw4uxcd/bafkreiclbgaenrhgnor6zvmnfql4d3olwzqp7zikm3maum5ylc4m6epys4)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA MARK KELLY, Plaintiff, Civil Case No. 26-81 (RJL) V. PETE HEGSETH, et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION February 12, 2026 [Dkt. #2] United States Senator Mark Kelly, a retired naval officer, has been censured by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for voicing certain opinions on military actions and policy. In addition, he has been subjected to proceedings to possibly reduce his retirement rank and pay and threatened with criminal prosecution if he continues to speak out on these issues. Secretary Hegseth relies on the well-established doctrine that military servicemembers enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces. Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military. This Court will not be the first to do so!
Worse still, Secretary Hegseth contends that this Court is not yet competent to decide the issues in this case. He and his fellow Defendants argue that military personnel 1 Case 1:26-cv-00081-RJL Document 37 Filed 02/12/26 Page 2 of 29 decisions are exempt from judicial review and, in any event, that Senator Kelly should first be required to go through the military appeals process so the military can have the first crack at adjudicating his First Amendment rights. I disagree. This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees. After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their Government, and our Constitution demands they receive it! Senator Kelly's First Amendment claim is not only justiciable; he is likely to succeed on the merits. He has also shown irreparable harm, and the balance of the equities fall decidedly in his favor. As such, his motion for a preliminary injunction on his First Amendment claim is hereby GRANTED.
BREAKING: Judge blocks Hegseth effort to punish Sen. Kelly.
"This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees."
Background: www.lawdork.com/p/breaking-k...
Just like with Brazil arresting their insurrectionists rather than re-electing them, other countries are holding their Epstein-tied politicians accountable far better than we do. www.bbc.com/news/article...
Cannot believe that I got to profile an extraordinary filmmaker, who happens to be the mother of NYC’s new mayor, and think about intersections of art and politics, and how familial love might produce a buffer against the corrosive politics and cynicism of our time. My story about Mira Nair:
SCOOP: Tensions at Palantir have grown in recent weeks over the company's work with ICE.
On Friday, CEO Alex Karp tried to calm concerns in an hourlong video that offered few specifics—instead offering NDAs to workers who want to understand how it's empowering ICE.
www.wired.com/story/palant...
A line chart going from Jan 2009 to Jan 2026 showing very few cases until Trump’s second term, where the line takes off nearly vertically, showing more than 6,600 cases in Jan 2026 alone.
Habeas cases filed by immigrants claiming their detention is illegal have taken off to levels we have never seen before. Just look at that chart.
www.propublica.org/article/habe...
This is literally what CURRENT LAW requires. It’s in the Constitution! www.politico.com/news/2026/02...
