Hayes Brown

@hayesbrown.bsky.social

Writer &c.

@yaelschacher.bsky.social Oct 9, 2026, 2:58 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

I am in Cap Haitien interviewing people deported from the United States. I have been doing this kind of work for almost a decade and it literally does not get more dire than this. People have lost everything they built in the U.S. and are terrified and have no place to go or way to live.

@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social Oct 7, 2026, 6:39 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

Meanwhile, over on X, the Secretary of Homeland Security is posting about "vandalizing the demographics of America," a phrase which is either a chilling suggestion of white nationalism from Mullin or just straight pablum which means nothing but sounds just fash enough to excite the faithful.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
@ReichlinMelnick
·
7m
“Vandalize the demographics of America” is either a chilling phrase suggesting that Mullin is a white nationalist or an absurdly meaningless bit of pablum which ignores 250 years of the constantly shifting demographics of a nation of immigrants.

Underneath is a picture of Mullin with a quote "How do you turn a country from democracy to socialism? You have to change the demographics."

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Oct 7, 2026, 6:24 PM

10 years ago today, the Obama admin dropped what it predicted would be a major bombshell: Russia was meddling in the 2016 election

A few hours later, the Access Hollywood tape and left the carefully worded statement all but forgotten until after Trump’s victory

www.buzzfeednews.com/article/haye...

"When we rolled that out on Oct. 7, we thought this would get a huge amount of pickup and play and be a catalyzing moment for the country, when the United States government — the intelligence community and DHS — announced jointly that Russians were trying to hack our election," Ned Price, then the chief spokesperson for the National Security Council (NSC), told BuzzFeed News.

"A colleague of mine at another department was on the phone with a reporter, who was asking him questions about the statement," Price said. "My colleague then recalled hearing from the reporter, ‘Oh my god. I’ll have to call you back.'"

One hour after the statement dropped, the Washington Post published the 2005 "grab them by the pussy" tape. Less than half an hour later, WikiLeaks began dumping a new series of emails, this time hacked from the account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

The reporter never called back.

@mikehixenbaugh.com Oct 2, 2026, 11:47 AMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

We’ve got the inside story of how Trump’s displeasure with seeing homeless people in D.C. became the first domino in a series of actions that culminated in the administration’s stunning decision to weaken the rights of millions of disabled Americans to live in their homes and communities.

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 11:33 AM

My “bond markets functioning” t-shirt, etc.

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Sep 30, 2026, 7:09 PM

that or about hispanics working in roofing/construction??

@cwarzel.bsky.social Sep 30, 2026, 4:19 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Sep 30, 2026, 7:06 PM

this is apparently at a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration which makes this both more and less bizarre. Just casually making up new xenophilic (I guess?) stereotypes on a Wednesday afternoon.

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Sep 29, 2026, 3:41 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

like...did nobody at the White House click the links? it feels like nobody clicked the links.

www.ms.now/opinion/whit...

From the WH press release:

Administrations of both parties have used public service announcements to explain policy and make the case for the nation’s direction:
[...]

It’s not just modern Administrations. President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information used posters, films, and speakers to rally the country. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Office of War Information produced films, radio, and posters to promote the war effort.

A headline from Smithsonian Magazine from the first link of the final section in the previous screenshot: How Woodrow Wilson’s Propaganda Machine Changed American Journalism

Subheadline: “The media are still feeling the impact of an executive order signed in 1917 that created ‘the nation’s first ministry of information’”

From the National WWI Museum and Memorial’s website, the second link in the final section of the WH’s press release:

“To influence public opinion in favor of the war, the U.S produced films, commissioned colorful posters, published pamphlets and recruited everyday Americans to “sell the war.” These efforts helped create both modern American wartime propaganda and spurred the 20th century advertising industry.”

The final link in the press release from the first screenshot, this time from the George C. Marshall Foundation’s website:

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt named CBS newsman and journalist Elmer Davis as the director of the OWI. Davis was charged with creating and carrying out through the newspaper, radio, motion pictures and other facilities, information programs designed to inform and create an understanding for the U.S. citizens home and abroad.

According to Elmer Davis, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Sep 29, 2026, 2:37 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

new from me: i dug into the White House’s “uh these are just public service announcements” defense for the taxpayer-funded propaganda ads. it’s all bad but the wildest part is them using LITERAL WARTIME PROPAGANDA as a historical precedent to say this is all fine

@daveweigel.bsky.social Sep 29, 2026, 4:43 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

Aaron is not underrating this. It's cinema. The sly smirk when Schmitt thinks he's gotten Smith to perjure himself. The hasty vanishing of the sign. Klobuchar getting Kennedy to hold it up. Schmitt getting LOUD and ANGRY when Klobuchar points out he mixed up the Hawks and Hawkeyes.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.comSep 29, 2026, 3:07 PM

🤡 Schmitt beclowns himself 🤡 Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atl for a Hawks game and to collude with Fani Willis, & flashed his "evidence" before accusing Smith of perjury. There's just one problem -- his facts were totally wrong. Here's the whole sequence:

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Sep 29, 2026, 3:41 PM

like...did nobody at the White House click the links? it feels like nobody clicked the links.

www.ms.now/opinion/whit...

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Sep 29, 2026, 2:37 PM

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Sep 28, 2026, 2:34 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

i got one of my favorite kickers in ages published this weekend

www.ms.now/opinion/trum...

Given the difficulties Trump has had, there’s no telling when or how the Iran war will end. But the longer the conflict persists and oil shipments remain hindered, the more likely the shifts in oil demand we’re seeing are to become permanent.

This administration doing anything to purposefully encourage that outcome is deeply unlikely. But if I had a nickel for every time Trump accidentally drove down global carbon emissions through a terrible policy decision, I’d have two nickels. Which, as a fictional mad scientist once said, “isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?”

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Sep 28, 2026, 2:34 PM

i got one of my favorite kickers in ages published this weekend

www.ms.now/opinion/trum...

@hayesbrown.bsky.social Sep 25, 2026, 2:13 PM

Are you one of those people? Because I personally think it provides a nice compliment and contrast with the suit and tie tbh

@jmberger.com Sep 23, 2026, 9:26 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

To quote @hayesbrown.bsky.social (again), this is the dumbest dystopia

@jetjocko.bsky.social Sep 23, 2026, 9:21 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

A lot of things make me feel kind of dumb, including how to take at face value the logic of “we are a multibillion dollar transnational industry building a vengeful elder god, and we definitely won’t stop unless you regulate us the way we want, which is a secret.”

The Associated Press@apnews.comSep 23, 2026, 8:02 PM

BREAKING: Heads of major AI firms warn the UN that without intervention, "AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole".

bit.lyHeads of AI firms tell UN Security Council that it could be a risk to all humanityThe heads of major artificial intelligence firms pleaded with the United Nations to set controls over the burgeoning technology they are designing in order to save the world — or at least its people.

@lbarronlopez.bsky.social Sep 23, 2026, 11:02 AMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

EXCLUSIVE @ms.now: Trump administration officials have discussed attaching the president’s name to Ford’s Theatre, the playhouse where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865

Officials are circulating a list of government sites that could carry the president’s name

www.ms.now/news/trump-f...

@ryanbeckwith.bsky.social Sep 22, 2026, 12:50 PMReposted by @hayesbrown.bsky.social

Even off the record, they can't bring themselves to blame Trump. They are going to lose their jobs and insist it was because of the high price of ground beef. www.ms.now/news/crushed...

Older posts