I can’t say that I’ve felt very much enthusiasm for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, insofar as 1776 marks that date (and arguably, it doesn’t). It tells you all you need to know that I spent the Fourth of July under a tree in a nearby park, reading Machiavelli in hundred degree heat. But two of my friends wrote notable and interesting pieces commemorating the 250th, and did so in interestingly similar and dissimilar ways. Both are on Substack, and both are worth reading. My friend Bob Massie has a piece called “A New Birth of Freedom” on his Substack. And my friend Chris Sciabarra has one called “From America 200 to 250: A Personal Journey” on his.
Continue readingAll Roads Lead from Rome
I was walking down the street wearing a bright red keffiyeh when a police officer stopped and pointed directly at me. Before I could react, she broke into a broad smile, singled out the keffiyeh, and gave it a thumbs up. You know times have changed when the police have become pro-Palestine.
All roads, they say, lead to Rome. Well, the same roads lead away from it.
Holly Schepisi “Responds”
And so do I
Here at long last is Senator Holly Schepisi’s “response” to my earlier post critiquing her claims about the New Jersey Department of Health’s May 28 inspection of Delaney Hall:
Yeah. That’s really fucking stupid.
Continue readingTeaching Lolita (Again)
After I lost my academic job back in 2020, I wondered if I’d ever teach again. Part of me wanted to; part of me didn’t. And with the passage of time, part wondered whether I still even knew how to teach. Is teaching like riding a bike? Or like remembering an old password? Or like getting married for the nth time?
Continue readingPort Newark Activists on Trial
On May 26th and 28th, I mentioned a group of activists who’ve put their bodies on the line at Port Newark/Elizabeth, not far from Delaney Hall, to stop military shipments through those ports to Israel. These activists are part of a little-discussed worldwide effort–spanning Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Denmark, the UK, Canada, and the U.S. (Newark, Norfolk, Houston, Seattle, Tacoma, Oakland, Los Angeles) to block the flow of military hardware to Israel.
Continue readingGetting Delaney Hall Wrong
Re-visiting the May 28 NJDOH Health Inspection (x3)
The mainstream press is systematically misreporting the New Jersey Department of Health’s May 28 inspection of Delaney Hall. This is from an article in today’s NJ.com, “Federal judge demands answers after N.J is again blocked at Delaney Hall detention center“:
In a limited inspection last month, state Department of Health inspectors did not find any serious violations in Delaney Hall’s kitchen.
Yes, they did. The author links to an earlier article of his that quotes from more of the report and makes this same determination, but both articles fail to mention the Department of Health’s overall evaluation of the facility, and both fail to cite the statutory definition of this evaluation (both also fail to link to the report itself).
Continue readingDelaney Hall: Would They Lie to You?
Politico Gets It Wrong, GEO Group Evades Another Inspection
Here are a couple of footnotes on yesterday’s post critiquing Holly Schepisi’s views on Delaney Hall. I argued there that Schepisi had egregiously misrepresented the facts about the New Jersey Department of Health’s (NJDOH) May 28, 2026 inspection of Delaney Hall.
Fact-Checking Holly Schepisi (2)
How to Fail an Intellectual Health Inspection
I’ve recently taken issue with New Jersey State Senator Holly Schepisi’s claims about Delaney Hall regarding who initiated force there, but here’s a post on a different topic. On June 9th, Schepisi posted an item on her official Facebook page claiming that a May 28 inspection by the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) had “proven false” migrants’ complaints about health conditions in Delaney Hall. This is her verbatim statement from the June 9 Facebook post, which she doubles-down on several times in the comments of the same post:
There have been so many conflicting comments made by NJ representatives regarding Delaney Hall but most of the claims of egregious living conditions made by Senator Andy Kim continue to be proven false. Here is the most recent example — if maggots were in food, if food was spoilt, the NJ Department of Health would not give Delaney a satisfactory health inspection.
To this end Schepisi cites a June 8 piece in Politico which links to the NJDOH report. The Politico piece summarizes the NJDOH report, and offers up some additional statements by Raynard E. Washington, New Jersey’s Commissioner of Health.
Continue reading‘New Brunswick Today’ Under Attack
I’ve praised both New Brunswick Today and its editor Charlie Kratovil on this blog before. If, as I’ve put it elsewhere, “New Brunswick politics is an education,” Charlie Kratovil deserves an endowed chair.
New Brunswick Today was the newspaper that published the most extensive expose, back in 2024, of the outrageous scheme by Edison township officials (and the Edison Police) to intimidate Spanish-speaking migrants stopped at the Edison rail station, following their expulsion by Governor Greg Abbott from Texas. Kratovil was the only reporter to go out and sue to get body cam video of the entire incident, publish it in its entirety, and make explicit that what it showed was an extended civil rights violation. Subtract his reporting from the record, and the event falls between the cracks and vanishes.
Continue readingThe Strikers and their Families Come First
Guest post by Paulo Almiron, posted June 2 at the Substack of Resistencia en Acción
This past week has seen it all. A lot has been written and said.
There is no doubt that the violence perpetrated by law enforcement has taken over the headlines. Joint operations between Newark Police, New Jersey State Police, and ICE outside of the Delaney Hall concentration camp are the most distressing news this state has seen so far. We have even spoken about it multiple times, knowing that several in our team had flashbangs explode inches away from us. It is valid and deserved that the repression against the immigrants’ rights movement is called out with no filters.
That said, we must be watchful of the effects this media angle will have. If we are rigid in this view, then we will lose our purpose: to support the strikers.
Continue reading
Policy of Truth 