As we establish our new form of government, the separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative branches will be crucial to balance. I am grateful for @bikeportland.org investigation and reporting on this issue.
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As we establish our new form of government, the separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative branches will be crucial to balance. I am grateful for @bikeportland.org investigation and reporting on this issue.
About this Florida vaccine story: When they were little - 1 yr and 3 1/2 - my two older boys, whoād had all their shots, got whooping cough. We asked their pediatrician what wouldāve happened if they hadnāt been vaccinated. āOh, theyād have died.ā
All kidding about this nonsense answer aside: The regime is asserting the power to murder without trial a boat full of people suspected of drug trafficking, who easily could have been intercepted and arrested instead. That is unconscionable and horrifying even assuming everyone aboard was guilty.
This is a rejecting of the concept of legal authority
once again, when pressed on where trump gets the authority to take an action, vanceās argument is, essentially, that trump is sovereign
once again I am asking people to correctly answer the question "who was President in 2020"
Exactly. The data is out there, but itās all raw and nobody has it congregated in a useful way for Oregon past 2020.
They could just whip out āinherent Article II authoritiesā extremely easily and the fact that theyāre fumbling around to answer even basic questions on the use of force tells you everything you need to know about how dysfunctionally shambolic this administration really is.
@the-downballot.com Is there any way to find presidential and gubernatorial election results by state legislative district? I'm looking for it for Oregon and the most recent results I have are from 2020 :(
Holy shit: Stateline spoke to nearly a dozen firefighters, agency staffers and contractors, who said that top officials assigned to the fire deployed the crews to a remote location under false pretenses so federal agents could check their immigration status. www.hcn.org/articles/fir...
Rich parents with sense are going to send their kids to schools that mandate vaccination. Public school kids aren't going to get that option.
YOUāRE A DOCTOR, YOU FUCKING INSANE, DANGEROUS QUACK, THIS IS LITERALLY YOUR JOB
the two americas
It's funny when people are like, "listen to the experts" and then every expert I listen to is like "yeah, they're wrong"
Man, they REALLY donāt want to hang that plaque honoring the police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan 6. @acyn.bsky.social
šØNEW: Declarations filed in the lawsuit against the rushed attempt to deport 600 Guatemalan children reveals the chaotic way the Trump admin carried out the operation. Children were taken out of bed after midnight to be rushed onto planes. One girl "was so scared she vomited."
AOC: If anybody says āthis isnāt fair, I'm gonna have to divest all my stocks if I run for congressā maybe you should stay home.
THIS IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND IRRESPONSIBLE. WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD???? They are going to kill so many people including children. What a FUCKED UP DECISION!
Firefighters, famously, have a house they all live in, where they wait for people to call them, actually.
Todayās news confirms it: Cuomo is Trumpās choice for Mayor. The White House is considering jobs for Adams and Sliwa to clear the field. New Yorkers are sick of corrupt politics and backroom deals. No matter whoās running, we will deliver a better future on November 4.
Luckily for Florida, it's not a destination for large numbers of elderly people who are especially vulnerable to respiratory diseases for which we have safe and effective vaccines.
I thought the whole premise of the occupation was supposed to be that something was, in fact, on fire
portland (sort of) does something like this with food pods and pop-up breweries and boutiques but we could use a *lot* more brick and mortar places (and a lot fewer empty spaces)
Cuomo running as a Trump Democrat in the NYC mayoral race is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in politics.
Washington state requires all firearms applicants to go through their local sheriff's department. This is yet another example of how well-intentioned gun control measures infringe upon minorities because the people enforcing those laws are conservatives. www.king5.com/article/news...
This polarization is going to produce some pretty dramatic statistics pretty soon.
āWe blew it up.ā On Trumpās orders. Even Rubio wants a little distance from this.
Itās true, I really would like to save democracy
Pay very close attention. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to release the Epstein files. Now that survivors are naming him as Epsteinās close friend, heās calling it a āhoax.ā Miss me with that bullshit.
"Who am I to tell you what your child should put in [their] body?" [stares directly at the camera]
I don't think enough people realize how many unpaid hours high school band directors put in. Between football games, basketball games, marching band, parades, assemblies, and other events, they deserve fair compensation for all this extra work. www.oregonlive.com/education/20...
I do think this is pretty key to the psychology of right-wing transphobia. they're all status-obsessed and self-centered, so they are genuinely baffled by the idea that someone could want something so strongly they'd accept persecution for it
i cannot overstate how extraordinary it is for federal civil servants to do this
Hate when 'The Internet' stokes baseless conspiracy theories about a president's health
They bombed without warning a non-threatening small boat, which is insane and a violation of international law even if it was carrying contraband which we have no way of knowing, and then gleefully shared it as a snuff video.
I saw someone earnestly say they didnāt understand why a gay politician would be closeted āin this day and ageāā¦ do people not realize that due to the continued and arguably resurgent existence of homophobia some people never even come out to themselves.
So much for the "big tent"
Big news: California, Oregon and Washington State just announced a joint "West Coast Health Alliance" to counter Trump/RFK destruction of our public health system. As I argued last week (see below), this is becoming a new frontier in Dem Gov resistance to Trump.
More of this.
Well bitch Democratic primary voters disagree
A reminder that "But what if people on YOUR side are on the Epstein list?" is a bullshit argument, EVERYONE who was raping children needs to get into the bin right now, that's the deal here and it ain't exactly complicated
After the chaos at the CDC this past week, Oregon, Washington and California say they are going to form their own "Western Health Alliance," particularly around vaccines.
yeahhhhh those are load-bearing and this will kill some people and immiserate more
He's right that after he's gone all the political journalists who cover for him today will laugh about how bad it was and how "everybody knew"
If you can track the boat on camera to slaughter everyone aboard then you can track the boat on camera to intercept the boat and arrest them
For book tour, I just looked for a train between two U.S. cities about 165 miles apart. There's one train a day, it leaves at 6:50 PM, involves a transfer, and takes 16 hours and 20 minutes.
The Everglades Concentration Camp costs 3x one of these trains.
i think the framers would be genuinely aghast at how fucking whipped this congress is, just the absolute lack of self-respect and unwillingness to use any of their power
i don't think it's great that there is no one in the GOP asking about congressional war powers
I am a bona fide Congress expert with letters after my name and a long list of publications backing up the claim and this is 100% true.
American white supremacists have been looking for the button that turns off wokeness for no less than 168 years
The country is being informally ruled by a woman who once handcuffed herself to the door of Twitter HQ in a way that allowed everyone to walk right past her through the other door.
how are you even supposed to take spy movies seriously when laura loomer is making intelligence decisions oh, thereās an elaborate plot to steal the nationās secrets? the ones being emailed to the lady who handcuffed herself to the twitter building? how dare they ruin one of the best genres
this is just insanely illegal
The best quote Iāve ever seen about this is that every Democratic leader of the 21st century is ideally suited by temperament and mindset to be in congress in 1995 debating the v-chip.
Each day the City of Portland goes unoccupied by the National Guard is another day we ask āI wonder how many days until Portland is occupied by the National Guard?ā
āwell this is certainly a bold departure from political norms!ā as they are marched to the gulag
@bikeloudpdx.bsky.social has internal messages from PBOT via a FOIA request confirming that PBOT pushed back multiple times on NW everett diverter removal before being overruled by PEMO
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.
also they never fuckin shut up about it of course people do not want to hang out with them
oh this is straightforward white nationalist agitprop
anyway itās shocking that no one was able to predict that when the George W. Bush administration gave itself unreviewable powers to murder and imprison people, those powers were eventually going to get used intentionally on noncombatants
āYouāre a naturalized citizen why are you even scared youāre so self absorbed šā Uhhh idk man! Maybe because the poem says āFIRST they came forā and not āthey came for those guys but Iām chillin because they decided not to come for anyone else ever againā
Itās not just that the President of the United States posted a video of eleven people being murdered in international waters itās that the President of the United States ordered the murder of eleven people in international waters so he could post a video of it.
When the people you are tear gassing all have gas masks, this is just poisoning a neighborhood for kicks
Can see the teargas at the ICE facility while traveling across the Sellwood bridge
The United States is the only place on earth where poor people shun unions, free healthcare, and free education because the rich tell them to.
"transit is an anti-poverty investment." someday, oregon will be allowed to have nice things like safer streets and frequent transit service. Until then, we've got @senkhanhpham.bsky.social fighting the lonely fight demanding them
He was telling people to physically assault trans people
Being pro-drowning of children seems like a real are-we-the-baddies moment www.npr.org/sections/sho...
Teens calling Idaho's suicide hotline are being told they can't proceed with the conversation without parental consent. Many of the callers are then hanging up. Idaho approved a strict parental consent law last year. idahocapitalsun.com/2025/08/29/i...
See? This shit is why I'm not going to let up on Newsom or other transphobic Democrats: they might otherwise go the Labour route and plunge the country into full on transphobia as policy.
Last year, Idaho passed a strict law that forbids anyone from providing to a minor any service that could be construed as medical or psychological in nature without parental consent. Now, minors calling the state's suicide hotline are being forced to have a parent speak for them or hang up
starmer is doing all the anti-immigrant and anti-trans "popularism" stuff the centrists are demanding US dems do and this is the predictable result:
I'm not going to vote for a transphobe. This isn't a "strategy," this is just reality. If people so desperately want my vote for whatever reason, they need to nominate a good candidate.
kotek having to go to voters and explain why she thinks the preschool for all tax on six figure earners is too high but low income oregonians can bear more gas taxes is a completely self inflicted political disaster
The Republicans are loving what happened with the transportation bill. It's a perfect storm for their outrage machine and online media ecosystem that feeds it. And there is really no Dems to my knowledge that have any type of response to it. Not a great recipe for electoral success.
at no point did we defund the police. it's important when we talk about defunding the police to note it never actually happened. would it work? we don't know! but merely phrasing the idea succinctly incited a reactionary backlash that put fascists in charge of all 3 branches of government. curious!
Concern over low birth rates was what the theocracy in Margaret Atwoodās Handmaidās Tale used to come to power.
More framing like this, please www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
Birth rates are lowering *literally everywhere.* The only countries which keep growing in power will be the ones which continue to grow, and without immigration that will not be āthe West.ā
Everyone should send @senkhanhpham.bsky.social a thank you email because her and her team have been busting ass to save transit and barely anyone else had the guts to join them
This means that whenever Rs want to grandstand on a bill, they can delay legislative proceedings for nearly 2 months each sessionālonger if thereās no session from Friday-Sunday as in most weeks. As a reminder, short sessions are just 35 days.
This means that whenever Rs want to grandstand on a bill, they can delay legislative proceedings for nearly 2 months each sessionālonger if thereās no session from Friday-Sunday as in most weeks. As a reminder, short sessions are just 35 days.
Having worked legislatures in other states, it really shouldn't NEED to be full time. But if walkouts are a thing, and the 10-day disqualifier is the only tool to combat walkouts, somehow we gotta make the time to use the tool. Or, yes, fix the quorum.
9 days times Y/X If you need 1 R and thereās 1 in the caucus, they can hold out 9 days before being disqualified. If you need 1 R and thereās 2 in the caucus, they get to 18 days. That means for the senate, with 12 Rs and 2 needed for quorum, they can hold out: 9 days * (12/2) = 54 days
the thing about Zohran is he is really fucking good at politics and everyone on the Dem side behaving like heās a liability has lost their minds I donāt care how you define It, he has It
A part-time legislature canāt mean part-time governance. If it does, we need to make the legislature full-time so we can have legislators who donāt struggle to make ends meet to serve their constituents.
1997: the president was born in 1946 2007: the president was born in 1946 2017: the president was born in 1946 2027: weāll see
Platner: No one cares that you pretend to be remorseful as you sell out to lobbyists. Symbolic opposition does not reopen hospitals. Weak condemnations do not bring back Roe V Wade. Maine deserves better than Susan Collins.
This is one those things you see and you think "how much longer can @schumer.senate.gov let this guy go on?" but I actually think it's too late to stop him.
Platner: Our taxpayer dollars can build schools and hospitals in America, not bombs to destroy them in Gaza.
lot of this comes down to how utterly dysfunctional Congress is as a whole
honestly insane how reporters have kept going "well but crime down so isn't this a good thing" about the take over of DC, dawg the reason why crime has collapsed is the same reason why restaurants are in freefall, because no one is outside because of all the goddamn goons
Vaxxed?
The progressive caucus needs to have a red line. If you push this to try to get R votes (and gain none), then you lose us.
When Dems push amendments like this to try to win R votes and get none while being blasted for not compromising, all we do is shift the Overton window to the right. When the caucus approves the bill anyways despite the bad amendments, it shows Rs they can concede nothing and still win.
endlessly glad to have senator pham fighting for transit riders and a good transportation system in the legislature; endlessly frustrated that it feels like sheās doing it alone