“If we are going to do a third Reconstruction we need politicians who conceive of themselves as working on behalf of a constituency, rather than would-be-saviors…And, like the people of Minnesota, we need to do the work to be that constituency…” www.liberalcurrents.com/aoc-for-pres...

Another reminder: if there exists *any* class of people who don't have due process rights, then *nobody* actually has due process rights because the government can always just say you're in that class.

I still think these two paragraphs from Ganz are the most important contemporary political writing

NEW: Sen Michael Bennet (D) says he will not appoint Gov Jared Polis to the Senate if Bennet is elected Governor. Bennet calls Polis' clemency for Tina Peters "disqualifying"

“If you, as a leftist, think [MTG] is better than AOC in any way, then I think you need help.” @mehdirhasan.bsky.social breaks down the double standard that holds AOC to endless scrutiny while overlooking MTG’s years of extremism and conspiracy theories. Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wqg...

One thing I’ve confirmed after multiple visits to Japan is that its reputation for having cleaner public spaces is not entirely because people are just littering less in public spaces. They litter less. But they still litter plenty. It’s primarily because someone is paying people to clean up.

Hungary’s parliament sings “Ode to Joy” — the anthem of Europe — after Péter Magyar is sworn in as prime minister. Hungary is once again a proud member of the European Union.

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Someone is insider trading on crude oil shorts using Iran War announcements from the White House…and making a LOT of money. You better bet we’ll be investigating ⬇️

#Axios reported an Iran deal as “imminent” five times in 19 days. Five times, no deal. Why does the same story keep coming from the same reporter? 🧵 1/3 .

what makes the SCOTUS Gang of Six acting as an unaccountable super-legislature especially intolerable is that they are not just setting up unfavorable rules, they are playing Calvinball where they selectively apply the rules case-by-case exclusively to help Republicans. A judicial dictatorship

Housing is distributed by people’s ability to pay. Refusing to build expensive new homes in your neighborhood does not make the rich people disappear or move elsewhere, it just ensures that they’ll outbid current residents for existing homes and renovate them into luxury housing.

Housing prices are set by supply and demand. New construction reduces rents by lowering prices in older buildings nearby. If relatively expensive new buildings aren’t built, the wealthier people who would have lived there will start bidding wars over the neighborhood’s existing less-expensive homes.

We don’t make enough of how lame it is he wants his name on everything. Loser shit.

The gunman by all accounts did not get close to Trump; he wasn’t “exposed” to him. The security plan balanced keeping the hotel open to the public with securing the discrete event that the president attended and, in this instance, it achieved both objectives. What’s the flaw?

I was at a birthday dinner last night with about 25 other people, and spent the morning out in the real world. Literally nobody is talking about the shooting. Most are unaware of it, or only peripherally aware and shrugging it off. It's a blip. We live in a violent country.

To figure out why Cole Allen did what he did, I obtained a copy of his resume and talked to his former friends. The portrait that emerges is unlike what the White House is saying: www.kenklippenstein.com/p/assassin-w...

I really think it’s important to underline that there was apparently no security breach. The gunman was confronted and stopped where he should have been according to the design—at the magnetometer perimeter. What this piece argues for is an *expansion* of the security perimeter in time and space.

Happy Miss Congeniality Day to all who celebrate!

Meme for the nerds about the gerrymandering wars (left is Dems, right is GOP)

The grim politics of resolving Polymarket bets: a reporter accurately reported on an Iranian missile that hit a forested area outside of Beit Shemesh. He quickly started receiving threats from Polymarket bettors who contracts would only pay out if the explosion was from an intercepted missile.

event betting sites are a scourge on society and need massive interdiction

second take

"It would be really bad if they don't work out this Hormuz thing, so they'll figure it out some way" is still the prevailing attitude. Can see it in markets, media, politicians, public. Bad can't happen, people in charge know what they're doing, it's all content anyway. I find it... unsettling.

In both foreign policy and economic policy, the core belief of Trumpism is that there is some button one can press to instantly and easily solve any problem, and every political leader this country has ever had was simply too cowardly to press it. That’s it.

Absolutely incredible. NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman, who commanded Artemis II, took this footage from the far side of the Moon with his iPhone. Watch with sound on.

Confidential memos by Supreme Court justices, obtained by The New York Times, show how they decided to bypass time-tested procedures and create the modern “shadow docket,” a rushed and secretive new way of doing business. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

Unbelievable corruption right in front of our faces.

:sobbing: the taxation of trade routes is in dispute ::

Trump: "Effective immediately, the US Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz...Additionally & at an appropriate moment, we are fully 'LOCKED AND LOADED,' & our Military will finish up little that is left of Iran!"

Hungary… WOW 🤩🇭🇺

Thirteen Americans have died in this war, thirteen families ripped apart who will deal with their loss for generations. And some worthless people - people who are clearly close to decision making - have the gall, the greed, and the arrogance to go make money betting on it.

Everything else he does, and therefore everything else his MAGA cult does, orbits around his base-level, inexhaustible need for adulation, praise, flattery, worship, and glorification. Everything, from common sense to global economic stability to the wellbeing of America, is subordinated to that.

Iranian drones are blowing up in Ukrainian cities every night. They have been for years.

They’re telling me a great empire will be destroyed if I attack Persia. Even the oracles who don’t like me very much, very nasty, they all said to me, “Sir, it’s one of the great empires, and it’ll be destroyed. And all because you attacked Persia.” That’s what they’re telling me.

A student just described the Articles of Confederation as thirteen different countries in a trench coat pretending to be one country and I don't think I will ever recover.

Kind of relevant, but more importantly, funny as hell.

Lmao the reason this leaked was because he wanted to buy IDEF, a totally illiquid BlackRock fund that trades ~$100k a day, instead of ITA which trades hundred of millions, so he had his brokers call up BlackRock and ask for a direct creation under his name. There’s so many layers of stupidity here.

the incentives here are so obscenely terrible that the entire thing should be illegal by default “I am sabotaging negotiations because I stand to make piles of money on Polymarket” is absolutely in play, what a horrifying clusterfuck

gatorade is owned by pepsico but it's the coca cola of the sports drink market. powerade in turn is owned by coca cola, but it's unquestionably the pepsi of sports drinks. this should be plainly obvious to all

neolithic guys get pissed if you tell them their cultures are organized by the type of pots and jewelry they made. "we called ourselves the blood hunters" "we conquered villages far beyond this horizon" sorry bud you're the western linear pottery culture now

If you want to read something that doesn't make you end by concluding "well, shit, we're cooked," like everything else does, read this

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

In a system structured so heavily around binary political outcomes, when one party is fully arsonist it is exceptionally reasonable for those targeted by reactionary violence to demand allies work on breaking arsonist power, because that becomes the whole of the political project until it is done.

Comer: "You're gonna see the Trump administration continue to freeze funds until Democrat governors do like what the Republican governors are doing: they're complying with the federal government, with the Trump administration."

Elon Musk, Feb 2025: "America should mind its own business rather than push for regime change all over the place.” Elon Musk now: