Radical Middle

Reagan didn’t have a problem with the pre-1996 laws, in fact, he promoted the last amnesty. The Republicans, not the Democrats, were behind the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996. Teddy Kennedy was a leading opponent. Clinton signed it because he wanted a second term.

@RadicalMiddle4 @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta Democrats crafted those laws as a way to get Republicans to vote for more immigration. They made the rules hopping no one would seriously enforce it to get R votes. Senators Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Emmanuel Celler all Ds made the rules.

Our immigration laws are so poorly written. You can know every single word of the INA and still not really know what so much of it means. What is "seeking admission." The Constitution should resolve all such ambiguity in favor of freedom...

I get that, I really do. But consider this: most crimes have a statute of limitations. You can commit most crimes, and avoid punishment if the government doesn’t come after you within a period of time. And, it used to be the law that you could stay if you weren’t deported within five years of entry. And up until 1996, 70% of the time an illegal could stay by proving deportation would be a severe hardship. Now you can say that is all bonkers. But I think it’s crazy to treat non-criminal illegals who have been here for a long time, particularly those brought here when they were young kids, almost as if they’re not human beings worthy of some positive consideration. (that’s the echo of Dred Scott) I also get the public benefits and census / congressional representation angles. Immigration is complicated. #Immigration

@RadicalMiddle4 @David_J_Bier @cyrusmehta The only injustice is this batshit insane idea that breaking the law long enough should mean immunity from it.

39 years ago today: As Justice Scalia puts it in dissent, Justice Brennan’s majority opinion in Johnson v. Transportation Agency “completes the process of converting [Title VII] from a guarantee that race or sex will not be the basis for employment determinations, to a guarantee that it often will, and it thus “replace[s] the goal of a discrimination-free society with the quite incompatible goal of proportionate representation by race and sex in the workplace.” In sum: “A statute designed to establish a color-blind and gender-blind workplace has thus been converted into a powerful engine of racism and sexism, not merely permitting intentional race- and sex-based discrimination, but often making it, through operation of the legal system, practically compelled.”

Esta es la cripta de la catedral de Anagni, en Italia. Es única. Entrar en ella es penetrar en un mundo de fantasía. El suelo, el techo y las paredes se decoraron así en el siglo Xl.

@aakashgupta “Blacklash”

HBO is spending $100 million per episode to reboot Harry Potter. That’s more per episode than the average Harry Potter film cost to produce. Seven seasons. 56 episodes. A potential $5.6 billion total production budget. Paapa Essiedu signed a 10-year contract for this role. He’ll be 45 when it’s finished. He’s receiving death threats on Instagram. People telling him to quit or they’ll kill him. His response: “The abuse fuels me.” Here’s what the people sending those messages don’t understand about how this actually works. The original eight Harry Potter films grossed $7.7 billion at the box office on a combined $1.2 billion production budget. That’s a 6.4x return before merchandising, theme parks, and streaming revenue. Warner Bros. is spending $100M per episode because the Wizarding World generates roughly $2 billion per year across all revenue streams, and they need a new content engine to keep that machine running for the next decade. Essiedu was one of the first actors attached to this project. Emmy and BAFTA nominee from I May Destroy You. Jason Isaacs, who played Lucius Malfoy across all eight films, called the backlash what it is: racism. The casting controversy has generated more press coverage for this show than any marketing campaign could buy. Every article about the death threats includes the trailer link. Every outrage tweet puts the show back in people’s timelines. 13M views on this single tweet are proof. Warner Bros. has run this playbook before. The internet raged when Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker. When Daniel Craig was cast as Bond. When Michael Keaton was cast as Batman. Each of those performances became the definitive version of the character. Essiedu grew up reading these books at a local library because his mom couldn’t afford a babysitter. Now he’s anchoring the most expensive TV series ever produced. The people threatening him over Instagram DMs are going to watch the show anyway. That’s the part they’ll never admit.

Homeowner waits until construction job is nearly done—then calls ICE on 6 of her own workers. Woman even provides the ladder used by agent to detain men—who she owes $10,000 for 3 day job. "She called the damn law on us and now we're totally screwed!" men yell in Spanish. "They surrounded us!—They surrounded us!" Agents even left behind the workers' van with doors wide open—filled with thousands of dollars worth of tools. The arrest was broadcast live for about 30 minutes by a co-worker—identified as Bryan Polanco. "Seeing it is not the same as experiencing it," he explains. "I’ve seen many videos, and sadly today I had to experience it." At the end of the video he gets the woman who called ICE on camera: "It is the same woman. Tidying up the house, and still with hatred in her heart." The incident occurred in Cambridge, Maryland.

@JacobALinker @ProfDBernstein @LarryKrasnerDA Shooting a would be assassin of a Supreme Court justice is part of the job description. Wearing masks, pretending your police, etc… are not. My point being that Neagle is not dispositive of those issues.

@RadicalMiddle4 @ProfDBernstein @LarryKrasnerDA Neagle straight up shot a guy and had federal protection in that regard. Refusal to wear Attire marking oneself is quite small compared to that.

And I’ll say it again.

@ProfDBernstein @LarryKrasnerDA Sure enough. But the facts of that case don’t make it dispositive with respect to how federal officers conduct themselves, as in if state law bars officers from wearing masks, or clothing indicating they are police when they are not.

@RadicalMiddle4 @LarryKrasnerDA Incorrect, settled for over 100 years: In re Neagle, 135 U.S. 1 (1890)

omg this is one of the cutest things I have ever seen.. The little beaver temper tantrum noises … 🥹

@RebeccaTucker85 @awstar11 If that is how it generally works out throughout the country, great. I’d like them to helpful, but I imagine you can understand my skepticism.

@RadicalMiddle4 @awstar11 There are no “unnecessary disruptions”. I was in the phoenix airport this morning and ICE and HSI were working with TSA and there was basically no line. They were doing a great job.

Why would we want to have immigration enforcement at airports where people arrive from other countries?

@PanopticonBot @nytimes @Babygravy9 The issue is what constitutes being in the U.S. I believe DHS is making the argument that even if you are over the line, you’re not ‘here’ for the purpose of filing for asylum.

@nytimes @Babygravy9 Breaking news: apparently we need a court ruling to prove that the government should protect our borders, actually.

Breaking News: A majority of the Supreme Court seemed open to allowing the U.S. to turn away asylum seekers at the Mexico border. nyti.ms/4bPnRfL

@KingotWorldIII @nytimes The issue is what constitutes being in the U.S. I believe DHS is making the argument is that even if you are over the line, you’re not ‘here’ for the purpose of filing for asylum.

@nytimes That's literally the law. The fact that ANY of the SCOTUS Justices are against enforcing the law should be grounds for removal.

@AAC0519 @BurninKaya @nytimes Not true. Although his deportations declined significantly over time.

@BurninKaya @nytimes Obama wouldn't have deported anyone if the border had been closed. His "deportations" were all at the border or with a short distance of it.

Actually, it’s unsettled law. Not the Supremacy part, state actors can’t interfere with federal law enforcement. But it’s an open question whether state actors can arrest federal officers if they are breaking state law. I don’t know where the Supreme Court will come down on this, probably on the fed side, but it’s more complicated than one might initially think.

@LarryKrasnerDA Have you heard of the supremacy clause? You can't interfere with federal officers enforcing federal law. This is a one-way ticket to federal prison. Best case scenario: You're being a demagogue who has no intention of following through on the illegal action you're suggesting.

🚨 I dropped a full year of bank statements into Claude Opus 4.6 and it sorted everything in 20 minutes. Income. Expenses. Categories. Recurring charges. The whole picture. That is roughly $11K in accounting work. Here is the exact prompt: ↓

With Venuzuela and Iran (soon) as vassal states, and the Gulf countries as allies, the U.S. could put a stranglehold on oil that China needs. In addition, the Chinese military hardware provided to Iran has been useless. China has a lot to think about before taking Taiwan. #Iran #China #UnitedStates #IranWar‌ #Trump

Why China chose not to take over Taiwan in this window still eludes me.

The research behind this is wild. Your brain can’t flip from full alert to sleep like a light switch. It needs a runway. And reading builds it faster than almost anything else. A University of Sussex study found that just 6 minutes of reading cut stress by 68%, more than music (61%), tea (54%), walking (42%), or video games (21%). The effect is surprisingly physical. When you read, your nervous system shifts from fight-or-flight into rest-and-digest mode. Heart rate slows, breathing deepens, muscles release tension. The neuropsychologist who ran the study, Dr. David Lewis, described it as entering “an altered state of consciousness,” where focused imagination activates the part of your brain that tells your stress response to stand down. A 2021 randomized trial tested this directly. Researchers split nearly 1,000 people into two groups: read a book in bed for seven nights, or don’t. After one week, 42% of readers reported better sleep versus 28% of non-readers. Nothing else changed. Now compare that with what 86% of Americans actually do before bed: scroll their phones for an average of 38 minutes a night. A 2025 Norwegian study of 45,000 university students found that every additional hour of screen time in bed raised insomnia risk by 59% and cut sleep by 24 minutes. A separate American Cancer Society study of 122,000 adults found daily screen use before bed was tied to 50 fewer minutes of sleep per week. Screens hit you with two sleep-blockers at once. Blue light suppresses melatonin, the hormone that tells your body it’s time to sleep, by about 50% according to a Harvard study. But the bigger problem is the content itself. News, social media, work emails, all of it fires up your brain’s threat-detection mode and spikes your stress hormones right when they’re supposed to be at their lowest point of the day. A physical book sidesteps both problems entirely. The long game matters too. A Yale study tracked 3,635 adults over 12 years and found that people who read 3.5+ hours per week were 23% less likely to die during the study. That worked out to living roughly 2 years longer, regardless of gender, wealth, or education. Books beat newspapers and magazines. The researchers pointed to deep, sustained reading creating a kind of workout for the brain that protects it as it ages. So the 5-10 minutes he’s describing? The science says 6 minutes is the threshold where your body starts winding down. His brain is switching off its stress response and easing into a state where sleep becomes almost automatic.