“Walmart was the top employer of SNAP recipients in five states and one of the top four employers in the remaining four states. McDonald’s was among the top five employers of Medicaid enrollees in five of six states and SNAP recipients in eight of nine states.” www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/w...

Great framing.

Who is furloughed, and who isn’t, remains uncertain, according to agency employees and observers interviewed by High Country News; it is not being carried out in an orderly or consistent fashion across the agency.

Researchers found that moisture lost to evaporation and drought, plus runoff from pumped groundwater, now outpaces the melting of glaciers and the ice sheets of either Antarctica or Greenland as the largest contributor of water to the oceans. By @abrahm.bsky.social

Mail voting is a secure way to cast a ballot that dates back to the Civil War. Election officials in every state use tested and multi-layered checks to ensure that mail voting is safe. 1/

“Sustainable” bitcoin mining is an oxymoron, given the enormous amounts of power and water data centers consume.

To combat declining numbers, scientists are installing nest boxes for the American kestrel.

New, from me: Trump just fired the head of the BLS, accusing her of rigging data. The reality is that by shooting the messenger reporting on the negative effects of his economic policies, Trump pushed America further into banana republic territory. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trump-shoo...

Missoula MT turns out! #NoKings

The Trump Administration is making it harder for eligible Social Security beneficiaries to access their benefits by eliminating phone services, forcing millions more people to seek in-person help even as it cuts thousands of Social Security Administration (SSA) staff. 🧵 www.cbpp.org/research/soc...

Statement from detained student Rümeysa Öztürk dictated to her attorneys while jailed at the South Louisiana ICE facility: “Efforts to target me because of my op-ed in the Tufts Daily calling for the equal dignity and humanity of all people will not deter me” @theintercept.com

“I promise you, (John Lewis) that I will do everything possible to make you proud.” —Cory Booker

A pie graph worth keeping in mind as the NIH budget plummets jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... for 356 new FDA drugs approved

So it appears DOGE has decreed that Social Security administration will no longer provide phone support. At all. This is in addition to shutting down a ton of local SSA offices. www.axios.com/2025/03/17/s...

You literally cannot tell this incredibly cool part of American history without centering Native American identity. It is an powerful demonstration of how diversity provided tangible military advantages over an enemy committed to White supremacy. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/whitewashi...

1. What you see here is clearest illustration why things are so messed up and why it cannot get any better until this asymmetry is addressed. Put simply: the right-wing has narrative dominance. My org @mmfa.bsky.social did this study and has been sounding this alarm for years. Some thoughts...

Something that's been clear to me for some time is that a lot of progressive advocacy and politics has overindexed on finding just the right combination of words to say while ignoring the fact that no media ecosystem exists where people might actually hear you say them. New from @mmfa.bsky.social

Overwhelmingly right leaning and overwhelmingly male dominated.

AOC on senate Dems caving and backing the CR: “A wide sense of betrayal.”

If you vote for this Republican Funding Bill, you are complicit in all that DOGE, President Elon, and Trump does.

Today on Volts: the costs of accommodating all those new data centers on the grid are being subtly shifted to ordinary electricity ratepayers, via rate cases. And in the process, Big Tech & utilities are forming an unholy alliance against grid reform. Two Harvard Law scholars get into the details.

BREAKING: In a recording obtained by @propublica.org's Eli Hager, acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek portrayed his agency as facing peril, while also encouraging patience with “the DOGE kids.” Much, much more here 👇 www.propublica.org/article/reco...

Here Are the Arguments for Why Senate Ds Should Vote Yes and Why They’re Wrong talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/here-...

As Musk and others claim undocumented immigrants are eligible for Social Security, it's a good time to re-up this from KFF's Sept '24 survey: Many people think immigrants can get Social Security and other benefits as soon as they arrive in the U.S. or are unsure. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/u...

the Trump administration is dropping enforcement action against a plant that's exposing a mostly-Black community to cancer-causing levels of chloroprene because it's "wasteful" and "DEI," while RFK flaps his arms vaguely about food coloring www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

One Republican proposal would make it harder for kids to access free school meals, increase grocery costs for their parents, and add unnecessary paperwork for schools & families. 24,000 schools serving 12 million children could be impacted. See the impact in your state: www.cbpp.org/research/foo...

Make America Healthy Again! www.politico.com/news/2025/03...

My latest post is now out. I show how Trump's attacks on science and universities are neither random nor new - they fit very precisely into the authoritarian playbook. This means we can guess what might come next and prepare - and we must! christinapagel.substack.com/p/censor-pur...

this entire article is an argument for dems to refuse to lift a single fucking finger to help republicans pass a dirty CR. if congressional republicans can go straight to musk to get relief for their districts but congressional democrats can't, then there's absolutely no reason to help, at all.

New, from me: you were told that the threats to free speech came from wokeness. Some compared it to Maoist China. Now we are witnessing government power being used to silence dissent and censor ideas. Now we know what real society-wide chilling effects look like. 🧵 open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

Dems can still get D senators to clip Elon's wings. But they only have about 48 hours to do it. I lay out the terrain in this post. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/will-...

The USPS is the nation’s lifeline, ensuring delivery to every corner of the country. We cannot allow it to be dismantled, sold off, and handed over to Wall Street billionaires for profit. Privatization would increase costs, reduce access, and be an utter disaster.

When Trump's agency heads ripped into Musk inside the WH, what they really revealed is that DOGE is on the verge of unleashing governing catastrophes that they don't want to take the blame for. On the pod, @katearonoff.bsky.social and I dig deep into this dynamic: newrepublic.com/article/1925...

Trump wants to control all federal firing & hiring. He wants to be able to reduce & refill the ranks of career fed'l employees. It's soft coup (non-military) happening before our eyes, but too many people aren't paying attention. Read about it here: joycevance.substack.com/p/humphreys-...

This affidavit, filed by a former Social Security employee in one of the DOGE cases, reveals a shocking exposure of personal info to DOGE operatives & possible compromise of parts of the system. Everyone should read this. Start at para 9. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Tuberculosis, the deadliest infectious disease on the planet, kills more than 1.25M people a year. New infections are expected to surge by 30% as a result of closing USAID, a memo says. The increase will inevitably lead to cases in the U.S.

Yes. If DHS can barge in, say your visa was revoked, be told you have a green card, say it's revoked too, and then disappear you so that neither your lawyer nor your family can find you, then all the guardrails are gone. There is no policy, practice, or law protecting anyone.

The massive income and wealth inequality that exists in America today is literally a matter of life and death. People in wealthy counties live SEVEN years longer than people in poorer communities. That’s unacceptable. EVERYONE has the right to a long, happy and productive life.

Don't let anyone tell you that Medicare and Medicaid are too expensive Here is a chart of the increase in cost of both programs compared to private insurance since 2007 The cost of private insurance has increased far more than either government plan Both plans are also cheaper in real dollars

This article proves how incredibly consequential the choice to resist instead of rolling over can be. These brave people are helping everyone, far beyond their own agency’s reach. Let’s all learn this lesson (Article also does a good job contextualizing Trump/Musk lies every time they’re relevant)

It hasn’t even been two months and already we know we don’t need the long judgment and perspective of history: his second administration is extremely high up there, arguably the top, in terms of both most openly and brazenly corrupt and lawless: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

If there is a recession, it will not have been caused by complex fluctuations in the economy. It will have been caused by Trump’s intentionally reckless chaos. Presidents rarely have this direct responsibility for economic cycles but this would be an exception.

RFK Jr is not a trustworthy source about vaccine efficacy or zoonosis, particularly for H5N1 in chickens. His claim that poultry vaccination will "turn those birds into mutant factories" is incorrect & I've got receipts 👇 Article by @alexander-a-tin.bsky.social www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-...

“Transitioning” from 50 straight months of job growth, a 400% rise in manufacturing construction and the best back-to-back years for the stock market in a quarter century. 🤡

NEW: The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees billions in aid and insures more than a trillion dollars in mortgages, is pondering using the blockchain and a stablecoin. One HUD official derided it as “monopoly money.” By @jessecoburn.bsky.social

Some of his readers have asked Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social why his technology news site, Tech Dirt, has been covering politics so intensely lately. www.techdirt.com/2025/03/04/w... I cannot recommend Mike's reply enough. It's exactly what readers need to hear, what journalists need to do.

Apparently Tesla isn't selling any cars which also means it's not selling carbon credits. It made 2.7 billion in carbon credits last year. Carbon credits is largely what has kept the company afloat

Democracy is burning, and we need sites like Bluesky more than ever. And Senator Durbin wants to repeal 230, which would massively stifle the ability of sites like Bluesky to exist, while massively empowering X and Meta. Why? It seems that someone in his office doesn't understand 230.