Nick Miroff profiles ICE agents and officers for The Atlantic (Apple News+ link):

Officers and agents have spent much of the past five months clocking weekends and waking up at 4 a.m. for predawn raids. Their top leaders have been ousted or demoted, and their supervisors—themselves under threat of being fired—are pressuring them to make more and more arrests to meet quotas set by the Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Having insisted for years that capturing criminals is its priority, ICE is now shelving major criminal investigations to prioritize civil immigration arrests, grabbing asylum seekers at their courthouse hearings, handcuffing mothers as their U.S.-citizen children cry, chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As angry onlookers attempt to shame ICE officers with obscenities, and activists try to dox them, officers are retreating further behind masks and tactical gear.

“It’s miserable,” one career ICE official told me. He called the job “mission impossible.”

Pete Prodoehl on Mastodon:

Oh sure, ICE is miserable… but could we make them even more miserable?

The headline implies poor morale because of the evil these agents are doing, but it’s as much about them feeling underpaid and unappreciated while they commit evil. Most of these folks seem otherwise fine being the baddies.

A common theme of my conversations was dissatisfaction with the White House’s focus on achieving 1 million deportations annually, a goal that many ICE employees view as logistically unrealistic and physically exhausting. The agency has never done more than a quarter of that number in a single year. But ICE’s top officials are so scared of being fired—the White House has staged two purges already—that they don’t push back, another official told me.

Today’s version of “I was just following orders” is “I was just making a living.”

I also enjoyed this little dig at Kristi Noem:

While tagging along on a predawn operation early this year, Noem posted live updates on social media, blowing the team’s cover for the rest of the day.

This administration is filled with some of the dumbest people on Earth.

Jason Kottke posted this piece at his eponymous site before the Fourth of July weekend. I’m glad I didn’t read it then—I would have come away with scant hope. Reading it was like an elbow to the solar plexus. He starts by quoting Tressie McMillan Cottom on Bluesky:

I’m going to be very honest and clear.

I am fully preparing myself to die under this new American regime. That’s not to say that it’s the end of the world. It isn’t. But I am almost 50 years old. It will take so long to do anything with this mess that this is the new normal for me.

I do hope a lot of you run. I hope you vote, sure. Maybe do a general strike or rent strike. All great!

But I spent the last week reading things and this is not, for ME, an electoral fix. So now I will spend time reflecting on how to integrate this normal into my understanding of the future.

Most of this will be personal. Some of it will be public — how we move in the world.

Right now, I know that I need to make a decision on my risk sensitivity. How much can I take? I also need to meditate HARD on accepting the randomness of that risk. No amount of strategy can protect me.

Those are things I am thinking about.

Kottke:

Cottom nails how I’ve been feeling for the past few months […]. America’s democratic collapse has been coming for years, always just over the horizon. But when everything that happened during Trump’s first three months in office happened and (here’s the important part) shockingly little was done by the few groups (Congress, the Supreme Court, the Democratic Party, American corporations & other large institutions, media companies) who had the power to counter it, I knew it was over. And over in a way that is irreversible, for a good long while at least.

Both Cottom and Kottke sum up my gnawing and palpable fears. In conversations with friends, we all keep nodding toward hopefulness, anticipating a Blue Sweep in the midterms and a rout in 2028—we’re all, as Kottke puts it:

Trying not to fall prey to doomerism and subsequently spreading it to others.

But when I’m honest with myself… I think about what it might look like to leave America. I worry about my transgender and immigrant friends being rounded up, or worse. I can’t confidently say we’ll have free and fair elections in 2026—much less a presidential election. And so much more.

It’s unlikely my mom—soon to be 79 and in less-than-ideal health—or any of her generation will survive to see the demise of this regime. At almost 56, I’m not sure if I will either. Optimism feels like a luxury I can’t quite afford.

The issues we’re dealing with aren’t the result of just one man or one party. There are too many “everyday people” supporting this regime’s policies for new leaders to make meaningful change. That no doubt disappoints the many who wish for a quickening of the actuarial tables brought on by one too many cheeseburgers. (I’d much rather see a trial and conviction.) The thing is, our country’s woes are well beyond any one man, and one man’s demise won’t pull us back from the brink. Toppling Trump and his regime is merely a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, to return this country to health.

This fascistic turn is something we will be battling for a long while, no matter who’s in power. This is, as Anil Dash wrote, “a rest-of-my-life fight.”

Fortunately, Bruce S. in Kottke’s comments provides some of that scarce optimism:

The new regime has not yet consolidated its power on the federal level, let alone among all 50 state governments. Plenty of states are still run by Democratic trifectas and our federal system still gives those state governments real power. […] there’s still a chance to start a liberal counter-revolution. […]

FDR saved our Republic from fascism; it can be done again.

Alex Blair, for News.com.au:

Spotify’s billionaire CEO Daniel Ek is under heavy fire from artists and industry advocates after announcing a €600 million (A$1.07 bn AUD) investment into Helsing, a military tech start-up developing AI tech for war.

Helsing, now valued at around €12 billion (A$19.5bn), builds AI-driven drones, submarines and aircraft and claims to “develop and deploy these technologies” to “protect fragile democracies”.

Ek’s investment, made via his firm Prima Materia, saw him aggressively double down on an earlier €100 million (A$162 million) pledge in 2021.

He now chairs the company.

Via Dave Rahardja, who notes on Mastodon:

• Spotify spent $250M of your subscription dollars to invite Joe Rogan to spew his disinformation on their platform.

• They’re still trying to embrace and extinguish Podcasts.

• They’re developing in-house, AI-generated “music” so users will play them (royalty-free) instead of music created by humans (who demand royalty).

And now, he’s using his wealth, created by your subscriptions, to fund tech that will use AI to literally murder humans in war.

Stop funding him. Quit Spotify now.

I’ve never been a Spotify user—between signing Joe Rogan, their fake-artist, better than payola schemes, and their anti-Apple crusade, any shot at that went out the door long ago. This alone would be a solid reason to never support them, though.

If you’re looking to leave Spotify, there are alternatives.

The responses to Rahardja’s post, though are absolutely wild, with one person—seemingly unironically—saying:

It’s actually one of the reasons why I subscribed to Spotify premium again. That “ai war” thing is a great defence tool and is what might save me and my family from a Russian invasion.

And other implying that the only two options are developing AI war machines or “have humans be sent to fight on the frontlines instead.”

As I said: absolutely wild.

Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report:

Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop dancing around the language, around the morality, and around the history.

What’s being built in the Florida Everglades, for example — what they’re calling “Alligator Alcatraz” — is not just another immigration facility. It’s a political prison engineered not merely to detain, but to humiliate, dehumanize, and broadcast terror.

It’s America’s first open-air symbol that our democracy is not just dying: it is being dissected publicly, cruelly, and with calculation.

A concentration camp built in eight days, in a state where over 30,000 people are experiencing homelessness.

Hartmann calls for us to engage through lawsuits; journalistic documentation of all that happens; direct action via peaceful protests, civil disobedience, and national mobilization; accurate language (it’s not a “detention center,” it’s a “political prison” or “migrant concentration camp”); and remembering and sharing history—in particular about Dachau and how it started:

Not with mass extermination, but with silence. With a single camp, surrounded by a fence, where people were put “for their own protection.”

He reminds us:

Dachau didn’t just hold communists. Over time, it expanded to include denaturalized Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma, and anyone who opposed Nazi policy. It became a national crucible of cruelty. It normalized the idea that “certain people do not deserve legal protections.” […]

Today, DeSantis is using FEMA funds intended for hurricane victims to build migrant cages. Tomorrow, it could be protesters. Journalists. Teachers. You.

It’s heartbreaking to witness the creation of another American concentration camp. I hope to witness its destruction—and history’s final judgment upon its perpetrators.

Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica (“Paramount accused of bribery as it settles Trump lawsuit for $16 million”):

CBS owner Paramount has reached a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over his claim that 60 Minutes deceptively manipulated a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Trump’s lawsuit has been widely described as frivolous, but Paramount seemed motivated to settle because its pending $8.4 billion merger with Skydance needed regulatory approval from the Trump administration.

In a statement provided to Ars today, Paramount said it “has reached an agreement in principle to resolve the lawsuit filed by President Trump and Representative [Ronny] Jackson in the Northern District of Texas and a threatened defamation action concerning a separate 60 Minutes report.”

CBS News, reporting on its own demise as a trusted news source:

Under the agreement, $16 million will be allocated to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library and the plaintiffs’ fees and costs. Neither Mr. Trump nor his co-plantiff, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, will be directly paid as part of the settlement.

The settlement did not include an apology.

One thing Donald Trump is unquestionably good at is convincing others to pay him large sums of money to influence his behavior or to avoid harm he’s promised or implied.

If only we had a word or two for that.

Michael Ian Black, in an opinion piece for The Daily Beast:

I’m a conservative now, I guess, because I believe in the social compact? Because I believe in such a thing as “the public good.” Because I want to conserve that which made the United States the destination of choice for those with dreams larger than their nations of origin can hold. I’m a conservative now, I guess, because I love so much about this country and it hurts me to see it gutted.

I agree with much of Black’s view here, though I would never call myself a conservative. But our usual definitions of the terms have been wrenched so far right that caring for the elderly, feeding the hungry, protecting consumers, and reducing the deficit are now practically radical.

In what I intend to make an annual tradition, here’s Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is Your Fourth of July?” as read by the late James Earl Jones. As I wrote last year, it’s powerful, made more so by Jones’ emotive baritone.

Douglass’ speech is alarmingly apropos right now—simply substitute “immigrant” for “slave”—

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

While this is the best-known passage from Douglass’ speech, there are many others equally worthy of recognition. Reading it in its entirety is both eye-opening and depressing. There are countless passages uncomfortably analogous to our current moment. Take, for example, this:

By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. […] By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans, have, within the past two years, been hunted down, and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery, and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey, stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, nor religion.

The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them, a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound, by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, to hear only his accusers!

Douglass is speaking of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; it’s distressingly easy to imagine a similar edict being pronounced today—probably via executive order and summarily approved by the Supreme Court. In truth, it feels like we’re already well on our way.

I encourage you to read Douglass’ entire speech. While long, I found it quite enjoyable—I found myself reading it aloud—and extremely well written, despite Douglass’ claims that “With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together.” One hundred seventy-three years later, and Douglass’ hasty and imperfect words still weigh heavily.

Tom Bridge, in “a reminder” to his son Charlie, enumerates the “complaints of inequitable treatment” by King George III, and notes:

As we take stock of 249 years of history, especially the last few months, the colonists’ rebuke of King George III’s cruelty feels a lot more like the present than any of us would care for. The unitary executive that the Trump Administration has sought to pursue has twisted our nation’s leadership to look more like the tyrants your great great great grandfather Andreas Hauff fought while in that Continental Army, a brand new immigrant to this continent. […]

The risks that our forebears took, and the sacrifices that they made to take those risks, are a permanent reminder that the price of free society can be high.

But the alternative, to see people placed in subjugation, to see others jailed abroad without due process, to see a corruption of our laws, and of the executive authorities, and do nothing?

That isn’t it, either.

Wonderfully written, with an uplifting close.

Joyce Vance, in her Civil Discourse newsletter:

Here it is, right on schedule. We’ve moved onto the next phase of the plan, where the Civil Rights Division, the once proud crown jewel of the Justice Department, will participate in stripping naturalized American citizens of their citizenship.

We are living through 1984.

I’m waiting for the executive orders that rename the Department of Defense to the Ministry of Peace, the Department of Agriculture to the Ministry of Plenty, and ICE to the Ministry of Love.

We, of course, already have the Ministry of Truth (Social).

Then we get to category 10:“Any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue. These categories are intended to guide the Civil Division in prioritizing which cases to pursue; however, these categories do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case, nor are they listed in a particular order of importance. Further, the Civil Division retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate. The assignment of denaturalization cases may be made across sections or units based on experience, subject-matter expertise, and the overall needs of the Civil Division.”

I don’t know what that means, and that’s exactly the problem. “Any other cases…that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.” The provision is so vague that it would permit the Division to denaturalize for just about anything. It could be something prior to or following naturalization. Given the other priorities discussed in the memo, it could be exercising First Amendment rights or encouraging diversity in hiring, now recast as fraud against the United States. Troublesome journalists who are naturalized citizens? Students? University professors? Infectious disease doctors who try to reveal the truth about epidemics? Lawyers? All are now vulnerable to the vagaries of an administration that has shown a preference for deporting people without due process and dealing with questions that come up after the fact and with a dismissive tone. “Oopsie,” and there’s nothing we can do to get them back. The way the memo is written, there is no guarantee DOJ will pursue cases against violent criminals—they could just do easy cases to ratchet up numbers like we’re seeing with deportation. Or they could target people who, they view as troublemakers.

As I wrote Tuesday, “Any reason will do.”

We—every one of us—are subject to the whims of a mad king and his administration lackeys, Supreme Court monarchists, and Congressional sycophants, all gleefully destroying America for power and petty revenge.

This regime is coming for anyone who doesn’t support them. It doesn’t matter if you’re here legally or not, rich or not, citizen or not.

But your immigrant friends and family, especially—hug them if you can: they are low-key freaking out right now.

My friend James had one of those moments where you ask a question that’s obvious to you—and to a computer, well, isn’t:

Ha ha, okay very funny DuckDuckGo.

To explain the joke: James searched for “base64 encode image”—looking for information on how to encode an image using base64. Instead, the search engine took the query literally, as a command, and returned the base64-encoded version of the word “image”.

Humans know what we meant. Computers know what we said.

This brought to mind an anonymous aphorism I’ve had in my head for nigh-on 40 years. It’s as relevant today as when I first heard it:

I really hate this damn machine

I wish that I could sell it.

It never does quite what I want

But only what I tell it.

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, now machines can do neither.^[1]

(A more verbose version of the query—“how to base64 encode an image”—skips the artificially intelligent response in favor of actually useful links. That makes the original version one of those instances where brevity bites you. John Siracusa had a good take on this on ATP 445. Ironically, his suggestion—ask your question using complete sentences—works even better today with LLMs.)

Jess Weatherbed, at The Verge (possibly paywalled; Apple News+ link):

Apple is suing a former employee for allegedly stealing confidential Vision Pro headset research before leaving to join Snap’s product design team.[…]

According to the lawsuit, Liu falsely claimed he was quitting his job for health reasons and did not disclose that he had a new job lined up as a product design engineer for Snap. This prevented Apple from immediately revoking Liu’s access to internal systems, a standard protocol activated by the company upon notice that employees are joining a competitor. Apple alleges that this allowed Liu to copy a “massive volume” of proprietary information that he could later access after being locked out of Apple’s network.

Why do people think they can get away with such skullduggery?

Apple says it’s unable to determine exactly what was downloaded by Liu, but argues the overlap between the information Liu took with Snap’s AR Spectacles products “suggests that Mr. Liu intends to use Apple’s Proprietary Information at Snap.” According to the complaint, Apple is pursuing unspecified financial damages from Liu for breaching contractual obligations and requesting that Liu be forced to return the stolen documents.

Apple is asking for, among other things:

• An award of damages in an amount to be determined at trial;
• Prejudgment and post-judgment interest at the maximum rate allowed by law; and
• Apple’s actual costs, expenses, attorneys’ fees incurred in this suit.

Whew. This will have a deleterious effect on Mr. Liu’s finances and future employment opportunities, I’m sure.

I doubt stealing files for a Snapchat position will have been worth it.

I suspect a surprisingly well-written apology will be forthcoming.

My favorite part from the complaint:

Mr. Liu gave his resignation from Apple at the end of October 2024. At the time, he told his colleagues he wanted to spend more time with his family and take care of his health. As a result, Apple allowed him to keep working—and maintain access to Apple’s Proprietary Information—for two more weeks.

A review of Mr. Liu’s Apple-issued work laptop showed that he was not honest about his stated reason for leaving Apple. Weeks before his departure, he negotiated a position with Snap Inc. (“Snap”), a maker of augmented reality (AR) glasses. He received an offer of employment on October 18, which means he waited nearly two weeks until October 30 to notify Apple that he was resigning from his position with Apple. And even then, he did not disclose he was leaving for Snap. Apple would not have allowed Mr. Liu continued access had he told the truth.

It’s well-known inside Apple: if you’re leaving for a competitor, you’re shut out from your accounts and walked out the door. He had time to download those files before resigning—without lying to his coworkers. What happened to honor among engineers?

Then there’s this:

On his final days as an Apple employee, he used his Apple-issued work laptop to copy more than a dozen folders containing thousands of files from a folder used for Apple work to his personal cloud storage account in a folder named “Personal” and a sub-folder within named “Knowledge.”

I’ll give Mr. Liu the benefit of the doubt here and suggest he downloaded these files as a personal reminder of the great work he did. But c’mon, everyone knows you name your surreptitious smugglings “Porn.”

Jaclyn Diaz and Juliana Kim for NPR (a news organization that stands to lose its federal funding for “unfairly” reporting stories like this):

The Justice Department is aggressively prioritizing efforts to strip some Americans of their U.S. citizenship.

Department leadership is directing its attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes—and giving U.S. attorneys wider discretion on when to pursue this tactic, according to a June 11 memo published online. The move is aimed at U.S. citizens who were not born in the country; according to data from 2023, close to 25 million immigrants were naturalized citizens.

At least one person has already been denaturalized in recent weeks. On June 13, a judge ordered the revocation of the citizenship of Elliott Duke, who uses they/them pronouns. Duke is an American military veteran originally from the U.K. who was convicted for distributing child sexual abuse material—something they later admitted they were doing prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.

It’s not difficult to see where this ends.

First, use an admitted child pornographer as a test case—few will defend the “indefensible.” The “American military veteran” part might give brief pause, but using they/them pronouns eclipses veteran status for this regime.

Next, declare any crime—right down to parking tickets and jaywalking—as a reason to denaturalize. You so much as drop a tissue on the street and you’ll be rounded up.

Finally, strip citizenship at will. Any reason will do. Membership in a terrorist organization—say, the Democratic Party, a mosque, or merely anti-Trump protesters—will be a leading contender, at least until they get to “because we felt like it.”

The DOJ memo says that the federal government will pursue denaturalization cases via civil litigation—an especially concerning move, said Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

In civil proceedings, any individual subject to denaturalization is not entitled to an attorney, Robertson said; there is also a lower burden of proof for the government to reach, and it is far easier and faster to reach a conclusion in these cases.

Robertson says that stripping Americans of citizenship through civil litigation violates due process and infringes on the rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

Presuming protection of the law is folly, because capriciousness isn’t a legal doctrine. Laws only matter when equally enforced—otherwise it’s just a whim.

Dan Mullen, ESPN:

The calendar has turned to July 1, and that means one thing: It’s time for Mets fans everywhere to wish each other a Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! Why? On Tuesday, 62-year-old Bobby Bonilla will collect a check for $1,193,248.20 from the New York Mets, as he has and will every July 1 from 2011 through 2035.

David Suggs, Sporting News:

[Bonilla] returned to the Mets in 1999 but was released in 2000. New York still was on the hook for $5.9 million. Mets ownership, locked into doomed investment partnerships with Bernie Madoff, believed it more financially viable to defer payment for Bonilla’s contract, spreading it across 25 years (2011–2035) with eight percent interest.

Jenna West and Dan Shanoff, The Athletic:

[…] the Mets originally offered Bonilla the deferred payments of the $5.9 million they owed him because they thought they could exceed the deferral payments by investing that $5.9 million in Bernie Madoff’s fund, which, up until that point, had produced meaningful returns for then-Mets owner Fred Wilpon. Madoff’s fund, of course, turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.

Suggs, again:

That initial $5.9 million fee now sits at $29.8 million.

Financial wizards.

Speaking of naturalization, Azucena Rasilla at The Oaklandside reports this glum news:

For Alejandra Vila, an Oakland resident for the past 25 years, having her oath ceremony at the Paramount Theatre was a special moment in her journey to becoming a U.S. citizen.

“When you get that letter with your oath ceremony information, you know you’re about to become free,” Vila said. “The night I got the letter, I walked to the Paramount with my wife, and I looked up at the lighted-up marquee, and I told her how my freedom would start at the Paramount.” […]

Now, as part of cost-cutting under the Trump administration, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has stopped holding naturalization ceremonies at the Paramount Theatre and all other non-government venues throughout the Bay Area and across the country.

This saddens me tremendously, as my naturalization ceremony was held there—a special, unforgettable experience.

(It was also the location of one of the earliest dates with my now-wife. So two special and unforgettable experiences.)

The Paramount Theatre is an historic and stunningly beautiful Art Deco space, a perfect place to welcome new citizens. What a loss.

(Via this Mastodon thread where I saw Kieran Healy’s piece on becoming a citizen.)

On June 27, 2025, Kieran Healy became one of America’s newest citizens. He writes a lovely essay about the process. It’s a wonderful distillation of an emotionally complex experience:

When I sat down to write something about becoming a citizen, I was immediately tangled up in a skein of questions about the character of citizenship, the politics of immigration, and the relationship of individuals to the state. These have all been in the news recently; perhaps you have heard about it. These questions ask how polities work, how they impose themselves upon us, how power is exercised. They are tied up with deep-rooted principles, claims and myths—as you please—about where authority comes from and how it is or whether it ever has been justly applied. These are not easy matters to understand in principle or resolve in practice. Nor can they simply be dismissed. But I am not writing this note because I want to take on these questions, even though I acknowledge them. I am writing this because I do not want to forget how I felt yesterday.

He peppers questions from the Naturalization Test throughout his essay, each one an implicit rebuke of the many Americans—elected and otherwise—who ignore the rights and responsibilities they were born, or sworn, to uphold.

Some of the questions, Healy writes, “are not trivial at all,” adding:

I think many Americans would get them wrong if asked. And I feel confident every one of the fifty or so people who took the Oath with me on Friday knew them backwards and forwards.

I agree; I studied hard to make sure I could answer all 100 questions. I’m guessing fewer than half of “natural born” citizens could answer six of the ten (random!) questions needed to pass. (Give it a shot, then share your score—you’re aiming for at least 60%.)

Healy continues:

I know the nationalities of my fellow oath-takers because of the next stage of the ceremony. This was the Roll Call of Nations. I did not know this was going to happen. Every country of origin represented was announced in turn. As your country was named, you were asked to stand up, and remain standing. Afghanistan came first. Then Algeria. The last person to stand, immediately to my left, was from the United Kingdom. There were twenty seven countries in all, out of only fifty or so people. For me this part in particular was enormously, irresistibly moving. It perfectly expressed the principle, the claim, the myth—as you please—that America is an idea. That it does not matter where you are from. That, in fact, America will in this moment explicitly and proudly acknowledge the sheer variety of places you are all from. That built in to the heart of the United States is the republican ideal not just that anyone can become an American, but that this possibility is what makes the country what it is.

But isn’t it more complicated than that? You know as well as I do that it is. So much more complicated. So much more painful. So much more dangerous. So much more messed-up. I will think about and work on strands and threads of that impossible tangle tomorrow, just like I have thought about and worked on bits and pieces of it since I came here. But I will not forget this moment. I will not forget what it felt like.

Seven years on and I still remember how I felt as I got sworn in as an American citizen. The feeling never fades, but it crystallized my view of my adopted country—as I’m sure it did for many others. More than most, we’re acutely aware when America strays from her ideals, and we remain resolute in their defense—a fierce loyalty not to what America is, but to what it claims to be.

I’ve always found the possessive-ied name of Ruth’s Chris Steak House quite curious. I’d once assumed “Chris” was “Ruth’s” child, thus “Ruth’s Chris”—an homage to their mom—but no: the actual origin is both delightfully charming and boringly corporate. The origin story of this “non-chain chain” is surprisingly heartwarming.

It also brought to mind the chintziest experience I’ve ever had at a steakhouse.

Almost 20 years ago I created a site called Steak Adventures—“Enjoying good steak with good friends then bragging about it.” Every few months or so a couple of us would visit a San Francisco steakhouse and write a “review.” It was mainly an excuse to hang out with my good friend Cathy, my then-girlfriend-now-wife Ying, and one or two other friends. (It was also an early attempt at being a food blogger—what today we might call an influencer 🤮.)

Anyway, one of those Adventures was to Ruth’s Chris Steak House on Van Ness. I’ll let two-decades-ago us take it from here:

Ruth’s Chris is a non-chain chain; you probably have at least one in your neighborhood, but it’s considered higher-end. It’s all dark wood and dim lighting. In many ways, it’s a reproduction of what many people think of when they think “steakhouse”. And like most reproductions, it pales in comparison to the real deal.

We were very excited to go to Ruth’s Chris; it was five of us after an improv workshop, and we had worked up an appetite bouncing around a room making bad puns. […]

When we were finally seated, we quickly ordered a bunch of appetizers, including an order of steak fries. When the fries arrived, they looked great. One problem: the dish contained exactly four french fries. Four french fries for five people. The phrase “clip joint” comes to mind. It’s bad enough to serve an appetizer of four fries, it’s beyond unacceptable to do so to a table of five people.

To this day, four french fries for five people remains shorthand for inappropriately small servings and inattentive service—would it have killed them to put one more french fry on the plate? It’s the first thing that comes up when someone mentions Ruth’s Chris.

The rest of the experience wasn’t great—we had to wait to be seated (despite having reservations), the “famed buttered steak” used the extra dairy to mask bland meat, the tables were too tightly spaced, the wine list was uninspired, and the bill was excessive for the quality of food and service. (About $50 per person—a fortune in 2006! That wouldn’t even get you a petite filet today.)

We concluded:

We couldn’t recommend Ruth’s Chris to anyone looking to experience a good steak, or a good steakhouse.

I haven’t been to a Ruth’s Chris since. I hope their plates have more fries.

Elie Mystal, writing powerfully for The Nation:

The legal upshot of the Supreme Court’s monumentally disastrous decision in Trump v. CASA (more commonly known as “the birthright citizenship case”) is chaos. Utter legal chaos. In its ruling on Friday, the court’s usual six monarchists granted Donald Trump’s request to reexamine various nationwide injunctions preventing Trump and Stephen Miller from implementing their plans to revoke birthright citizenship to any American who doesn’t happen to be white. With the legal sleight of hand so beloved by the Roberts court, the ruling doesn’t actually allow Trump to end birthright citizenship. It just makes it incredibly difficult for courts to stop him from ending birthright citizenship. It’s a distinction, one that lawyers will try to exploit for an entire rearguard action to defend citizenship in this country, but one that’s unlikely to make much of a difference if you happen to be born on the Republican side of the tracks. Once you read the fine print, it becomes clear that this decision is a historic, five-alarm catastrophe.

I love reading Mystal because he doesn’t mince any words.

The decision means that some courts, districts, and states will still defend the concept of birthright citizenship, while others will not. That could mean that whether or not a child born in America on or after June 27, 2025, is considered a citizen of the United States will depend on what state, or even county, that child happens to be born in.

If that setup sounds familiar, it should. It is exactly how this country determined citizenship from June 21, 1788, (when the Constitution was ratified) until July 9, 1868 (when the 14th Amendment was ratified).

I cannot begin to express how abhorrent and terrifying I find this decision.

Mystal writes that “one’s fundamental rights should not wildly change if they miss their exit on the interstate.”

Having fundamental rights shift as you move between states—a citizen here, not a citizen there—means a loss of rights for women, LGBTQ+, minorities, and, inevitably, a return to slave states.

Imagine you’re born in California, where your rights as a citizen of the United States of America are recognized. You hop on a plane to New York (another state that will recognize your American citizenship), and your plane is diverted mid-flight to Texas. It’s boarded by masked ICE agents, and you are shackled and dragged off, because in Texas, you are not a citizen of America. You have no rights. You can be held indefinitely or deported to a country you’ve never been to—legally, with no recourse.

What other rights can be stripped from you? How about your right as a woman to decide who—or whether—you marry? If you’re a LGBT couple, your marriage might be illegal in Utah. Your interracial relationship? Void in West Virginia. Georgia already forced a brain-dead woman to give birth in Georgia. What makes you think that won’t be extended to all women?

It’s fashionable to say that the court’s ruling is not really about birthright citizenship, because the legal question focused on the power to issue nationwide injunctions. But that sanewashing of the court’s opinion does not survive its first contact with reality. By taking away the ability of courts to enter nationwide injunctions in this case, the court is giving Trump carte blanche to violate the constitutional definition of citizenship in any district where a friendly Trump judge will allow him to. And, in practice, this ruling will extend to every other single issue where Trump has been stopped thanks to a nationwide injunction.

And here is how we return to a country with slave states. Trump is one executive order away from declaring that “slavery is legal.” Obviously California, New York, and the rest of the “blue” states will challenge the order, and win. But it will only be enforceable in those states (at best—as Mystal notes, the nature of this ruling might make it valid only for those who themselves are part of the lawsuit). In states where there is no challenge—or a challenge is lost—slavery will be legal.

If you think I’m being hyperbolic and irrational, think back a few months to when the idea of abducting of a legal visa holder in broad daylight by masked men seemed hyperbolic. Or to when deporting a man protected from deportation was an irrational idea. Or to just a few days ago, when a Supreme Court decision stripping lower federal courts of their authority seemed absurd.

Indeed, this decision places virtually unchecked power in the hands of the Supreme Court. The “court’s usual six monarchists” (as Mystal calls them) have set themselves up as the most powerful arbiters of what’s legal, rendering their decisions as untouchable. Any law can be declared unconstitutional. Any executive order can be deemed lawful. If they don’t like what Trump is doing, they can constrain his actions—unless, perhaps, he agrees to do something for them, I suppose. As Mystal notes,

We’re living in a world where six Republican Supreme Court justices used the courts of a monarchy we revolted against as the controlling authority on whether the president of the United States has to follow the Constitution.

It took exactly three seconds to know I’d be linking to this Living Colour appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. Living Colour is one of my all-time favourite bands—I’ve listened to Vivid possibly hundreds of times, and named my post-college creative endeavors “Broken Hearts Productions” after one of their tracks.

Growing up in New York in the late ’80s, I caught them early in their rise. Hard rock was new to me, and Black hard rock artists were a rarity. Living Colour pried open a genre of music I didn’t know existed, and forged a core part of my musical identity. They reminded the world—and me—that Black musicians went way beyond jazz, reggae, and soul. My everlasting thanks to Anton, my friend of 40-plus years, for introducing me to them.

The band sounds phenomenal, especially Corey Glover’s wails—enjoy it on a big screen and your best headphones—but the concert was all too short. I ended up watching it twice, back to back—then immediately started playing the albums.

What’s your favorite color, baby?

John Gruber over at Daring Fireball summarizes the recent controversy over Apple’s vomitous use of an Apple Wallet Push Notification to promote F1 The Movie, adding:

iOS 26 adds new settings inside the Wallet app to allow fine-grained control over notifications, including the ability to turn off notifications for “Offers & Promotions”. That’s good. But (a) iOS 26 is months away from being release to the general public; and (b) at least for me, I was by default opted in to this setting on my iOS 26 devices.

I was also opted in by default on iOS 26 (beta 2)—I’ve since turned it off.

The Wallet app wasn’t the only transgressor; I received a notification from the new-to-iOS 26 Apple Vision Pro app.

The Apple Vision Pro app has a “New Content Available” Push Notification setting (defaulting to opt in, natch). It would reasonably cover the first half of this notification—I want to know when new Apple Vision Pro content is released—but tacking on the F1® ad puts me in the wholly unacceptable position of either allowing tacky ads, or not learning about new immersive content. (I have, of course, chosen the latter.)

Unsurprisingly, Apple has App Review Guidelines covering this exact scenario. Also unsurprisingly, Apple is violating its own guidelines:

4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out of receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.

That’s pretty clear-cut, and Apple violates all three parts:

1. It sent a Push Notification for a promotion without customers “explicitly” opting in to receive them.
2. The publicly available version of iOS offers no way to opt out of those notifications.
3. iOS 26 beta adds the required option to opt out from promotional pushes, but defaults customers to opt in.

Marco Arment:

This is a core system app interrupting you, promoting a sale by a movie-ticketing company, to push you to go see the platform vendor’s new movie.

Why not just pop up random ads all the time, always creating new channels that everyone’s opted-into by default so you can never keep up with opting out of them all?

Oh wait, that’s already what happens.

Apple’s as bad as everyone else. They don’t respect their customers — we’re fodder.

They truly have no standards anymore.

I’d say “Apple has lost their way” but they’ve been abusing Push Notifications—and customer trust—for so long they’ve clearly chosen this path. They haven’t strayed—it’s their strategy.

David Pierce, The Verge:

[…] sometime in the last several days, the Trump Mobile site appears to have been scrubbed of all language indicating the phone is to be made in the USA. (Like, for instance, the huge banner on the homepage that says the T1 is “MADE IN THE USA.” Just to name one example.)

Instead, the Trump Mobile website now includes what can only be described as vague, pro-American gestures in the direction of smartphone manufacturing. The T1’s new tagline is “Premium Performance. Proudly American.” Its website says the device is “designed with American values in mind” and there are “American hands behind every device.” Under Key Features, the first thing listed is “American-Proud Design.” None of this indicates, well, anything. It certainly doesn’t say the device is made in the USA, or even designed in the USA. There are just… some hands. In America.

Someone probably whispered “lawsuit” into a Trumpian ear, since “Made in USA” has a very specific legal meaning, state Attorneys General might want a word, oh, and there’s this:

[…] the Lanham Act gives any person (such as a competitor) who is damaged by a false designation of origin the right to sue the party making the false claim.

(Imagine Apple and Google using the Lanham Act to challenge the claim? Fireworks and popcorn.)

Several specs of the purported device were also changed or yanked from the site—the screen is now 6.25“ instead of 6.78”, and the previously claimed 256 GB storage and 12 GB memory are nowhere to be found. The release timing is also changed, to “later this year” instead of August or September.

Despite the scrubbing and rewording, Trump Mobile still claims, in a statement to USA Today, that the T1 Phone will be made in the U.S:

Chris Walker, a Trump Mobile spokesperson, dismissed the report, saying that “T1 phones are proudly being made in America. Speculation to the contrary is simply inaccurate.”

(Interesting that this statement only went to USA Today, and no other news outlet—including The Verge.)

The T1 site now has this completely vapid claim about the phone:

it’s brought to life right here in the USA. With American hands behind every device […]

I previously wagered that

someone will get a hundred devices’ worth of Chinese cellphone parts and screw them together in their garage, and that will satisfy the “Made in America” claim.

I’ll bet that’s what they mean by “brought to life,” but perhaps even that low bar will prove too ambitious for the Grifter-in-Chief’s family business—I fully expect this phone will never ship.

Joseph Cox, 404 Media:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a new mobile phone app that can identify someone based on their fingerprints or face by simply pointing a smartphone camera at them, according to internal ICE emails viewed by 404 Media. The underlying system used for the facial recognition component of the app is ordinarily used when people enter or exit the U.S. Now, that system is being used inside the U.S. by ICE to identify people in the field.

A reminder that technology used to expose illicit behavior can also be tools of autocracy and repression.

Perhaps it’s time to invest in a pair of anti-infrared glasses.

Emanuel Maiberg, 404 Media:

A new site, FuckLAPD.com, is using public records and facial recognition technology to allow anyone to identify police officers in Los Angeles they have a picture of. The tool, made by artist Kyle McDonald, is designed to help people identify cops who may otherwise try to conceal their identity, such as covering their badge or serial number.

“We deserve to know who is shooting us in the face even when they have their badge covered up,” McDonald told me when I asked if the site was made in response to police violence during the LA protests against ICE that started earlier this month. “fucklapd.com is a response to the violence of the LAPD during the recent protests against the horrific ICE raids. And more broadly—the failure of the LAPD to accomplish anything useful with over $2B in funding each year.”

Finally, an acceptable use of facial recognition. More like this, please.

A sudden storm on Lake Tahoe this past Sunday capsized a powerboat, and eight people died, among them Josh Pickles (a DoorDash executive), and his parents, Terry Pickles and longtime Apple employee Paula Bozinovich. Brian Croll (a now-retired Apple Product Marketing VP) emailed Daring Fireball’s John Gruber to share a touching reflection on Bozinovich’s impact on Apple:

Paula was an employee who you are not going to see profiled in any books on the history of Apple or Steve Jobs. She worked closely with the ops team to ensure CDs and then DVDs shipped on time and correctly packaged in a box. She knew all the systems and the right people to make things happen. She was always committed to getting things better than just right — perfect. Paula’s extraordinary commitment, along with all the hundreds of other unheralded employees, translated the vision of Steve, the designers, the engineers, and the marketing people into a shipping product.

One of the secrets behind Apple’s success has been its ability to execute. Paula was an important part of that fine-tuned machine. She was also quite a character!

I’m sending you this because I’ve seen front page obituaries of executives who probably did way more harm than good to their companies, and yet when you scratch the surface of a successful company you find that people like Paula make all the difference.

The Apple employee community is surprisingly small in spite of the company’s size, and losing someone from the community, even if we don’t know the person, hurts. Though I’ve never met Paula, I’ve known many people like her: the unheralded people who made, and make, Apple hum. The high-profile names may get all the glory, but Apple would be nothing without people like Paula. I’m grateful to Brian for sharing this tribute.

My sincerest condolences to the friends and family of Paula and all those who died in this tragedy.

Matt Ford at The New Republic, on the poorly reasoned Supreme Court decision in United States v. Skrmetti (which I referenced in passing), under the headline “The Supreme Court’s Anti-Transgender Ruling Is a Tortured Mess”:

It is fitting that Roberts wrote the majority opinion in United States v. Skrmetti because it is representative of his court’s slipshod approach to major, high-profile cases. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority effectively engineered a landmark case on transgender rights in which no transgender person is a named litigant, reducing them and their interests to an easily ignored abstraction. The result is tortured reasoning, misapplied precedents, and a transparently outcome-oriented ruling. […]

The ruling, on its own terms, drew sharp criticism from the court’s three liberal justices. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor castigated the majority for what she saw as a blow to sex-based discrimination protections in general—and for the impact it would have on transgender Americans across the country. “By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims,” she wrote. “In sadness, I dissent.”

The Tennessee law notes PBS News:

bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors, but it allows the same drugs to be used for other purposes.

The logical hoops the Court jumped through to reach this conclusion boggle the mind. The world continues to trample over transgender rights, and there’s no end in sight. It’s sickening.

Lisa Melton, an early-2000s Apple colleague:

My post here should be a celebration of my coming out publicly. On Mastodon, no less. Two years ago today. Yay! I’m still so surprised at and so grateful for the positive reaction I received there. Those are good people.

But this is more than an anniversary party. It’s a vulgar rant. It’s catharsis. It’s a celebration of a different kind of triumph.

And it’s a long story. So, strap in and get uncomfortable. Just like I did.

Lisa paints a harrowing tale of a gender confirmation surgery delayed by unexpected medical issues and further exacerbated by the unwelcome “orange-faced fascist returning to power”—a potentially deadly combination that could prevent her from completing this “life saving” surgery:

I am not hysterical when I say that Cheeto Jesus and his goons are trying to exterminate me and every other trans person in this country. And while they’re at it, make sure no one else ever considers or attempts transition. Mind you, just that last plan will kill people.

She ends:

That’s where we are, folks. That’s how bad it is for trans people. Wake. The. Fuck. Up!

Am I angry and bitter about this? You’re goddamn right I am.

Now, I’m still going do my best to thrive, and not just survive, in spite of all of this horror. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with it.

You shouldn’t be either.

Especially relevant in light of the recent Supreme Court decision to deny minors the right to gender-affirming care.

The Onion Editorial Board on Friday, in an open letter (“Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice”):

Who will stand up for our democracy? This question, fraught in even the most peaceful times, has only grown more pressing as our country approaches its 250th anniversary. Each passing day brings growing assaults on essential liberties like freedom of speech and due process. Meanwhile, our delicately assembled legal system faces a constant barrage of threats. Even as this issue reaches publication, the U.S. military has been deployed against peaceful protestors. We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing.

Members of Congress—now, more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice.

Terrific timing.

The Onion also placed this as a full-page ad in Sunday’s print edition of The New York Times (a fitting choice, as the do-nothing paper of record) and sent physical copies to each member of Congress.

One of many reasons I subscribed to The Onion.

Donald Trump on “Truth” Social (the official channel for presidential proclamations, but reposted to X/Twitter for actual reach):

We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The “Thank you for your attention to this matter” confirms it’s an official communiqué, of course, but it’s the all-caps call for peace—after dropping 30,000-pound bombs on a sovereign country without congressional approval, thereby pushing America to the brink of yet another Middle East war—that shows just how seriously Trump takes this.

This unconstitutional military strike should be a clearly impeachable offense. I’m sure our do-nothing Congress will get right on that.

(An aside: What has happened to John Fetterman?)

I’m reminded today of two articles. First, this 2016 New York Times piece by Maureen Dowd:

Second, this 2023 Wall Street Journal opinion from J.D. Vance (Apple News+):

Both have aged like fine wine in a 100º cellar.