Today on Volts: I'm joined by the great @michaelhobbes.bsky.social to discuss "reactionary centrism," an intellectual tendency that's come to dominate US public life. You know the type: would never view themselves as conservative, yet finds voluntary pronoun use vastly more aggravating than fascism.

This. Remember they cut healthcare for this.

In Printz v. United States, #SCOTUS held that the Constitution bars the federal government from forcing or otherwise compelling local or state governments to enforce federal law. The liberal squish who wrote the majority opinion in that case? Justice Antonin Scalia: tile.loc.gov/storage-serv...

CNN airs compilation of federal agents acting with extreme aggression towards peaceful observers.

Demands should be: 1. ICE Out of Minneapolis/MN (restrict by statute # of agents in city and state to 2024 staffing levels through 2029) 2. Kristi Noem resigns 3. Greg Bovino resigns 4. No masks for federal agents (w/ misdemeanor criminal penalties for violators) 5. Mandatory IDs on uniforms

The march is now passing the Chicago city hall / Cook County hall building. The chant goes up, "Minnesota don't you fear, we, the people, are right here"

Lot of conservative dudes out there telling on themselves by being astounded by a level of ”logistics” that the average mom has to manage every fucking day

The inescapable conclusion that neither the NYT nor WaPo editorial board can bring themselves to make is that this administration has to end. Its response to these killings—let alone the killings themselves—is obscene and totally disqualifying.

It’s currently operating totally outside of our constitutional rules. Habeas corpus , due process of law, equal protection, freedom of speech, 4th amendment protections against search and seizure, are all not being enforced in any common sense or meaningful way.

man the stuff i am seeing on IG from the most normie, i don’t really talk about politics accounts suggests something different

Every minute ICE is out there publicly defending kidnapping and using a fucking preschooler as bait is a moment they are losing. I refuse to believe that there is an America that wants this shit.

This is such an important point. That 5-year-old and his dad should never been detained in the first place! That's because they were already in the system and going through the legal process to seek asylum — and their arrest was seemingly just to juice ICE's numbers.

Minneapolis shows us the only way out Today, we will see the closest thing to a general strike in the US since 1946. Much of Minnesota will simply say, "Hell, no," to the lawless, vicious, and absurdly unnecessary assault on their neighbors by the Trump regime's Department of Homeland Security.

It’s hard to accurately describe what is happening in Minneapolis without sounding crazy. Unmarked rental vans all over the city, with people in military gear and no id jumping out of them to take captive anyone who looks nonwhite or who makes political speech they disagree with.

Jack Smith: "My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in our country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted. The rule of law is not self-executing. It depends on our collective commitment to apply it."

National media should really be covering the fact thay every major school, museum, and arts institution in the Twin Cities, and hundreds of local businesses are closed tomorrow to protest federal occupation. Nothing like this at this scale has happened anywhere in America anytime in living memory.

Jayapal: Did your investigation find that Donald Trump attempted to manufacture fraudulent slates of electors in 7 states that he lost? Smith: Yes. Jayapal: Did he pressure state officials to ignore true vote counts in those states? Smith: Yes.

it doesn't matter if you don't want to have this fight, it doesn't even matter if it's not politically optimal to have this fight the fight is here and sitting it out is not an option if you can't see that get out of the way

Just as everyone predicted with the exception of Donald Trump, Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick, and Kevin Hassett. The last 3 knew they’ve been lying, not sure with Orange Caligula because he’s a moron and a liar so in his case it could be either one or both.

10/10. No notes.

That people would only work to protect their neighbors because they get paid cuts to the core of conservative ideology. Across Minnesota, people, many who weren’t that political, are outside in negative temps, armed with whistles and phones putting their lives on the line to protect their neighbors.

ICE ended up returning the man, Saly, after realizing he’s a fucking US citizen with no criminal record, per his sister-in-law. These fucking animals.

Just so people outside of MN know - a lot of the US citizens getting “arrested” by ICE never get processed at Whipple. They are roughed up during the arrest and then often dropped off miles from where they were picked up. It means we don’t know the true scale of what ICE is doing based on ICE stats

Yet again, Elon Musk is pushing the insanely racist Great Replacement Theory that has directly inspired several mass murders from his fellow white supremacists. The richest man in the world who controls a massive media platform is *repeatedly* pushing this garbage and it should be a global scandal.

I can't say this loudly enough: THEY ARE TRYING TO NORMALIZE THE KILLING OF CIVILIANS FOR PARTICIPATING IN FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTED PROTEST ACTIVITIES.

"So Trump, Vance, and all their hirelings stand behind all the masked and untrained ICE officers, no matter what any of them might do, no matter how unjustified or indefensible any of their acts. I’m just one citizen. But I stand with Renee Nicole Good." open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

I've seen refugee aid efforts defeat multi-year occupations by regional / national police forces who deployed 30x the amount of resources. Hell I've been part of that. It is *very* possible. ICE's budget has a limit. Make them use it. ICE's morale has a limit. Make them lose it.

“'The guy, I’m telling him like, "Please step off the school grounds," and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he knocked me down,' an official at Roosevelt High School said. 'They don’t care. They’re just animals. I’ve never seen people behave like this.'"

If Renee Good is a "a domestic terrorist" according to Kristi Noem it means the label is meaningless and will be used by the Trump Administration to murder anyone it wants. From Venezuelan fishermen to anti Trump protestors in the No Kings Rally. Eyes wide open, friends.

Noting the egregious hypocrisy, not as a gotcha—you can't shame them by showing that they're acting against stated principles, because they don't have any principles—but as a reminder that this movement is post-truth, using words merely as tools to cheer their "team" or to get something they want.

Wall Street’s biggest banks made more money financing green projects than they did from working with fossil fuel companies for a fourth straight year, even as they faced ongoing pressure to pull back from the business

The President handed $12b to farmers who couldn't sell their crops because he started an international trade war but the real waste is daycare payments.

People ask, “If the economy is growing, why doesn’t it feel like it?” Because our individual economic realities are driven less by the national average and more by the policy choices—tariffs, taxes, and cuts—that decide who actually gets the gains from growth.

Yeah, this dum dum is talking about chicken pox. Anyway, it's very cool and awesome that he has so much cultural and political influence.

we’ve been over this we just did this in Massachusetts they’re not gonna leave, they’ll whine and bitch and moan and eventually this will raise more money than expected because nowhere they go is actually like the place they’re leaving

After buying it for $18.8 billion, Walgreens' new private equity owner has eliminated paid holidays for all hourly workers on Christmas and New Year's. Last year, Walgreens had a CEO-to-Worker pay gap of 410 to 1. Corporate greed that would make even Scrooge blush.

This is a model for what actual masculinity should be. Men don’t need to spend more time in caves beating their chests with other men; they need to take their daughters to a meaningful thing and talk to them about it. Relatedly I think the biggest cure for toxic masculinity is platonic women friends

I highly recommend watching this segment, not just because the CBS News execs and the White House didn’t want you to, but because these men were tortured and they deserved to have their voices heard.

Here’s the highest-quality upload of the 60 minutes CECOT segment I’ve found so far: www.dailymotion.com/video/x9w8gyi

Looks like sending it through Byers didn't have the intended result

Chicago is having none of this administration's BS.

BREAKING: RFKJr directs that the US instantly stop recommending all vaccinations for children. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

BREAKING on MS NOW: Jack Smith, in his opening statement to House Judiciary, says: "Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power."

you are not owed the affection of your children, but they are owed yours. if this seems unfair to you you are not fit to have kids. they don't get the choice that you do

I keep saying this but no one is connecting the dots. The war is to satisfy legal preconditions for mass removal *domestically* of Latinos (i.e., suddenly a lot of people are going to be “Venezuelan” for purposes of removal). This is 100% Stephen Miller…oil claim is to make grandpa go along

"We suffer through daily reminders of the weakness of his mind, but the U.S. has muddled along with other dim presidents. Where Trump occupies a category all his own is in his breathtaking moral depravity. The man is a moral abomination, and so are his defenders." open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

one thing that doesn’t get enough coverage or comment with regards to this administration is it how much it hates the actually existing united states

Kinda wild that the organization the FBI considers the biggest domestic threat is ... largely imaginary.

it is actually kind of bananas how unitary executive theorists have taken a straightforward clause requiring the president to "faithfully execute the laws" and transformed it into a grant for the exercise of limitless unenumerated power.