They plausibly feared that some politicians would want to pay the rebels reparations. That's why they forbid it in the Constitution.

This was put in the Constitution specifically for this purpose. The framers wanted to prevent any president or Congress from either paying Confederate bonds or compensating those who rebelled for any of the damages/punishments inflicted upon them by the national government.

Not enough news coverage of how the insurrectionist reparations fund is a clear violation of the 14th Amendment. We need to enforce the Constitution in its original meaning and plain text. You can't imagine away parts of the Constitution just because it is politically inconvenient.

The idea that race and partisanship would be too entangled to identify voting restrictions as racist would have seemed absurd to the authors of the 15th Amendment, given that it was itself adopted at a time of racist partisan disenfranchisement www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

If AI data centers do indeed get throttled by a popular revolt, it'll be because for 20 years, we: - Let Google steal and monetize IP - Let Facebook break minds and social bonds - Let Uber run roughshod over local and state laws - Let Elon commit fraud over and over again With no consequence.

Suing an accuser for breaking an NDA: 1) is a tacit admission of guilt 2) a terrible PR move 3) makes complete sense if you're trying to deter your other victims from coming forward

I say without hyperbole that this is the most brazenly corrupt action in US Presidential history. That it does not immediately lead to impeachment is a dangerous sign of how far the rule of law has declined.

What a disgraceful action (granting clemency, not the removal of a clause) from someone who has proven over time to be a meh governor.

Between this & all the stock trading Trump is suddenly doing it's hard not to come to the conclusion that he's realized he's missed his chance at consolidating a dictatorship so he's stealing everything that isn't nailed down before he's driven from office.

That’s what happens when you destroy the greatest research infrastructure in the world & promote pseudoscience. An unfun fact: The US now has no confirmed CDC director, no FDA commissioner, no Surgeon General. Our NIH director is a laptop MD. China is spending more on R&D than we are. 🧪

I am being as generous as possible when I say that far too many people are in charge of things who do not understand the value of the things in their charge and will embarrass themselves and damage the institutions/legacies/brands of which they are supposed to be faithful stewards

"For better or worse, Alabama is where it’s expected to be: There has always been a set of folks threatening to reduce the rights of people that are generally of a darker hue, and there has always been a set of folks who stepped up to battle against those threats."

this is precisely the math, which is most often stealing public funds for corporate welfare, not unlike stealing public funds for grifter insurrectionist welfare, and is why ed tech went all in on authoritarianism

You don’t have to let the racists and their crying be your assignment editor. This is true if you’re in the media and especially true if you are Just Some Guy On Here.

In 2000, we had protests (*in-person*!) about DoubleClick’s use of cookies for advertising, and the potential to track people across as many as 1500 (🤣) websites. They dodged the objections, Google bought DoubleClick, and every harm that was feared came to pass. archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes....

The arrogance and complete absence of self awareness of all these tech and finance types to understand that says everything you need to know about them. Some people are just in charge of things to be in charge of things, not because they are brilliant, including the Masters of the Universe™️

Our society in a nutshell:

The corruption of every other president combined does not add up to what this one man has done in office.

On the left is an Onion headline from March. On the right is Reuters, today.

Evergreen post

Coward says what

Nearly 60 trades a day! Madness.

Trump doesn't care about the economic plight of the average American because he's too busy calling his broker His stunning 3,700 trades in just 3 months in firms like Palantir, Nvidia and Boeing should be another Watergate. Here's how to make it one My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/trum...

Was he personally selling part of that 10%? You can’t convince me he wasn’t.

"If AI were a candidate for political office, it would be losing in a landslide." www.axios.com/2026/05/17/a...

You love to see it

“The War of 1812 is over. Now we’re onto a new project: rebuilding the White House which somehow became damaged.”

… we have lost much of the civil rights act, most of roe v wade, most of the EPA, any remnants of a progressive tax code, the voting rights act. I’ll be shocked if the ADA makes it through the next two years. I want to vote for candidates who recognize the scope and are ready to try new things.

What’s old is new again. (I cannot emphasize enough how bad this is, if it doesn’t change)

If you thought elaborately faking being good at videogames to impress a bunch of manchildren was embarrassing, consider elaborately faking that your mother loves you.

This is the right thing to do, obviously, but god it's bleak that this may very well end up with less Black representation in the South AND throughout the rest of the country as the districts get carved up

71% of Americans now oppose data centers being built in their area. Nearly half of all Americans (48%) strongly oppose them. And just 7% strongly favor data centers being built in their area, according to new Gallup polling. news.gallup.com/poll/709772/...

once again, just spitballing, what if we just provided for everyone's basic material needs

Anyone out there unclear how well the United States would be doing economically without California and New York?

people need to start identifying with fiction and myths again and not try to narrativize real life

OpenAI needs to lose every one of these lawsuits and be completely destroyed. It does not deserve to exist.

Yes, exactly. It also gives Iran incentives to hold out, since establishing a deterrent needs unignorable economic pain. As long as Trump manages to manipulate markets, the pain doesn't hit, and Iran has strategic reasons to do more damage.

He made the Reflecting Pool look like a toilet bowl filled with cleaner…

the most anti free speech administration in this country’s history

It's the Federalist Society's junta, and we're its subjects.

there's no marcomentum, stop trying to make marcomentum happen.

Just a reminder that corporate media will happily launder any politician as long as they talk to them and play the game. You can carry out any war or genocide or kill literally millions of people and they'll slop up this bullshit for you if you give them a minute of useless, meaningless chit-chat.

Really cool

Far right authoritarianism is not a horse race Far right authoritarianism is not a horse race Far right authoritarianism is not a horse race Far right authoritarianism is not a horse race Far right authoritarianism is not a horse race Far right authoritarianism is not a horse race Far right author-

We Should Have Finished Reconstruction: A Brief History Of American Politics, 1865-2026

this is correct. we so often choose to not fight when we might lose, rather than taking the risk and getting caught trying. older example: the biden wh's response to dobbs. “well, our executive action is guaranteed to be overturned” — and? do it anyway, lose, and show the courts are partisan.

Fascists succeed in general because they are willing to take stuff, break rules, get violent, while most of their opponents are not Fascists lose, in general, because they pick (at least) one fight too many with someone they didn't expect to fight back

This is the only path forward to save and renew our democracy from the death spiral it is in

This statement… OH SO TRUE