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."
This is the type of person Trump pardoned. He proudly asserts that they should have injured a US Capitol Police Officer worse than they did on January 6th (@sergeantaqgo.bsky.social) had to medically retire). But MAGA supports law enforcement? Seriously? Then show me by condemning this guy.
The method you’re looking for is impeachment. It cannot go unchallenged that one Senate-confirmed appointee can decide to fire another Senate-confirmed appointee for speaking with Senators. Cabinet officials who hold this view must not be allowed to serve. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/h...
This interview, which is also available to listen to as a podcast, provides a useful overview of some of the dangerous trends we’ve been seeing in recent months regarding federalization and militarization of state and local police functions.
Welch: Am American president talks to other American citizens like that, and propagandists come on TV and normalize this behavior. And nothing about this is normal. Nothing
Susan Collins remains concerned.
Science: Trump supporters are assholes.
"Your prayers are not helping the victims or their families. Helping potential and actual gun violence victims is a bridge you could have crossed a long time ago, and you chose not to. You pray in order not to feel culpable in horrendous acts of violence."
I’m so grateful that I have tenure and the academic freedom to call it like I see it. “Dr. Kathleen Bachynski, a professor of public health at Muhlenberg College, described Kennedy’s comments as “absolute gibberish” and slammed the HHS secretary as a “dangerous buffoon” who is “threatening us all.”
Past 48 hours in Iowa: #IAsen www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
WSJ Page One: @wsj.com www.wsj.com/business/ret...
RFK Jr is driving this country towards an almost certain public health disaster. If Democrats can’t stop it, at the very least they can get it on the record now that they wanted him gone and the GOP wanted him kept in. Underline how they own the disasters to come. It’s Politics 101.
@chrislhayes.bsky.social channeling the same level of anger I too feel about this absolute insanity, as well as every other case of the death of expertise on display in this regime. By platforming this crap, it seems Trump and the GOP are wilfully destroying our country.
He has filled the most powerful vaccine advisory board at CDC with sycophants. He has placed a man who is opposed to COVID19 vaccines in charge of their approvals at FDA Their hands are tied, and they correctly refuse to “just follow orders”.
He is manipulating data and making absolutely horrific decisions without consulting some of the best experts in the world. They have no recourse. If you wish to rage at someone, may I suggest any Republican Senator. 2/3
Dear people who are saying that the CDC directors who quit yesterday should have “stayed and fought”, With all due respect, you do not grasp the magnitude of the problem of RFK Jr. He is asking them to do unethical and immoral things that will actively harm the people of the United States. 1/3
They aren't "bureaucrats," they're not civil service employees. They hold an office to which they were all duly appointed by an elected president and confirmed by an elected Senate pursuant to a law passed by an elected Congress.
BREAKING: Big moment as CDC staff stage a mass walkout. They have lined the street outside its HQ to greet and salute the four top officials who have resigned in protest at RFK Jr’s attack on the agency’s science base. (🎥 AP)
Sen Patty Murray (D-WA): “If there are any adults left in the White House, it’s well past time they face reality… We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired.”
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."
I know it’s not productive. But honesty is important. And I’m honestly so freaking angry at the people who weaponized COVID for political gain. Who criticized progressives for wearing masks too much. For sharing ridiculous propaganda about the vaccine while taking the vaccine. You should be ashamed.
We are in very dark times. It’ll take an entire political/social movement, an overwhelming rebuke at the polls, and a new vision of governance to unstick this country from whatever this collapse is.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), top Dem on the Senate health committee, on this evening's chaos at CDC: “We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired."
WASTE! FRAUD! ABUSE! Send the $400 million bill to Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump. 🚨Alligator Alcatraz will be empty within days, according to an email obtained by ABC News.
In a functional government, this would be a five alarm fire where Congress calls in Kennedy and asks him what the fuck is going on
They’re going to rebrand it as the Centers for Disease Creation
🚨 The CDC as we know it is being severely altered tonight. In addition to the CDC director being ousted, the Post is reporting that several senior leaders are leaving as well. Here are from two of the resignations:
Experts on voting warned that Heather Honey’s appointment could erode trust between state and federal officials, prompting states not to share information with the agency. One election official called her involvement with DHS “deeply troubling.” By @dougbockclark.bsky.social
The hits just keep on coming. @politico.com www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
Now do Merrick Garland.
Update: At least three other high-ranking officials in CDC have also resigned. “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” one of the officials said in a note to staff.
Trump wants you to think he’s broken the rule of law. But that’s not true. Guardrails still exist, starting with grand juries, which are declining to indict criminal cases that are lacking. We need to remember the Constitution puts power in other hands for a reason. It’s time to use it.
That is great news!!
Walz: "It boggles my damn mind that in the midst of a military takeover of our cities, the flaunting of the rule of law, that the press finds the need to talk about, 'Oh, there's a division in the Dem Party.' There's a division in my damn house & we're still married and things are good. That's life"
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.
1. Get convicted of mortgage fraud. 2. Fire someone for alleged mortgage fraud. 3. Push gerrymandering in Texas. 4. Threaten to sue California for same. @cnbc.com Mhttps://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/25/trump-california-lawsuit-texas-redistricting-newsom.html
It's not going to happen of course, but tonight is another Goldwater-Rhodes moment. Has a single journalist even bothered to try & track down Speaker Johnson or Senate Majority Leader Thune & ask them why they're not doing their damn jobs or upholding their damn oaths while the Constitution burns?
🗣️YOU NEED TO CARE ABOUT THIS BECAUSE IT IS A PATTERN. HE'S GUTTING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF BLACK LEADERS BUT THOSE BLACK LEADERS OVERSEE PARTS OF THE GOVERNMENT THAT AFFECT YOUR DAY TO DAY. #blacksky #econsky
We now have an economy subject to the whims and desires of one person, unaccountable to anyone else. Call it what it is: a dictatorship.
Every dictator in history has claimed that they’ll only use their powers to go after the worst of the worst. Every dictator in history has lied. Donald Trump is no different.
He didn't just invoke MLK's "arc of the moral universe" line. He added that the arc won't bend itself and people need to step up to make that change happen. Absolutely right. Pitch perfect.
Illinois Gov. Pritzker vows to pursue Trump officials who participate in an illegal National Guard deployment to Chicago: "If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me - not time or political circumstance - from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law."
Mobster president
Texas is a majority-minority state, yet Republicans drew maps that make white votes carry 2-3 times more political power than Black or Hispanic votes. That’s what gerrymandering does: it cracks and packs communities of color so their growing numbers translate into less representation.
"We’re witnessing, in real-time, a profound consolidation of power & collusion among political & tech elites... wherein the tools and technologies that this industry has built... can now be deployed in service of an authoritarian regime" — @katie-drummond.bsky.social www.status.news/p/wired-kati...
DRUMMOND: “.. Ultimately, this era in history is a WIRED story: The United States’ authoritarian turn, aided and abetted by the tech industry’s complicity. And that’s how we’re covering it.” @status.news @oliverdarcy.bsky.social @katie-drummond.bsky.social @wired.com www.status.news/p/wired-kati...
House Oversight's Robert Garcia says the "overwhelming majority" of the 33,000 pages of Epstein materials received from DOJ was previously-disclosed information. "DOJ's limited disclosure raises more questions than answers and makes clear that the White House is not interested in justice."
Greenland breathes sigh of relief as it turns out Trump has decided on a military occupation of the United States instead.
Swollen ankles, gnarly-looking hand covered in makeup, canceled White House tours, weird appearance on the roof, can't remember the names of his Cabinet secretaries. Not a great situation in Trump world. If this was Biden, the media would be all over it—and rightfully so.
Trump looks like hammered dogshit these days. His ankles are horribly swollen, he's got a weird discoloration on his hand, his eyes are glazed over and he's not even wearing a necktie in the Oval Office anymore. He's rambling more than ever and seems deeply out of it. But Joe Biden, huh.
⚡️Pentagon has quietly barred Ukrainian long-range strikes in Russia with US missiles, WSJ reports.
For the January 6th mob: "Get-out-of-jail-free" cards. For American citizens on the streets of DC: Armed troops. This isn't law and order or leadership-it's authoritarianism. Call it what it is.
You know what's crazy? There have been no op-eds or editorial statements in major newspapers this year calling on Trump to resign. None calling for his impeachment. None asking if he's medically fit to be in office. Not one in any major newspaper all year.
The Trump administration is undertaking an unprecedented strategy to try to undermine our elections. They are doing so by rewriting election rules, targeting election officials, supporting election deniers, and retreating from protecting voting rights. bit.ly/4l1lUPP
Really worrisome news today. Quick, someone tell the House weaponization committee and the DOJ’s Ed Martin that the president is using law enforcement to target his political enemies! www.thebulwark.com/p/developing...
Just as a reminder, before the FBI went to get the nation’s top secrets back from Trump’s bathroom, they basically just begged him for months to please just return them.
On the left: Nate Cavanagh, a 28-year-old DOGE staffer and college dropout. On the right: Mohammad Halimi, a 53-year-old exiled Afghan scholar. This is the story of how DOGE targeted Halimi on social media. Then the Taliban took his family. 🧵
"J Michael Luttig, who served on a federal appeals court for 15 years, put the criticism starkly. 'The chief justice is presiding over the end of the rule of law in America,' Luttig told the Guardian." www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
And also: That sends a fairly strong (if mixed) message that Trump will lose these cases *eventually,* but only once they're brought in the Court of Federal Claims.
From @stevevladeck.bsky.social TL;DR: 5 justices say Trump doesn't have to immediately restore the funding, but 5 *also* signal that the underlying directives are unlawful.
"The Justice Department is the only cabinet-level agency whose name is a moral virtue. . . . "The Justice Department isn’t a tool for a president to deploy against his personal and political enemies." -- @joycewhitevance.bsky.social
And Abbott has not addressed any of this sure his special sessions.
Trump has attacked and undermined vital nonpartisan data, including: -BLS monthly jobs numbers -DC crime statistics -EPA emissions database -NOAA & National Weather Service forecasting Like every dictator, Trump knows the major enemy of tyrants is an educated public.
the capital city of the country is under illegal occupation by forces loyal to a fascist president could Democrats be even more useless today? let's check
Trump must have had a bad night. Spewing lies about elections. Again. Every American citizen has a right to vote, Each state runs its own election. We don’t owe the president. It’s the president who owes us a duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT...
I am a bit of a broken record on this, but are local DAs going to let this continue indefinitely? The ICE agents didn't have any kind of warrant, didn't identify themselves, and then recklessly started firing. Let them argue federal immunity.
Miraculously, he didn’t hit a single CDC employee! But he did kill David Rose, the police officer who responded, who leaves behind two children and a pregnant wife. I can't help but imagine the vast attention this case would have received if the race of the shooter and the victim were reversed.
People who know me IRL, or know my career, know the degree to which I know the CDC (first/only reporter to embed with their disease detectives, wrote a book about it, etc.). That's a bias if you want to interpret it as so. Still it's just astonishing to me that this attack hasn't been bigger news.
Neither science nor society can work effectively if we lose the social and political systems that make it possible to trust experts. @carlbergstrom.com wrote more about that here bsky.app/profile/carl...
If journalists were doing their jobs, they would call the deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, DC, from three deep-red states what it is: an invasion and occupation force. https://wsvn.com/news/us-world/3-states-move-to-send-hundreds-of-national-guard-members-to-washington/
Good stuff here from @passantino.bsky.social and @status.news www.status.news/p/trump-puti...
Parents, be vigilant against PragerU instructional materials in your kids classrooms! It’s an extremist outfit masquerading as an educational nonprofit. It’s a far right wing response to PBS kid’s programming, it is propaganda designed to appeal to children and careless or bigoted educators. Beware!
I’m actually embarassed for him www.politico.eu/article/dona...
Just an honest labor statistician collecting the data, crunching the numbers, and reporting them fairly, and definitely not an extremist ideologue with an axe to grind, unshackled from respect for the law or political norms.
1/ The court’s decision was 2-1, with Judges Karen Henderson and Gregory Katsas in the majority and Judge Florence Pan dissenting. As Judge Pan notes in dissent, they reframed the issues argued by the government in order to rule in its favor open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...
Hoagie assault guy, if convicted, will be punished more strongly than J6 folks who beat police officers with poles and other objects and are now walking free (and probably joining CBP)
Trump's BLS pick EJ Antoni has said that Social Security, America's greatest anti-poverty program, is a "Ponzi scheme" that needs to be sunset. Reminder that BLS data is what determines annual cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security benefits. This is a five-alarm fire.
America can also rise again. It will take each and every one of us to think long and hard about what it means to be American. What are we willing to do in order to save our grand idea from extinction? What we choose, how we respond, will forever define our generation… …and America. (4/4)
One man, the son of Holocaust survivors, said, “People being kidnapped without arrest warrants, without trial, without recourse, by the president of the United States’s ICE armies ... We are not headed toward an authoritarian fascist government; we are already there.” trib.al/f5JzLeJ
As a reminder: Trump’s first act was to pardon HUNDREDS of J6 rioters who assaulted and beat DC police officers. Trump’s been responsible for a large percentage of the total assaults (and many of the worst/most brutal) on DC police in the last decade.
Someone forgot to take down this webpage: www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/v...
one more crime, zero accountability.
Pritzker: "It's cheating. Donald Trump is a cheater. He cheats on his wives. He cheats at golf. And now he's trying to cheat the American people out of their votes."
“The purge of dedicated, patriotic FBI officials like Special Agent Evans is an absolute disgraceful moment in history,” Zaid said in a statement. www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-...
Karen Henderson is the longest-serving Republican appointee on the D.C. Circuit. She’s deeply conservative but not Trumpy. In ordering the Trump administration to restore a congressionally mandated database of federal spending, she strongly suggests the president is engaging in king-like behavior.
Judge Henderson's 27-page opinion was pretty blunt: The founders all agreed Congress power is "at its zenith" when it comes to federal spending — and every administration has agreed, until now, that Congress could set the terms of public disclosure too. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
It’s time to wake up - we are literally on the verge of losing our democracy if Donald Trump cheats his way to those seats in Texas.
President Zelenskyy's remarks come as U.S. and Russian leaders plan a summit next Friday. President Trump wants an end to the war and says it could involve "some swapping of territory."
The FBI director whose prior career was “podcast guest with an enemies list” thinks other people are engaged in “political weaponization”
Trump shows weakness, permitting Putin (who is under indictment) in the US and traveling to the meeting in Alaska. And what's being reported-giving Russia all of eastern Ukraine - is precisely what Russia was proposing in 2016 with Paul Manafort and others, and would reward its illegal war effort.
No, he’s not giving Putin Alaska, but he is giving Putin a huge gift: the legitimacy of touching down on US soil at the invitation of a US president. A reward for the full-scale invasion of a sovereign, democratic country that the United States and its European allies support.
1/DOJ is investigating whether Obama officials violated fed’l law while investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Revisiting 10-year-old events, thoroughly investigated by a special counsel appt’d by Trump & a GOP-led Senate Cmte w/out any prosecutions smacks of political interference.
Alec Luhn is an old friend. I know some ppl in Norway read me. Please share. The search for him is ongoing: www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...
Trump just confessed his attorney is working with a convicted child sex trafficker and rapist to protect people involved. I mean that’s almost as bad as a private email server, right?
"My coverage did not adequately prepare Post readers for an outcome that has altered the course of the country." That's Dan Balz of the Washington Post admitting that his journalism failed to meet the moment in 2016. He's retiring after 47 years at the Post. Read his reflections: wapo.st/4leuE5b
Anne Applebaum: "If American media can’t convey how dangerous this behavior is—for our prosperity, for our health, for our democracy—then American media will eventually cease to exist." More from our convo in @status.news: www.status.news/p/anne-apple...
Every story on Trump and gov’t stats should reference his felony conviction for falsifying business records. Seems relevant.
The economy is so good that I'm firing the BLS Commissioner for reporting numbers so grim I refuse to believe them, and also demanding the Fed cut rates typically seen during a recession.