Beza Merid

Assistant professor @ASU_SFIS. Director, Digital Health and Racial Justice Lab. Former fellow @umichmedicine Cardiology, @fordschool. PhD from @mccNYU

[Jonathan Reiner @JReinerMD]

Last year half of CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program staff were fired. This is the group responsible for investigating cruise ship outbreaks. The cuts were made despite the fact that US taxpayers don’t pay for this team. The cruise ship industry does.

[Jeff Roush @JeffRoushPoetry]

It’s so weird that every time SCOTUS declares racism to be no more than the Ghost of Voter Suppression Past, a bunch of states leap at the chance to do more racist voter suppression.

[Stefan Smith @TheStefanSmith]

All of this was fucking foreseeable 🔮

[National Homelessness Law Center @homeless_law]

BREAKING: Louisiana has advanced one of the cruelest anti-homeless bills in the country. It would force homeless people to choose between jail and involuntary treatment, make them pay for it, and if they can't pay, force them to perform unpaid labor. https://t.co/0J9rBRtKkA

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson didn't invoke Weimar Germany as a rhetorical flourish. She cited a specific scholar by name in a footnote: Ernst Fraenkel, a Jewish labor lawyer who observed the Nazi legal system from the inside, smuggled his manuscript out of Berlin in 1938, and published "The Dual State" at the University of Chicago in 1941.

Fraenkel's framework is precise. The Nazis didn't immediately collapse Germany's legal system. They left courts functioning - particularly in contracts and economic matters - while placing Jews and political enemies in a separate lawless zone where no legal protection applied. Most Germans lived in the law-bound "normative state." The targeted lived in the "prerogative state." The facade of normalcy was the mechanism of control.

Jackson invoked Fraenkel to name what the court's Republican majority is doing in real time. In 21 consecutive shadow docket cases, the six conservative justices have let Trump opt out of the law - often with no explanation given at all. They blessed ICE racial profiling without citing a single legal justification. They allowed Trump to ignore $4 billion in congressionally appropriated foreign aid. They stripped lower courts of the ability to issue universal relief, meaning only those with resources to file individual lawsuits get protection from illegal presidential action.

Constitutional law professor Evan Bernick put it plainly: "The court is adjusting the law to make place for arbitrary power."

Jackson's dissent is not hyperbole. A footnote citing a 1941 manuscript about Nazi legal architecture is a Supreme Court justice blowing the cover on what her colleagues are building.

[💗 @ma1ybe]

they'll put a woman in prison for a miscarriage but you can state your intent to let your kids die from a preventable disease and its fine

[Gary Marcus @GaryMarcus]

Everything you need to know about “Open”AI’s claims to be working on AI “for the benefit of humanity”.

[Rakesh Bhandari @postdiscipline]

“Google AI Overviews have been a disaster for publishers who rely on clicks to fund the production of quality journalism, but they also let down users looking for accurate information,”

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Harmeet Dhillon described her own agenda to the Federalist Society after her appointment: not slowing down civil rights enforcement but "turning the train around and driving in the opposite direction."

She has done exactly that. In one year as head of the Civil Rights Division she dropped federal oversight of police departments with documented discrimination histories. The office that once defended affirmative action is now investigating universities to eliminate it. Her staff is suing states to acquire voter databases - targeting the same minority voters whose ballot access the division once went to federal court to protect.

She terminated dozens of consent decrees for police departments and school districts with records of racial discrimination. Her explanation: removing "barriers to government acting efficiently." A former federal prosecutor who teaches at Loyola Law School offered a cleaner read: "We don't really have a traditional civil rights division anymore. Civil rights have been turned on their head."

The Civil Rights Division was created in 1957. It has around 300 attorneys. Its founding mandate was enforcing anti-discrimination law for racial, sexual, and religious minorities and protecting voting rights.

Dhillon calls this "zooming out." A Laurie Levenson calls it the darkest days in the division's history. Mark Rosenbaum, who spent decades at the ACLU in Los Angeles, put it plainly: "The civil rights division was an ally of the most vulnerable groups in America and, now, it's an enemy."

Pam Bondi is out. Dhillon posted Friday: "Stay tuned - great things ahead at the DOJ." The Civil Rights Division is the warm-up act.

[philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_]

The University of Missouri has stripped its historic Black student governing body, as well as at least four other minority affinity groups, of all annual designated funding starting in July

"Mizzou has been the canary in the mine"

https://t.co/s8ixqsNnNQ

[Dr. Allison Wiltz @queenie4rmnola]

A Black man disarmed a shooter but cops shot him on sight, assuming he was a threat.

[Kierra | Data Conversationalist🎙 @iamKierraD]

This is why ethics needs to be a required class in computer science programs.

[Lorraine E-Van-Off @LorraineEvanoff]

Fucking outrageous. And highly illegal.

"Trump has grifted his entire life. Now he’s just taking it.

The State Department transferred $1.25 billion in foreign aid to Trump’s Board of Peace, pulling $1 billion from international disaster assistance, $200 million from peacekeeping operations, and $50 million from international organizations.

Money that Congress authorized for hurricanes and refugees, moved without a congressional vote, into a fund that Trump created by executive order and controls personally. When reporters asked the State Department about it, a spokesperson said they had nothing to announce at this time.

The Board of Peace has one defining characteristic. Trump controls it forever. He named himself chairman for life. No audits. No transparency requirements. No conflict of interest rules.

Countries pay $1 billion into a fund he runs to get a seat at the table. It has transferred nothing to Gaza, disclosed nothing about its spending, and received $1.25 billion of your disaster relief money without a word of explanation.

When he leaves the White House he keeps the fund. That is not a loophole. That is the design."

He’s Not Grifting Anymore. He’s Just Taking It. https://t.co/eYb5g4g9bR

[Librarianshipwreck @libshipwreck]

The clearer it becomes that there is widespread opposition to AI and AI related infrastructure, and the clearer it becomes that such opposition can result in tangible victories, the more desperately AI-boosters will howl that “AI is inevitable.”

[trash jones @jzux]

AI companies will say AI is inevitable and then be like “please please please please please please please please use us”

[Andrew Solender @AndrewSolender]

"reporter-free newsroom" my brother in christ that's just called a room

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

BREAKING: The White House is out with a new National Policy framework for AI.

The proposal says: "States should not be permitted to regulate AI development."

It also says that states shouldn't be able to penalize AI companies when people break the law with their models.

[Clarence Thomas the Tank Engine @TheRealJChubby]

It did poison poor communities and make electricity and water more expensive though.

[Kalle📸 @KalleSorbo]

I think it is deeply concerning that the group of people building the technology that is supposed to reshape humanity don't actually care about what it means to be human.

[𝑮 ♡ @highitsg]

i’ll ask a ouija board before i ask chatgpt