I like Presidents who don't bulldoze the White House

So yesterday House leadership brought in Chip Roy as their guest speaker and today their pick was James Comer to be the face of Republican messaging on the shutdown? The master strategist Mike Johnson strikes again by highlighting buffoonery.

It looks even worse by video 😢

Donald Trump is not paying for the huge construction projects at the WH out of his pocket like MAGA claims. He started out with that lie, but then admitted more than once, on video, that he’s been shaking down CEOs & rich people who want something from the government. As usual.

Donald Trump is now officially demolishing part of the White House to make room for his $200 million golden ballroom. This comes as Americans can’t afford groceries and the government is still shut down.

Talk about a metaphor

Another week in Washington and Republicans are still on recess, boycotting negotiations - while the government is shut down. Now, Trump is moving money around to pay only the employees he favors - another sign that he wants the government shut down so he can act like a king.

Dumb and dumber are embarrassing themselves. Pu called Trump not because "peace is infectious" but because Ru wanted to stop the delivery of Tomahawks, the war's playing field wouldn't be equalized a bit, and Ru could continue pounding Ukraine. There's no peace deal in sight!

It was perfectly safe for the Marines to fire artillery shells over I-5 because the US military never has training accidents.

Don’t worry about the I-5 artillery incident. The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. That’s what kids do.

Incredible reporting from @infinitejaz.bsky.social from the West Bank. Video of a settler ambush over in his stories. Extremely harrowing. www.instagram.com/infinite_jaz...

This is my new favorite story

Stipulated: responsibility for corruption, crime, dishonesty & violence of Trump & MAGA rests absolutely & forever w/them. They are beyond redemption & beneath contempt. But extent to which Biden admin naively & quixotically left us undefended from these relentless attacks defies comprehension.

A favorite from Arizona. #NoKings #NoNazis

The world joined us and said, “No Kings.”

Pardons are another unfettered power that Trump has used to mock a country founded on the rule of law. Trump has completely shattered this. J6 and other rightly convicted criminals belong in jail for the entirety of their sentence. Period. Releasing Tarrio and Santos is meant to humiliate us.

They use govt accounts, employees & resources to make partisan political messages. They make partisan political speeches attacking the opposition party to troops routinely. They get pardoned when they commit crimes. They ignore the laws. There is zero congressional oversight.

Here is my countdown of the Top 40 protest signs from No Kings 10/18. These are good, but stay tuned because the Top 20 are pretty epic. Here is 31-40. open.substack.com/pub/meidasto...

I learned back during the Iraq War, that Democrats, leftists, progressives, etc. are the only Americans that the media is okay with ignoring or condescending.

It is notable that the Times article did not mention this, which, in itself, should be a huge, ongoing scandal, particularly in light of all of the concern about condescension to ordinary Americans that the Democrats supposedly display. uk.news.yahoo.com/donald-trump...

The “article” is trash The Dem consultants all say uh sure you need a positive message too but look Trump is DEEPLY unpopular And it quotes five (!!) Republicans As the late great Eric Boehlert taught us, Dems are never quoted in articles about the GOP, but GOP gets majority of quotes about Dems

Front page of Philadelphia Inquirer today. No Kings is 4 pages in ….

Top story when you go to The Guardian this AM. Which it is not when you go to the Washington Post or the NY Times. Apt language here, whereas WaPo describes the day as an airing of grievances as though we are a bunch of whining George Costanzas, not a vast public fearful of losing everything.

Portland, Oregon. #NoKings

Since Hegseth is trying to suppress the press, seems like a good time to reprise some reporting: https//www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history

On our way to #NoKings

“The Department of Homeland Security has purchased two Gulfstream private jets for Kristi Noem, the secretary, and other top department officials at a cost of $172 million” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/u...

A plan to cut pollution in oceanic shipping supported by much of the maritime industry was shelved Friday by delegates to a UN regulatory body following threats from Trump that he would punish countries [with tariffs] backing the measure. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Looks like the Russians like his Russia tie. It’s not red-white-blue either. It’s red-blue-white. Like the Russian flag. For a meeting with Zelensky.

The 105 House Republicans who condemned George Santos and voted to expel him from Congress are strangely silent about Trump springing him from prison after a very short stint. They are all terrified of King Donald.

NYT confirms our reporting from days ago - which the WH said was fake news - that Trump and Hegseth are pulling a stunt to fire artillery rounds over I-5 between SD and LA onto Camp Pendleton as a stunt, one of the busiest highways in America. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/u...

I expect to be reposting this at least once more before Christmas.

Do you think pro-Ukraine Republicans like John Thune, Lindsey Graham, Roger Wicker and many others will finally admit that Trump never had any intention of helping Ukraine and is Putin’s useful idiot? Probably not, because they are cowards.

Let’s be very clear. Trump has made it explicitly clear that Republicans are free to commit white collar crimes. Any of them. Wire fraud. Bank fraud. Bribery. Election fraud. Tax fraud. Money laundering. So long as you vote MAGA, you are free to commit those crimes now.

We just gave $40 billion to a country that is screwing us by selling to China, so China doesn't have to buy from or deal with the US. That's almost the entire budget for USAID, except instead of saving one South American dude, we could have saved millions of children.

The war zone in Portland is out of control.

I can remember when conservative Christians would have been offended by Trump saying the f-word in public instead of worshipping him as he does it.

Let’s be clear— no conventional weapon delivery to Ukraine is escalation! French and German troops can join AFU at the front line and it won’t be an escalation because Ru is already using North Korean and Cuban troops. Don’t reward the Kremlin w any response to their ridiculous framing.

$40 billion could provide more than a year of affordable health care for millions of Americans. Instead, Trump uses your taxpayer dollars to bail out his “favorite president” in Argentina.

Choosing Hungary as the place to meet Putin is one of the most outrageous and illiberal acts of this new Trump era. It’s another extraordinarily gift to Putin, an insult to our allies and Zelenskyy, and should be forcefully denounced by leaders in both parties here in America.

Republicans in charge of Congress have abdicated all responsibility for governing the nation to Trump. There are no checks. There are no balances. No Kings.

This is grossly dark. These are broken people. But it's also so politically dumb. How do they think Americans will react to being told that anyone who doesn't support Trump is a terrorist?

Absolutely! About 10yrs ago, I wrote a paper on the offensive weaponization of law and argued it can happen across regime types, it isn't an exclusive feature of consolidated autocracies. Discussants told me I'm trying too hard to generalize post-Communist cases, old democracies are safe.

this is a prime opportunity for democrats to explicitly tell their voters "they say you're a terrorist, but youre just a patriotic american who is trying to get by in this world."

"We are a decade into Trumpism. These Young Republicans have never known any other type of Republicanism. We’re talking about a full generation of Republicans who only understand politics in the context of an authoritarian project." www.thebulwark.com/p/all-the-pr...

Biden’s fatal flaw was believing he could nice the GOP back to normal. Goebbels didn’t do evil because he didn’t have infrastructure. He did evil because he was evil.

Has Trump dispatched National Guard units to Alaska to help with flooding and recovery?

Attacking posts of strangers & telling them to “FIX [THEIR] SHIT” bc they don’t see every issue exactly as you do is prob not how we’re going to rid ourselves of fascists. Could be wrong, but feel pretty confident. We “know” each other in only most superficial sense. Kindness prob more effective.