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Candice Bernd

@candicequestions.com

Special Investigative Correspondent covering climate & movements @texasobserver.org • bernd@texasobserver.org • Signal: Candice.49 Author: “Blood, Soil & Oil” forthcoming @haymarketbooks.org https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2860-blood-soil-and-oil

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Robert Downen@robertdownen.bsky.social · 2w ago

In the last week, a GOP nominee for statewide office: -Apparently invoked the conspiracy theory that led to the Holocaust -Called to round up Chinese people -Quoted an obscure white nationalist novel -Called the nonworking "low IQ parasites" We asked GOP leaders to respond. None did. (Gift link).

A GOP Nominee for Texas Office Keeps Peddling Fascist Ideas

Bo French was once criticized by members of his party for his offensive posts. Now that he’s the nominee for the Railroad Commission, they’re silent.

texasmonthly.com

Charlotte Weatherill@ckweatherill.bsky.social · last wk.

Full of despair today. Massive lay offs in social sciences and humanities across the country, Burnham puts out a video saying 'AI can write an essay', and my university is busy integrating co-pilot into all staff and student computers. We are being told we're defunct and there's no resistance.

gwen howerton@kissphoria.bsky.social · 3w ago

ive talked about this a little but it's been kind of crazy-making to watch testosterone and hormone therapy blow up and become a big body-hacking craze at the exact same time that it's being rolled back for trans people

Texas Observer@texasobserver.org · 3w ago

New from @josephinelee.bsky.social, in our magazine: Districts across the state are arresting and citing young children children for common misbehavior, leaving lasting trauma as the Legislature rejects bills to raise the age of criminal responsibility and floods schools with even more police.

In Texas Schools, a Crisis of Arrests of Kids as Young as 10

A groundbreaking data analysis shows how districts across the state are arresting and citing children for common misbehavior, leaving lasting trauma as the Legislature rejects bills to raise the age…

texasobserver.org

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4w ago

“A simple data-entry error, magnified and broadcast nationwide by a growing surveillance network operated through an opaque partnership between a private company and public agencies, led police to identify me as a car thief and set up a sting to take me down.”

How Flock Cameras Wrongly Tracked Me for Days Over ‘Stolen’ Plates and Sent Police After Me

A simple error got magnified by Flock's nationwide surveillance camera network and ended with four cop cars boxing me in.

thedrive.com

Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)@kitoconnell.com · 4w ago

“We're not Dallas, we're not Tanglewood; there's real interesting people that live here, and you should get to know your neighbors.’” New @thebarbedwire.com: Through their 'Weird Mom Prom,' Youth LGBTQ+ prom, and mutual aid, this nonprofit builds community for progressive oddballs in North Texas.

Meet the ‘Weird Moms’ of Fort Worth Who Embrace Diversity, Acceptance & Joy in North Texas

From meet and greets with local candidates to the “Weird Mom Prom,” this Fort Worth nonprofit is building community and changing perceptions about the kinds of people who live in the DFW metroplex.

thebarbedwire.com

Robert Downen@robertdownen.bsky.social · 4w ago

Far-right Islamophobe Aaron Reitz is expected to be named US attorney for the Southern District of Texas, which includes Houston. Reitz has called Islam "incompatible" with the West and as a recent candidate for Texas AG vowed to use "lawfare" to "destroy the left."

Reitz Slated to Be US Attorney in Texas’ Southern District (1)

Aaron Reitz, a former Trump administration official and top lawyer for the state of Texas, is set to be the next US attorney for the Southern District of Texas.

news.bloomberglaw.com

Lex McMenamin (they/them)@lexmcmenamin.com · 4w ago

Prairieland AMA starts at 2 pm ET!

From the politics community on Reddit: We are Lex McMenamin and Sam Levine, reporters at The Guardian US! Ask us anything about the Texas anti-ICE protesters sentenced to 450 years in prison.

Explore this post and more from the politics community

reddit.com

Lex McMenamin (they/them)@lexmcmenamin.com · 4w ago

hey folks! tomorrow at 2 pm ET, I'll be doing an AMA on r/politics about the Prairieland case in North Texas, the questions it raises for the First Amendment, and how it targeted trans folks. my colleague Sam Levine, who attended the trial, is participating too. bring your questions!

Lex McMenamin, wearing glasses and a green shirt, holds a piece of paper reading: Hi! I'm Lex McMenamin (they/them :) ) I'll be on r/politics @ 2 pm ET July 8th. u/guardian
Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · last mo.

NEW — The sentencing of the Prairieland demonstrators shows the brutality of Trump's war on dissent, but it's not without precedent, @kimkelly.bsky.social writes. History shows us the government has always punished anti-fascism. But this time we can change the narrative in real time. Read here:

From Haymarket to Prairieland: How dissent has unleashed the long arm of the law

The Prairieland sentencing has dark historical parallels, Kim Kelly writes. But we can change the end of the current story.

thehandbasket.co

alex@nonmodernist.com · last mo.

one thing i try to convey in this story is that the specific loose association of friends and acquaintances now sentenced to 30-100 years in prison were being targeted and harassed by the state for YEARS before the july 4 noise demo at prairieland.

I should tell you that my husband doesn’t want me to write this story. Not because he thinks it doesn’t matter, but because he fears it matters too much, to the wrong people, in the wrong way. He has reasons. Two years ago I was doxxed for the first time, while I sat with Liz, Ines, and Savanna on the sixth floor of a Fort Worth courthouse taking notes on the felony trial of an antifascist. The person who set the dox in motion was a self-described "Christian fascist" who has spent years building bridges between elected Republicans and men in swastikas, and who has learned that the surest way to make both groups pay attention is to point at a crowd of queer people and the people defending them and say the word antifa. The arrests that led to that trial happened at a drag brunch in Fort Worth on April 23, 2023, six days before I sat in that community center eating popcorn and writing letters with Ines, Liz, and Savanna. That afternoon, three antifascists were shoved to the ground and arrested while a far-right reporter circled with a camera on a stick, ready to feed footage, charging documents, names and addresses, to a network of extremists who coordinate harassment campaigns. A Christian-nationalist group later sued some of the people who'd shown up to defend the drag show. In the days before the brunch, an anonymous account had asked the Tarrant County district attorney to investigate an "antifa militia" supposedly planning to descend on it. At least two of the people caught in that invented emergency—one arrested at Fort Brewery, one named in the lawsuit—have been arrested in connection with the events at Prairieland. The conspiracy theory workshopped by a handful of local extremists to get a drag show shut down has now been adopted wholesale by the federal government. On September 22, 2025, the president signed an executive order designating antifa a "domestic terrorist organization." There is no such thing. No statute lets the government brand a domestic group a terrorist organization, and "antifa" has no roster, no office, no accounts to freeze, because it was never an organization to begin with. It is a description of a politics, and, increasingly, a word you can lay over any gathering you'd like to break up. Three days after the EO, a memorandum, NSPM-7, directed federal agencies to "disband and uproot" the networks behind such "violence." You cannot disband a thing with no members. You can only decide, case by case, who counts as one—so the order didn't name an enemy so much as authorize the hunt for one. The same month, federal agents raided Liz and Ines's home a second time and seized the printers and book-making equipment they used to make zines—the same printers that made the pages that became the seed packets still sitting on my desk.They had been arrested in July, immediately after the noise demo. But no federal terrorism case against them existed yet. The federal indictments for terrorism didn't come until October and November, after the executive order and the national security memorandum. The government drew the category knowing they already had people to put inside it. And so a fiction that once lived in a right-wing conspiracist's Twitter reply now lives in a federal sentencing memorandum. It is why people I know, and care about, may grow old in prison.
alex@nonmodernist.com · last mo.

i wrote about my friends, two of whom were sentenced yesterday to 50 years in prison each. hotel-florida.ghost.io/the-seeds-of... if you read it, or even if you don't, please donate to @dfwsupportcommitt.bsky.social

Uzza@uzzamodea.bsky.social · last mo.

So far I've only seen Rashida Tlaib take a stand. Andy Ngo gave a snarky reply and his minions are following it up w a ratio. FOX News reported her statement in shocked tones.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweets, "These sentences are a travesty and totally unjustified, but that's the point. Americans hate the fascist Trump regime, so the only way they can try to cling to power is brute force. NSPM-7 is a grave threat to all of us and more bullshit 'terrorism' charges like these are coming."
Kevin Foster@kevinhfoster.bsky.social · last mo.

Seems worth noting how no Democratic Congress member (as far as I can tell) has actively spoken out against the political persecution of the Prairieland anti-ICE protesters. It should go without saying that treating antifascism as terrorism is a serious threat to Democracy.

Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)@kitoconnell.com · last mo.

(NEW!) As America celebrates it's 250th bday, I decided to take a closer look at the plight of transgender veterans & their ability to access healthcare through the VA. Spoiler: It wasn't good before, now they're under direct attack under Hegseth. My latest for Big & Bright @thebarbedwire.com:

Healthcare for Trans Veterans Was Already Bad, And Under Trump It’s Getting Worse

Trans veterans were told to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis "for insurance." Now the VA is using it to deny them the care they earned.

thebarbedwire.com