“The very bedrock of American democracy—free and fair elections—is under threat. … If the administration is allowed to continue on this path, Americans should not take the integrity of next year’s midterms for granted.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Guardians couldn’t hit Rangers pitching all night, so they walk it off by having a Rangers pitcher hit them. #GuardsBall #playoffs

This is, without any exaggeration, exactly how Putin and Orbán proceeded — using antisemitism to discredit the idea of civil society and political opposition, and as an excuse to undo the rule of law. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

Another page out of the authoritarian playbook. This is usually accompanied by an attack on the NGO’s tax status and/or passage of an NGO law regulating their activities. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

“I can say that my son died because of aid cuts. If doctors had support, my child would be alive.” A reminder that cuts to USAID have nothing to do with saving money. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/o...

There is a rumor that the Tigers will move to the Philippines. They will be known as the Manila Folders. #GuardsBall

I see that WJLA Channel 7, the Sinclair-owned ABC affiliate in Washington, is not broadcasting Jimmy Kimmel tonight. Our work is not complete. #jimmykimmellive #disney #censorship #freespeech

Guards in first place after being 15 1/2 down. No quit in this team. Man, this is fun. Meaningful September baseball is a blast. #GuardsBall

Fun fact: MLB record for strikeouts by one team in a nine-inning game is 20. Guardians pitchers are at 17 through 8 innings. Bonus fact: It has happened 8 times, and Detroit hitters have been involved in 3 of those. #GuardsBall

Guardians’ two-out rallies during this streak have been insane. #GuardsBall

Really scary to see David Fry get hit in the face. Hoping he is OK. Skubal’s reaction says a lot about him. Class act. #GuardsBall

Three runs without the ball leaving the infield. #GuardsBall

I’m not sure what to make of this, but it is a definite improvement over “you don’t have the cards.”Hard to tell if this just reflects the last conversation he had, or if he truly recognizes that Putin was jerking him around. #NAFO #StandWithUkraine www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

Vaclav Havel wrote about the importance of pointing out the law in a totalitarian society - it may not help in a situation where the government makes and enacts laws willy-nilly, but calling it out keeps the insanity of it all in the open for all to see.

A few years ago, when current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said, “Censorship is the authoritarian's dream,” we didn’t realize it was aspirational. www.yahoo.com/news/article...

Nothing better than being able to watch a weekday baseball game with playoff tension. Check that: nothing better than watching Jose Ramirez hit a two-run home to put the Guardians ahead in said weekday game. #GuardsBall

The details of the Jimmy Kimmel situation reveal that Trump has adopted one of Viktor Orbán's most effective weapons against the free press www.vox.com/politics/461...

a good arbiter of how close we are to bad hybrid regime shit is if the political comedy shows start getting pulled for whatever reason

“… the biggest danger in a polarised climate is that the shooting becomes the Reichstag fire of our age. That arson attack on 27 February 1933 marked Germany’s pivot from fragile democracy to outright dictatorship.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"Top of mind for Democrats is the White House’s use of a rare maneuver to skirt a vote and cancel nearly $5 billion in foreign aid funding that lawmakers had already approved. "

Marco Rubio’s 🤮 bill would gut the First Amendment, letting him revoke American citizens’ passports for vague “support.” Dissent becomes terrorism, speech a crime, all under the guise of security.

NATO’s value lies in its ability to deter aggression so it does not need to fight a war. To re-establish deterrence, NATO must destroy bases in Belarus and occupied Ukraine from which the drone attacks on Poland originated or give Ukraine the capability for long-range strikes on Russian bases. #NAFO

To better understand the threats to a democracy, USAID developed a strategic assessment framework. The assessment begins by analyzing five elements: consensus, inclusion, political competition and accountability, rule of law and human rights, and government responsiveness and effectiveness. 1/

Jamelle Bouie encapsulates the core question that animates MAGA: Is American citizenship a civic citizenship open to all who embrace its promise, or blood-and-soil nationalism open only to white Christians? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/o...

“… none of this is really about immigration. It is about the administration’s attempt to inflame racial tensions and divide Americans, and to acclimate them to the militarization of their streets and the stripping away of their constitutional protections.” www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

Marco Rubio is unfit to lead the State Department. Under his watch USAID clinics in Afghanistan shuttered, 60,000 left without care, and disaster aid collapsed. Every quake deadlier, every famine harsher, every survivor abandoned. That record is blood, not diplomacy.

I spoke today with a Latina friend who casually remarked that she now carries her U.S. passport card with her at all times. She is a U.S. CITIZEN! It feels like we are in a black-and-white movie where the Gestapo agents ask people on the street, “Papers, please.” www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Same old story: Administration takes illegal action. Lower court enjoins illegal action. Supreme Court removes injunction and lets illegal action continue until it is too late to unscramble the egg. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/u...

Wordle 1,535 1/6* Now I need to find a new opening word. 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

We are about to find out whether the courts will save the constitution or acquiesce to Trump’s illegal impoundments of congressionally appropriated funding. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u...

Here is your daily reminder that the destruction of USAID was never about saving money. www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

While Congress was away on August recess, the regime sent in troops to D.C. to consolidate its control. "The United States, just months before its 250th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism." www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/america-ti...

Good piece on how to respond to the current threat: “resist harm (block), facilitate dialogue across divides (bridge), and construct more inclusive, resilient futures (build), particularly in response to the spread of authoritarianism.” Read and repost. nonprofitquarterly.org/block-bridge...

I know there is a word for government ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. It’s just on the tip of my tongue… www.npr.org/2025/08/22/n...

Your daily reminder that J.D. Vance is an asshole. #NAFO #SlavaUkraini #StandWithUkraine www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/u...

Amb. Mike McFaul nails it on security guarantees to Ukraine: "We keep hearing something about ‘NATO-like security guarantees.’ Why not just NATO security guarantees? ... The only way to do real, credible security guarantees for Ukraine is membership in NATO.” #NAFO www.msnbc.com/weekends-wit...

“What I do not doubt is the abiding importance of public service, and the value of what you have done with yours…I know that you will continue to serve in different ways, helping to stand watch over our great experiment, even as too many of our elected leaders seem to be turning their backs on it.”

"The human rights report for 2024, put out last week by the Trump administration, is an extreme departure from decades of painstaking tracking of global human rights. It eliminates multiple critical human rights indicators, redefining in many ways who qualifies as human." thehill.com/opinion/inte...

A collective defense guarantee outside of NATO for a European country would lack the credibility of NATO’s Article 5. Worse, it would leave Ukraine outside the command and technical interoperability that NATO has developed. It would not deter further aggression. #NAFO www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-ar...

“Donbas is a highly fortified territory. There are hills, and the rest of Ukraine is flat and unfortified so if [Putin] takes over Donbas he has a clear road all the way to Odesa.” Parallels to Munich 1938, which forced Czechoslovakia to surrender its defendable mountainous borders. wapo.st/4oAngEd

Going on vacation tomorrow so spent Saturday night making maps of all the places in Ohio, West Virginia and South Carolina with higher violent crime and murder rates than D.C. Perhaps better places for those governors to focus resources! www.pbump.net/o/more-peopl...

Sad to note that Toledo, Dayton and my hometown of Cleveland all have violent crime rates that exceed that of Washington, DC. Yet, Gov. Mike DeWine is sending Ohio National Guard troops to DC. Ohioans should ask why the governor is wasting their tax dollars. #FreeDC www.cleveland.com/news/2025/08...

The world’s worst negotiator is trying to make Ukraine lose the war. His opening offer is “Keep what you stole and I’ll give you more.” Is it any wonder this guy has gone bankrupt six times owning casinos, where the house always wins? #SlavaUkraini #NAFO www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...

The carelessness with which this administration approaches national seciurity is frightening. Bring your own damn printer to a summit with a KGB agent. And don’t host a lunch in “honor” of a war criminal. www.npr.org/2025/08/16/n...

So, I go to the rink tonight to play my last beer league game with my sons before they go back to school, and an NHL player shows up to play for the other team. Just another Friday night. #ALLCAPS

Alaska I wasn’t familiar with your game

Spare a thought today for the Ukrainians who will suffer “some bad stuff” that Donald Trump has promised from his version of the Munich Agreement. Rewarding the aggressor with territory will lead only to further aggression. wapo.st/45Mdwzn #SlavaUkraini #NAFO

Seven steps from the authoritarian playbook, and we are only seven months in. www.cnn.com/2025/08/13/p...

Your regular reminder that DOGE was all about the cruelty and had nothing to do with saving money. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

With the State Dept's Bureau of Intel & Research newly gutted, Washington's Russian experts won't likely be in the room when Trump meets Putin in Alaska. "Safe to say that Trump does not have a single policymaking person who knows Russia & Ukraine advising him,” says ex career diplomat Eric Rubin.