Something we’ve noticed in doing our weekly bill round-ups are the many pieces of legislation increasing a local official’s expense account midterm and then converting it into salary at the next term. Here’s how that works.

my question for ahmari: the federal reserve is subject to democratic control — congress can, whenever it chooses, alter the terms of fed independence. how and why is the unilateral authority of the president, exercised outside of rule if law, more democratic than congress’s legitimate authority?

People frequently ignore Madison’s comments on the tenure of the comptroller, which imply Congress could determine the tenure of certain officers. “There may be strong reasons why an officer of this kind should not hold his office at the pleasure of the executive branch of the Government.”

Read @chancephillips.bsky.social today

In my latest article for @liberalcurrents.com, I agree with @sohrabahmari.bsky.social that Trump is behaving like Andrew Jackson. I just go on to explain why that is so horrifying. Please read it if you’re also enthralled by 19th century political oratory! www.liberalcurrents.com/trump-must-l...

Just read Where Do We Go From Here!

I stopped by the @liberalcurrents.com Half the Answer podcast to talk about Charlie Kirk, Ezra Klein, free speech and the power of independent media. Full episode here: www.liberalcurrents.com/half-the-ans...

Eidelson does some fantastic reporting. Read this.

"In reviewing the leaked materials, I have identified a number of deeply concerning questionnaire responses that can be connected to people who now hold positions of influence." Chance Phillips looks at a lesser known element of Project 2025:

Thanks to @thebulwark.com for publishing my latest analysis of the leaked responses to a Project 2025 questionnaire for government jobseekers. Contra Sam Haselby, Pat Buchanan is not a “marginal figure.” The folks running the government appear to be his acolytes. www.thebulwark.com/p/the-trump-...

Read @chancephillips.bsky.social over at @thebulwark.com on the Buchanan and Bukele fans in the administration www.thebulwark.com/p/the-trump-...

I've worked in writing -- academic, belle-lettrist, journalistic, technical -- all of my life and I still have no clue how paragraph transitions work. Every succesful paragraph transition is a gift that God grants in His mercy

Me every time I delete a sentence that ultimately doesn't work for the article

"Individuals everywhere are deputized to film any professor saying anything that would offend conservatives, guaranteeing that a deluge of harassment from government officials and online threats will follow." prospect.org/education/20...

Folks! Part II of My piece w/ Noa Rosinplotz on the demonization of ABAWDs. This time we examine how booting people from Medicaid (many of whom won't even be ABAWDs) is going to cause widespread harms. & we remind folks that ABAWD is just the latest bugbear... www.firesidestacks.com/p/the-cruelt...

Adobe’s decision to make Acrobat constantly try to push AI summaries on its users is anti-human. Ex.: “This appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary.” “This” is a book. I would like to be able to read a book without being told I should save time by not reading a book.

pre-order @briancallaci.bsky.social's book! I am jealous of how good this cover is bookshop.org/p/books/chai...

Read this! “Schmitt, like his fellow travelers past and present, wants none other than to turn the page on those ‘five words about equality.’ Which is to say that both he and the president to whom he has pledged his allegiance want to turn the page on a nation dedicated to a ‘new birth of freedom.’”

"Congressional Republicans....have become so resolutely evasive that Capitol Hill reporters have for years been printing out physical copies of Donald Trump’s tweets to prevent them from getting out of addressing" the gross ones. So our @cheetah.bsky.social used that tactic with Trump's drawing:

the free press trying to make a scandal out of reading robert dahl is very funny (shoutout to dahl, one of the best to ever do it)

New from me yesterday on the NatCon shitshow www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I’ll just add: The ability to opine comes with the ability to *learn.* For a living! That’s a priceless opportunity!

... I have not read the article so won’t critique it, but Lincoln famously took the house divided phrase straight from the Bible. (Douglas mocked him for “pretending” to have divine insight!)

Eric Schmitt's speech was cribbed from Samuel T. Francis.— www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-schmit...

I spent two hours listening to four of the right's leading thinkers debate topics such as: -should Black men in Baltimore be indentured to churches? -should Ron DeSantis create a youth militant organization in Florida? -is the American public crying out for purges? www.vox.com/on-the-right...

Jaffa argues in Crisis of the House Divided that *Stephen Douglas* supported Manifest Destiny—which Schmitt praised in his horrific speech—because Douglas believed American institutions could span the western hemisphere and spread republicanism and self-governance.

what's interesting is that schmitt/hochman/whoever wrote this is aware enough of how foreign this is to the actual american experience that they have to include "continental europeans" into this category of legitimate americans

“If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples; and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them ...

oh i forgot about hochman. that's probably the nazi who wrote this www.liberalcurrents.com/missouri-sen...

Taps the sign. www.liberalcurrents.com/missouri-sen...

Sen. Benjamin Wade introduced an amendment to the Fourteenth Amendment on the grounds that Sen. Fessenden implied(!) that not everyone born on American soil had always been born a citizen, and specifically said the children of diplomats would be the only exemption.

One of Chick-fil-A’s major poultry providers was recently fined for repeated child labor law violations, with children as young as 13 working at an Alabama-based facility. @jmcjmc.bsky.social reports via @investigatemidwest.bsky.social: buff.ly/X8AXw07

People should be reading about the Whigs more nowadays.

A great and snappy analysis.

I should probably do more writing by hand—and I do try to take notes and jot down ideas on paper whenever possible—but a mildly odd thing I do on occasion is switch between my laptop and my phone after I finish writing something in order to give it a “fresh” read.

Cracker Barrel announces it is going back to its old logo. Our long national nightmare is ... stupid.

very excited to announce I have been featured in Liberal Currents, writing about what Zohran’s pro-housing policy should look like! here’s the TL;DR: 1) upzone, upzone, upzone 2) address hard costs & permitting 3) leverage the public sector 4) appoint the right people 5) sell the vision

This great story from @sentientmedia.org just underlines the point I was trying to make in my article for @currentaffairs.bsky.social. The Trump admin is going to spend the next few years giving meatpacking companies a pass on food and worker safety requirements. sentientmedia.org/former-tyson...

New from me: a podcaster who is a former pastor and current member of Pete Hegseth's church advocates for public executions, thinks abortion should be a capital crime, and thinks ICE raids are biblical. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

“In our type of economy, in which a large measure of the laissez-faire spirit is reserved to management in its drive for profits, management strongly objects to any attempt on the part of labor to intrude itself into the price or profit function. At the same time, there is no reluctance to

Just a fantastic graf from @mattbruenig.bsky.social’s half of The Argument’s first “Mad Libs” debate column.

About two or three times a year, fantastically skilled reporters manage to put together a story I literally could not have dreamed up. Today is one of those times. www.thecity.nyc/2025/08/20/w...

Gold bars and chips bags full of cash. The Northeast never really got over that whole open political corruption thing, did they?

“Recent struggles over fiscal impoundment challenge the ability of Congress ... This is a huge deal: if the President can stop any lawful payments from the government at will, we have a different system of government from the one we had last year, not just a different government.”

from chandra manning's wonderful book "what this cruel war was over"

I find it mildly funny that I just learned "Ol' Man River" was originally a song in the musical Show Boat, and not just a Paul Robeson original/folk song cover, by thinking I accidentally began playing the wrong record.

@sohrabahmari.bsky.social seriously messed up his response. He writes that "DC’s 2024 homicide rate was the fourth highest in the nation," referring to an RIT report. The RIT report is only of 24 cities and DC is just the highest of those 24 cities. Actually looking at all cities, DC is #11.

DHS speechwriter linked to hateful social accounts while claiming American conservatives are ostracized like Jews in Nazi Germany