When you highlight the fact that crime is lower among the immigrant population—including undocumented immigrants—in the United States than in the general population, someone eventually pipes up to ask, “Then why are there so many immigrants in federal prison?”

This question hopes to serve as a “gotcha” moment. It’s calculated to provoke the fear that, if so many immigrants are in federal prison, they must be more likely to be violent criminals, mass murders and drug traffickers, etcetera. Arguably, it’s an attempt to make infamous Trump’s “murderers and rapists” slur more palatable by gussying it up as a statistic.

One of the most frustrating things about interacting with transphobic people is how frankly sanctimonious they can be about their behavior. However unexamined their beliefs may be, they often express those beliefs in the tone of someone who is taking the high road, who exudes a sort of justified moral superiority, who simply defends legitimate social and moral norms—even as they are being confronted for denigrating transgender people. It’s a neatly working self-defense mechanism because it enables such people to feel self righteous about the misinformation or even the venom they’re deploying, even as their beliefs remain unexamined.

I have…

It was March 2nd with COVID-19 still boiling across the great state of Texas, and Governor Greg Abbott proclaimed that he was reopening the state. No more mask mandates. “EVERYTHING” would open again at 100% capacity. Then, almost immediately after the telling Texas to return to normal, Abbott hastened to blame immigrants for the spread of the virus.

On Twitter the next day, he claimed, “The Biden Administration is recklessly releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants who have COVID into Texas communities. The Biden Admin. must IMMEDIATELY end this callous act that exposes Texans & Americans to COVID.”

NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro posted a tweet this past week, which resonated with many of us. A year into this COVID-19 pandemic, she asked, “We all have #TheMoment when we knew things were going to be different. Where were you and what were you thinking a year ago?” A remarkable cascade of touching and emotional stories followed—all the more humanized when you could see familiar figures and friends responding to her question.

Lulu’s prompt certainly struck me because as a street photographer, I spent much of the first few months of the pandemic photographing everything on long walks to keep…

To hear it these past few months, a hardy band of patriots have been fording a stream of free speech oppression unleashed by some of our better known social media platforms in these United States, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. They’ve cast themselves much as Emanuel Leutze cast our first President in his 1851 painting Washington Crossing the Delaware: They are strong, forward-looking, resolute in their determination to forge a path for “free speech” among all the chattering social media channels of the 21st century. They’re cornering the market by creating platforms, which cater to those who truly care…

By the time he left office, Donald Trump’s record at attempting to overturn the election stood at 1 in 65 in the courts. The solitary case he won didn’t prove any election fraud or shenanigans in the 2020 election either. And yet tens of millions of Americans still believe he won the election. That’s a titanic triumph of disinformation.

The playbook is simple and Trump and many of his most avid supporters have mastered it. You can examine the dynamics from different angles. You can look at social media. You can examine the practice of Russian disinformation or dezinformatsiya. …

Fox Business announced today they were canceling Lou Dobbs Tonight, their highest rated TV show. We’ll have to see if this canning prompts cries of “cancel culture!” from his admirers or if those cries are only reserved for when competing left wing networks and social media platforms take the megaphones away from similar voices.

You can be sure Dobbs hasn’t been sidelined for the stream of misinformation he’s channeled over the past few years nor for his interminable Donald Trump boosterism, but almost certainly because of the massive lawsuit Smartmatic has leveled at Dobbs and his Fox News colleagues Maria…