It was a long time ago, but yes, I have read the book. Unabridged. What that critic is a lambasting is pretty much exactly what the whole book is about.
It was a long time ago, but yes, I have read the book. Unabridged. What that critic is a lambasting is pretty much exactly what the whole book is about.
From the University of Arkansas' RazALERT system: "Avoid the area of Mullins Library due to an active shooter reported. Avoid. Deny. Defend."
Just last month, DOJ told a federal judge that Abrego Garcia’s immigration proceedings would be handled like any “garden variety” case. No decisions would be made, they said, until he reports to ICE and is assigned a case officer. That officer, they insisted, would call the shots.
UPDATE: Hours after Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release in Tennessee, Fox News reports that the Trump administration may deport him to Uganda as early as next week.
Fox 17 Nashville reports that Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released from criminal detention in Tennessee and is on his way home to Maryland. “Today, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is free,” his attorney, @sean-hecker.bsky.social, said in a statement. fox17.com/news/local/k...
NEW: Kilmar Abrego Garcia files motion to dismiss his criminal charges in Tennessee based on selective and vindictive prosecution "Mr. Abrego was charged because he refused to acquiesce in the government’s violation of his due process rights." www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
"It's like a PhD in every field!" "Can it reliably do college-level work, such as accurately identifying and summarizing pertinent information?" "No." "So what is really does is sound like an expert to people who aren't experts in that field?" "Yeah! That's what everyone wants, right?"
JUST IN: The right-wing news channel Newsmax has agreed to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems over its coverage of the 2020 presidential election. A trial had been scheduled for October. n.pr/3UuKeyZ
President Zelensky is not flying to Trump alone — his plane has already taken off after a stop in Brussels. And he won’t be empty-handed: Europe is coming with him.👇
NEW: Wearing masks, no ID, unmarked & blacked out cars, refusing to say what agency they’re from and using profanity with any press & public nearby. This was at 14th & R in Washington DC, this morning (Sunday). What the hell is happening to the US? (🎥 Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Washington Post)
NEW: The District of Columbia withdraws its motion for a temporary restraining order barring implementation of AG Pam Bondi’s now-rescinded order that purported to take control of the city’s police department. DC says it’s still “evaluating” the new order Bondi issued last night.
"Follow the money" always applies, but never more so than now.
5/ Think about this: At the most important US-Russia summit in years, Trump put his Treasury and Commerce secretaries in the prime seats beside him. That’s not how you arrange a table to end a war. That’s how you arrange it to cut business deals.
4/ The seating chart is the smoking gun: Trump was flanked by Treasury Secretary Bessent and Commerce Secretary Lutnick alongside his security team. This wasn’t Ukraine-focused. The economic officials’ prominence confirms that sanctions relief and trade deals were central to Trump’s agenda.
bsky.app/profile/anna...
NEW: DOJ files notice that AG Bondi rescinded her previous order and issued a new one. Here it is:
The Trump administration has made U.S. human-rights reports favorably evaluate countries the president likes, @anneapplebaum.bsky.social writes. Now the State Department portrays “Germany as more oppressive than El Salvador”:
Newsom: "He doesn't play by a different set of rules. He doesn't believe in the rules. As a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. It's not enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil, talk about way the world should be...we have got to meet fire w/fire"
ICYMI, the eye-popper in today's PPI: a 39% rise in wholesale fresh vegetable prices. It's the largest month-on-month increase ever recorded in the summer (data to 1947), and one of the ten largest ever, regardless of season. With the estimable @alexjamesfitz.com www.axios.com/2025/08/14/i...
US Park Police now doing traffic stops in DC, and charged at me with a baton for filming closer than they liked
Will be hard to explain in the future that the US government went antivax, causing a lot of avoidable suffering and death, not in response to any negative incident with vaccines, but to the biggest, fastest, most successful, most impressive vaccine rollout in history.
If they weren't before they are now.
This is a stunningly lawless and crazy lawsuit by the government. Just bonkers. “Your protests are interfering with our right not to be protested”
D.C. police will impose a “juvenile curfew zone” this weekend in Navy Yard, covering Nationals Park, rec centers, schools, and nearby businesses. Teens under 17 caught out past curfew face up to 25 hours of community service, with certain exemptions.
Things are breaking that will take at least a generation to repair, and there are so many of them that it doesn't even hit the headlines.
The new BLS director:
Year-on-year core PPI: “.. In the last 10 years, only April 2021 had a bigger jump.” @mikezaccardi.bsky.social
On this day 80 years ago, the Empire of Japan surrendered to the United States.
The only head-scratching is why these numbers didn't surge earlier, given what businesses have been reporting in surveys for several months about tariff-driven price pressure.
Trump claims there will be "very severe consequences" for Russia if they fail to stop the war. He doesn't want to say what they'll be but they will be severe. With wearying predictability, this wildly implausible claim is now the main headline on the BBC. 🧵
Have any of these three people been asked about the terrorist attack on the CDC, inspired by Trump's HHS Secretary, yet?
Whenever power is reclaimed from these fascists, vandals, and thieves, the punishment for their many crimes against our society, culture, and history must be equally or more severe than if done by a foreign enemy. Nothing less is justice, nothing less will deter them from doing it again.
"Stop publishing the employment data because we don't like the answers economists give" and "subject the Smithsonian to searching ideological censorship because we don't like the answers historians give" all on the same day.
No one would have any confusion about what is happening if they saw it in another country.
You can't teach U.S. history without "divisive" narratives. Slavery wasn't "unifying." The Japanese incarceration wasn't "unifying." The anti-immigrant Operation Wetback (real name) wasn't "unifying." It's history's job to tell the truth, not cover up past racism to pave the way for future racism.
Weirdly this doesn't mention that the woman Trump put in charge of reviewing the Smithsonian is his Florida criminal defense attorney who didn't like some of the museum's exhibits when she visited after the inauguration so she convinced Trump to sign an executive order putting her in charge
Step 1: Smithsonian quietly removes info about Trump impeachments Step 2: Smithsonian insists this is routine updating and not political interference Step 3: White House: "Nah, it's political interference, to be very clear." www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
An "economist" so dumb I had to explain to him how the import price index works last month will now lead the BLS, kill me
AI video is almost there: no amount of post-hoc squinting can tell fake from real. Losing our last bastion of verification is no joke. Trusted news can help with high-profile events, but what about everyday life? Recipe for chaos. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/o...
Revealed preferences theory suggests that Wall Street executives value their ability to call their subordinates gay at approximately 8 trillion dollars
Here are the still images. Please share them widely.
If the federal government can simply seize privately held patents then that is the end of the U.S. patent system, the legal basis for American innovation.
The SG's brief openly asks the Supreme Court to endorse their position that ICE and Border Patrol can stop and question anyone in the Central District of CA based solely on the person being Latino and speaking Spanish. /side note, I highly doubt their 1 in 10 statistic; plus, many aren't Mexican.
WASHINGTON (AP) - US Air Force says it will deny retirement pay to transgender service members being separated from the service.
1. This week, the FBI released its comprehensive crime report for 2024, which revealed that both VIOLENT CRIME and PROPERTY CRIME reached their LOWEST LEVELS SINCE THE 1960s This a massive story. But you might not have heard about it, even if you follow the news closely. Here's why.
I remember when explaining how markets work is something that conservatives did to liberals.
@npr.org, please stop saying that "other countries" will pay Trump's higher tariffs. That's not how tariffs work, and surely you know better.
I will personally write Hassett a $1000 check if he can find a single voter who based his or her voting decision of the official statistics put out by BLS or BEA. That's just not how voters form impressions or make decisions about the economy, one way or the other.
On left: ABC: Ghislaine Maxwell told "Blanche that Trump had never done anything in her presence that would have caused concern." On right: Maxwell said same about Epstein, under oath. DOJ 2022: "Simply put, the defendant lies when it suits her." Whatever is the truth, she's no source for it.
in fact, the vast majority of Americans live with a roommate, and always have. many Americans will never live alone in their entire lives. the number of people living without a roommate is pretty much the highest it's ever been, which is a big part of why housing costs are up as a share of income
Two-hundred page account of the Trump administration’s effort to arrest, imprison, and deport foreign students who had the audacity to exercise their First Amendment rights. @knightcolumbia.org @aaup.org @mesa1966.bsky.social knightcolumbia.org/content/post...
Also: If you really believe that fighting Trump is a last-ditch effort to stop fascism, then "I'll vote to stop fascism - unless my loans aren't forgiven" betrays a certain lack of seriousness
A Gilded Presidency and A Gelded Senate My conversation with Tom Nichols CHARLIE SYKES AUG 3 open.substack.com/pub/charlies...
Over 90 pages of "Alligator Alcatraz" files disappeared as I was looking at them and reporting on the situation. Our public records requests are getting stonewalled. A slew of experts told me this all seems to be illegal. talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/th...
Winner of my “ reposting this twice” award for today. Seriously, trust should be easy to lose in hard to regain for everyone and in all circumstances.
I apologize for swearing but--are you fucking kidding me??? The NYT thinks that judges refusing to give Trump's DOJ the benefit of the doubt is "eroding the healthy functioning of the courts." For democracy to survive, judges need to be more skeptical and impose greater sanctions for DOJ's lies.
Imagine in another country a corrupt president was trying to change the election laws. Then that president's political ally threatened to remove all the legislators of the other party to get it done. That's what's happening in Texas right now.
It's not just 100% political, it's awful politics. Seriously, all this does is remind people of Russia's shenanigans and how Trump benefitted from them. Does give Fox News something to talk about, though. That's apparently the goal.
Before you see a hundred or so posts saying that Texas has issued arrest warrants for the absent Dem legislators, you should be aware that they are civil warrants issued by the House that are not effective outside the state www.texastribune.org/2025/08/04/t...
I don't generally care to get preachy about "journalism" and what it is or isn't but I feel like a good baseline is the people a reporter interviews ought to exist
Important details from this story: 1) Yet another news-break by student journalists (this time @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social) www.thecrimson.com/article/2025... 2) Harvard saying "see you in court," not "let's make a deal." 3) Per Garber, WH/MAGA leaked news of a "deal." NYT then ran with it.
Reup: If Dems Successfully Message on News Outlets Lefty Pundits No Longer Read, Did It Ever Happen? At some point, if you're not seeing Dems efforts to use Epstein, you must be living in a cave. www.emptywheel.net/2025/07/27/i...
The idea the market plays no role in these declines, that an all-powerful gov't can fix this, is the root of dictatorship.
It's mainly driven by losers who know they'll never get ahead in life if they don't get a big head start.
Me three months ago:
prescient (from 3 months ago)
As someone who relies heavily on government data for research (not BLS data per se), I am very worried that I am going to have a black box of omitted years in certain data sets. I have concerns with the quality of the data and it's going to take a lot of effort to validate it.
The firing of the head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is an absolute outrage. BLS collects and distributes gold standard data that provides tremendous insights into the American economy and it is used by all manner of public and private organizations. www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/b...
The President has declared his intention to suppress economic data that displeases him. The question becomes why shouldn't we believe him?
This is a perfect example of how an unfettered presidential removal power can undermine accountability (despite unitary executive theory claims to the contrary). How can you hold the President accountable for economic conditions if the President can keep us from knowing about those conditions?
For people saying these jobs numbers revisions are "unprecedented", here's a record of previous revisions back to 1979. Triple-digit downward revisions aren't common, but they've certainty happened before. www.bls.gov/web/empsit/c...
BREAKING: Judge Cobb has blocked the Trump administration's use of summary deportation for those who had previously been paroled into the U.S. — and warns the tactics used by the administration are beginning to resemble the countries these people fled. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...
What can you even say? www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...
BREAKING: The D.C. Bar's board of professional responsibility recommends that Trump ally Jeff CLARK be *disbarred* s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
I come to Bluesky to hear and go to Twitter to tell.
States should resist even minor intrusions into their elections by the executive branch of the federal government. They should contest every effort by this administration to encroach on their right to administer elections via executive order, informal request or any generic claim under Article II.
The most important questions in politics right now: www.thebulwark.com/p/why-wont-d...
The CIA smuggled copies of 1984 behind the Iron Curtain to undermine a totalitarian regime. In 2025, red states are pulling it from libraries.
"Some fear it could politicize the general officer corps." Oh come on. Seriously. If you have to pass an interview by somebody who never spent a day in uniform to get promoted, that's being politicized. "Some fear" For crying out loud, stop with the temporizing.
youtube.com/shorts/sAmcu...
Trump's new story is that he fell out with Jeffrey Epstein because Trump's most valued employees preferred to go work for a notorious sex offender rather than stay with Trump.
Faculty who wrote to defend their president and object to a DOJ investigation of their university...are now being investigated by the DOJ. The most banal defense of free speech and academic freedom will trigger the full wrath of the US government now. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...
The FBI "is in the early stages of something like a radical deprofessionalization." @qjurecic.bsky.social spoke with a former agent who was a casualty of Trump's purge of the bureau. "The most important quality for an FBI official to have now appears to be not competence but loyalty":
Republican Senators will get a partisan judge who supports their policy preferences for this seat whether it's Bove or someone else. Supporting Bove instead of demanding a different choice at this point is accepting/endorsing the most explicit attack possible on the republic and the rule of law.
Stalin disappeared purge victims' existence less effectively than these folks have memory-holed special counsel John Durham's investigation, and lack of results thereof.
NYT reports that a mysterious, *$984 million* transfer from a Pentagon"black box" account might be paying for the renovation of Trump's "free" Qatari jet. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/u...
It would be helpful if someone started creating a database with badge numbers and ID for all the ICE agents caught on video. Just in case we ever get the chance for a reckoning.
I used to live in China. Feeling like I do again.
Not an irony attempt. Serious question. Does no one near the top of the DoJ realize that cutting a deal with Ghislaine Maxwell makes this whole Epstein scandal worse?
It is fucking insane that we had a decade of people complaining about the dangers of cancel culture, and now literally hundreds of thousands of people are being purged from government jobs for ideological reasons, but that is not cancel culture.
NEW: Justice Connection, a DOJ alumni organization, says that “a new whistleblower, whose disclosures haven't been publicized, has evidence that Emil Bove wasn't truthful during his confirmation hearing.”
The problem with Emil Bove isn’t that he’s the worst judge in history. It’s that the system, which is fully cognizant of his utter disregard for law and his corrupt nature, is going to confirm him anyway. People will find himself in his corrupt courtroom and our leaders will say “Who cares?”
Whitehouse: "Let me mention first just how very bizarre it is that the Deputy AG is going out to do a witness interview. It really raises the question whether he's doing that in the role as Deputy AG, or if he's stepping back into his role as Trump criminal defense lawyer."
The fact John Durham is so completely forgotten is fitting.
I am no constitutional scholar, but I can't help but feel that "the President gets to dictate what every university can teach and what every television station should broadcast" is closer to what the founding fathers were worried about when it comes to free speech than trigger warnings on syllabi.
It’s also why there’s a clear pattern among the non-MAGA crowd: the more seriously you take yourself, the more pretentious you are, the more likely you are miss Trump’s obvious nature.
Tact and decorum are obstacles to clear communication.
Trump's defense attorney-DAG is AS WE SPEAK meeting w/a sex trafficker to find a way to make Trump's pedophile problem go away, and he hasn't even bothered to reach out to victims first (and fired the prosecutor who could test Maxwell's claims). www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLep...
Tulsi Gabbard is not on our team.
Winner of my “reposting this twice” award for today.