smithcal.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

The sad truth is that many Americans already understand that sexual violence is a core feature of incarceration and simply think a different set of people should be subjected to it.

submitted 17 hours ago • 6 comments

The attacks on DEI are a pretext for a much more radical agenda of reversing the gains of the civil rights movement, an objective the Trump administration is pursuing with zeal. A Great Resegregation. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

submitted 23 hours ago • 115 comments

Welcome to affirmative action for white male mediocrity, which has a long, long history but is all ramped up and shouty and sulky right now.

submitted 1 day ago • 20 comments

Today marks the 60th anniversary of Malcolm X's death. I always try to listen to The Last Message to mark the occasion. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra7V...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

“The ongoing lockdowns have blocked some people behind bars from receiving medical care and visits from friends and family, and have led to cancellation of almost all programming, including mental health counseling and courses leading to high school equivalency degrees”

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

The Girl Scouts of Tropical Florida c. 1966. From the archival collection of The Black Archives History & Research Foundation of South Florida.

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

REVEALED: we identified the operator of an overtly racist X account, "GlomarResponder," as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden, based on an overwhelming number of biographical details matched through publicly available documents, other social media activity, and courtroom observation.

submitted 3 days ago • 1005 comments

I’m so fucking furious at this shit

submitted 6 days ago • 86 comments

Read this over the weekend. It's really good. Check it out, everyone!

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Echoing others, there are many great historical examples of anti-fascist fighters in Europe we use for inspiration. But when it comes to fighting fascism here in the States, we have a centuries long playbook too.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Deputy leader of the AfD Beatrix von Storch is the granddaughter of Hitler's Minister of Finance Lutz von Krosigk (pictured here on the left w/ Goebbels) and Chancellor of the Third Reich (May 1945). She has previously advocated the shooting of immigrants who do not have visas.

submitted 7 days ago • 5 comments

History buffs will know that every authoritarian leader eventually converges on some version of: "I am the state. I can not break the law, I am the law, the law is instantiated in me." Our march to authoritarianism so far has been excruciatingly by-the-book. Hitting every beat. No surprises.

submitted 7 days ago • 345 comments

Here's my lane: the origins + legislative intent of the birthright citizenship clause & the Reconstruction Amendments. Here's a 28 page article ungated about the Reconstruction Amendment's effects on Black & Native Americans, Chinese & European immigrants.

submitted 7 days ago • 13 comments

"I called it ethnic cleansing. But when I saw the images of starving babies in Gaza I had to upgrade my language." By Art Spiegelman (Maus) and Joe Sacco www.theguardian.com/world/pictur...

submitted 8 days ago • 26 comments

If this is how the most highly-valued American businesses have been operating for the past decade, I have so many questions

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

Reminder: Black history offers many examples of fighting authoritarianism, so one doesn't always have to look to Europe. Nazi lawyers looked to Jim Crow for inspiration for their racist laws. Read as much about struggles against Jim Crow as you do about other examples of resisting authoritarianism

submitted 8 days ago • 11 comments

JD Vance as the U.S. engages in a mass political purge of federal civil servants it perceives as leftist, Marxist, or just not sufficiently loyal to Trump personally as opposed to the country: "Europe should be more tolerant of Nazi-sympathetic political parties."

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

The White House says it will bar the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One indefinitely due to the news outlet's use of Gulf of Mexico

submitted 8 days ago • 323 comments

New Game: counting how many court orders a president gets to defy before it becomes a constitutional crisis.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

AUSA Hagan Scotten, former clerk for John Roberts, really put some mustard on his resignation letter.

submitted 9 days ago • 853 comments

On this 14th day of #BlackHistoryMonth, I am sharing my Anguilla Massacre project. [CW: murder, violence and anti-Blackness.] I started researching the lynching at the Anguilla prison camp in 2008. Here is a zine that tells the story: issuu.com/projectnia/d...

submitted 9 days ago • 6 comments

The precedent for immigrant mass deportations of the 20th and 21st (?) century, I argue in my forthcoming book The Politics of Mobility, 1619-1888--Voluntary and Involuntary Migrations, is Native American deportation. See Claudio Saunt's Unworthy Republic re deportation of 80K Indians in the 1830s.

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments

Trump already empowering the worst bosses to just.. ignore labor law. Whole Foods workers won their union vote, and now Whole Foods (owned by Jeff Bezos) is saying they simply won't recognize the vote because nobody is going to make them.

submitted 16 days ago • 190 comments

So, who is going to primary Durbin in 2026? I want to practice writing and putting a check by their name early.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Tooooooooootal coincidence with the quid pro quo of the Trump DOJ dropping (or finding a stooge in DOJ to drop) the bribery, campaign finance, and obstruction charges against the mayor.

submitted 9 days ago • 34 comments

Here is the pre-RFK vaccination schedule for your kids. Please download it before he is confirmed and changes/deletes it. Give it to your pediatrician and say this is the schedule you want your kids on. Making this my pinned post.

submitted 18 days ago • 95 comments

In order for New Yorkers to vote in the closed Democratic Mayoral Primary, they must be registered as Democrats (and not unaffiliated or otherwise) by TOMORROW, February 14th. You CAN do change or update online through the DMV link below with a valid ID: e-register.vote.nyc

submitted 9 days ago • 36 comments

As is being noted, the acting heads are not random people. They were selected by the Trump administration. Even they are resigning.

submitted 9 days ago • 44 comments

Sen. @chrismurphyct.bsky.social asks McMahon, bluntly: "there's a possibility that public schools that run African American history classes... could lose federal funding if they continue to teach African American history?"

submitted 9 days ago • 5 comments

Our Supreme Connections database tracks who’s paid the Supreme Court justices, reimbursed their travel expenses or given them gifts. We just added Justice Samuel Alito’s 2023 filing and newly uncovered Justice Clarence Thomas filings from the 1990s.

submitted 10 days ago • 65 comments

🧵"So this is how liberty dies..." Trump’s first 3 weeks have been a relentless flood of actions. It's incredibly hard to keep up. I’ve gone through 69 actions & mapped out the pattern - showing how they fall within 5 broad domains consistent with authoritarian states 1/9

submitted 10 days ago • 523 comments

"Stop pointing out the hypocrisy. The other side does not care. Its content makes the people there feel powerful but action is the only real power." www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/o...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

I can’t believe the Supreme Court said the president was above the law and now the president is acting like he’s above the law.

submitted 12 days ago • 1059 comments

i just flicked past the game and they were playing the clash as outro music for a commercial break and i hope the ghost of joe strummer haunts everyone involved in that decision

submitted 13 days ago • 6 comments

We should all begin to (re)familiarize ourselves with the term herrenvolk democracy for the next four years.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Dick Durbin voted to confirm a 2020 election denier to be the top official overseeing OUR VETERANS. Dick Durbin should retire.

submitted 18 days ago • 4 comments

It would be fantastic if major federal institutions would acknowledge that the executive branch cannot legally unilaterally cancel or redistribute congressionally appropriated funding on ideological grounds and thus they have no legal obligation to comply with such directives

submitted 23 days ago • 897 comments

i think it is important to say that the open and explicit racism of the president and the vice president isn’t just uncouth or “controversial” but a direct attack on tens of millions of americans and a dereliction of their duty to represent the entire country

submitted 23 days ago • 2304 comments

This non-elite “tribune of the common man” would be Yale BA, Harvard MPA, and Stanford Hoover Institute fellow Jeremy Carl.

submitted 23 days ago • 10 comments

Once again, a fundamental reason why so many academics despise Trump, Vance, Musk & company is that we’ve all had our share of The Guy Who Didn’t Do The Reading But Demands to Be Heard

submitted 23 days ago • 118 comments