Avice Meehan
@avicea.bsky.social
Substitute teacher; volunteer community journalist; science, data and knitting geek; fan of protecting voters and the right to vote; sometime quilter. Norfolk terriers rule. Always, fight the will to be dreary.
NEW: CBP is shopping for a contractor to track down people the US has deported to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala and collect unpaid immigration fines — debts that can top $1.8 million a person.
U.S. Border Patrol wants a contractor to track down deported people abroad and collect their immigration fines
The agency gave bidders three business days to compete for a first-of-its-kind contract to collect fines from people it has deported to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.
projectsaltbox.com
🔥🔥🔥🔥 “All of the speculation and hype around A.I. is hiding the fact that the technology isn’t just large language models or agents or data centers. It is the backbone of a superstructure that merges regressive politics with unchecked economic power in the guise of technological innovation.”
Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2d agoAnyway, I made a reading list in public. I try to avoid doing that. The Twitter “syllabus” wars scarred me. It’s gonna be a touchy few days.
What will the media companies who are publishing stories that Blanche agreed to a “deal” with Cornyn & Tillis to kill the slush fund write when people start getting paid with our tax dollars & this whole thing is revealed as a sham? Since they aren’t writing how it’s a sham now.
FYI: Blanche rescinded the ORDER establishing the slush fund, not the underlying “settlement.” The settlement says any changes must be agreed to by ALL parties, not just Todd. This “rescission” isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
I was going to write this morning on the damage Trump and Hegseth have done to the American military, but went in another direction. But Paul Krugman does an excellent job here. And as he would be the first to say, there is even more evidence that could be cited. open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
The Putinization of the American Military
When poseurs and yes-men run a war
open.substack.com
“Daylight Saving” and “Sunshine Protection” are deceits. Restore permanent Standard Time for more honest time-keeping.
The fact that VP JD Vance and Richard Grenell went to Romania—on behalf of the Trump Administration— to advocate for Andrew and Tristan Tate, who by all accounts, were rapists running a coercive sex ring, then permitted them to come to Florida, should be a crazy, crazy scandal.
The fact that we’ve had 10-plus years of Trump the politician and we are STILL having this conversation shows just how behind journalists (and particularly the TV kind) have been in adapting their practices to fit a changing reality. This should be a no-brainer by now.
Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis@jeffjarvis.bsky.social · 3w agoWas about to write this but @julieroginsky.bsky.social did it first: "Any television network with an ounce of integrity should refuse to carry Trump’s address live." They should delay, then fact-check the hell out of it, providing context, i.e. journalism saltypolitics.substack.com/p/the-medias...
NEW: "Let me tell you a story to help you understand how our situation looks to outsiders"—the story of America's death squads. www.thebulwark.com/p/americas-d...
America’s Death Squads Are Real
Sometimes you can’t see the world clearly from the inside.
thebulwark.com
WALLER: "If we get another hot reading on core inflation this week, then the FOMC will need to consider tightening monetary policy in the near term." "Sternly staring at inflation until it melts before our withering gaze is not an option." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/b... @nytimes.com
Fed Official Warns of Higher Rates if Inflation Stays Elevated
Christopher J. Waller, a governor at the Federal Reserve, said he needs to see several months of lower inflation data to feel confident about the outlook.
nytimes.com
The Platner story shows how political consultants should not parachute into a state and pick a candidate. There were a bunch of solid Democratic candidates in the state. Maybe the elites don’t know better than the people who actually live in the state?
CDC scientists wrote a robust paper on the safety results of the Covid vaccine. The acting director Bhattacharya, w/o experience in vaccines, blocked it based on his non-expert opinions on how vaccine safety studies should be conducted. An ongoing pattern of censorship. 🧪 archive.today/3QN9x
Opinion | Why the CDC refusing to publish covid vaccine research is so worrying
The publication of the study in another journal doesn’t erase the troubling questions raised by its suppression.
wapo.st
While I'm at it, here's the recruiter who was responsible for vetting him shrugging off a half-assed vetting and dismissing the red flags that did emerge. (WSJ covered how they went the cheap-and-fast route.)
Solomon@solomonrmissouri.com · 4w ago
ICE is engaged in a very large escalation nationwide, with the agency claiming to be hitting record arrest numbers amid the return of quotas. This has gotten very little attention from the media because ICE learned lessons from the chaotic disasters of Kristi Noem’s tenure. Keep a watch.
WA Whistles@wawhistles.bsky.social · 4w agoICE is surging in the Seattle area. (Map shows activity in the last week) Do you have your whistle with you?
Statement from Counsel for Olympian Davey Hearn -- Norm Eisen, Democracy Defenders Fund & Mary Dohrmann, Washington Litigation Group
Originally there was no Constitution. So ignoring the Constitution is the only truly originalist approach to Constitutional law.
Poll workers say that staffing and equipment prevent them from counting every ballot on Election Day. A Fox News guest says that the counts are delayed so that Antifa and Italian satellites can change the results. For busy Supreme Court justices, it can be hard to know who to trust.
My grandkids have measles and I’m about to get kicked out of my nursing home since they had to fire all the Haitian nurses. But at least now I know that the students at some school I never heard of aren’t going to get trigger warnings anymore.
WATCH: Chris Hayes looks at how Elon Musk’s assault on USAID became one of DOGE’s most devastating legacies—and why Musk is now trying to rewrite the record.
Hayes: Musk wants you to forget his deadly DOGE legacy
YouTube video by MS NOW
youtube.com
Keep speaking up.
Catherine Rampell@crampell.bsky.social · 2mo agoGood news: The Trump administration is abandoning its plan to dismantle a $368 million ocean monitoring system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems, bowing to a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/c...
Bob Odenkirk is a national treasure. Take 44 seconds and watch. www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0rB...
Unitary executive theory was made up by conservative lawyers in 1980s to empower Reagan. Today, they find support in Scalia’s dissent in Morrison v Olson, but SCOTUS majority — in still-binding precedent — said hogwash. www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/...
JD Vance can NEVER become president under any circumstance. When Trump is so far gone that he must be impeached and removed, Vance must be removed, too. Here's the evidence
Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof@evanbernick.bsky.social · 2mo agoYale Law School.
Elias: The fact that the New York Times thinks there’s a middle ground here… Here’s my message: I don’t compromise with Republicans because there is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist, and they are trying to burn down democracy.
Trump's deal with Iran is 95% done. All that remains to be negotiated is Iran's nuclear program, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the unfreezing of Iranian assets.
