we should stop letting the police departments in supposedly progressive cities use poor communities as policy labs for dangerous technology designed to incarcerate as many of those people as possible

this is the third time Donald Trump has shut down the government while his party controls both houses of Congress

the democrats do not listen to this particular random dude on the internet, but: do not listen to the stupid headlines, hold the line, let Trump and company brag about how much damage they’re doing fuck these people, give them nothing, show the public that none of this is acceptable or normal

worth it solely for this reason, tbh

"Republicans run the entire government but can't keep it open" That's it. That's the whole story.

The endgame for all of this is constructing a military that will obey orders when ordered to fire on citizens. That's the throughline to half of what Trump is doing.

They seem to be rejecting the fundamental conceptual basis of international trade. They really want autarchy! I've said it jokingly, but it's honestly a legitimate point: part of our difficulty fighting these people is that we have trouble internalizing how fucking stupid they are.

look, the president taking responsibility personally for cutting popular universal entitlements in a very public way which will almost certainly get blocked in court is pretty much the optimal option for democrats right now? just let him do it

In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists when unprovoked — what would we call it? If federal agents marched down streets demanding papers — what would we say? Authoritarianism — let’s not pretend it’s something else when it happens in our American cities.

Incredible that we're going to have our first shutdown since the last time Trump and Republicans controlled every branch of government.

Undocumented immigrants aren’t even *allowed* to access Medicare, Medicaid or ACA credits. Republicans like Randy are going to spike your health insurance premiums, but they REALLY want you to blame an immigrant instead.

Blue cities should tear up the roads in front of ICE facilities and then start decades of community engagement and input sessions to rebuild them. Let's harness our core competencies.

lol i would kinda respect the whole demanding a meeting thing much more if they brought a doc along to secretly assess how far along his dementia actually was

A pattern is developing where everyone who fights back against a Trump attack inevitably wins with their reputation much better than before, and everyone who caves to him looks like shit and has Trump coming back for more a month later.

In that entire NYT focus group article, no Republican brought up trans rights, abortion, climate change, or feminism once. Indeed, they barely talked about Democrats at all, and some of them said they had good ideas but were "weak".

let’s hand it to president brain genius for raising the issue salience of prescription drug pricing right as his party is about to shut down the government rather than stop health care premiums from jumping by double digit percentages

leak the memo leak the memo leak the memo

WOW. The lead plaintiff is a Latino man who's been here legally for 24 years. He was grabbed off the street by plainclothes federal agents who didn't even ASK about his status. He was detained overnight and only released once a supervisor realized he had been illegally arrested.

1. This piece by Roge Karma is absolutely worth reading - www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch... . If the Supreme Court allows Trump to fire Lisa Cook, the consequences are likely to be disastrous. key points:

5. There's little to stop Trump using "a bottomless slush fund. He could direct money to favored industries, such as crypto, or even his own businesses. He could reward media outlets ... companies that donate to Republican campaigns, and even the budgets of local officials who promote his agenda."

8. "An organization subjected to such treatment would be unable to pay its employees, manage its endowment, or receive funding from government or private sources. An individual would be unable to receive direct deposits from their employer, get a mortgage from a bank, or pay their bills."

The thing is I think it’s a pure bluff. If they wanted to do this and felt they could, they simply would do it and not need a shutdown. If they wanted to do it and felt they needed a shutdown, they can cause one themselves. The idea that shooting this hostage would help them is absurd.

If these are actually low attention citizens (which I'd be skeptical about fwiw), this is quite promising

It infuriates me that when Chipotle messes up your app order, the only resolution they offer is a credit for that same item free next order. And the credit expires. If you paid money for an item you didn’t receive, you are owed a refund not a coupon requiring you return in the next 10 days!

So just to be clear: The US is propping up Argentina’s economy, and now Argentina can eliminate its export taxes, so it can sell tons of soybeans to China, so China isn’t forced to buy soybeans from the US, so the US can pay subsidies to keep our farmers solvent. www.reuters.com/world/china/...

I'm so grateful that kids so intuitively understand new tech

Well, there it is. Sinclair is digging in for a fight, so please help push back -- find stations in your area, watch their local news to see what ads they run, then write those advertisers to tell them you're boycotting as long as they're on a Sinclair station. List here: sbgi.net/tv-stations/

#SinclairPushBack Watch your local news Write down advertisers Share those advertisers Let the boycotting begin

I suspect we are, probably for our own mental health, underestimating the degree to which the Trump administration is dominated by the worst swingers imaginable

Seems like QP2 a pretty big deal, too. Suggests that SCOTUS wants to answer “even if it’s illegal for the President to fire someone, courts are powerless to stop it.” [stares at the Fed]

sounds fair, sinclair pulls kimmel, abc pulls college football from every affiliate in the southeastern conference, everybody wins

nyt push alert authors can’t even

i think one thing people have a hard time grasping is that the central figures of the trump administration are not bad as in "the worst republican blowhard you know," but bad as in "the worst people you have ever heard of." donald trump is a serial rapist whose best friend was a pedophile.

set aside the folly of such a demand but given everything that the federal government is doing right now Democrats should be doing everything in their power *to* shut down the government

Also, there's a John Oliver segment on Sinclair, explaining why they are dangerous outside of blackmailing networks.

The way to understand the importance of cancelling Disney+ is that it is an opportunity not just to exert power, but to pop the Twitter bubble execs have lived in for the past half decade, and show them their insular information environment has put their bottom line at risk.

I would call this “consciousness of guilt” in an eventual domestic trial or international war crimes tribunal.

Dems ought to be telling people now these letters are worth absolutely nothing.

Heard from a friend at Disney+ that there are multiple levels of freakout internally, both from internal dissatisfaction, concerns about subscription cancelations, and of course the big one: concern about a boycott spilling over into parks and cruises.

Luckily, Sinclair has a helpful database of all their stations, so you can see if they're operating in your area and respond accordingly. sbgi.net/tv-stations/

I gave my heart and soul to that place. Built entire sections for journalists pushed out of their home countries. When the writer I hired, Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi Arabia, they paraded me around as a symbol for press freedom. I put MY LIFE on the line to defend journalism and WaPo.

It’s so pathetically obvious how desperately he craves the respect and adoration of these people he claims to hate; and so satisfying to know he will never, ever get it.

Having no Trump statues is definitely better than having that fucking guy everywhere. However, I'm still in favor of building one or a few, cause, like, we deserve something to tear down later.

If some Dem yahoo had said what Kilmeade said and these kinds of shootings ensued (even if completely coincidental), Fox News and every other wingnut outlet would be trumpeting it like a 5 alarm fire.

See this is very sharp, but it's the kind of thing that should populate the budget bill. Any illegal impoundment should result in the immediate elimination of the presidential travel budget, for example.

This is an area you can push back in your own community, if you live in one of cities listed in the solicitation in this story. Talk to city council and state reps, as well as local landlords and organizers. Create pressure preemptively to keep them from using private spaces. Cities include... [1/2]

which is really why I bristle at the "don't register for a protest" bullshit. if you cannot participate in peaceful civil society actions under your wallet name, you are already in an autocracy. DO NOT CEDE THAT GROUND UNLESS YOU HAVE TO. you are a fucking american, peaceably assembling, act like it

I've also registered for multiple protests and local orgs, fwiw bsky.app/profile/sky....