With President Trump repeatedly threatening to send the military to Baltimore, read about how daily life and acts of resistance in Washington exist side by side. www.thebanner.com/politics-pow...
9,224 followers 150 following 4,842 posts
view profile on Bluesky
With President Trump repeatedly threatening to send the military to Baltimore, read about how daily life and acts of resistance in Washington exist side by side. www.thebanner.com/politics-pow...
I know there are apparently a bunch of geniuses in DC who say Dems shouldn’t talk about the invasion of sovereign cities but Texans were pretty mad when Ted Cruz rode out a natural disaster in Cancun imagine being the governor who costs lives for an unrelated political stunt because there’s no guard
Really important to call this exactly what it is - the mainstreaming of a really nasty strain of blood-and-soil nationalism with its closest analogues and likely source among the white supremacist movement.
“Man promises he’ll do his job later, won’t comment on whether he’ll complete it or do it well or anything like that.”
Whether it’s a survey of the implementation of the human right to health, the measurement of poverty, or of housing access, almost every progressive group points out we really need better data. For all their talk of ‘truth’ the forces of reaction are fuelled by ignorance.
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.
Operation Idiot Sicario is very dangerous because once you’ve decided to missile random boats rather than interdict them you’ve ignored the advice of every good person in your organization and ensured your kill chain is exclusively staffed by the most evil, malicious, or lazy bastards alive
The next Democratic nominee should explicitly say that (when Trump abuses the pardon power) we’re going to cooperate with international courts to prosecute war crimes, as a way to rebuild US leadership in the international order and address corruption.
Just a minor Dem so far, but we have a lot of time.
“The morally complicated hero isn’t our influence anymore. Just the outright racist!” I mean… yeah. Seems accurate.
🔥
Hakeem Jeffries is going to get Eric Cantor’d.
The Department of Justice lawyer suing Harvard for alleged "indifference to antisemitism" is an actual Nazi who admires "Mein Kampf," because of course he is. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/02/m...
Trump et al. have basically created a zugzwang situation for left/liberal Jewish academics and students, forcing them to choose between tolerating actual instances of antisemitism they encounter vs. Trump co-opting their legitimate complaints as a pretext to stifle academic freedom and cut funding
BREAKING: Gov. JB Pritzker says the Trump administration has sent the Texas National Guard to Great Lakes Naval Base outside Chicago, awaiting orders to deploy to Chicago. Trump administration officials will target Mexican Independence Day (Sept. 16) celebrations. @wttw.bsky.social
Vance’s entire political career doesn’t exist without his ties to the Silicon Valley white supremacist and neo-fascist movement. But media systematically ignores the right wing anti-democratic ecosystem (and has a lot of practice with the evangelical fascists).
One of the definitive days of this admin imo was the WSJ identifying racist posts from a DOGE staffer - the kind of stuff that would be read out loud to you as HR explains why you're not getting severance - and Vance saying no, we won't let the media cancel people anymore.
During the election, the position of the Trump campaign and their various surrogates was “financial fraud is fine as long as the borrower doesn’t default.” … because they needed that to defend Trump’s laundry list of fraudulent loan applications.
Also, if Nadler decides to provide support and photo-ops to progressive candidates in NYC, he could significantly move the NY delegation to the left on a range of issues. Notably, Nadler endorsed Mamdani immediately after Mamdani won the primary.
If Nadler endorses a very progressive young candidate as a successor, that’d be huge. Nadler can shift a lot of Dem primaries in NY, especially in the swing districts R’s currently hold but are almost certain to lose in ‘26.
I wish Nadler had done this a long time ago, but I do think it’s worth acknowledging what a huge win this is. Nadler moves policy, and aligning with the position of actively blocking arms shipments will make it hard for any other Dem in the House to oppose it. Nadler isn’t Torres; he’s effective.
Residents are finding all sorts of ways to fight ICE: They're recording and reporting. They're wheatpasting and sharing know-your-rights materials. And they're stepping up to care for each other, from delivering groceries to walking kids to school. 51st.news/dc-residents...
Famously times where things went just fine.
Nate Silver is getting read to take Carville’s chair when he slithers off this moral coil.
Here's a better response to RFK's destruction of our public health system than what Senator Schatz is offering here, from JB Pritzker (with some additional ideas thrown in from me and public health experts): newrepublic.com/article/1998...
Seconding Hane’s assessment. This is also my experience.
I agree. I’d go so far as to say he’s one of the best representations of philosophers in film/tv history.
Schatz and Polis are two political figures who have shown that just being towards the left of the party doesn’t make a politician good.
Am I horrified and enraged that the Deputy Attorney General/defense attorney for the President accepted the obvious lies of a convicted child trafficker? Yeah. Still, this is consistent with Blanche's use of his role as a corrupt personal attorney.
Pritzker and Moore have both been willing to go after Trump without throwing LGBTQ+ people under the bus. Hell, Janet Mills did it in the WH to his face in defense of trans people. If you need a craven hack like Newsom, that says more about you than the current political environment.
One of the things I’ve heard from political scientists focused on parliamentary democracies is that (a) proportional representation and (b) a massive increase in number of House seats would address a range of our recurring problems.
Friendly reminder
You misspelled "talentless, lazy dipshits."
I’m enjoying the people in the replies proving the point.
The fact that a judge is explaining to the government how basic legal process works is a pretty clear sign of where our institutions are.
We’re about to have another case where the administration just ignores court orders and said “well, we shipped the kids out before the order, so there’s no jurisdiction.”
I think this is especially notable in contrast to Welker pressing Lankford about actual crime states and saying "should Trump send the national guard to Oklahoma?" It's clearly all pretext to play to Trump's racist audience, and media should treat it that way.
When I talk about embedded, unconscious racism in the DC press corps I mean people like Martha Raddatz, clearly unconscious of her own upper class white people assumption that Trump's invasion of a Black run city like DC or Baltimore is anything but fascism and white supremacy.
Also, being funded by a Russian propaganda campaign.
Moore should say, “no, I don’t think that the systemic violation of civil rights by untrained or willfully bad actors makes the people of Baltimore safer.” But he’s trying to be nice here.
Some of this is on Khanna for not having a good answer. The answer is “no, we don’t litigate these things in the press. And the press’s credulity of thinking that Trump cares about the facts is part of the reason why.”
I mean, the data is not controversial. FBI data has Oklahoma 6.7 per 100K, CA 5.7, NY 4. CDC data: Oklahoma 8.9, CA 6.4, NY 4.8 Also, note that Lankford never answers the question.
Yes, Unfortunately. My dad and brother both are, and have no diagnosable mental illness.
It's a good observation, though. FWIW, I think the major function of moral character is the difference between people who, when forced to engage at great length with serious ideas, (a) become introspective or (b) become ideologically entrenched. Maron is (a); Rogan (b).
I would (at some point in my life) like to be straightforwardly happy, not needing a qualifier or anything. I'm genuinely skeptical that's even possible. As a matte rof course, I'm doing relatively well now in my life, and happier than I've typically been. It's just never unqualified.
I think that's an interesting point. I'm not so sure that his podcast was the source of this growth. (He definitely had a lot of professional counseling, especially around the addiction stuff.) But I do think that confronting these failures of the profession through the podcast is valuable.
New universal refutation just dropped
The bare minimum for violations of posse commitatus should be an expectation of basic civil rights and procedural compliance. This is a useful procedural lever for states and municipalities.
Never go full Nazi.
A Senator of the United States of America says that he was refused the ability to see Gaza for himself as part of a Jordanian aerial mission over the occupied territory.
The US Holocaust Museum is planning to "upgrade" its exhibit on the US response to Nazi Germany, and staff are concerned the Trump administration wants to downplay the extent to which the Immigration Act of 1924 doomed more European Jews to die. abcnews.go.com/US/upcoming-...
Disabled people: RFK Jr. is a dangerous eugenicist who wants people to die. Nondisabled people: DP: Here are examples of his eugenicist policy. NP:... DP: He actually wrote all this out in a book years ago. NP: Hey why can't I get a Covid shot??
It will not surprise people to learn that one of the major figures backing the AI schools (one of which we now have in VA) is giant douchecanoe Bill Ackman.
Fuck Ticketmaster forever.
Listening to this conversation (as Maron was making the transition to podcasts) with the late Patrice O’Neil. O’Neil says @pattonoswalt.bsky.social is a “Maron baby.” Sounds like a weird ass movie. youtu.be/qzhjrljqyB4?...
Part of the reason that Trump has an easy time cozying up to dictators is that many are under severe sanctions (as Museveni is), and Trump’s gutting of career officials working on international corruption makes it easier to dodge sanctions.
My students, who attend a working-class rust-belt college, openly talk abt how much they hate AI & are afraid of its consequences. I wonder how much of the oft-reported student enthusiasm for the tech is the merely result of the NYT’s Ivy League bias
Marc Maron is part of an era of comedy that produced a lot of bad people (including some of his close friends in the industry). The fact that he's decided to do the "I'm going to use my platform to deal with the current problems in politics and industry" is good, especially in contrast to others.
One of these things is not like the others. One of these things is a greaseball playing paddy cake with fascists.
The day in presidential aspirations: Newsom: "Here's another troll tweet of Trump" Pritzker: "We're going to buy COVID vaccines and distribute the to our citizens." Walz: "I'm thinking about calling a special session of the Legislature to limit guns."
Hello, I am furious www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
For those who don’t know what I’m talking about: thegrayzone.com/2025/08/11/n...
So… Eric Adams put a Black Hebrew Israelites leader on his list of endorsements of Rabbis, and I’m sure ADL and other groups focused on the NYC mayors race will say nothing.
DOGE wasn’t a cost-cutting venture. It was a data mining operation for private interests. Trump opened the gates to the castle from inside for invaders with bad and greedy intent to plunder and exploit.
hey sorry to bother you on your lovely beautiful friday night but THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE OUTSIDE A HIGH SCHOOL IN DC ONLY TWO HOURS AGO
I’m really sick of the courts finding this administration broke the law in some unprecedented way, but they get to keep doing illegal things for a few months as a little treat. They’re defaulting to rewarding lawbreaking.
The fact that people are treating Chris Van Hollen like this pisses me off.Van Hollen has shown some of the best moral leadership of any of the Dems. He’s doing what they all should do.
Chris Van Hollen is literally calling for a ceasefire and end to the war here, and he has been more pro-Palestine than all but maybe one or two other senators, but a lot of the replies here seem angry at him for deigning to talk to Israelis at all.
NEW: SSA chief data officer and whistleblower Charles Borges resigned today—but his resignation email quickly disappeared from recipients' inboxes, sources tell @wired.com. @makenakelly.bsky.social and @davidgilbert.bsky.social report: www.wired.com/story/charle...
A Star Trek episode with @pattonoswalt.bsky.social. Yes please.
Peter Hacker really did go by the initials PMS in all of his publications. Did nobody tell him? Surely he knew it's an acronym or something else.
People talk about Epstein a lot, and rightly so, but it’s also important to remember that Trump’s close personal friend Vince McMahon (and the husband of his Secretary of Education) was facing a serious case for sex trafficking and that… doesn’t seem to be happening anymore.
An element of fascism is a kind of upside down where the meanest, most rapacious, and least virtuous of society are loosed to bully and abuse people who genuinely uphold civic ideals of service and sacrifice. Public service isn’t what the system is about. It’s about conditioning the national body.
Ernst has been having an especially terrible run lately, and she’s polling even with all four of the major Dems in the primary (which is very bad for an incumbent). It does create an open primary, and I’m not sure it’ll produce anyone better (electorally or substantively).
I mean, generally, incumbency is still considered an advantage. Will “rando Republicans” do better than Ernst?
Johnson can make this claim publicly, but his own caucus isn’t buying it. After seeing the IA blowout and other internals the GOP has (which I’m sure align with this) and the town halls in their district, this is a tough sell.
One impact of the “Trump is sick” discourse is that it is going to pit the already combative factions against each other. The idea that Vance could unify that coalition is pretty laughable; the House GOP in particular depends on Trump to personally whip votes.
On the new acting CDC director. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
This hits on a big problem with branding “specialized” AI products. Their sales pitch is “we’re not like the other guys; we’re designed for your needs,” and they have all of the same problems.
It does speak to how bad the government has been at regulating Internet technologies. AI is a species of a broader problem that goes back to issues like news algorithms pushing radicalizing content and online groups (on major and specialized platforms). AI is just a lot more powerful.
Another one. Those who follow the industry closely or the academic literature around it have seen these cases cropping up, but they’re starting to get attention. OpenAI and many other companies in the AI space are about to take on huge litigation burdens.
New from me for @thestranger.com With Feucht coming to Seattle this weekend I took some time to lay out his playbook, in detail. Understanding how the rage machine works will help folks respond while keeping those most vulnerable safe www.thestranger.com/news/2025/08...
They’re going to lose this case twice.
If you have published anything, please consider doing this. The window is closing and you should get your details registered now for a chance at a settlement. The form works wherever in the world you are based.
This is illegal. www.gao.gov/blog/what-po...
The insurrectionist-in-chief returned to power to establish a vindictive autocracy and mandate the white nationalist mythology that drives his movement. Only seven months into Trumpist rule, America has reached “Ashli Babbitt: Blood Martyr” territory. January 6 ultimately prevailed.
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
I think this has to be right. It’s hard to imagine US prices dropping this hard and Canadian prices not dropping significantly. We also know pretty clearly that the Chinese are picking up their supplies from Brazil, so it’s not like Canada just picks up these sales (like they did with seafood).
China is using a geopolitical strategy of leveraging BRICS (in this case, mostly Brazil) to fill their demand. It’s the same strategy Russia is using around oil sanctions. Unfortunately, this administration is run by idiots.
The administration will bailout industry leaders (like they did in 2018) and keep those endorsements, and the DNC will fail (again) to get effective messaging to the core voters.
Look, we can talk about how ag industry leaders backed Trump in 2020 and 2024 despite his doing this in 2018, costing $20b total… but this industry employs almost 200,000 people, and it isn’t industry that’s gonna hurt. It’s workers who will lose jobs.
For context, China’s share of US soybean purchases last year was a little over $12b (at $10.50 a bushel). This year, no purchases of new crop from China and prices down at $8. youtu.be/tg3_EzO26dQ?...
Very, *very* smart piece from @espiers.bsky.social about why media efforts by Dem consultants are so often comical failures. Highly recommended:
Hey would you look at that... The magic deskilling machine is deskilling people
There's no more vivid demonstration of the complexity of Jewish attitudes towards belief than Maimonides himself, who wrote one of the most widely used statement of belief (13 Articles) *and* Guide for the Perplexed. Belief is part of Judaism and is not a necessary condition for being Jewish.
Seems like this would up being right. Being right sucks. slate.com/technology/2...
All of this should fall not on Trump or Kennedy individually (though, you know, they certainly are the major figures here) but also the Republican Party collectively, including Bill Cassidy, whose decision to vote for Kennedy shows he’s not competent to govern.
This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
