Connie Zheng

White words on a black background read: 50+ Immigration agents have the authority to detain whom they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally. We found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship. They were almost all Latino. ~130 Agents also can arrest citizens who allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers. We compiled cases of about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, accused of assaulting or impeding officers. ~20 Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer.

Hi, I'm the ProPublica reporter who's been tracking an unusual stat: U.S. citizens grabbed by immigration agents.

I did it because the government isn’t.

This is what I found.

Recycled my No Kings sign from June

Side A: No Kings F 🧊
Side B: Hands Off Our Healthcare!!!, with a doodle of me bringing down a cast-iron skillet on a tiny orange hand slithering out of a hole in the ground

Not my most inspired or formally inventive but I think it gets the point across

Pretty joyous vibes at No Kings Oakland

THIS, 100%. My partner was one of the organizers of the No Kings in his small, v red town in rural GA and not only did turnout exceed his expectations (88 vs 40 projected max), he also met long-time residents who were ecstatic to learn they weren’t the only lefties in town and want to organize

- Criticism - e-flux In a far corner of ILHAM plays Gogularaajan Rajendran’s Coolies’ Chorus (2025), a seventy-minute video in which Ind

Gosh, first time my work has been called “dazzling”! Thank you to Max Crosbie-Jones for the very nice words in @eflux.bsky.social

Header image is of my drawing of commodity flows, “As It Is: Nothing Lasts Forever”

Showing at Ilham in Kuala Lumpur until 9/21 :)

www.e-flux.com/criticism/67...

“For a Deaf person, an accommodation might mean access to an interpreter of a sign language that they know… But if an interpreter is not readily available or provided, it could keep a person in detention for longer than they otherwise might be.”

Apparently he also didn’t know the US has a hurricane season, lucky us

Does anyone else feel like these clowns are not actual people but possibly AI hallucinations downloaded into man-suits? Because every day I feel like I am living in a movie written by the most demented and illogical LLM possible

Been diligently clocking in to Duolingo for Korean lessons for 1 week now and so far I can only confidently recognize vowels, but it’s kinda wild how big a level up that feels like

People in Many Countries Consider the U.S. an Important Ally; Others See It as a Top Threat People in 12 of 24 nations surveyed tend to say the U.S. is their top ally. But it's also widely seen as a top threat, as are Russia and China.

By a wide majority, people in Canada and Mexico now see the United States as the "greatest threat" to their country.
www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/...

Writing a dissertation is very hard

Been working on a new painting about plants & animals + liberation struggles and spending a lot of time studying Albrecht Dürer’s “Great Piece of Turf” (1503), a watercolor depicting a gorgeous clump of weeds. Thinking about how power is underfoot everywhere, in the ‘ordinary’ + beneath our feet

A chart titled "Most Americans approve of Zohran Mamdani's proposals to lower the cost of living"

A Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that Mamdani's proposals (freezing rent, free universal child care, taxes on the rich) are overwhelmingly popular, especially among Democrats – and that's nationally, not just in deep-blue NYC. www.yahoo.com/news/poll-zo...

And now for some positivity amidst the doom times

Oops, just realized the proper denomination is the florin (ƒ)! My bad

10£ and 10ƒ redesigns in intaglio form

ALSO did you know that the Dutch East India Company was the 1st multinational corporation in the world? It even had the ability to wage war, raise its own armies, print its own currency etc ….. so ofc it behaved in a lawless manner that in NO WAY seems like it could be a model for companies today 🙃

And here is a 10-guilder banknote made from a tulip catalogue I found in a rummage bin. Did you know that the first recorded speculative bubble in the world was over tulips (which are from Central Asia, fyi)? Single bulbs would sell for over 10x the annual salary of a skilled artisan

Hard not to think about failed empires these days. Here’s a 10£ banknote I designed w/the poppies section of one of my heirloom seed catalogues, as a nod to the British Empire’s flooding of opium — produced on their plantations in India — into China in order to reduce their trade deficit. Nefarious

The highlights are blown out but not too terrible for an initial test run. Also I swear this project has nothing to do with the fact that a certain unelected billionaire with quasi-governmental powers has just seized control of our treasury 🫥

Collaged together a $1 bill made of seed catalogue pics of watermelon/okra/cowpeas & a $100 bill of the Three Sisters (squash, corn, beans) 🌽🍉 b/c where else does *actual* wealth come from but the earth and its bounty

Cutting up my old heirloom seed catalogues for collage work

Well, we knew they would blame the plane crash on DEI, and Trump's sycophants will just nod their heads even though it is a nonsensical claim. I don't know how Republicans live with themselves. I really don't. And frankly, most of those Democrats, too, as they put up no resistance.

Echoing the calls for a public syllabus (please)! Thank you for all of your work + reporting amidst this admin’s unhinged kakistocratic onslaught

Just learned that one of my art heroes, Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith (Confederated Salish/Kootenai), passed away last week. Deeply sad about this news, esp amidst the onslaught of these past 2 weeks. Sharing one of my fav (& quieter) pieces of hers, Kalispell #1 (1979) 💚

aaaand I just learned you can follow topic feeds (can you tell I never learned how to use twitter)

Been training my 🦋 algo to serve me mostly lefty / progressive journalism + photos of mushrooms and I think I’m ok with that — could use more dog pics tho

Anybody who actually knows gender nonconforming kids could tell you that they are some of the most courageous people in the world.

Let’s hope the rest of us can rise to their standard.

Anti-immigrant crackdowns making a bird flu pandemic even more inevitable:

"Human testing has been voluntary, and infections have been missed. Few farmworkers have opted to be tested, out of fear of immigration officials or their own employers."

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/h...

may you shed the skins that no longer suit you, keep your energy rooted to the ground, & sharpen your fangs in this year of the 🐍