Ossoff: "It's been extraordinary to see the Speaker of the House reduced to lying in order to cover up sex crimes"
(not going to call them skeets) I ❤️ 🇨🇦
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Ossoff: "It's been extraordinary to see the Speaker of the House reduced to lying in order to cover up sex crimes"
Follow the money on this scam. Miles and miles of prime oceanfront real estate between SD and LA. I’m surprised it took him this long to cook up something on it.
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.
1/ I worked at DoD. I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat. Hard to see how this would not be "murder" or war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable. Read expert analysis by @bcfinucane.bsky.social⤵️
As a lawyer, I'll tell you that there's nobody who knows this law better than Ryan and Brian. Sure looks like murder or war crime to me. But as a human, I'll tell you that the Rubio statement -- we could have stopped the boat but we blew it up to send a message -- is sickening and depraved.
🚨 The Trump admin is moving to de-legalize more than a quarter of a million Venezuelans who have been here for at LEAST four years. The vast majority entered before Biden took office (often on tourist visas) and were previously granted deportation protections by Trump himself.
National Guardsmen now stationed outside our DC building confirmed that the only thing they can do if they witness a crime is call 911. The have no more authority than my office mate to intervene. Despite the handcuffs, they can't make arrests. They are very expensive mall cops.
SCARBOROUGH: We do Republicans keep promising to release these files and then keep releasing the same things and making fools of their followers? REP. ROBERT GARCIA: Because there is a massive White House coverup going on right now
I cAn'T dO tWo ThInGs At OnCe aaaaghh
The Chicago Police Department’s criminal homicide tally for June, July and August is the lowest in 60 years. And overall violent crime remains near its lowest point in more than four decades. trib.al/f4O8yRs
We can scare him off.
Q: "Trump said that this Epstein issue is a hoax. Can we get your reactions?" Epstein survivor Haley Robson: "Mr. President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican...I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax."
Someone needs to get Trump on record saying wether or not he believes the Epstein survivors
“weakening centuries-old power” is another way of saying violating the Constitution. But why speak clearly when euphemisms will do?
A bipartisan group of House members is set to convene a closed-door meeting with Epstein’s victims Tuesday afternoon. A group of Epstein’s victims also plans to hold a rally on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning. "This has not gone away like the speaker had hoped.” www.politico.com/live-updates...
🚨🚨🚨”What we heard today is a cover up. And it is a cover up of epic proportions. A cover up involving the US government, the justice system, rich and powerful individuals… and yes, a cover up by republicans in this chamber.”
he's totally going to plan another one now
“Look, why are they smiling?” - Jesse Waters, probably
Rep. Robert Garcia: "The Attorney General herself has said that President Trump is in the Epstein files."
Rep. Dan Goldman: "This is a coverup. This is a massive cover up...Donald Trump was hot to trot and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino were leading the charge to release the Epstein files. Now, all of a sudden, they don't want them released. They are trying to hide something."
Wow.
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.
I have now lived a long and full life, with a Republican Treasury Secretary saying that adding a national sales tax -- imposed on an odd assortment of goods -- *raises* economic growth. Can't wait to raise other taxes to raise growth further. Or to double tariffs so we can double growth.
"Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio has warned Donald Trump’s America is drifting into 1930s-style autocratic politics — and said other investors are too scared of the president to speak up." www.ft.com/content/b86b...
oh look a 600 pound bullet proof white house window wide fucking open
SCOOP: Sources at the House Oversight Committee confirm documents posted by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna are the same ~33,000 pages of Epstein documents they received — 97% already public — and part of a broader plan to block transparency.
They adjourned for a month to avoid taking a vote on releasing the files, and THIS is the best scam they could come up with to fool people? Who hatched this genius plan - Comer? bsky.app/profile/meid...
This is not transparency. Nearly everything the GOP just “released” has already been released. This is a pathetic attempt by Republicans to buy them more time to bury this crisis. RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES.
That Pritzker press conference was... surreal, and I think marks a significant moment of escalation in the constitutional omni-crisis. This was the governor of a state saying plainly the Union itself is being torn apart and his state is being militarily invaded by an authoritarian regime.
I don’t know how this is possible. Texas cannot control guard sent to Illinois without violating Illinois sovereignty. It must be federally controlled units, otherwise instead of a Posee Comitatus problem, we have a major constitutional crisis.
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.
I don’t know who needs to hear this but the National Guard of one state can’t invade another state. They are separate sovereigns
Senate Democrats: DO NOT FUND the government when the current continuing resolution expires at the end of the month. SHUT IT DOWN unless DC is funded, the troops are withdrawn from our cities, elections are protected, the Epstein files are released in full... SHUT IT DOWN.
If it’s under Title 32 authority, the Texas guard remains under state control. That would mean that one state is deploying armed forces into the territory of a non-consenting state. And that’d clearly be a violation of the principle that states are co-equal, territorially limited sovereigns.
One of which being the minor detail that deploying them off federal property in the territory of one state under another state's authority without the permission of the government of the first state is quite literally an invasion
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."
🚨BREAKING: President Donald Trump is preparing to deploy National Guard troops in the state over the governor’s repeated objections. Pritzker also warned Trump will soon launch large-scale immigration raids in Chicago. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
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
Pritzker: "When did we become a country where it's ok for the US president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything? Especially something we don't want. Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation that we treat this as normal?"
I know, I know, but: The president of the US saying, literally, "we're going in" in reference to sending the military to an American city for no reason beyond terrorizing the local population should be the most immediately impeachable shit imaginable
VOTE BLUE
when you have no one in your life to tell you your beard is fucking ridiculous
It's so weird how Greenwald and Nate Silver and the like—who aren't even here—keep insisting that Bluesky is pro-DNC, when I've yet to see anyone here ever say anything nice about the DNC at all. Also, evaporating? Lol. Bluesky now sends WAY more traffic to @techdirt.com than Twitter *ever* did.
Perfect encapsulation of the Trump administration: The guy suing Harvard for alleged antisemitism is a straight-up Hitler-admiring Nazi. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/02/m...
Kristi Noem's Non-Stop Slander Invites Congress to Ask Melania about Her Close Ties to Jeffrey Epstein www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/02/k...
WWII ended 80 years ago today, as Japan surrendered on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
I read this as cement yard and sadly it's the same thing
Venezuela
Everyone saying “there’s no way Trump wrote this” is kind of missing the point. It doesn’t matter who wrote it— this coming out from Trump’s truth social account at all means the White House is frustrated by the narrative about the CDC / vaccines and laying the groundwork for a break from Kennedy.
Tulsi Gabbard is *very obviously* a foreign intelligence asset and I hope we all live long enough to see her tried and convicted for it.
Trump's dictator moves like calling in the national guard or ballooning the ice budget are designed to enrage you, but also to desensitize you to his authoritarian behavior. As Rick Wilson says, we can't let that happen:
One thing that's particularly maddening about what's happening today—beyond that it's happening—is that when people talk about how we are moving toward authoritarianism, toward fascism, by a collection of narcissistic sociopaths, many Americans' eyes glaze over.
Voter fraud with undocumented immigrants: ~0% Mail-in ballot fraud: ~0.00006% Requiring voter-ID and ending mail-in ballots suppresses the right to vote for minorities, the elderly and disabled, helping Republicans. Trump is rigging elections, not protecting them.
I don't know what the correct balance is. But I do know that we need to expand the pro-democracy coalition, and I suspect that this *will* require approaches that abandon stigmatization of allies and potential allies in favor of empathy and persuasion.
If we are going to prevail against them, we need as large an opposition tent as we can get. We need disciplined counter-mobilization. That means protests where SJP doesn't get on stage and tell people that if they don't support the destruction of the state of Israel, then they need to go home.
We also have some limited ability to influence how unified the pro-democracy coalition is. Remember, competitive authoritarian regimes rely on divide-and-rule tactics. The sooner the opposition unifies, the better the odds of dislodging autocratic rulers.
But it was too late. To understand what happened, you *must* read @kimlanelaw.bsky.social's @jodemocracy.bsky.social article ▼▼ In fact, just drop what you're doing and read it now.
🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics. The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.
The problem: Mortgages signed by the Paxtons contained inaccurate statements declaring that each of those three houses was their primary residence, enabling the now-estranged couple to improperly lock in low interest rates, according to an Associated Press review of public records.
@nealkatyal.bsky.social: “You’ve got the president who's imposed the largest tax increase on American consumers since 1993 … and he did it without Congress saying one word. That is not our constitutional structure.”
"She did not die defending the Constitution. She died trying to overturn it. She was not protecting lives at a gate in Iraq; she was forcing her way through windows in the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power." New from @markhertling.bsky.social:
Among the people killed in the russian attack on Kyiv on August 28th were: 🕯Anhelina, 2, and her 24-year-old mother Nadiia 🕯Maryna Hryshko, 17, a student 🕯Yana Shapoval, mother of a 10-year-old boy 🕯Nazarii Koval, 14, a school student
has he been posting?
BOOM. The federal appeals court rules Trump's tariffs illegal, because they are. There's no national emergency, and so the power to tariff a country rests with Congress. Trump admin has lost at every stage of the process, but stay tuned for the Supremes to chime in.
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:
This is good: With Trump/RFK destroying CDC, JB Pritzker's officials are exploring the possibility of buying Covid vaccines from manufacturers and distributing them in-state themselves, source tells me. Dem govs must step up and fill the void. New piece from me: newrepublic.com/article/1998...
we will outbreed them, but not educate or protect the children
Donald Trump wants to turn the Federal Reserve into his own bank. We need to pause all Fed nominations amid his illegal takeover attempt and hold a hearing on how it will raise costs on American families instead.
LET’S FUCKING GO
I would like to remind people Trump literally posted Obama’s personal address and a lunatic follower of his showed up there the next day armed to the teeth. You might not have heard about it because places like the NYT never reported it (they reported the gunman but not the Trump part at all!)
Trump's trying to help those targeting Kamala Harris. edition.cnn.com/2025/08/29/p...
There is no legitimate reason to do this, or to have done it to Fauci or Bolton. It tells you everything, in case you have not been listening.
There is no possible legitimate reason to do this. It’s what despots do. It’s petty. It’s dangerous. It’s unAmerican. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...
As expected. Noted antivaxxer Geier, who has had many retractions in the lit and was fined for practicing medicine without a license, is who Kennedy hired to "find the cause of autism."
Welch: This is a guy who has redecorated the oval Marie Antoinette style and is building himself a ballroom because he has no intention of leaving.
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.
Fletcher Merkel loved family, friends and fishing; Harper Moyski doted on her younger sister.
Ashli Babbitt can fucking rot in hell
Oh look, Trump fired another Black official without reason, warning or cause: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/b...
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Denmark summons top US diplomat over alleged operations in Greenland on.ft.com/4oSRTVC
US accused of conducting hostile campaign designed to destabilize Denmark, a close democratic ally amp.dw.com/en/denmark-s...
Stuart Stevens on National Guard deployment: "The murder rate of Jackson, Mississippi is 3 times that of D.C.... the whole thing is complete fraud"
This is the second day in a row he’s said this. This is an intentional normalization effort.
After almost a decade of this sort of BS from Trump, I’m surprised that America’s not tired of it and that his approval ratings are not lower than his already historic lows.
all federal law enforcement of all kinds — from fbi to dea to hsi to irs to ice to diplomatic security to everything else — deprofessionalized and combined into a single amorphous and untrained federal “police” force for use in the streets. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/u...
Elon's DOGE Muskjugend uploaded a dataset of every Social Security number to the god damn cloud www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/u...
Oh look, it's the thing every fascist government says about the opposition party before they dissolve them and turn the country into a one party state.
trump's commerce secretary giddy about copying china by taking ownership of private companies..
FUCK ME DO NOT DESCRIBE TRUMP'S PLANS IN THE HEADLINES WITHOUT NOTING THEY ARE ILLEGAL.
May 16
This is the way …
There’s a non-zero chance that Trump is destroying the country to distract from Epstein
The Fed was designed to be insulated from politics to maintain the stability and credibility of our financial system. The President is breaking the law, abusing his power, setting a dangerous precedent, and undermining our economy.
1/2 Trump should absolutely not be able to fire Lisa Cook. But this is because he should not be able to fire anyone with statutory tenure protections.
This is the make or break moment for Powell's @federalreserve.gov. If they do not defend Lisa Cook and treat her as still on the Board, the fight over the Fed as an independent agency will officially be over. see my Friday piece. www.crisesnotes.com/trump-vs-pow...