A lachrymose plea for sympathy from a popular MAGA influencer who’s sometimes quoted at me online. He recently moved to Shelby County, Tennessee from Alabama.
Livin’ La Vida Loca
Category Archives: migrant defense
West Orange: ICE-Free at Last
As I’ve mentioned here a few times, I split my time between Princeton and West Orange, New Jersey. So I pay attention to local politics in both places, and engage in activism in both.
Since the fall of 2025, I’ve written seven or eight posts here describing the effort to persuade West Orange’s municipal government to take a stand in favor of migrant rights and against ICE. In 2025, the effort focused on getting West Orange Council to pass a resolution in favor of the Immigrant Trust Act. In 2026, it’s focused on getting the Council to pass what’s commonly called ICE-Free legislation.
Continue readingThe Neo-Nazis and the Permit Raj
Princeton Patch has now confirmed that a white supremacist rally did in fact take place in Princeton this past Saturday afternoon, August 29th. Don’t miss the neo-Nazi video embedded in the article, “Youth in Revolt.” Apparently, the spirit of Leni Riefenstahl never quite died.
Unfortunately, the rally is (like so many things) increasingly being seen as a law enforcement matter, and the police, fixated by definition on matters of law enforcement, are now pursuing the thought that the people participating in the rally lacked a permit to march down the street or through Monument Park, and should have had one. Law enforcement’s idea of a solution to the rise of neo-Nazism in Princeton is to set up a Permit Raj: demand that activists get permits to exercise the privilege of assembling, marching, chanting, or holding signs. And make sure to demote those activities to the status of privileges in the process.
Continue reading“Keep New Jersey White” (take 2)
I posted this yesterday but pulled it after I started to doubt the provenance of the photo. The photo seemed real enough, but I wasn’t sure exactly when the event had happened, and was worried that it was old footage recently unearthed but misleadingly described as recent.
I’ve now traced the source of the photo to my own satisfaction, and am convinced both that the photo is real and that the event it depicts really did take place this past weekend–on Saturday, August 29th. The original eyewitness source appears to be one Andrea Christo of East Windsor, New Jersey, who filmed the demonstration as she drove by, and then either took a still of the scene below or screenshotted her own video. Here’s a link to her Facebook post, and here’s a link to her video. I’m grateful to Ms Christo for documenting this event, and hope that it finds its way into the local press.
People have been telling me for fifteen years that my worries about the rise of fascism and neo-Nazi racism are overblown. Well, here’s a photo of the corner of Nassau and Stockton Streets, taken on August 29th in the supposedly woke college town of Princeton, New Jersey. “Keep New Jersey White.” Since New Jersey isn’t white, their point, obviously, is that it has to be made white at gunpoint. Any guesses how?
(ht: Zellie Imani and Rev Erich Kussman; photo credit: Andrea Christo)
Continue reading“Keep New Jersey White” Mystery Photo
UPDATE: See my August 31 update to this post.
I originally posted this with a critique of the message involved, but about an hour after I posted it, got skeptical that the photo was either real or genuinely depicted an event that took place on August 29th, as is being alleged online. So I’ve deleted the original post pending verification that the photo depicts a demonstration that took place at Nassau and Stockton in Princeton on the afternoon of August 29, 2026.
(ht: Zellie Imani and Rev Erich Kussman)
Continue readingICE-Free Zone for Princeton
Statement to Mayor & Municipal Council of Princeton
400 Witherspoon St., Princeton, New Jersey
August 10, 2026
Almost exactly a year ago today, the Mayor and Council unanimously passed resolution R-25-275, a resolution supporting passage of what was then called the Immigrant Trust Act. Among other things, the resolution called on other municipalities to join with Princeton in urging the state legislature to pass the Act. In the end, 30 municipalities and seven counties passed resolutions, and an amended version of the ITA passed the legislature in January 2026.
DHS Is Systematically Lying to You
People sometimes claim to be unable to decide between the claims of, say, DHS and migrant defense activists. Faced with conflicting stories, people sometimes retreat into a kind of Pyrrhonian skepticism: each side is incompatible with the other, they’ll say, but neither side’s claims can easily be rejected. So we’re left with an undecidable clash of equal and opposite positions.
What to do? The original Pyrrhonian skeptics believed that tranquility was to be sought in the undecidable clash of such equal and opposite claims.* So they lived their lives–or tried to–without having any settled beliefs at all. If belief leads to conflict (they thought), non-belief eliminates it, producing the calm equanimity of the perpetually uncommitted. I sometimes wonder whether this is the guiding ethos of our news media and its modal consumer. If “mental health” means tranquility, and tranquility demands perpetual agnosticism, maybe it’s safer (people seem to be reasoning) to give equal credence to every claim, even if the resulting tranquility is purchased at the price of cognitive paralysis.
Continue readingThe Delaney Hall Scandal Revisited
Expert Insights and Journalistic Failures
Readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with, and possibly sick of, my fixation over the sanitary condition of Delaney Hall. I’ve written four posts on the subject.
On June 24, I challenged New Jersey State Senator Holly Schepisi’s whitewash of the state health department’s report on Delaney Hall. On June 25, I took issue with Politico’s misreporting on the subject. On June 27, I took issue with NJ.com’s misreporting on the subject. And on July 2, I responded to Holly Schepisi’s incredibly stupid attempt to “respond” to my earlier challenge. Since then, I’ve demanded that all three of them–Schepisi, Politico, and NJ.com–retract or correct the false claims they’ve made on the subject. Schepisi has served up evasive bullshit; Politico and NJ.com have simply stonewalled and gone silent.
Continue readingLorenzo Salgado Araujo
Demand a reckoning. What are we waiting for? A massacre?
Our Sacred Honor
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 reading
Policy of Truth 