Had an awesome conversation with @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com and ofc @joshkovensky.bsky.social about Prairieland. There are, imo, a lot of difficult and important questions around activism. We get into many of them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhqS...

How a Texas Protest Ended in Disaster | TPM Social Club

YouTube video by Talking Points Memo

youtube.com

Stephen Miller Sent 9 Special Operations Goons to Tail a Guy Driving ICE Out Signs emptywheel.net/2026/08/25/s...

Stephen Miller Sent 9 Special Operations Goons to Tail a Guy Driving ICE Out Signs - emptywheel

On February 26, Special Operations goons spent 13 hours tailing a guy transporting ICE Out signs in his truck.

emptywheel.net

Not the main point here, but the details in these docs of undercover informants watching young lefties muse about abolishing ICE while preaching nonviolence — then reporting back to their handlers on what they saw — is very amusing. Has the tone of a Coen Brothers movie or something.

Undercover DHS Agent Monitored Alex Pretti Memorial, New Docs Suggest

Federal law enforcement’s undercover campaign to surveil Minneapolis protesters included monitoring a...

talkingpointsmemo.com

Via @ulaakuzi.bsky.social, with additional photos and a video from @fiona-ndre.bsky.social and @fiona-murphy.bsky.social: I feel like I shared this story already, but y'all, I may've undersold how *hungry* the photos/videos in this halal barbecue story will make you. religionnews.com/2026/08/14/h...

Texas barbecue is getting a halal makeover

FORT WORTH, Texas (RNS) — As anti-Muslim rhetoric rises in Texas, Muslim pitmasters are winning over diners and reshaping one of the state's most iconic culinary traditions.

religionnews.com

An undercover DHS agent monitored a makeshift memorial in Minneapolis to Alex Pretti, new court docs show

NEWS: GOP candidate in NY-19 posted a photo of his grandfather in a full Nazi uniform, swastikas and all, on Veterans Day w/ the caption "I salute all who served." Oberacker sat on the GOP's antisemitism working group and already had to fire his campaign manager over the "I love Hitler" group chat.

This is fucking hilarious. This filing basically ignores MOST of the defendants' discovery requests. It DOES address their request for comms w/Main DOJ, barely. But now they can point to the metadata to support that demand.

Josh Kovensky@joshkovensky.bsky.social · 5d ago

That lists Brian W. Lynch as the author. Lynch is a co-director of Joint Task Force Vanguard, the DOJ's body implementing NPSM-7. Lynch marched on the Capitol on January 6, I reported here talkingpointsmemo.com/news/exclusi...

Federal prosecutors called DHS's campaign to surveil protesters in Minneapolis "standard law enforcement practice" in a bizarre filing on Friday

Autonomous drones, whose targets are chosen by an onboard AI and not a remote human operator, may now be killing people in Ukraine www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/w...

A Drone Killed Three Ukrainians. It Was Guided Entirely by A.I.

An attack by what Ukrainian officials said was a Russian drone with an Nvidia chip presages a dystopian future of weaponry untethered to humans.

nytimes.com

NEW: The Trump administration is looking to set up a consortium for anti-immigrant "independent journalism" in Europe, with the State Department envisioning "substantial involvement" in the project. www.theredoubt.net/trump-admini...

Trump administration to support 'independent journalism' in Europe with anti-immigrant focus

For-profit entities are eligible to receive $1 million from the State Department, which envisions "substantial involvement" in the project.

theredoubt.net

More details on the crackdown in Minneapolis, which Homeland Security—I am not making this up—called "Operation Puppet Master"

DHS Spied on Churches, Libraries, and Union Halls in Minneapolis Protest Crackdown

Federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security sent undercover agents to...

talkingpointsmemo.com

This incident seems to raise more questions than the other church ones because University Baptist Church is covered by an injunction blocking warrantless DHS actions on church property: bsky.app/profile/bria...

Brian Kaylor@briankaylor.bsky.social · 2w ago

Surveillance at University Baptist Church raises additional questions. DHS went inside church on May 28. UBC is covered by an injunction issued Feb. 13 that bars DHS from warrantless actions inside American Baptist & Alliance churches. UBC is part of both & was specifically cited in injunction.

Full story here: talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dhs-spi...

DHS Spied on Churches, Libraries, and Union Halls in Minneapolis Protest Crackdown

Federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security sent undercover agents to...

talkingpointsmemo.com

Josh Kovensky@joshkovensky.bsky.social · 2w ago

NSPM-7 Watch: federal agents sent an undercover informant to a Sunrise Movement meeting, obtained years of financial records for labor unions, and spied on churches during and after Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dhs-spi...

We've been covering NSPM-7 and its implementation extensively and in granular detail in our Creating the Enemy Within series talkingpointsmemo.com/creating-the...

Creating the Enemy Within

A running TPM project tracking the Trump administration's state campaign to treat dissent as terrorism.

talkingpointsmemo.com

Josh Kovensky@joshkovensky.bsky.social · 2w ago

NSPM-7 Watch: federal agents sent an undercover informant to a Sunrise Movement meeting, obtained years of financial records for labor unions, and spied on churches during and after Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dhs-spi...

Per this filing, two HSI agents collected the license plate numbers of cars parked in a lot as they sent an undercover informant into a meeting held at a Twin Cities church.

Brian Kaylor@briankaylor.bsky.social · 2w ago

Woah, a court filing says federal agents spied on churches in the Twin Cities! This is a serious allegation & another sign of how the Trump administration is not actually pro-religious liberty:

Woah, a court filing says federal agents spied on churches in the Twin Cities! This is a serious allegation & another sign of how the Trump administration is not actually pro-religious liberty:

Josh Kovensky@joshkovensky.bsky.social · 2w ago

NSPM-7 Watch: federal agents sent an undercover informant to a Sunrise Movement meeting, obtained years of financial records for labor unions, and spied on churches during and after Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dhs-spi...

One thing Ian Sant revealed in his blockbuster filing about the spying in response to killing Alex Pretti is that the prosecutor who attended Jan6 (exposed in this @joshkovensky.bsky.social story) presented an exhibit to the grand jury trying to implicate basically the entire left.

NSPM-7 Watch: federal agents sent an undercover informant to a Sunrise Movement meeting, obtained years of financial records for labor unions, and spied on churches during and after Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dhs-spi...

DHS Spied on Churches, Libraries and Union Halls in Minneapolis Protest Crackdown, Defense Attorney Alleges

Federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security sent undercover agents to...

talkingpointsmemo.com

At the SPLC, Beirich helped uncover the inner workings of hate groups across the country; since then, she's run the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, tracking hate groups in the U.S. and around the world.

Trump DOJ Brings Criminal Charges Against Outspoken Critic of Far-Right

Alabama federal prosecutors on Wednesday unveiled charges against Heidi Beirich, a prominent...

talkingpointsmemo.com

NEW: Harmeet Dhillon swore in 100+ new Civil Rights Division lawyers as "civil rights warriors" for "ALL Americans" — then named exactly none of them. So we did. Court filings let us ID 11. At least 5 arrived with records of misconduct, controversy, or hiring irregularities. 1/

Meet the attorneys Harmeet Dhillon installed to turn the Civil Rights Division against its mission - Public Citizen

Introduction  On July 8, 2026, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon tweeted that she had sworn in more than 100 new…

citizen.org

As @joshkovensky.bsky.social reported in April, Republicans in Texas carved out a path early in the midterms cycle to resurrect the George W. Bush-era Muslim panic as a winning strategy. Republicans in Congress have since taken the messaging strategy to a very dark place.

Inside Texas Republicans’ Effort to Make the Midterms About Islamophobia

GRAPEVINE, TX – On a cold spring morning in this tony Dallas suburb,...

talkingpointsmemo.com

TPM@talkingpointsmemo.com · 3w ago

The Republican Party is grasping at increasingly dangerous and racist threads to campaign on in lieu of any cohesive policy platform.

Important context for this exclusive (we're the first to publish the draft rule, but the existence of the document was earlier reported by Wired).The constitution requires that the Census count ... talkingpointsmemo.com/news/read-a-...

READ: A New Draft Rule for the Census Seeks Sweeping Changes to How Political Power Is Allocated

The Trump administration is planning to dramatically reshape the data the Census...

talkingpointsmemo.com

TPM's @laylaayanna.bsky.social & @joshkovensky.bsky.social report on the docs that outline the admin's plan for changes to political apportionment and Census data collection. It revives a Trump I effort to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count used to determine congressional representation:

READ: A New Draft Rule for the Census Seeks Sweeping Changes to How Political Power Is Allocated

The Trump administration is planning to dramatically reshape the data the Census...

talkingpointsmemo.com

The Trump administration plans to exclude noncitizens from the Census count and stop collecting race and ethnicity data for the first time in Census history, according to documents obtained by TPM. from me with @joshkovensky.bsky.social talkingpointsmemo.com/news/read-a-...

READ: A New Draft Rule for the Census Seeks Sweeping Changes to How Political Power Is Allocated

The Trump administration is planning to dramatically reshape the data the Census...

talkingpointsmemo.com

W/@laylaayanna.bsky.social: We're exclusively publishing Trump admin plans to alter the 2030 Census in a way that, critics say, will systematically undercount the population of blue states, diminishing their Congressional delegations. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/read-a-...

READ: A New Draft Rule for the Census Seeks Sweeping Changes to How Political Power Is Allocated

The Trump administration is planning to dramatically reshape the data the Census...

talkingpointsmemo.com

“The spy agency believes that Israel is seeking to insulate the U.S.-Israel alliance from America’s changing political landscape by replacing highly visible foreign aid with deeper, longer-lasting forms of military and industrial integration.” capitalandempire.com/p/exclusive-...

EXCLUSIVE: CIA Assessment Details Israel's Race to Make the U.S.-Israel Alliance Irreversible

The intelligence assessment says Israeli officials are pursuing a long-term strategy to make the alliance harder for future administrations to scale back.

capitalandempire.com

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 3w ago

I am once again tapping the sign to remind you all to support independent, worker run, billionaire free news how and where you are able to

I am once again tapping the sign to remind you all to support independent, worker run, billionaire free news how and where you are able to

CNN@cnn.com · 3w ago

Twenty-five years after the mayor of New York City became the champion of America's grief and resilience at the time of the 9/11 attacks, families of those killed are split on whether the current mayor should attend the annual remembrance. https://cnn.it/4zkKYdc

The New York Times covered one of these cases last month. @emineirmakyucel.bsky.social and @joshkovensky.bsky.social found two more.

John Light@johnalight.bsky.social · 3w ago

NEW from TPM: The Trump administration has confessed at least three times in court to having withheld funding from states simply because of how they voted, a damaging admission intended to avoid discovery, which might heave revealed something even more dramatic.

The New York Times reported last month on one instance in which the Trump admin admitted in court that it withheld grant $$ from blue states, explicitly for political reasons. TPM's @emineirmakyucel.bsky.social & @joshkovensky.bsky.social have found many more:

Trump Administration Has Repeatedly Confessed in Court to Withholding Money From Blue States

Late last year, Department of Justice (DOJ) officials agreed to make a...

talkingpointsmemo.com