And the thing about this is that it's self-evident. Even if they couldn't stop what's happening, they could be saying "We need to stop this, and we're trying to figure out how to stop this." And they're just not saying that. Ever.

They still look at the main role of the opposition party as one that signals vs one that active impedes/opposes. You get tough talk, limited stand offs, but no action. Like they're rehearsing lines for the mid terms, not active politicking or governing

Dems need to stop acting like what ICE is doing is an accident, or a failure of policy, or a tactic of distraction. It's the policy. And that's fucking terrifying, because it means that there's no negotiating with it, no ameliorating it. There's only defeating it, or being defeated by it.

2,000 detentions so far from their surge in Minnesota, DHS says Some of that is citizens beaten & held for 8 or 12 hours & then released And some is tearing families from each other indefinitely I will campaign for the politician, whoever they are, who says "Dismantle DHS & REUNITE EVERY FAMILY"

This is a good way of thinking about it. Newsom is a Bloomberg/Yang candidate, and 2028 has no Biden.

just did an interview with a reporter about the history of executive authority and they were like, damn historians must be freaking out these days.

I'm going to go ahead and say that I think it's incredibly unlikely that Newsom is going to be the Democratic nominee in 2028.

i have been reading Tom Ricks’ “Fighting the Good War” which is a military analysis of the civil rights movement, and one thing that comes abundantly across is that movement leaders and ordinary people made it a practice to refuse to fall into despair and cynicism.

this is cold as fuck

When you focus on the regular people showing up magnificently in all of their flawed beauty, it helps you to keep going.

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed by Walz's turn to don't make waves. Perhaps the death threats rattled him badly. But even when I've taken more than I can manage at the time, I've never advised OTHERS to back down.

I've seen some folks giving into doomerism by citing the US's history of paramilitary violence shutting down fair elections in the South, and I want to add some historical context to support Jamelle here (as an historian of Reconstruction paramilitary violence)

Speedrunning toward the absolute worst of Jim Crow.

There was a time when politicians knew that if they wanted calm in the streets their place was in the streets.

Cannot stress enough that you can just do stuff. You don't need permission. You can just do stuff because it needs to be done by someone.

Bud was one of a kind. I got inappropriately drunk at his bar the Goose Hollow Inn in 1984 when I first moved to PDX and was extremely surprised when my drunk ass saw a dude with a handlebar mustache riding one of those old velocipede bicycles and it was freaking Bud Clark riding to his bar.

More than an attempted coup, where a mob tried to seize Congress on live television did? There's not going to be an implosion about anything. It's either a slow slide towards oblivion where everything gets incrementally worse as people try to live normally, or a slow grind in the opposite direction.

This is not the behavior of a regime that expects to successfully rig the next election, to invert a phrase.

Just guessing here, but I suspect the White House is pushing so hard for wars of conquest on multiple fronts because they see their support collapsing ahead of the midterms and worry they won't get another shot. An example of how tyrants become more dangerous as they get weaker, not less.

Only instance that comes to mind is Bud Clark in Portland back in the 80s, because of this poster

And the former mayor just did a crypto rug pull. Truly a cutting-edge global city.

That’s also been there for months. It must be a sustainable business.

When was the last time this city—or any city—had someone out selling tourists knockoff mayoral merch?

Bakery Chef Barbie, early 2027: "Oh, no, I'm not saying I'M autistic. It's just that hearing folks on that side of the family talk about it has given me some useful insights and coping strategies."

There is a new autistic barbie out, but no one is talking about her mother, undiagnosed computer engineer barbie about to get the surprise of her life when she starts to argue with the evaluator that these are all normal childhood behaviours that she had when she was the same age.

My mom just texted me to tell me that Claudette Colvin had died. Raise a glass.

That’s pretty much the SF Chron version too. It starts “Scott Adams, the once enormously successful Bay Area cartoonist…”, which is getting your boot in before the first sentence ends…

The Times obit is basically “Scott Adams, Asshole and Creator of ‘Dilbert’ Strip, Dies at 68.”

An issue with “abolish ICE” is the work of ICE can still get dispersed elsewhere. But as a specific agency with a specific culture and recruitment history, it’s indefensible. Trump’s regime is doing brownshirt recruitment campaigns for it. You gotta nuke that.

Even in DC speak I’d take: “This agency is hopelessly politicized and has a broken culture of violence and unquestioning loyalty to Trump. Its duties will be reorganized and reassigned to other law enforcement agencies. ICE was an experiment started in 2003 and it has failed.”

Get in loser, we're going to put our bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, to make it stop

Ron Wyden last posted to Twitter two days ago. Lujan and Markey have both posted today. Suspending their use of the app is a practical thing these senators could do immediately to raise awareness and bring pressure on others.

This is why the very first step of a new Dem majority is pro-democracy reform: - Make DC a state (gets us one more Senate vote) - Squash gerrymandering and make many more House seats competitive - Eliminate EC so every vote’s vote counts - Reform the SCOTUS, get big money out of politics

I'm mostly with Jamelle on this. Where the Dems are right now, as a party, is woefully inadequate. The path toward them getting better is them getting better. Sometimes that improvement is going to be sudden, sometimes incremental. And sometimes incremental lays the groundwork for sudden.

Mary Pelota is figuring there’s gonna be midterms.

I was talking with Melanie and Casey yesterday about how sometimes a person just ... shifts from their regular self into a person who is willing to do anything, risk anything to stop an injustice from taking place in front of them. There's a switch, and when it gets flipped, everything changes.

Thank you baby bisexual Jesus!

/3 Ist we not the supermen? Western Culture supermen! Ja we ist der supermen Super-duper supermen! Haf ve not the manly guys? Aren’t they candy to our eyes? Ja ve had the manly guys! Zey are candy to our eyes!

My internal monologue at this moment, and for the foreseeable future, is Ilya making fun of Connor's mustache.

Real good stuff.

Never let them tell you art can’t make a difference in someone’s life

Eight million New Yorkers. Three million immigrants. Half a million undocumented. One city. Our city. Fuck ICE.

Today’s march took the same Fifth Ave route as the 1917 anti-lynching Silent Parade, one of the first American civil rights protests. Both started at 59th, by General Sherman’s statue, and headed downtown. For more on the Silent Parade: hyperallergic.com/naacp-silent...

Froze my ass off at the Iowa City anti-ICE rally, but it was worth it

This sign reminds me of a story of my redheaded, very North Dakota sister-in-law at the start of the Iraq war. An 8 YO boy in the grocery store was chanting, "I wanna kill some Iraqis!" She looked at him and said, "I'm Iraqi. Kill me."

Not gonna lie, marching down 5th Ave singing This Land Is Our Land with several thousand neighbors made me feel some feelings.

The beautiful thing is that if you do numbers 2-4, 1 kinda sorts itself out

My sign today.