If Trump is really stealing spending power from Congress then it would be insanity for Democrats to vote to fund the government later this month. Shut it down until the president stops wiping his ass with the Constitution.

Samuel Alito flew two flags used by insurrectionists. Clarence Thomas' wife plotted to overturn the 2020 election. Both justices refused to recuse themselves from SCOTUS cases related to the January 6th plot. It's a stain on our nation that this has effectively been forgotten.

Yep. The idea that we are going to vote to appropriate military budget dollars while the President is openly aggressing against a treaty ally (in defiance of a Senate ratified treaty which is binding US law upon the president, not only international) -- we deserve nothing but scorn if it happens.

The future of propaganda studies is going to be lit. So much raw, primary source material to work with. Streams of it running directly out of the U.S. White House at the moment. www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

Atomic "Bombshell" on PBS Tonight open.substack.com/pub/oppenhei...

The attempted coup was made into a rolling and ultimately successful coup by Mitch McConnell’s covering for it in the senate and by McConnell’s Hand-packed SCOTUS - no figure worked harder or more successfully to destroy the protections we had against a man like Trump whom he purports to disdain

Reading Ganz's 2022 article on Italy and Ethiopia: www.unpopularfront.news/p/mussolinis...

one of my big takeaways lately is in 2026 we are now basically at 20 years of social media. this is a clear marker. we can now look back and assess the results. i am tempted to say we will determine social media was basically about as socially beneficial as the plague.

David Graham, a day later: “Remember what yesterday’s attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol was like. Very soon, someone might try to convince you that it was different. Maybe someone already has.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Five years ago.

The Kinsley gaffe to end all Kinsley gaffes

The content is obviously different, but Miller's tone reminds me of the radical secessionists - the "fire-eaters" - of 1860-61: a braying hyperbolist who makes up in volume what he lacks in sense, both belligerent and fragile at the same time.

Reports of gunfire in Caracas, Venezuela.

Great @jeffcolgan.bsky.social analysis of Trump's return to petro-imperialism, for @goodauth.bsky.social goodauthority.org/news/trump-m...

Nuclear proliferation in the next five years, post-Venezuela:

I can’t fully articulate the way my stomach dropped when I saw this headline. Please know the evidence has not changed. The people in charge have changed, and they did not consult any relevant experts or the public. “This new policy has not been vetted with pediatricians, the public, or the ACIP”

One thing that's becoming clear is that Rubio et al don't actually understand what imperialism entails. Like they could have turned USAID into the Colonial Office, but... Honestly not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders

Coming on January 6 to American Experience on PBS: “Bombshell: The Fight to Control the A-Bomb’s Story,” about how the US news media worked with the government to manipulate the official narrative about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and how a few journalists refused to play along.

Here’s America’s dictator carving up the world and laying claim to 2 continents.

Holy shit. Stephen Miller basically saying the United States wants to restore a imperial/colonial order with the United States at its heart and reverse the era of global decolonization.

Just bleak man I really think hybrid warfare and online grifting (information warfare) is one of the biggest threats of our lifetime. The informational environment is a extremely sensitive critical equilibrium and it is actively being destroyed for cash and clout

👇🎯 Once again, I ask, in good faith & without trying to be overly alarmist, what anyone has seen in the last year to make them believe that the 2026/28 elections will be free, fair, & democratic by any traditional meaning of the words? bsky.app/profile/mcop...

John Fetterman: "America is a force of good, order, & democracy — and we are promoting these kinds of values. We are the good guys" The “good guys” don’t have to go around trying to convince everyone they’re the good guys…

the geography of temporary burial sites/mass graves dug in Tokyo in the aftermath of air raids Largest red dots: sites where 10,000 or more were buried Green dots: location of memorials/cenotaphs

A poem for our times, by Hayley DeRoche

Seldom has a letter to the editor expressed my own sentiments so well www.nytimes.com/2026/01/04/o...

finally, we're living through precedented times

Trump in a single gaggle on Air Force One just threatened: -- a second strike against Venezuela -- Cuba -- Mexico -- Colombia -- Iran -- Greenland (which in turn would be an attack on the EU and Denmark)

This has been the default imperialist position for centuries, so really the oddity was that brief period of comfortable unipolar hegemony where it seemed gauche to say it out loud. No clearer sign of late imperial anxiety than the contemporary return of this old ass monocle and pith helmet blather

A major use-case for AI is reality destabilization.

It's wild that the PM of a NATO member feels compelled to put out a statement like this vis-à-vis the US government.

A thousand amens to this piece by @willbunch.bsky.social:

A memorable line from Jonathan Swift (1712), satirizing decorative inserts as a cover-up for the geographic ignorance of European mapmakers: “So Geographers in Afric maps, / with Savage-Pictures fill their Gaps; / And o’er uninhabitable Downs / Place Elephants for want of Towns”

The kidnapping of Maduro inaugurates a highly dangerous era of U.S. empire that for perhaps the first time in an era of mass media is not pretending to be anything other than a violent, extractive enterprise of domination.

Reminded that the dreadful piece about how cool New College is was an A1 placement

A Swimming Memorial Service held in Tokyo's Sumida River on March 10, 1985 in recognition of the 1000s who died when they leapt into the river during the firebombing 40 yrs prior 50 participants swam 500m in the frigid Sumida so as to "feel the coldness of that water firsthand and pray for peace"

A pointed decision by Matsuura Sozo to label the bombing of Tokyo a 北爆 from the Marianas in his landmark 1968 essay on the "hidden history of the Japan air raids" 北爆 was a term reserved for the US bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and Matsuura knew exactly what he was doing in linking the two

I don't find this threatening. I find it what America is all about.

the thing is, “differing political views” used to be about what percentage to tax high earners and not whether brown people are humans

sheeeeeiit RIP

This is why they want us talking about day care scams.

This is functionally equivalent to - & equally illegitimate - as Russia invading Ukraine. As @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social notes: "the US wasn’t attacked by Venezuela, someone based in Venezuela, or anyone else. There’s no self-defense argument, and the US didn’t even try for UNSC authorization."

Speaking as someone who just wrote a book on the Manhattan Project, I can assure you that refugee immigrants were the *entire* reason the US mastered the atom first. The most chilling part of writing my book was reading about them fleeing fascism … abroad. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/fleeing-on...

Our photographer Alex Kormann captured the exact moment the presses stopped for the last time in Minneapolis, ending a 158 history of locally printed newspapers.

New, from me: The NYT reporter who specializes in profiles of beleaguered right-wingers on campus went to New College...and found out that things were going ok! So let me explain some pretty massive errors of omission: 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nyt-re...

I’m only 3/4ths through this book, but I’m wrecked. Lots of people have correctly noted that it feels important, but (a) he’s a damn good storyteller, and (b) it’s hard to read this and not constantly see how the attempt to prop up the violence of western hegemony wrecks all our lives

Yeah, this dum dum is talking about chicken pox. Anyway, it's very cool and awesome that he has so much cultural and political influence.