We are pleased to announce that Diane de Vignemont (@Diane2V) is the winner of this year's Daniel Singer Prize contest. Her winning essay “Minneapolis Protests Sound a Lot Like the French Resistance" was published by @newlinesmag this past January. (Link below.)

It's kind of wild to find out that the Republican in the NYT story that says she had a toxic relationship with Graham Platner is Lyndsey Fifield. Having been in DC for too long, I know a decent number of people who know her quite well. For a long time she was the co-host of a podcast with her best friend Bethany Mandel, called Ladybrains, though she has also worked for multiple super PACs, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Heritage Foundation. Some background, presented without judgment: In 2014, Fifield began work as digital director for American Action Network, a Republican Super PAC that oversees House races. The next year she became social media manager for the Heritage Foundation, where she stayed for the next seven years. In 2022, she joined the Super PAC backing Nikki Haley for president, switching to the official campaign side the next year, and staying until the campaign flamed out. She now lists herself as a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a prominent dark money group that is best known for helping usher Brett Kavanaugh on to the Supreme Court and giving Susan Collins the talking points she needed to make her decisive speech in his favor. The NYT breezed past all this, saying she was "a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns." In an interview for a news outlet called Red Alert Politics that named her to a “30 under 30” list back in 2016, she said that she wanted to “emulate the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s approach to online activism.” Breitbart, known for pushing the boundaries when it came to political combat, is perhaps best remembered for having exposed Anthony Weiner’s penchant for sending nudes to young girls, and for his work elevating James O’Keefe. That she worked for Independent Women's Forum recently is even wilder since IWF played a critical role in Kavanaugh's confirmation and in persuading Collins to support it. Heather Higgins, chair of IWF, laid out the group’s role in a talk several years ago. “We wrote a memo. It was used by a lot of members of the Senate and the House, Fox News, and elsewhere. Most important, Susan Collins told me that without that memo, she would not see how to support him,” Higgins said. “And if you look at the speech she gave on the Senate floor, it’s entirely the playing out and architecture of how we said to structure the argument — what to say and how to say it, which is just so gratifying. We’re watching TV and we’re like, ‘That’s ours! That’s ours!’” Meanwhile, the timeline Fifield gives of their relationship is confusing, because during at least some of that time she was actually dating a different person, her longterm boyfriend who became her fiancee before she called off the wedding in 2018. We all know this because she and Mandel did a podcast episode on it that went mega-viral in Republican circles back then. Apparently this is the kind of thing the NYT thinks is important now, so I guess it requires more reporting. I'll report back. Here is Heather Higgins celebrating IWF's role in getting Susan Collins to confirm Kavanaugh:

The cracking of Memphis and the Black community What has happened in Tennessee is exactly why Congress passed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to protect minority voters This will be the first big Callais test in the courts. If this is allowed to go forward, the VRA is dead.

Urgent solidarity needed, Azat Miftakhov is being tortured, and has been transferred to Kharp, north of the Arctic Circle, to one of the most remote and harshest of Russia's penal colonies. theins.press/en/news/292243

Warming up in a local Minnesota park for the rally with @peggyflanagan.

We've been hearing that Orban and associates have been moving money. We know he personally has property and business interests in Russia and that that is probably his safe haven, like Assad. theguardian.com/world/2026/a…

This Sunday on Beneath the Surface, @KPFK 90.7fm, 10am PDT: @ClaraEMattei and @suziweissman on #EscapeFromCapitalism. What does it mean to escape from capitalism — not reform it, not regulate it, but escape?

Бразильцы в шоке

This guy in the Senate would be great for American politics.

On Jacobin Radio: "There are zero historical cases of air power bombing a country into revolution from below. Zero." "It is 2003 all over again" and why building an anti-war movement is the left's most urgent task right now. open.spotify.com/episode/0El…

5/5 And: Mather and Moshé Machover are launching Nur — a new initiative for regional solidarity across Iran, Palestine, and the Arab world, in the tradition of the 1970s journal Khamsin. Hear the full discussion on Jacobin Radio kpfk.org bit.ly/3k3iPCH

4/5 On illusions about Russia or China as saviors: "Putin can't even tolerate anti-war people within his own borders. He's going to support the Iranian working class?" Film directors & Nobel laureates hedged on foreign intervention, not Iranian oil workers & teachers .

3/5 On Khamenei: cultured & well-read, sometimes acted as a brake on the IRGC's most adventurous factions. With him gone, the Revolutionary Guard is in the driving seat. His death by foreign assassination may give him in death the authority his legacy denied him in life.

2/5 "The very same people who don't like this government might dislike Israel more." People who were in January's anti-regime protests have joined pro-govt demonstrations — not for the regime, but out of fury at foreign attack. Trump's 'liberation' operation has backfired.

NEW on Beneath the Surface: @yassaminem on the US-Israeli war on Iran. 1/5

"If they don’t stop, Tehran will turn into Gaza’: Iranians describe night of terror. People tell of scenes of panic during airstrikes on Iran’s capital, with several saying they feared they would die" theguardian.com/world/2026/m…

RT @yassaminem: Statement issued by Israeli and Iranian socialists - Moshé Machover and Yassamine Mather The existential crises engulfing…

Every time after a prisoner exchange, I read the news hoping that this time my friends, who have been in captivity for over three years, have also been exchanged. But again, no. If you can help in any way, please help. solidaritycollectives.org/en…