Kat Abughazaleh, a Democratic candidate for Illinois's 9th congressional district, carries yard signs into her campaign office in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago on May 6, 2025. | Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

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Welcome to The Logoff: A federal grand jury in Illinois has indicted six people, including a Democratic congressional candidate, for participating in a September protest outside an ICE facility near Chicago.

What happened? The indictment charges six people, including two local elected officials and Kat Abughazaleh, a Democrat running for Congress on Chicago’s North Shore, with conspiring to interfere with and forcibly impeding a federal agent outside of an ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview.

The indictment alleges that, among other actions, the people charged “physically hindered and impeded Agent A and the Government Vehicle such that Agent A was forced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators.” Video of the confrontation posted to X by Abughazaleh shows protesters chanting and attempting to block the car.

What’s the context? Since early September, the greater Chicago area has faced an especially brutal immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, resulting in headlines like “Border Patrol agents under fire for allegedly disrupting children’s Halloween parade.”

Protests against the crackdown have often centered on the Broadview ICE facility, and peaceful protesters — including Abughazaleh and members of the clergy — have repeatedly been assaulted and tear-gassed by federal agents. Such tactics have been under increasing legal scrutiny; this week, a Border Patrol official was told to appear in court daily as a judge scrutinizes use of force by agents.

Why does this matter? This indictment is the latest in an alarming trend of protesters, including elected officials, being targeted for prosecution by the Trump administration — at the same time that federal immigration agents have functionally been placed above the law.

In May, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested outside an ICE facility, and Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver was later charged with forcibly impeding an officer; my colleague Ian Millhiser described the McIver indictment as possibly “the most anti-democratic thing [Trump has] done since January 6.”

Bari Weiss walked into 60 Minutes and asked the staff: “Why does the country think you’re biased?”

The question stunned them into awkward silence. And it should have—not because it caught them off guard, but because it reveals everything wrong with what passes for journalistic sophistication in our moment.

Let’s be precise about what Weiss is doing. She’s not asking whether 60 Minutes is actually biased. She’s not evaluating their coverage against standards of accuracy, fairness, or adherence to facts. She’s asking why “the country” perceives bias—which treats that perception as fact requiring accommodation regardless of whether the perception corresponds to reality.

This is false balance perfected. The sophisticated move that treats “Trump and his allies say you’re biased” as equivalent evidence to actual journalistic practice. The epistemic surrender that makes public opinion—shaped by coordinated disinformation campaigns, algorithmic manipulation, and deliberate attacks on legitimate journalism—into the arbiter of what counts as fair coverage.

When the President calls judicial review “insurrection,” when his advisers threaten to ignore court rulings, when federal agents conduct warrantless mass detentions—60 Minutes covering these facts isn’t bias. It’s journalism. And when Trump and his allies attack that coverage as partisan, the proper response isn’t “how do we address these perceptions?” It’s “we report what’s happening.”

But Weiss has built a career on reframing accommodation as courage. Her brand rests on the premise that mainstream journalism, academia, and cultural institutions have been captured by the left and need correction toward “balance.” This framework treats asymmetric reality as if it were symmetric controversy—and what the New York Times reports about her first weeks at CBS reveals how this plays out in practice.

She’s reportedly personally booking Netanyahu, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff—architects of Trump’s Middle East policy—while urging executives to identify newsroom leakers. And she’s asking a newsroom that views itself as nonpartisan to justify why coordinated attacks on them have gained traction. She’s not asking whether Netanyahu’s government has committed actions worthy of critical coverage or whether Trump’s peace plan deserves scrutiny beyond its architects’ preferred framing—she’s ensuring powerful right-wing figures get platforms while shifting the burden from those making false claims to those reporting facts.

This matters because even journalists who genuinely believe they’re defending fairness can fall into this trap. The frame is seductive: “Both sides claim bias, therefore the truth must be somewhere in the middle.” But this only works when both sides operate in good faith. When one side systematically attacks any accountability journalism as partisan while the other tries to report accurately, splitting the difference doesn’t produce balance—it produces capitulation.

The question “why does the country think you’re biased?” does something structurally insidious regardless of Weiss’s intentions. It treats coordinated attacks on legitimate journalism as evidence requiring response rather than as bad-faith manipulation requiring exposure. It makes perceived bias—manufactured through deliberate campaigns—into a problem journalism must solve by changing coverage rather than a weapon journalism must resist by maintaining standards.

The danger isn’t that journalists become propagandists overnight—it’s that they internalize propaganda’s logic while believing they’re protecting neutrality.

This is precisely how authoritarian movements capture journalism without needing to shut it down. You don’t need to close newspapers when you can convince editors that “balance” means giving equal weight to demonstrable lies and documented facts. You don’t need to jail journalists when you can make them internalize the frame that reporting what’s actually happening is “partisan” if it makes one side look bad.

The 60 Minutes staff should have answered her question directly: “The country thinks we’re biased because a coordinated disinformation infrastructure has spent decades attacking any journalism that holds Republican power accountable as ‘liberal media bias,’ and you’re now amplifying that frame by treating their attacks as legitimate concerns requiring our accommodation rather than as bad-faith manipulation requiring our resistance.”

But they sat in stunned silence instead. Because Weiss is now their boss. And her early choices clarify what she values: access to powerful right-wing newsmakers, concern about perceptions shaped by those attacking journalism, and the sophisticated frame that treats “both sides say the other is biased” as evidence requiring split-the-difference coverage.

This is how journalism dies. Not through crude censorship but through sophisticated editors who convince themselves that accommodation of authoritarian narratives is “balance,” that platforming power without sufficient scrutiny is “access,” that treating coordinated attacks as legitimate criticism is “taking concerns seriously.”

Two plus two equals four. Federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions violates the Fourth Amendment. Stephen Miller calling judicial review “insurrection” is authoritarian rejection of constitutional governance. Covering these facts is journalism. Treating coverage of these facts as evidence of bias is surrender.

Bari Weiss is editor-in-chief of CBS News. And her first major act was asking the network’s flagship program to justify why they’re perceived as biased for doing their jobs. That tells you everything about what she’ll demand they stop doing—and why her version of “balance” is just authoritarianism with better branding.

Historical data shows putting leaders on trial is a healthy democratic practice.

The Democrats have failed to mount a serious response to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. Their fecklessness has left the door open for democratic socialists like Zohran Mamdani to position themselves as the real opposition to Trump.

Shake Shack wants you to shit yourself to death (permalink)

Shake Shack has changed the terms of service for its app, adding a "binding arbitration" clause that bans you from suing the company or joining a class action suit against it:

https://shakeshack.com/terms-conditions#/

As Luke Goldstein writes for Jacobin, the ToS update is part of a wave of companies, including fast-food companies, that are taking away their customers' right to seek redress in the courts, forcing them to pursue justice with a private "arbitrator" who works for the company that harmed them:

https://jacobin.com/2025/10/shake-shack-arbitration-law-terms-service/

Now, obviously you don't have to agree to terms of service just to walk into a Shake Shack and order a burger (yet), but Shake Shack, like other fast food companies, is on a full-court press to corral you into using its app to order your food, even if you're picking up that food from the counter and eating it in the restaurant. This is an easy trick to pull off – all Shake Shack needs to do is starve its cash-registers of personnel, creating untenably long lines for people attempting to order from a human.

Forcing diners to use an app has other advantages as well. Remember, an app is just a website skinned in the right kind of IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it, which means that whenever you use an app instead of a website, you are vulnerable to deep and ongoing commercial surveillance and can be bombarded with ads without you having any recourse:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/24/everything-not-mandatory/#is-prohibited

That surveillance can be weaponized against you, through "surveillance pricing," which is when companies raise prices based on their estimation of your desperation, which they can infer from surveillance data. Surveillance pricing lets a company reach into your wallet and devalue your money – if you are charged $10 for a burger that costs the next person $5, that means your dollar is only worth $0.50:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/

But beyond surveillance and price-gouging, app-based ordering offers corporations another way to screw you: they can force you into binding arbitration. Under binding arbitration, you "voluntarily" waive your right to have your grievances heard by a judge. Instead, the corporation hires a fake judge, called an "arbitrator," who hears your case and then a rebuttal from the company that signs their paycheck and decides who is guilty. It will not surprise you to learn that arbitrators overwhelmingly find in favor of their employers and even when they rule in favor of a wronged customer, the penalties they impose on their bosses add up to little more than a wrist-slap:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/15/dogs-breakfast/#by-clicking-this-you-agree-on-behalf-of-your-employer-to-release-me-from-all-obligations-and-waivers-arising-from-any-and-all-NON-NEGOTIATED-agreements

This binding arbitration bullshit was illegal until the 2010s, when Antonin Scalia authored a string of binding arbitration decisions for the Supreme Court, opening the hellmouth for the mass imposition of arbitration on anyone that a business could stick an "I agree" button in front of:

https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1443&amp%3Bamp%3Bcontext=blr

A fundamental tenet of conservative doctrine is "incentives matter" – that's why they say we can't have universal healthcare (if going to the doctor is free, you will schedule frivolous doctor's visits) or food or housing assistance (unless your boss can threaten you with homelessness and starvation, you won't go to work anymore). However, this is a highly selective bit of dogma, because incentives never seem to matter to rich people or corporations, whom conservatives are on an endless quest to immunize from any consequences for harming their workers or customers, which somehow won't incentivize them to hurt their workers and/or customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

At this point, we should probably ask, "Why would anyone sue a Shake Shack?" To answer that, you just need to look at why people sue other fast-food restaurants, like McDonald's and Chipotle. The short answer? Because those restaurants had defective food-handling and sourcing procedures, and this resulted in their customers contracting life-threatening food-borne illnesses:

https://apnews.com/article/mcdonalds-chipotle-taco-bell-norovirus-e-coli-83f1077981d738b91dbf0c76f7db2883

By immunizing itself from legal consequences for the most common sources of liability for fast-food restaurants, Shake Shack is reserving the right to make you shit yourself to death. Combine this immunity with Trump's unscheduled rapid midair disassembly of all federal regulations (AKA "Project 2025") and you get a situation where Shake Shack can just make up its own money-saving hygiene shortcuts, and face no consequences if these result in your shitting yourself to death. This is both literal and figurative enshittification.

Of course, Shake Shack doesn't believe this should cut both ways. You can't slip out of Shake Shack's noose by walking into a restaurant with a t-shirt reading:

By reading these words, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. This indemnity will survive the termination of your relationship with your employer.

Shake Shack isn't trying to create a simplified, efficient system of justice – they're creating a two-tiered system of justice. They get to go to court if you hurt them. Vandalize a Shack Shack restaurant and they'll drag your ass in front of a judge before you can say "listeria." But if they cause you to shit yourself to death, you are literally and figuratively shit out of luck.

That's really bad. Two-tiered justice is always and ever a prelude to fascism. The way to keep the normies in line while your brownshirts round up their neighbors and seize their property is by maintaining the "normal" justice system for some people, but not for the disfavored group:

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/anti-jewish-legislation-in-prewar-germany

Gradually, the group entitled to "normal" justice dwindles and more and more of us get sucked into the "state of exception" where you aren't entitled to a lawyer, a trial, or any human rights.

Trump isn't just dismantling the regulatory state: his fascist snatch-squads ignore the Constitution and the courts. His supine Congress ignores the separation of powers (Trump: "I'm the President and the Speaker of the House"). This rapid erosion of the rule of law is about to meet and merge with the long-run, Federalist Society project to give corporations their own shadow justice system, where they hire the judges who decide whether you can get justice.

Oakland, CA – On October 23, Trump rushed over 100 federal agents, in a long-threatened “surge” operation, to occupy the San Fransico Bay Area. So, the Community Service Organization, the Oakland Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and over 500 Oakland residents mobilized for an emergency “Ice Out of the Bay” rally and march to take the fight directly to ICE and Border Patrol at the U.S. Coast Guard base where they were stationed.

Trump had warned and later recanted the takeover of San Francisco, but no such promise was made to spare Oakland. The Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity was flashbanged, run over by Customs and Border Patrol trucks, and Reverend Jorge Bautistathe was shot in the face with pepper rounds at the bridge connecting Oakland to the Coast Guard base island.

A mile away, in the plaza of the Fruitvale district, home to Oakland’s largest Chicano/Latino community, protesters gathered in the afternoon. Danny Celaya, with the Community Service Organization of Oakland, started the program by welcoming supporters and introducing speakers.

Romaine Charite, who represented the Oakland branch of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, started with a speech calling the president’s assault on the birthplace of the Black Panther Party “An attack on democratic institutions, an attack on the Chicano/Latino movement for legalization, and an attack on the political power of African Americans who are fed up with white supremacy.” Charite also tied the use of federal agents to crush the Black Liberation Movement, such as during the George Floyd Uprisings under Trump’s last term.

Eve Wallace from the Oakland district of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization said, “It is only through our commitment, our bravery to stand up against oppression, and our willingness to build organizations of working-class people to fight back will we ever achieve our shared liberation.”

After the speeches, the people took to the streets, marching half an hour to the military base to the chorus of “Raza si, Migra no!” and “All power to the people. No human is illegal,” with cheers and car honks from neighbors.

The community then came face-to-face with the Coast Guard, who were already lined up and armed along the entrance of the bridge. ICE was suddenly nowhere to be seen. The tense two-hour standoff had protesters screaming at the soldiers who were part of the attacks earlier in the day aiding ICE. Several times, the troops attempted to isolate and push back protesters. They failed, as Oaklanders in their hundreds grew too large and ungovernable. As night fell, the Coast Guard retreated far back into the bridge. The crowd cheered, “We’ll be back.”

The next morning, the city’s mayor, Barbara Lee, confirmed that Trump’s operation was canceled for the entire San Francisco Bay Area.

Anti-abortion advocates haven’t just played key roles in rolling back abortion rights in recent years. They also helped tank President Donald Trump’s campaign-trail promise to make in vitro fertilization free.

That’s according to a new report published Saturday in Politico, which reveals that anti-abortion activists—some of whom are opposed to IVF because it involves discarding unused embryos—spent more than a year lobbying the Trump campaign, and then his administration, to ensure that officials did not subsidize or mandate coverage of the procedure. They got their wish earlier this month, when the president announced a far more limited initiative: a cost-cutting agreement with a leading fertility medication manufacturer to slash prices on a drug involved in the IVF process. Trump also announced the creation of a new fertility insurance benefit that employers could voluntarily offer to employees.

“There were letters and meetings and calls—a lot of activity,” Kristi Hamrick, vice president for media and policy at the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America, told Politico. “We told [the administration] that it would be an absolute violation of people’s conscience rights to force taxpayers to subsidize IVF, which has the business model that destroys more life than is ever born.”

Anti-abortion advocates had long been vocal about their opposition to Trump’s promises to promote IVF. After his February executive order—which claimed to expand access to the procedure but merely required an official to gather ideas on how to do so, as I reported at the time—several leading abortion opponents decried the move. But the Politico story indicates that anti-abortion advocates’ involvement in scaling back the administration’s moves on IVF was greater than previously known.

“A lot of people met with different people within the administration over the last eight months to say, ‘This is not pro-life. This is not going to raise birth rates. This pumps money into an industry that a lot of pro-lifers have great concerns over, because of the potential for eugenics. So let’s tap the brakes on this,'” Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, told Politico.

Beyond the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Students for Life of America, other anti-abortion groups that were reportedly involved in pressuring the administration include Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Americans United for Life. Those groups did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday.

According to Politico, White House officials also gave the advocates a heads-up before Trump’s announcement of his IVF policies:

In a sign of how seriously they took the groups’ arguments, administration officials held a briefing call for a select group of activists ahead of last week’s announcement to address their fears of a coverage mandate. According to two anti-abortion advocates on the call, granted anonymity to discuss the private event, the White House did not take questions.

A White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about behind-the-scenes conversations, confirmed both the call and the key role anti-abortion groups played in developing the policy. Their influence ensured that no employer is obligated to cover IVF, that no federal funding supports it, and that new coverage options can include alternative fertility treatments promoted by groups who oppose abortion.

“It’s providing flexibility, not just in an ideological sense, but just in a medical sense,” the official said. “It would be bad policy just to push everyone onto IVF.”

Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to Mother Jones.

Politico reports that anti-abortion advocates also pushed the White House Domestic Policy Council—which was tasked with coming up with suggestions to deliver to the president—to back “restorative reproductive medicine” (RRM), a loose group of approaches that allegedly tackles the root causes of infertility, as my colleague Kiera Butler wrote last year. Leading medical organizations have said that RRM is not evidence-based and that it is not a distinct concept, but instead a repackaging of work that fertility doctors already do to support patients.

During Trump’s Oval Office announcement, officials did not explicitly reference RRM, but they—including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—did repeatedly say that they plan to address “the root causes” of infertility. An expert on IVF access who did not want to be named for fear of retribution previously told me they were concerned by these mentions: “On the one hand, we were happy because they didn’t say ‘restorative reproductive medicine.’ And on the other hand, we were concerned because they said ‘root causes’ several times.”

But for all the administration’s attempts to pander to every conceivable interest group, it could not manage to make everyone happy. Some on the left said that there was more Trump could do to expand access to IVF and that the announcement amounted to a failure to deliver on his campaign pledge.

On the anti-abortion side, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops called Trump’s announcement a “harmful government action” that could “push people of faith to be complicit in its evils.” Lila Rose, head of the anti-abortion group Live Action, said on X that Trump’s announcement is “not a solution to fertility struggles.” And Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, called the announcement a “disappointment.”