Super interesting guy vying to be the first Navy SEAL Democrat in Congress. Oh, and he carried the nuclear "football" for Obama.

Ken Paxton recently bought 3 Utah luxury condos worth $1.6 million. He then put them in a blind trust that shares an address with the Dallas home he appears to be sharing with a woman who is not his wife.

This small story is somehow the perfect encapsulation of the rot coming from inside the Trump White House:

<Pete Hegseth Mandates Gender-Affirming Care> is the headline you're looking for

About Pete Hegseth’s talk about testosterone for service members … Rep Becca Balint (D-VT): “There are so many people in this Administration that have some weird, intense homoerotic feelings toward men, while also being homophobic”…

Tom Homan: "It all go backs to the Dems ... there's still gonna be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth and let ICE enforce the laws that they enacted."

I guess this is what the FBI does now that they've stopped investigating white-collar crime? www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/u...

Hatred of AI now reaching the level of cultural consensus that becomes attractive to advertisers

Huge new class action lawsuit filed by big publishers and authors against Google this week over AI training. It accuses Google of taking millions of books / articles provided to them for use only in Google Books, Google Play Books, and Google Scholar, and secretly using them to train LLMs. 🧵 1/4

PHASE ONE of our fight against the OMB rule is complete and YOU ALL SHOWED UP!!! HALF A MILLION COMMENTS is WILD. We absolutely exceeded our goal of 100,000! So, what happens next??? Welcome to PHASE TWO: Pressure and Preparation! 1/x

Elon Musk's xAI has installed more than double the number of gas turbines than it has publicly acknowledged to power its Colossus 2 data center project, without federal permits, and the pollution is hitting predominantly Black neighborhoods the hardest reut.rs/4bIghEm

E Jean Carroll's atty has $5.62M for the Carroll II verdict. ...

BREAKING: E. Jean Carroll just received Trump's $5 million — plus interest. Despite Trump's repeated attempts to block Carroll from receiving the money, $5,625,005.48 was disbursed to Carroll's legal team this week. www.ms.now/news/e-jean-...

BREAKING: BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) - Homeland Security secretary said man killed by ICE in Maine was not the target of warrant, Maine Sen. Angus King says.

I spoke to former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart, now a Maine voter, about the Graham Platner fiasco and what comes next -- as the state Dems scramble to nominate a candidate who can defeat Sen. Susan Collins.

Our local newspaper, The Portland Press Herald, has lifted their paywall on coverage of the ICE shooting of a man in Biddeford, Maine this morning. They have excellent reporters and will have much more accurate information than natl news as we learn more: www.pressherald.com/2026/07/13/s...

Huge victory — federal judge rules Trump's IRS suit was a sham from day one, reopening the case & exposing the $1.8B slush fund Accountability wins today

Compared to a year ago, Manhattan luxury real estate sales are holding firm despite fears of a “Mamdani effect.” In fact, there still isn’t enough luxury real estate inventory in the city. The myth that all the billionaires would leave was created by billionaires so they wouldn’t get taxed more.

Mitch McConnell has released a photo and the first statement on his condition: "I was briefly unconscious and was taken to the hospital. While receiving excellent care over the past several weeks, I’ve also had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia."

Forest bathing is somehow still underrated

he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Lindsey Graham’s office provides an update on his death — new information via the DC Medical Examiner:

He can talk for 20 mins at a time but can't type out a missive for good old Lindsey Graham 🤔

I hope the people who think Trump cares about them are seeing the way he talks after someone close to him dies

A brief and sudden illness after a trip to Ukraine... If this were a spy novel you'd think he got got.

Nearly 100 Epstein victims had their names exposed on Todd Blanche’s watch — & he withheld files the law required him to release Why? The bar complaint from 100+ judges suggests he was protecting Trump & himself My latest publisher’s note has the full story👇 -TN

A contractor building Meta's data center flushed its "closed-loop" cooling system straight into Cheyenne's sewer. It carried a bacterium and knocked the city's water-reuse system offline for months. They sell these as sealed systems that barely touch the water. This one poisoned a city's.

LORENZO SALGADO ARAUJO Thread of events being held TODAY. 1) Eugene, OR 7pm

“ a crime against humanity that makes anyone who still has a functioning moral compass want to scream in outrage.”

KEY: all three witnesses are being detained apart, and their story is consistent. They say that there were agents along the side of the vehicle but none in front. When you add the videos showing a lack of evidence of damage to the front despite ICE's ramming claim, ICE's story is falling apart.

I flew over Greenland on my way back from Europe and, like holy shit. I've never seen a crazier landscape

@normeisen.bsky.social and I discussed the 'Trumped up' case against Olympic canoeist Davey Hearn, who faces a felony charge for touching the waters of the reflecting pool

Guys I can’t keep doing this independently. I need a job. If you know of a place—advocacy, OSINT org, think tank, left media, etc—where I could take this work in-house, pls let me know. I admire the folks making independent work for them, but I am collapsing under the weight and the lack of impact.

when I saw the RS post my first thought was, "oh man. They better have assigned @stephenrodrick.bsky.social this profile." I was not disappointed

In Paris this 4th thinking about liberte egalite & fraternite, and visiting a scale model of Lady Liberty 🗽

For the 250th, I spoke with @kevinmkruse.bsky.social about the reactionary spasm of the MAGA movement, and how America has overcome similar struggles

You ever just stop and consider what sort of situation in the country would have to exist to actually satisfy freaks like this. Like what, precisely, would have to be happening, for him to think "yes, this is correct and good, and I am happy now." Because it gets extremely Nazi extremely fast.

The Slaughter case, overturning precedent, returns us to a spoils system where a president can “clean house” every four years, destroying our professional, independent civil service.

“Dear migrants, before I say any other word to you, I want to bow before your dignity. “You are not numbers or case files. “You are people — with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn.” — Pope Leo XIV

Happy Pride

pete hegseth is engaged in open racial discrimination against black officers. the clear message is that there is no place for black or women leadership in his military

I curated a (mostly) exhaustive list of Juneteenth celebrations across the country. Chances are there’s one near you!

(Disclosure: A former editor in chief of WIRED, Nick Thompson—currently the CEO of The Atlantic—is among those in both the public list and unreleased records. He declined to say whether he is a Dialog member.)

Here at the Reflecting Pool where a big chunk ofTrump's blue paint-apoxie has peeled off the bottom of the pool and is bobbling in the water.

In a notice filed Thursday in federal court, the administration said the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has begun the process of creating a new records system to track mail ballots. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Thank goodness we cut back on that SNAP funding 😞

New: The National Park Service has removed at least 51 exhibits from 38 sites ​to carry out President Donald Trump's executive order targeting displays that "inappropriately disparage Americans past or living," a court-ordered ‌inventory filed in Boston showed. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

The Iran deal has a $300b question at the heart of it, and maybe a 60 day trigger for Iran to start collecting tolls. Wonder if the two are connected