There's a lot going on, and a lot to argue about. But we should all be able to agree that the shocking levels of incompetence shown in the leadership of our federal government is both historically unmatched, and it hurts all of us.
There's a lot going on, and a lot to argue about. But we should all be able to agree that the shocking levels of incompetence shown in the leadership of our federal government is both historically unmatched, and it hurts all of us.
40% of Republicans think the COVID vaccine killed more people than the COVID virus. One in four believe that QAnon is real. No matter how far they radicalize, we are told over and over again that the people being rude to them are the problem.
"Donald Trump is a monster and we desperately want to work with him" is a batshit position to take, it makes you sound like an insincere and feckless empty suit
This is what fascism comes from. Not economic conditions, not policy objections, but giving people a permission structure to indulge in performances of violence against an imagined subhuman enemy.
Under Dr. Oz, Medicare is launching a pilot program that will use AI to determine whether patients would be covered for certain procedures. Companies running the program will be paid a share of the savings from rejecting claims. Who in their right mind voted for this? No one.
Why didn’t we just track and interdict the vessel in US waters, arrest the crew and seize the drugs, as the US Coast Guard routinely does?
The president is sending the military to control American cities and if you're a reporter who's framing that illegal power grab as "pushing the boundaries of constitutionality" or "acting boldly to fight crime" or whatever, please go find another line of work where you won't get us all killed.
This is THE question all Americans should ask themselves NOW.
Pritzker is doing two things here that are smart. One, he's describing this forcefully and unapologetically and in his own terms, not adopting the Admin/media frame. Two, he's making clear that he will blame the Admin for any violence or disorder sparked by their invasion of his state.
Good: Pritzker calling BS, unambiguously and forcefully, on Trump’s planned invasion of Chicago, correctly identifying it as blatant rights violations based on a pretext. Bad: How much it stands out to see a leading politician do that, rather than go along with the BS, treating the pretext as real.
Illinois Gov. Pritzker ahead of Trump National Guard deployment: "To Chicagoans... Look out for your communities and your neighbours. Know your rights. Film things that you see happening... Authoritarians thrive on your silence. Be loud for America."
Hey @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social: you said this three days ago. And now today you want to find bipartisan solutions with them? Why should any person take you fucking seriously? bsky.app/profile/hake...
Pritzker: "I refuse to pretend that any of this is normal ... I refuse to fall into the pundit trap that demands we sacrifice vital constitutional rights if it's being done in the fake guise of fighting crime."
Oof. The Dems need to stop pretending, based on some imaginary focus group, that there’s some common ground with Trump. The key is to fight everywhere. You should go study Neville Chamberlain’s attempt at “common ground.” It didn’t end well for his historical reputation. Or the world.
@scholten.house.gov
Ezra Klein
The exact same correlation exists for male education
*glizzy
A new piece I wrote appearing in FOREIGN AFFAIRS today www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/warn...
They did ok on the headline/bsky post here
Republican governors have sent National Guard troops to Democratic-led Washington, D.C., even though cities in their states all have higher rates of violent crime than the nation’s capital. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
Trump limits National Guard assignments to 29 days at a time to keep the called up service members from getting healthcare and housing benefits while on duty. And the NG troops are catching on. Stereotypical Trump. Don't give those losers and suckers an extra dime. www.rawstory.com/trump-infuri...
Example of money: US dollar Example of not money: crypto
Unit of measurement, store of value, and medium of exchange that is universally accepted.
52 of 53 Republican senators voted to confirm him.
Leaving aside the typical histrionics, this seems to be Trump beginning to distance himself from Kennedy (who’s “ripping apart” CDC), and inviting mainstream physicians and scientists to defend the vaccines, so Trump can then say, I got them to explain it better and vaccines are OK.
No, Native-Born Employment Has Not Soared. A viral chart shared by Trumpworld showing an increase in employment among native-born Americans is a multiple-count data felony: washingtonmonthly.com/2025/09/01/n...
Seems so obvious, and it’s also obvious dems will never do this. I genuinely don’t understand why they won’t, I just know they won’t.
JD Vance 2016: Trump could be the next Hitler! JD Vance 2024: I could be the next Hitler!
RFK Jr. rushing to the White House with a wheelbarrow full of beef tallow to save the President
"The visible health problems of the oldest president in American history barely registered in mainstream coverage," writes @passantino.bsky.social for Status_. But @nytimes.com 🐔, @wsj.com 🐔🐔 & other major outlets published dozens of stories about Biden's physical fitness while he was in office.
“…I am infuriated that the Air Force plans to grant military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt. She did not die defending the Constitution. She died trying to overturn it.” My latest in @thebulwark.com www.thebulwark.com/p/honoring-a...
My god, sir.
Also, a big butt ☺️
The A.I. companies they contract to review pre-authorizations will have a strong incentive to deny care. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections. My story with @reedabelson.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/h...
Still sticking to “kitchen table” issues I see. If you don’t have the courage to fight fascism, resign and let someone who does take your position.
He literally has no experience in public health
BREAKING: Social Security Administration chief data officer and whistle-blower Charles Borges has resigned after bombshell report that SSA put highly-sensitive data at risk. He sent out an email to colleagues moments ago. Here is the text of his email shared with me:
What a cursed sentence (gift link) “The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”
This is called corruption.
balaji srinivasan is a special advisor to Chainlink, and he's got a good bit in his book that describes exactly why they want to put everything on the blockchain. the short version is it's adam tooze's bit about statistics being the driving force of history in Weimar
The way I describe it is: we are under an authoritarian regime, but we don't know that it has consolidated -- for all we know, it could still be thrown out via elections.
This is how it’s done www.bbc.com/news/article...
Full resignation letter from Demetre C. Daskalakis, a CDC leader, does not hold back. "The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning. My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud."
Very, very disappointed @jasonfurman.bsky.social would write Trump “is firing” Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook—language is very important. To write that Trump “is firing” her assumes he can. Cook’s response clearly notes that she’s not “resisting” his firing, she knows he can do no such thing:
💯
wtf is this nonsense? He thinks he can understand kid’s “mitochondrial challenges” just by looking at them? This is an insane person.
Breaking: The CDC
Trump deployed military to DC because Big Balls got kicked by a 15 year old girl But he will do nothing in response to kids being shot and killed at a religious school
I think about the tweet like “being a billionaire where everyone you meet agrees with you must be the cognitive equivalent of getting kicked by a horse every day” and how we have now democratized that experience for everyone, including actual billionaires, in the form of uber-sycophantic chatbots.
If you're a CDC employee and have heard anything about the removal of Susan Monarez as director, please reach out! You can contact me at pjacobs@aaas.org or on Signal at phiejacobs.48 @altcdc.altgov.info
⚠️ Following the ouster of CDC Director Susan Monarez, three additional CDC leaders have resigned—with possibly more departures to come:
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
Exactly. These dems have no courage, and no fight in them. I often wonder if they are secretly cheering for fascism to win.
Trump administration moves to bar states and even private (!) nonprofits, such as Red Cross, from helping undocumented immigrants after disasters. Evil. s2.washingtonpost.com/4467742/68af...
Dearest Martha, The National Guard stand solemn watch at the Krispy Kreme tonight. I cannot tell if they defend the people from the donuts, or the donuts from the people. Powdered sugar hangs in the air like cannon smoke. Jensen took a hot coffee to the face, he may never recover. Yours in glaze,
No-Bill for Assault With a Deli Weapon->A D.C. grand jury declined to indict the fired DOJ paralegal Sean Dunn who hurled a sandwich at a federal officer during protests against President Trump’s hyper-federalization of the nation’s capital, the NYT reports. talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...
Janet Yellen: "The independence of the Federal Reserve is not some technocratic nicety. It is the bedrock of US economic stability and global leadership. Trump’s effort to tear it down for personal gain is reckless, corrosive, and profoundly un-American." www.ft.com/content/d2ea...
Oh, so that’s the problem. He doesn’t know what capitalism is.
Hi I think there's been some mistake, I specifically asked *not* to live in interesting times
Powerful words from @nathantankus.bsky.social about the attempted firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook.
The Trump Administration’s war on legal immigration escalates, as they move to reinstate a practice ended 35 years ago that would see federal investigators interviewing peoples’ neighbors and coworkers to determine whether they are of good moral character and thus eligible for citizenship.
Patriots. A lesson for the knee-benders at Paul Weiss, Christopher Wray, Columbia University, etc.
This is a free campaign ad for Trump. It tells Americans that the NewDems caucus supports Trump’s general ideas, and says Trump is not a fascist and Republicans are normal and worth working with (“bipartisan”.) This is electoral poison. It hurts the D brand and so every Dem, me and you included.
If one day we remember this time as a brush with American Fascism instead of a full-blown descent into it, it will be thanks to people like Lisa Cook. One could take the “pragmatic” self-preserving approach that we have seen from so many who have bent the knee. Saying “absolutely not” is heroic.
NEW: The Social Security Administration's chief data officer has blown the whistle, saying Trump's DOGE team uploaded a database containing the hundreds of millions of Social Security records of most Americans to an AWS cloud server, allegedly without proper access controls or monitoring in place.
We either live in a country where the president is subject to the law or we don't.
judgment at nuremberg from 1961 is a really interesting movie. spencer tracy and max schell are standouts in a cast with greats like richard widmark, burt lancaster, marlene dietrich, montgomery clift, and a precocious william shatner. quoted post is accidental and i cant figure out how to remove it
Yes, the stakes here are large. Very large.
There's no guarantee that hospitals that have chickened out will resume care once a Dem enters office. The threat of a future GOP administration will always hang over them. That's why the next Democratic admin needs to also find a way to punish the cowards. Or at least reward those who held strong.
literally a cartoon image of a “criminal”
We may get to find out soon whether POTUS can rewrite the First Amendment via executive order.
they’re so scared. Suburbanites can embarrass them so easily.
It's wild to me that this continues to work and meanwhile no one is asking the vice president of the United States about his ties with white supremacist intellectuals.
this point—that this era is not forever and accountability can come in many forms—has for some reason proved bizarrely elusive for democrats
Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.
keep fucking telling them, marc variety.com/2025/tv/news...
Pritzker: This is not about fighting crime. This is about the President and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections.
In the NIH funding case, Justice Gorsuch (joined by Justice Kavanaugh) claimed that this was the third time in recent weeks that lower courts had "defied" a #SCOTUS ruling. As today's "One First" explains, that claim is not only nonsense; it's enabling a dangerous anti-court narrative on the right:
As you watch the extraordinary spectacle of Trump's government attempting to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, let's not lose sight of just how lawless and indefensible Trump's misconduct has been all throughout. Here's a thread recapping all of it. 1/
Trump: “I hate to barge in on a city and then be treated horribly by corrupt politicians and bad politicians like a guy like Pritzker. He ought to spend more time in the gym actually.”
The Supreme Court made possible the administration's threats to send Mr Abrego Garcia to Uganda -- because the Court blocked the lower court decisions that had restricted the gov'ts ability to send noncitizens to far-flung places they've never been & where they could face violence, torture, & death.
Democrats “distraction” talk implies: -voters are extremely selfish and parochial, and couldn’t possibly care about events in the national capital and major cities -all voters care about is relatively small amounts of money -“military takeover bad, rights and Constitution good” is too hard a sell
All the people who correctly predicted how Trump would act in office were treated like lunatics by the Elite in 2024. Now in 2025 rather than listen to us those same Elites who buried our voices in 2024, who led US here, are still claiming we are lunatics, still demanding that we should trust them.
I’ll say it again: billionaire brain is fascinating. So convinced of their own brilliance they’re incapable of any serious critical thinking, which motivates public pronouncement of idiotic ideas. One after another, after another…
RFK Jr. Warns Docs of Liability if They Stray From CDC on Vaccines www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/v...
holy shit
once again, i'll suggest that perhaps the reason the broad public thinks democrats are weak is that when confronted with situations that demands that democrats loudly and proactively stand up for their values, democrats shirk from the fight
The Survey Bro really is a plague on modern politics.
Referring to yourself in the third person is weird. Saying you are always right is dishonest. Wearing a ball cap in the Oval Office is tacky. Using your left hand to cover up medical issues on your right hand is concerning. And has he stopped being able to tie a tie?
Remembering today when pro-GOP media erupted with outrage over Kamala Harris' warning that Trump had plans to militarize the national guard and deploy them on the streets of US cities. Indeed, he had such plans. And now he's implementing them.
Much more of this, please.
Why are Democrats not fighting the DC federal militarization? Because they believe their quantbrain data people, who have limited tools for measuring persuasion and so they get incorrect answers. Look at this! 1/
I need to hear a lot of economists speaking up for Lisa Cook. This is actually very important.