Notes to My Future Self
by Brad Rourke
Shining a light on the things we will want to remember when we wonder what happened.
THE RECORD
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Federal Agents Search Ilhan Omar’s Home
One wonders how we would describe what is happening here if it were taking place somewhere else.
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DHS to Get “Heat Ray” Weapon
The secret police are being offered ray guns. They have already ordered their shock gloves.
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Pentagon Plans to Livestream Execution
The United States is now preparing to bring back the spectacle of execution, and broadcast it to the world.
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ICE Collects Millions of Voter Records
It will bear remembering what uses this government makes of our voter information.
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Trump Says Arrest New York Times
Trump’s latest demand concerns reporting about the size of a rally crowd.
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Russia Says There Is No Plague
We may not know whether Russia is telling the truth until much later.
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Thought Police at the Border
The government is now checking visitors’ ideology at the door.
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DOJ Sues to Keep Masked Agents
History is filled with examples of autocratic regimes’ using masked secret police, and the United States government is going to court to assert its right to join them.
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Hegseth Creates Religious Affairs Office
The military has long made room for religion. What happens when religion begins to shape the military itself?
EARLIER NOTES
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Sand in the Gears
You do not have to do everything. Pick one thing. Then do it. Be sand in the gears.
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Trump’s $5 Billion Threat
Authoritarianism does not always only silence the critic. Sometimes it teaches everyone else to lower their voice.
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Trump vs Ballot Envelope
Why, one wonders, does the administration want the Postal Service deciding which envelopes carry a vote?
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Career Soldiers Want Out
When the people who have served longest start asking to leave on moral grounds, one may well ask: what are they seeing that is causing this?
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Trump Kennedy Center Demolition?
In other words: give him his marble, or lose the building.
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“Integrated Military” Ballroom
Donald Trump appears to be building against a court’s schedule. His term ends at noon on January 20, 2029. One may well watch the construction and wonder: which deadline does he think is real?
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Trump, Iran, $4.10 Gas
That sounds nothing like complete control.
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Trump Haitian Arrests
One may well ask, what kind of dignity and respect are we exhibiting as a quarter of this city’s residents now fear to move about?
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Election “Fraud” Monitors
Come November, we may have arrived at that place.
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ICE Shock Gloves
New tech being deployed to make the compliance state more efficient. What could go wrong?
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Trump vs Nursing Home Voters
The administration is systematically making it harder and harder to hold it to account at the ballot box, targeting one vulnerable population after another.
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Children In Court Alone
Children, detained and alone, facing the government of the United States. This is what deporting the so-called worst of the worst looks like.
