I write about national politics and sinkholes for @motherjones. tmurphy@motherjones.com
May 28 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The Border Patrol turns 100 years old today. I profiled the congressman who helped create it—a cowboy newspaper publisher who once invaded Mexico with his brother to stage a jailbreak. motherjones.com/politics/2024/…
Claude Benton Hudspeth was, in a way, the bridge between the ways that Americans had enforced their borders in the past, and the ways they would in the future. motherjones.com/politics/2024/…
Oct 29, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"a piratical entrepreneur who did for the cab industry early in the 21st century what greedy lenders did for the nation’s savings and loan associations at the end of the 20th." nytimes.com/2021/10/25/nyr…
"He hurt so many people in so many different ways," is the kind of quote that should be in more obituaries tbh
Sep 24, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
always important to make sure you're logged into your burner first
"This time, the financiers aren’t presiding over an expanding rail system; they’re selling it off and permanently liquidating its assets for short-term economic gain." washingtonmonthly.com/2021/08/09/amt…
not the thrust here but story includes reference to "the Trent Lott National Center at the University of Southern Mississippi"
Jul 27, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
none of this would have happened if Pelosi had simply gone along with the Stefanik–Trump proposal to overturn the election
US missing out on 3v3 basketball at the Olympics just reinforces my belief that any sport that doesn't draw the best athletes to the competition shouldn't be at the Olympics. (Also the Olympics are Bad.)
no disrespect to Robbie Hummel, who had a great 10-year career at Purdue
Jan 21, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Josh Hawley was the type of youngish white man who gets floated for everything before he’s done much of anything. And then January 6th happened. motherjones.com/politics/2021/…
Hawley is fully capable of unpacking the faults of a racist Manhattan celebrity with daddy issues—I read his book about Roosevelt. But he's made a cynical choice about what voters will reward, and I'm still not sure it's wrong. motherjones.com/politics/2021/…
Sep 11, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The election interference that matters most isn't coming from Russia motherjones.com/politics/2020/…
foreign interference is more ominous-sounding—and 2016 was very bad—but in 2020, the greatest threat is that it is impossible to tell where the government ends and the campaign begins. motherjones.com/politics/2020/…
Aug 31, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
trump's comments about charlottesville were supposed to just be comments about...infrastructure
wait is this the origin of Infrastructure Week
A couple years ago I wrote about a small group of activists who were trying to register voters in the Tohono O’odham Nation. motherjones.com/politics/2018/…
One of the group's most active members was Gabriella Cazares-Kelly, a high school teacher.
Jul 29, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
For @StrangersGuide's great National Parks issue, I wrote about the people and places that get swept aside to create the idea of nature: strangersguide.com/articles/forgo…
"eviction" is at the heart of the national parks experiment. In order to provide visitors with the kind of pristine space they came to expect, the park service and its allies had to create it. strangersguide.com/articles/forgo…
Jul 24, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Cuomo should spend less time doing fanfic about himself and more time averting preventable catastrophes. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
I have no idea whether my vote, which I mailed at the post office before the deadline, counted. idk, that's sort of unconscionable? And they were made aware of this problem. A simple fix would have addressed it.
Jul 23, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm sort of perplexed by the headline. The book just sucks! This isn't like grappling with Huck Finn or something. newyorker.com/news/daily-com…
I got into "Profiles in Courage" a bit—and some of the examples cited here—in this impeachment piece. There's nothing super complicated about it. It's a bad book filled with stories that are boring and cliche when they're not also racist. motherjones.com/politics/2019/…
Jul 22, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
A Century Ago, One Lawmaker Went After the Most Powerful Cops in Texas. Then They Went After Him. motherjones.com/crime-justice/…
Wrote about the Texas Rangers, their history of atrocities, the lawmaker who went after them, and the long long tail of the trial that followed: motherjones.com/crime-justice/…
Jul 20, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
problem with trying to use DHS goons as the new "sending army to the border" is 1.) the caravan scare didn't work, and 2.) 143k people have died and the economy is in pieces
Trump's extraordinary lack of empathy for the anxiety and trauma of ordinary people has left him not just incapable of addressing the causes of such anxieties, but totally blind when it comes to political messaging around it.
Jul 17, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"The Border Patrol says it has authority to 'conduct arrests' in Portland." Maybe that should wake some folks up. motherjones.com/crime-justice/…
I mean, the incredible audacity of that statement. These folks, be they federal prison riot police or border patrol, just feel entitled to act with impunity against civilians in cities. Because, more or less, they've been told they are.
Jul 14, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
amazing that they did this landmark tax reform and the one thing they absolutely didn't do is "eliminate the tax return" (because they don't care abut you)
I'm not one of those "government taking all my money!" weirdos. It's just actually insane that you have to file paperwork on information they already have.
Jul 13, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In 1970, the Texas Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights called for the Rangers to be abolished. The baseball team came in 1972. That same year, a Dem candidate for governor ran on abolishing the "festering sore" that was the Ranger force.
another candidate during the Rangers' debut season suggested the agency be sent to Alabama to work for George Wallace. Abolition was a live political issue in the early '70s, and in that context, owners were inundated with letters in late '71 suggesting the Ranger name.
Jun 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
would respect the hell out of mississippi just stealing some other state's flag
[blue ribbon commission meets] anyone got any ideas?
