Former counselor to RFK Jr’s predecessor:
Father, husband, dog-owner, programmer. Somewhere left of center.
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Former counselor to RFK Jr’s predecessor:
As CNN offers daylong saturation coverage of the podcaster’s funeral, I went back and checked to see how CNN covered Melissa Hortman’s memorial on 6/28, where Walz spoke and Biden/Harris attended. It got about four minutes during the hours it was happening—less than Jeff Bezos’s wedding that day.
Another example of the same phenomenon; they are killing people so they can make videos of them killing people. There is not actually any policy that Venezuela or Colombia can enact to satisfy them, because the purpose is just content creation. Podcasters with the power of the Federal government.
Latest projection suggests that more than 505,000 adults and kids have died due to USAID's illegal dismantling by Musk, Rubio, and Lewin Source: www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?vi...
The second-order effects are large on everyone else—their employers, their landlords, the IRS who were collecting their taxes, etc—but don't lose sight of how particularly cruel and evil it is on the holders themselves and their families
Important to remember that H1B visa holders have their whole life in the US. The home they rent or own is here. Their family. Their kids go to school here. Being locked out of the US is also in many cases rendering them homeless and away from their family, with no obvious path to return
So, this is the thing: Congressional Democrats broadly know that the public likes seeing pugilism from political leaders. There's overwhelming data on this. But they think that they can't do that, because it undercuts a modicum of professionalism/collegiality. There is no such modicum anymore.
J Street welcomes the UK, Australia, and Canada’s recognition of Palestine as a vital step to sideline extremists — pushing back against Hamas and the annexationists as they seek to prevent a reality where Israel and Palestine can both exist in safety, peace, and prosperity.
With all the claims Twitter didn't matter, one who got that it did was Elon Musk. He called it the woke Twitter mob, understood it was one place outside the usual conservative corporate filter that had influence. If Schumer didn't read it, his staff did. So he bought it to spin it right.
Not just media execs. Congress is also divorced from what people want right now. Dem leaders are also subject to a propaganda and harassment campaign. Look at how many of them and their preferred pundits are still on Twitter. And the 3M+ NoKings protests didn’t register in their media sources.
Who in the tech world first decided that big tech’s embrace of the renewables age was over? What group chats spread the idea? How were the energy industries involved? This actually feels like something you could report on - they are less sensitive about it than their racism, for example.
National parks remove signs about climate, slavery and Japanese detention
Hope @rweingarten.bsky.social is tracking clear examples of a billionaire making "A.i." more racist. The @aft.org should not be pushing this fascist-enabling tech into schools.
related: someone asked tony gilroy why he made the massacred ghormans rich white & french & his reply was basically “societies ignore the marginalized but freak when shit hits the privileged.” folks slept on the moon girl ⬆️ sitch; karen attiah’s firing didn’t hit wapo like kimmel’s hit disney.
Wait, I think I missed that one? (The left definitely cancelled people, sometimes unfairly! But I don't remember that story.)
I’m not an “I told you so” kind of guy. But y’all remember that stupid TikTok ban? I voted No on that one.
Every day I get off work and open the app and he's done something completely insane, impeachable, and administration-destroying, and then the next morning the headlines are basically just about how our norms are going through it
Personalist regime tries to set up another mechanism of control. Silicon Valley firms will be subject to the whims of the mad king.
There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.
Absolutely wild. Israel targeted and massacred 31 journalists and media staff in Yemen. The second-deadliest attack on journalists ever recorded. The Israeli regime is built on war crimes.
More than that. "The FBI ***recorded*** Tom Homan taking the money "after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration."
The tent has to be big enough to hold Jay Jacobs' feelings, not big enough to include the voters of New York City
I had this thought too. MAGA is turning Charlie Kirk into their MLK. That's why I'm increasingly certain there will be a Charlie Kirk Day. And they're going to force Kirk Thought into school curricula.
Hey, what do you think is more likely guys: Indian firms and US firms start hiring more US workers Or Indian firms and US firms start the biggest offshore program to do the work in India and China you’ve ever seen in your life causing a net drop in jobs for US workers
Every elected official who dares to stand against criminality & injustice deserves to be praised for it
vote choice among indian american citizens in 2024. these folks are not MAGA / trump fans
Part of this comes with what I’ve kept thinking about recently, the responsibility of having an audience and how they hear you even apart from how you mean to be heard. Passing off stuff as “this is interesting but RT≠endorsement” does not reflect how your audience will necessarily process it.
Also, I have talked to two friends currently with TT jobs, who have an H1-B and their green card applications have been initiated. They both received emails yesterday to the tune of "we hope it won't apply to your case, but if it does we won't renew your contract."
This. No TT/non-TT/VAP job will be offered to an int'l candidate, since it requires an H1-B until the green card is issued. This process takes at least a couple of years.
As corrupt and appalling as the ouster of this career prosecutor for refusing to prosecute Trump's enemies truly is, I strongly encourage folks to also understand this as evidence that Trump's authoritarian designs are facing serious institutional resistance:
As someone who has followed this discourse closely, this has been a thing for time out of mind. Centirst pundits are always urging Dems to sell out on abortion when it's their *most* popular culture war issue, and it makes even less sense given the public opinion shift post-Dobbs
The fact that Charlie Kirk was viewed as some kind of a Titan of free speech and debate shows a bizarre trend where it somehow became acceptable for adult non student conservatives to invade college campuses and talk about why women and black people shouldn’t have basic civil liberties
“Her husband, Edgar Hernan Elias Escobar, called her to say that masked federal agents had rammed their car into his to stop it as he went to work, smashed the window, and pointed a stun gun at his head.” www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/19/m...
However, I am saying that the effort to impose a uniformly positive cultural view of Kirk's legacy of hatred and extremism is very dangerous. And I'm saying the only way to fight it is to say things that dispute or puncture it.
I want to be clear about what I'm saying. I'm not saying those who express sorrow for Kirk's family, condemn violence, or even express distaste for people being rude about Kirk's legacy are bad, or idiots, or anything like that. It's a natural response. It would be weird to hold it against ppl.
In Denmark, if you’re pregnant and the government thinks you will be a bad parent because you were abused as a child, they can give you a test asking “what’s glass made of?” and “what’s the big staircase in Rome called?”If you fail they take your baby after birth. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
It's not just American conservatives who're turning Charlie Kirk into a martyr. From Germany to South Africa to Great Britain to Japan, ultranationalist movements have also seized on the late MAGA influencer's death.
I can't understate how bad the political environment was for Ds last year. The worst in a Prez cycle for them in my lifetime. You have to go back to the Reagan 80s to find a worse Prez year environment for them. Harris keeping it within 1.5% and Ds almost sweeping key Senate races was impressive.
Ezra Klein may have at one time nobly sought to influence policy and combat the Right and Yglesias along with him. But at some point everyone turns into a business and the business of media is attention.
the first amendment is not only under attack in the media, but also behind the walls of private ICE detention centers detained people engaged in peaceful protest to fight against severe neglect & in response, guards violently brutalized them, including tossing the organizers in solitary confinement
I cannot overstate how remarkable it is that under GOP rule, US federal health regulations have been captured by fringe crackpots who espouse views that the vast majority of the US public—and nearly 100% of health professionals—reject. Gift link:
The fact that Democrats allowed themselves to to be gaslit into not running primarily on abortion, and that abortion is no longer treated as an uncompromisable issue, is a sign of how much male pundits who are completely out of touch have taken over the consulting class
H1-B workers don’t take jobs — they create them. They make our companies more competitive globally and help us lead in tech, medicine, and defense. This policy shrinks our talent pipeline, undermines job creation, and hands America’s competitive edge to global rivals.
Two babies have died of Whooping cough in Louisiana, a vaccine preventable disease. All pregnant patients and their families should be vaccinated to protect the newborn. This is Louisiana's worst Whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak in 30 years. buff.ly/pez25q3 #medsky #pedsky🛟😷
We’ve actually gotta burn down (figuratively!) a lot of our cultural institutions honestly and start over
oh looks like jill lepore wrote the book i thought i might write www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/b...
Elected lawmakers aren't just there to carry out bureaucratic technocratic procedures. They are your agents, to stand between you and the force of the state, empowered with the people's "she speaks for us." This is what representative democracy is for, at its best in the face of its worst failures.
There are several linked problems here; one is that conservative voters are increasingly plugged into the national discourse, which is why conservative Democrats with deep roots in their states all got wiped out over the last few years. Nobody gave a shit anymore about local issues or coalitions.
Oh Jesus Christ, we're doing this discourse again. The reason that Democrat lose in Red States more than they used to is educational polarization and nationalization reshaping coalitions. There were, in fact, many pro-life Democrats a decade ago, and they all got replaced by Republicans!
I get the political take but it's also an unethical take given the anti-abortion legislation kills pregnant people. We've gotten to a point where we've forgotten that the role of politics is to actually make society better. Just like the role of economics is to help socially allocate resources
Just to add to this, I've spoken to immigrants who have moved to California and they assume that *all* American cities have people sleeping on the street. It's not! Look at the "Unsheltered" column. We're just really bad at this! We have 45% of the nation's street sleepers! Compare with NYC!
Breaking Silence, Former University President Claudine Gay Blasts Harvard’s ‘Compliance’ With White House Demands www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
NEW: The SEC quietly dismissed complaints against 3 people who were granted clemency by Trump for frauds that collectively bilked victims out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, Devon Archer, Trevor Milton & Carlos Watson won't have to pay any money that could be used to make victims whole.
NEW: Ayman Soliman, whose detention sparked a community uproar and became a test of counterterrorism powers in immigration court, was released from an Ohio jail Friday as DHS abruptly withdrew its deportation case against the children's hospital chaplain. By @hannahallam.bsky.social
I don't know, but my hope is that *someone* manages to get a complaint filed and a Temporary Restraining Order issued tomorrow. Seriously. We're looking at that level of emergency litigation.
It is deeply unfortunate that these old-guard unions are no longer a reliable part of the Democratic coalition but, given that their membership is actively voting to destroy the institutions and hurt themselves, it's probably time for Democrats to just cut them loose
Thinking about the Beltway reporters who in January told CJR they were relieved to have Trump back because he fed them more snackable content www.cjr.org/political_pr...
Correcting myself since I didn't read carefully enough in my haste; this doesn't go into effect immediately, it goes into effect in 29 hours, at 12:01 AM on Sunday morning.
Don’t waste much time thinking about any ideology or policy reason for the H-1B visa change. This is so tech companies will have to pay Trump for exemptions. Same as they paid him for tariff exemptions. It’s just a standard mob shakedown.
No, once they're in, they're no longer subject to removal. It's a ban on entry, not a deportation ground. But just as the first travel ban in his first week in office in 2017, where even green card holders were detained at the airports, this could see H-1B visa holders detained at airports.
The reps who got arrested for demanding to see the ICE holding cells at 26 Federal say agents ziptied the doors shut and duct taped the cracks to hide. And then laughed.
Key passages about Robert Moses’s fall in The Power Broker: The younger investigative journalists at different publications start collaborating with each other behind the scenes to get the editors and publishers to compete with each other over scoops instead of constantly burying their stories.
I think we can say two things. 1) Trump is hurting the economic outlook, especially in terms of distribution, but also in terms of potential growth and risks to the cyclical outlook 2) the US economy is just extremely hard to derail into a full blown recession This is hard to articulate!
It was of course another Matt Darling reply chain that really got me thinking about this. George Pearkes is also showing an admirable amount of caution every time a new big headline drops.
Final ACIP update for the Covid vaccine: 1) Covid vaccines for all ages will be based on individual decision-making (no recc). 2) 65+ can just go and get it. 3) 6 mos-65yr, vaccine informed consent will be required to be discussed prior to receipt with 6 points of mandated misinformation 1/2
A big problem with the Dem fundraising ecosystem is that in the past 24 hours I've gotten about 5 texts from scam PACs asking me to sign dubious petitions to support Jimmy Kimmel. This can't be the first request for mass mobilization that people get.
I appreciate Zack going through the *how* of how we'd lose our democracy. It's not canceling elections or troops in the streets, it's takeover of media platforms and either buying off or silencing dissenters.
Holy shit, huge revelations about a GOP Delegate in VA www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GWE...
I would call this “consciousness of guilt” in an eventual domestic trial or international war crimes tribunal.
Oh, for fuck's. THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT. DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME ON A LIST IF YOU ARE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO THE GOVERNMENT WANTS LISTS OF. PUT YOUR NAME ON ALL THE LISTS IF YOU ARE THE KIND OF PERSON THEY DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO PROSECUTE EN MASSE. FLOOD THE ZONE.
“Class depolarization” was a 60-year experiment conducted by Harvard University. Thank you for your time. You have now been automatically enrolled in a subsequent trial, “class repolarization.” www.semafor.com/article/09/1...
It was very telling that for three days, none of the major TV anchors would have me on air one-on-one to talk about my firing from the Washington Post over Charlie Kirk. The first offers were from Black media, independent media, Substackers, and podcasters.
The Republican reaction to Kirk’s murder has been a campaign of state repression that ends with Trumpist toadies deciding what Americans are allowed to think, do and say. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
“how do you feel about the foreign policy and defense debates of your life being shams with no domestic political grounding, ae?” in all truth its hard to feel much at all
They don’t have a mandate to do any of this, they just are in power, and every weird, unpopular thing they do is damaging them, not making them stronger
NEW: I tracked three dozen teachers, professors and other school staff who've been forced from their job or stepped away due to their comments on Charlie Kirk and his killing Republican lawmakers are increasingly getting involved, pushing for firings www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
The lateral hiring process is going to be wild for the next few years, isn’t it? I can’t imagine how many academics are trying to make a move out of red states to blue, esp those at public institutions. Guess that’s good for blue-state schools, but will be devastating for some great places.
lol thanks Chuck, Joe, Sinema
we wrote about this WH tactic recently. they’re asking journalists for expert source names and then using them to look up political donations in FEC records to try to discredit those sources as biased. www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...
I had this exact same experience this morning. Same reporter as Heidi. This is *not* normal. I have spoken to the press on these issues for two decades. No government official has ever demanded to know my identity in order to give a comment on a story.
This is staggering. Dismantling the right wing propaganda machine is imo one of the biggest and most vital obstacles to the future of this country.
“There is no comparable requirement for boys to confirm their gender,” said another parent. “Once again, the onus is placed on girls to be monitored and regulated, reinforcing the idea that female athletes are the ones who need to be verified.”
disney's going to either have to make a stand here or they're going to have to let sinclair and nextstar dictate their programming *and the personal behavior of their talent* going forward
they’re also kind of fucked now because sinclair wants a public apology and a donation to TPUSA out of him, both of which seem, uh, unlikely
Vermont and Maryland too
I can’t say I’m surprised, but I am certainly appalled. This is a dark day for public health. I believe it is most appropriate to refer to this committee as RFKJ’s ACIP. He handpicked all these members to get the result that he wanted.
Reconstruction, even in its later failure, required breaking regular democratic norms and constitutional procedures on a massive scale. 13, 14, 15th were literally ratified at gunpoint! Rightly, but hardly regular. There has to be a counter-purge, you can't reboot the game of democracy without it.
Everyone’s rightly focused on Disney/ABC, but the demonetization of local TV caused shitstains like NexStar & Sinclair to monopolize that landscape, the real assist to Trump ousting Kimmel. At least we have the internet; oh Trump is forcing the sale of TikTok to the oligarchs?
In the wake of the last few days news and the blood and suppression the GOP is calling for, you would think democrats would be thinking twice about section 230 and the tools they would be handing over with KOSA
comedy may no longer be legal, but at least fraud is
Just now, 11 state and city lawmakers were arrested by DHS police on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza after a hour of demanding access to the ICE lock up on the same floor. @thecity.nyc
Poland's recent experience is a rich case study. This article about the "post-illiberal trilemma" is excellent www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/dem...
I've a thought I can't quite articulate, but it's something like: how do you rebuild the system when this regime falls- as it will, eventually - when the thing you need to rebuild is adherence to law, the very adherence to which will prevent you from fixing the things these people broke.
Three different people in the last two days — all former or current students — have told me they were shocked to learn something in my US history classes they had never heard about before, that their high school teachers never mentioned, and that I thought was common knowledge.
These are feints. Do not lose focus. The CEOs are still in charge, but want to avoid accountability of their enabling a dictator by pretending that Trump, definitely the most unpopular president of my lifetime, and definitely extremely unpopular, is somehow extremely powerful w/o them. It's a lie.
Here’s what a Ball State University employee said that led to their termination:
Can you expand on this? He lists himself as having been lead counsel on the impeachment - why was he voting against debate?
not to bring up the email signup thing again but this is why you don’t scare people about dumb and meaningless shit and why if you are someone with any meaningfully large personal following, this is much more important, it filters out poorly