Timothy Snyder:^[1]

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Millions of you, around the world, have put these lessons to good use; it has been humbling to learn how from courageous and creative dissenters, protestors, and oppositionists. I am delighted to have this special chance now to share the lessons again. I was honored when John, a wise advocate for civil discourse and civic engagement, volunteered to read them aloud.

Lithgow is a stellar choice.

(Apropos, I’ve finally ordered a copy of On Tyranny.)

In a story for WBEZ (signup required; Apple News+ link), Adriana Cardona-Maguigad writes that “attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of have Illinois” accused the federal government of violating immigration law—arrests without probable cause, “making arrests without proper warrants and creating warrants in the field after the arrests,” which allegedly violate something called the Nava Settlement.

The story includes this revelation about one of the arrested people:

[…] Chicago resident Julio Noriega, 54, a U.S. citizen […] was arrested, handcuffed and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center […]. He was never questioned about his citizenship, and was only released after agents looked at his ID.

“I was born in Chicago, Illinois and am a United States citizen,” Noriega said in his statement, adding that on Jan. 31, after buying pizza in Berwyn he was surrounded by ICE agents and arrested. Officers took away his wallet, which had his ID and social security card. “They then handcuffed me and pushed me into a white van where other people were handcuffed as well.”

ICE arrested a US citizen—born here!—because, I presume, he “looks like” an immigrant and has “an immigrant’s” last name. No questions, no due process. He was held for ten hours:

He was released after midnight without any way to return home and without documentation of what happened […].

Appallingly, this isn’t the only instance of citizens being detained. Since Trump retook office, ICE agents are allegedly targeting people they presume don’t look or sound American, including Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans and Navajo Nation tribal members.

We’ve officially entered the snatching Americans and legal immigrants off the streets phase of fascism. Next, we’ll be told it’s merely protective custody.

Kaveh Akbar drops a searingly emotional piece for The Nation in reaction to the abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk:

This is, more than anything, a plea for principled leftists to rise en masse and not just decry but disrupt a nation helmed by gleeful genocideers. I’m writing frantically, aware my prose is ugly, overearnest, unvetted against worst-faith readers. It’s graceless, unlovely. So am I.

Tonight I want to be understood, not appreciated.

I could quote the piece at length, but to do so would be a disservice to both Akbar and to you.

It’s critical that I share this plea, however:

I want to tell you powerlessness is an alibi. Hopelessness too. I want to ask, what specifically are you going to do? Tomorrow, the next day? What’s your “I am Spartacus” move to protect the more vulnerable, the targeted, the invisibled, the next-on-the-list?

I want to say, it’s your turn now, help. This is us asking you while we still can.

I’ve taken one tiny step: I added the phone number for the San Francisco Immigrant Rapid Response Hotline (415-200-1548) to my contacts, so I’m prepared to act if I see someone being confronted by ICE.

Find the equivalent service in your area and add the number to your phone.

I finally brought myself to watch the video of ICE’s abduction of Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk. It’s even more disturbing than I expected after reading the story because, watching, it looks exactly like a random kidnapping off the streets—plainclothes men and women, with masks, approaching a woman and coercing her into an SUV. It was simply done quietly, with badges and handcuffs, instead of loudly, with guns and chloroform-soaked handkerchiefs.

Opportunistic criminals with two-bit tin badges can now confidently disappear someone off the street, and we’ll simply assume they’re with ICE. 

That ambushing people on the street or at home is tolerated, even applauded by a fraction of Americans—and defended by our government officials, no less—is profoundly alarming. That it’s done in such a casual manner is equally disturbing.

At what point does ICE become indistinguishable from the Gestapo?

Dan Bernstein, writing at (the new-to-me) Sportico:

Starting around the 3:07 p.m. ET first pitch of the game between the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays, fans trying to watch any game on MLB TV via web browser or apps received error messages. The technical problems during one of the biggest days of the season caused backlash on social media, with complaints quickly racking up thousands of likes.

There might be worse days for MLB.TV streaming to experience a massive outage, but Opening Day has got to be right up there. Maybe Game 7 of the World Series with two out in the bottom of the ninth and the winning run at third beats it out.

Maybe.

I was among those affected while trying to watch the Mets vs. Astros game (chosen because MLB’s ridiculous blackout policy prevented me from watching the Giants vs. Reds game—honestly, I’m not sure why I continue to pay $150 a year for the service).

Let’s hope MLB has this fixed for the rest of the season.

The Wall Street Journal ran this story Wednesday evening (Apple News+ link) by Michael R. Gordon, Nancy A. Youssef, and Lindsay Wise, posted at 6:26 pm EDT, under the headline “Hegseth Comes Under Scrutiny for Texting Strike Details as Fallout Grows” and the subhead “Republicans react with concern about new details on posts about weapons used and timing of Yemen attack.”

It reads like the first sharp blows of an upcoming hit piece against Hegseth, presented initially as mostly Democratic criticisms, with a few Republicans tossed in so those criticisms aren’t dismissed out of hand.

The entire piece is filled with jabs and body blows, each one preceded by a slight feint of a defense of Hegseth’s actions before countering with a gut punch of reality.

One example: About his decision to share “specific times that F-18s, MQ-9 Reaper drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used in the attack” and “that an unnamed target of the strikes was at a ‘known location’”, the WSJ dryly notes:

Such information is normally guarded carefully by the Pentagon before imminent strikes to avoid disclosures that could help adversaries. 

Hegseth’s lack of qualifications for the position is also called out—he’s “never held a senior national security post”—with the paper noting his experience as a “former Army National Guard major and Fox News host” and following up with a comment from “Sen. Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat who flew combat missions in the 1991 Persian Gulf war as a naval aviator,” who dubbed Hegseth “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen.”

Then, WSJ has other chat participants doing their best to distance themselves from Hegseth, basically saying “I didn’t post classified information in the chat.…”

But to me, the real tells about Hegseth’s future come from the various members of the military and security communities—past and present—making their (anonymous) opinions clear:

Several U.S. military officials said the strike information Hegseth included was still classified as secret when he shared it.

And:

Targeting plans and the employment of American forces have long been considered to be highly classified before action is taken because their disclosure can tip off adversaries and provide them with insights on how the U.S. conducts sensitive military operations, former officials and national security experts say.

The WSJ added:

Top national-security officials have access to secure communications on government networks designed for classified discussions about such information.

They then closed thusly:

Earlier this month, the Pentagon sent an advisory to all military personnel warning that a “vulnerability” had been identified in Signal and warned against using it for classified information.

“It borders on incompetence,” Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator and defense secretary during the Obama administration, said of Hegseth’s texts. “It’s certainly reckless.”

It’s tough to run the Department of Defense if the military you’re responsible for doesn’t trust you to keep their secrets and keep them safe.

To me, all of this adds up to Hegseth’s resignation because “the fake news media has made this story a distraction to President Trump’s important agenda to Make America Great Again.”

I expect a WSJ Opinion calling for his resignation within the week, Hegseth’s decision to step away soon after, and reluctant acceptance by Trump, who will undoubtedly cast it as a “witch hunt,” and be followed by the inevitable pardon.

Not too much new in this New York Times annotated version of The Atlantic’s leaked Signal chat, but I sniggered several times at the obvious delight the reporters took in slapping the Trump administration officials. For example, this, from Helene Cooper, on Pete Hegseth’s response to J.D. Vance:

Pete Hegseth: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.

Cooper: Mr. Hegseth is echoing here a Trump-administration critique that the U.S. Navy does more to keep shipping lanes through the Suez Canal open than European naval forces do. Using words like “loathing” and “pathetic” will likely make his next meetings with European counterparts dicey.

“Dicey.” Right.

Axios also has a great compendium of the Trump administration’s repeated denials of any classified information being leaked in that Signal chat:

After Goldberg published a partial version of the texts, withholding key details for national security reasons, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegsethswiftly went into shoot-the-messenger mode. […]

Here’s how those statements match with what we learned in the subsequent Atlantic story.

My favorite:

Ratcliffe in the Senate hearing said he was not “aware” of any “information on weapons packages, targets or timing” that was discussed in the chat. Gabbard concurred.

The texts include a detailed sequencing of the timing of the attacks, to include Hegseth’s to-the-minute breakdown of when F-18s and drones would take off and drop their payloads.

Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, and Shane Harris share the byline on this story detailing exactly what was shared in that now-infamous Signal chat. (Apple News+ link.)

So, about that Signal chat.

I chuckled at the dry acknowledgement that a chat thread is the biggest story of the week.

Much of the text thread reads like first-time managers receiving status updates from their teams and, having no understanding of what it is or means, naively share it, believing it makes them look like they’re “in the loop.”

I also get a distinct vibe (from Pete Hegseth, especially) of “check out what I know! I’m cool now!”

Goldberg and Harris:

On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

It surprises no one that Hegseth (and Mike Waltz, Tulsi Gabbard, and the rest, all the way up to Trump himself) would deny any top-secret national security information was leaked. What’s surprising is those denials would come knowing Goldberg had screenshots of the Signal thread—and that it was already confirmed as legitimate by administration officials.

In my head canon, Goldberg presented the original story as he did, confident the administration would go into full-on denial mode, and claim, as they did, that the material shared was not classified, thus freeing him to post the thread in its entirety:

At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”

I can’t be sure that releasing the full chat was the plan from the outset, but it must be deeply satisfying to use a person’s (or administration’s) predilection for lying against them.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was added to a Signal thread with 17 high-ranking Trump administration officials, where the group proceeded to discuss what could only be considered top secret information (Apple News+ link):

At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

The entire story demonstrates a stunning disregard—willful or otherwise—for even basic operational security procedures among people entrusted with our nation’s most sensitive secrets.

As Goldberg notes:

Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe.

Every Monday, new Apple employees receive a stern lecture about keeping devices and communications secure, and ensuring sensitive information isn’t accidentally leaked to those not authorized to receive it. Literally on Day One. 

At Apple, this level of security malfeasance has cost people their jobs, and in any other administration—or, more precisely, in any Democratic administration—this would be a huge scandal, and people would be fired—and quite possibly prosecuted—for leaking this information. I’m also confident that had Goldberg shared the Signal thread prior to the bombings, he would be arrested and tried for treason.

I doubt the stunningly reckless behavior of these officials will result in even a hand-slap.

(Via Laffy.)

If you listen(ed) to ’90s electronic music, you likely recognize that quote from The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds. The Orb were probably my earliest introduction to electronic music, and this track is one of my favorites.

The track kicks off with this question by an unknown interviewer, who for years was mistakenly thought to be LeVar Burton. Ian Scott finally discovers who really asked this important musical question.

(Via kottke.org.)

Who Asked “What Were the Skies Like When You Were Young?” in “Little Fluffy Clouds?”

Who asked the famous question in the song Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb? TL;DR: it’s music writer Carl Arrington. Read on for more background.…

Ian “polpo” Scott

So many fascinating tidbits about Brooklyn’s layout and history this long-time Brooklynite was unaware of, explained in a wonderfully clear and casual manner by Daniel Steiner:

The story of Brooklyn is the story of a bunch of disparate settlements that grew until they eventually merged together to become “Brooklyn.”

Steiner’s YouTube style is like visiting with your best bud as he recounts his latest fascinating discovery over a cup of chamomile. I could watch him talk about maps for hours, which is great, because he also has explainers for Manhattan’s grid, and the maps of Staten Island, Las Vegas, London, and his latest, Los Angeles (plus several more).

If you’re of a certain age and grew up watching Sesame Street, you count to twelve to a funky, jazzy, surprisingly complex tune (sung by The Pointer Sisters) that accompanies a trippy pinball animation, aka “Pinball Number Count”. Charles Cornell, who analyzes and explains musical concepts on YouTube, uses music theory to break down the tune’s odd time signature and unexpectedly intricate melody. The deeper Cornell dives into the song, the crazier it seems that this masterpiece of music was written for a children’s television show. It certainly made it memorable—it manages to live rent-free in my head, 40-plus years on!

(Watch all 11 versions—yes, 2 through 12; there is no 1.)

Jasmine Mooney writes in The Guardian about her harrowing experience being locked up in a series of ICE facilities after her visas were revoked:

I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them, looking like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.

For two days, we remained in that cell, only leaving briefly for food. The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was and no one answered our questions.

Stories about the inhumane conditions in these detention facilities mainly seem to make the news when it’s someone who “doesn’t belong there,” but the conditions are awful for everyone. It’s imperative that we continue to bring attention to this issue. I’m glad Mooney was willing to speak out and use her personal privilege.

To put things into perspective: I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family and even politicians advocating for me. Yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks.

Imagine what this system is like for every other person in there.

I can’t imagine having no way to reach someone who can help you, whether in the US or your home country, because you don’t have their telephone number or email address. It’s a nightmare—and there’s no incentive for the facilities to resolve things:

The reality became clear: Ice detention isn't just a bureaucratic nightmare. It's a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.

Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It's a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560mfrom Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.

The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.

If Donald Trump and Elon Musk were truly serious about cutting wasteful government spending, they’d abolish ICE.

Which I’m sure is next, right after “cancel Starlink contracts”.

Because rueful laughter is still laughter.

A brief follow-up from my last link: Garrett Bucks, in his preface to that piece, wrote:

We have wished (appropriately) for bravery from our media, from elected Democrats, from public officials in general. However fair those wishes are, they come with a risk: that we miss the opportunity to be the lonely voice for justice in our own community, the person who makes it a little easier for a second and third and fourth lonely voice to start perking up by our side.

That idea—one lonely voice making it easier for others to perk up—stirred something in me and I started to hum, an indistinguishable tune at first. Only after hitting publish did it coalesce into something recognizable.

I was in my eighth grade choir—this would be 1982, 1983—and one of the songs we performed, and which has clearly stuck with me all these years, was Barry Manilow’s One Voice:

If only one voice would start it on its own

We need just one voice facing the unknown

And then that one voice would never be alone

It takes that one voice

(Complete lyrics.)

The parallels with Bucks’ phrase teased this forty-plus-year-old memory from the depths of my subconscious.

It’s a beautiful song, and a beautiful sentiment.

Garrett Bucks on the importance of taking small, seemingly insufficient actions:

Why? Because others will see you do them, and it will make it easier for them to take their own (slightly less lonely but equally beautiful) action by your side.

From February, but still (maybe even more) relevant today.

Here’s the first one:

The next time you read an article about how USAID or the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau or the Department of Education is being attacked, remember that no matter how impactful the agency, movements don’t coalesce around acronyms—they are always about empathy for each other. Take a few minutes to research a specific program administered by those agencies that help people, and ring the alarm for everybody you know. Stop saying “Trump and Musk are the worst” and practice saying things like “Trump and Musk are sentencing millions of AIDS patients to death” or “Trump and Musk want credit card companies to rip us off” or “Trump and Musk just cut mental health and math tutoring resources for your kids’ school.”

I’m working to do better at this when I rant on Mastodon. And I’ll try to do a few of the remaining 29, despite many of them giving me, as Bucks puts it, “anxiety about putting [myself] out there.”

David Mora and Michelle Jia wondered if it’s true that they don’t make love songs like they used to:

The proportion of love songs in the 1960s was 23%. In the 2020s, it’s 12%. The proportion of love songs has almost halved! So, was Boomer Bob right? Are love songs, in fact, dying?

Not quite: we think Boomer Bob has too narrow a view of love. Sure, these lovey-dovey tunes have declined. But what about other songs? What about Adele’s Someone Like You? Or T-Pain’s Buy U a Drank? Or WAP? If we look more closely, we uncover a story that will change how you see love in pop music.

A thoroughly engaging visual and aural exploration of the evolution of the love song. Today’s “love songs” are much more… nuanced.

As with most pieces from The Pudding, the methodology is as interesting as the results, so be sure to read “Nerds: learn about our methods and data” at the end. Of particular interest to me: the use of ChatGPT 4o, with an extensive prompt, to help label songs. I may have more to say about this in the future.

Is the Love Song Dying?

We categorized songs in the Billboard Top 10 to see if love songs are on the decline.

The PuddingThe Pudding

Shirley Wu, a self-described “obsessed” fan of Hamilton, explains her astonishingly deep dive into Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliant work:

When I started digging through the lyrics, I was curious about two things: the relationships between the main characters, and the recurring phrases associated with those characters.

So I went through every single line in Hamilton (twice 😱 ) and recorded who sang each line, as well as who that line may have been directed towards. I've noted every phrase that was sung more than once across more than one song, and grouped them into broad themes.

It’s a good thing I didn’t see this visualization a decade ago when I was completely obsessed with this musical, or I wouldn’t have slept for days. As it is, I spent all too much time exploring the themes and relationships and, yes, singing the lyrics. It’s a brilliant and fun way to revisit what is certainly one of my all-time favorite musicals.

An Interactive Visualization of Every Line in Hamilton

When I first heard of Hamilton, I was doubtful...but from the moment I sat down to listen the whole way through, I was done for…

The Pudding

On a recent trip to Los Cabos, another tourist imitated the ducks wandering along our path, and from those vocalizations, I guessed he wasn’t a native English speaker. Thanks to this fun and illuminating data visualization (and sonification?) of the onomatopoeia of animal sounds in multiple languages, I now know it was the Korean version of “quack.”

How do animals sound across languages?

Analyzing animal onomatopoeia across languages can demystify how we shape sound into meaning.

The PuddingThe Pudding

From John Broich in The Conversation (via Smithsonian Magazine^[1]):

How to cover the rise of a political leader who’s left a paper trail of anti-constitutionalism, racism and the encouragement of violence? Does the press take the position that its subject acts outside the norms of society? Or does it take the position that someone who wins a fair election is by definition “normal,” because his leadership reflects the will of the people?

These are the questions that confronted the U.S. press after the ascendance of fascist leaders in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

First published in December 2016. Our biggest newspapers have learned nothing since, and—dare I say—are even worse now.

By the later 1930s, most U.S. journalists realized their mistake in underestimating Hitler or failing to imagine just how bad things could get.

When will today’s journalists come to the same realization about Trump?

What will historians write about today’s newspapers one hundred years hence?

I linked to this fascinating, enlightening, and, frankly, terrifying article from Timothy W. Ryback in The Atlantic (Apple News+) in my previous piece, but it deserves its own post. I’ve referenced it a lot since January 20, 2025. Though I was broadly aware of Hitler’s rapid rise and subsequent consolidation of power, I wasn’t aware of just how quickly it happened, nor how “democratically” it was done:

In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered.

I was already convinced Trump was America’s Hitler. After reading this article, and watching Elon Musk dismantle government agencies, I thought, Musk is Trump’s Wilhelm Frick, sent in to dismantle everything, with little oversight.

But maybe I have it wrong. Maybe Trump is President Paul von Hindenburg and it’s Musk who’s the Chancellor who usurps all power.

Regardless of who’s playing which role, since the inauguration, it’s felt like this country is speedrunning an autocracy/oligarchy challenge, with Trump seemingly trying to best Hitler’s democracy destroying record. I’ve wondered, more than once, how we will recognize when we’ve crossed the democracy rubicon? What’s the sign we’ve hit our “53 Days”?

Has it already passed, after Trump ceded power to an unelected, non-Senate-confirmed billionaire, targeted the most vulnerable, and purged the country’s military leadership?

Is it ongoing, with Congress ceding its power to the White House?

Or still to come, once Trump “acquires enough muscle to enforce his lawless proclamations,” a scenario more likely with Trump loyalists heading the FBI and Justice Department?

As you’d expect, not everyone finds this comparison appropriate:

I am not a fan of using comparisons to 1932 and Hitler.

This is not post-WWI Germany operating under the treaty of Versailles and the war reparations act, nor does the US have an inflation rate of 29,000% per month.

To me, the situations don’t have to align for the comparison to be apt. Hitler and Trump both gained power via legitimate, democratic means, and used/are using those same levers to undermine the very systems that brought them to power.

Trump admires Hitler and men like him, and is surrounded by others who do too.

I find it valuable to acknowledge the historical rhymes, even if we don’t like the meter.

Priscilla Alvarez, Jennifer Hansler, and Alayna Treene, writing for CNN:

The Trump administration is expected to invoke a sweeping wartime authority to speed up the president’s mass deportation pledge in the coming days, according to four sources familiar with the discussions.

The little-known 18th-century law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, gives the president tremendous authority to target and remove undocumented immigrants, though legal experts have argued it would face an uphill battle in court.

[…]

The announcement, which could come as soon as Friday, has been a moving target as officials finalize the details.

This threat isn’t new—Trump has been making it since at least September 2023—but this latest report, coming just days after the illegal detention of Mahmoud Khalil, suggests a move may indeed be imminent.

(Not to get too conspiratorial, but today—Friday—marks Day 53 of the Trump regime, which some may recognize as significant.)

Calling it an “uphill battle” is a bit of a gloss, though. Here’s the relevant section of the Act (emphasis mine):

Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.

To my layman’s eyes, a plain reading of the Act makes it clear that it cannot be invoked without a declared war or invasion from a foreign country.

The “first” group Trump wants to use this Act against:

The primary target remains Tren de Aragua (TDA), a Venezuelan organized crime group that is now operating in the United States and other countries.

Are we supposed to believe we are at war with or threatened by an invasion from Venezuela—a country with fewer people than Texas? Does Trump even know where Venezuela is?

Attempting to use it in this situation would be, at best, misleading and at worst, blatantly illegal. Not that such trivialities matter much to Trump.

Trump wants to use this Act for one, simple reason:

Those subject to the Alien Enemies Act would not be allowed to have a court hearing or an asylum interview since they would be processed under an emergency, wartime authority — not immigration law. Instead, they would be eligible to be detained and deported, with little to no due process, under Title 50, the section of the U.S. code housing America’s war and defense laws.

Bypassing the courts and the legal system: the preferred tactic of every would-be dictator.

This Act has been invoked just three times since 1798, all in times of war. By first threatening to invoke this little-used law against a foreign criminal gang, Trump is defying us to defend them, daring us to stand with “the enemy.” After all, who’s against cleaning up our streets from dangerous gangs, right?

If he succeeds with this abuse, who gets flagged as a “member” of the gang will expand, followed by which gangs get targeted. You can bet Mexico and other South and Central American “gangs” are on his list. Muslim and African “gangs” won’t be too far behind. Eventually, it won’t even need to be couched as “members of a gang.” It’ll just be dehumanized “vermin” from “shithole countries.” By the time the country realizes what he’s doing, it will have been normalized.

Every immigrant—legal or undocumented, recently arrived or decades settled—is at risk to the whims of the Trump regime.

It’s just a matter of time before Trump starts detaining natural-born citizens, too.

Joseph Gedeon, writing for The Guardian:

The mayor of Miami Beach is attempting to evict an independent cinema from city-owned property after it screened No Other Land, the film about Palestinian displacement in the West Bank that just won the Oscar for best documentary.

Steven Meiner’s proposal would terminate O Cinema’s lease and withdraw $40,000 in promised grant funding. In a newsletter sent to residents on Tuesday, Meiner condemned the film as “a false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our City and residents”.

An American government official should understand that, in America, screening this movie is a First Amendment right:

“Screening movies to make sure they conform to local censors’ tastes is a practice we left behind with the red scare,” said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire).

“If the first amendment doesn’t mean that a movie theater can show an Oscar-winning film, something is seriously wrong.”

Something is, of course, seriously wrong.

Madiba K. Dennie, writing in Balls and Strikes about the backlash against Justice Amy Coney Barrett for daring to dissent, even briefly, from the conservative orthodoxy:

Barrett’s fellow travelers on the right felt betrayed, and voiced that betrayal with the kind of vitriol they normally reserve for minorities and poor people. Often, when a marginalized person ventures outside of the box conservatives try to put them in, Republicans attack their credentials and character, painting them as undeserving and ungracious. Barrett, a lifelong conservative less than three years removed from casting the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, got to experience a version of that this week. Republicans have from time to time been disappointed in the Republican men on the Court too, of course, but they aren’t telling Roberts that he’s unqualified, that he has kids at home, or that he should go back to Indiana and smile on his way out. Barrett is a dutiful foot soldier of the patriarchy, but she’s still a woman.

In this circle, “DEI,” of course, means “not a white man,” and “conservatism” is all about following the white male playbook. Failure to do so will be punished, regardless of how much in the tank for their cause you otherwise are.

I fly in and out of San Francisco International Airport (SFO) several times a year—it’s my home airport—and while I know it has a lot to offer, I’ve never considered it a destination to be explored. This video has me reconsidering. Perhaps the next time I have an easy flight, I’ll get to SFO early or wander around after I land.

Listening to the music from F-Zero put me in a nostalgic mood and brought to mind another of my favorite SNES games, Axelay. It has one of the most cinematic and emotional openings I can remember, and a killer gameplay soundtrack.

The Mute City 1 (track 1) music from F-Zero was stuck in my head yesterday. A quick search on YouTube later, and I was scratching that earworm itch while reliving a beloved SNES game soundtrack from one of my most-played Super Nintendo games, without having to hunt down my console.