The government official who sent migrants to gulags is now urging the the firing of the journalists who reported the story and objected to it being killed. bsky.app/profile/thet...

@thedailyshowcouch.bsky.social "Separation of Church and Hate" author #johnfugelsang wonders why the Left doesn't lean into the fact that the teachings of #Jesus are inherently #progressive

Nencko Ganchev, a 56-year-old who did everything legally. ICE KILLED HIM!: Stand up and protect our immigrant brothers and sisters at https://www.gofundme... This is the 32nd immigrant to die in ICE custody. #Immigration #ICE #HumanRights #ImmigrantRights #PaxisApp

@timmiller.bsky.social on the difference between the two Trump terms: "The trade was that you get to do corrupt stuff...and I get a good economy, and to see the libs I hate cry... And like this time, the deal is like, I get a shitty economy, and I get to watch you name stuff after yourself."

JUST IN: Judge blocks Trump's attempt to strip security clearance from whistleblower lawyer Mark Zaid. Judge Amir Ali (Biden) says the move may violate Constitution's ban on bills of attainder. Doc: ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

Karma Is Coming For the World's Worst People Trump, Epstein, Bari Weiss, Russell Brand and MAGA Grifters are all eating generous doses of humble pie as their incompetence, ugliness, and criminality are being exposed in front of the world. open.substack.com/pub/thelefth...

Kavanaugh goes out of his way to pen a footnote not having to deal with the case at hand. He appears to be trying to narrow the forces he unleashed with his prior opinion allowing for race- and ethnicity-based #KavanaughStops

Investigative reporter Julie K. Brown points out that the redactions Trump's DOJ is making to the Epstein documents makes Epstein's survivors wonder whose protection is the real priority.

The real question is not "Why is Bluesky so left-coded," the real question is "Why can't the right exist in a social media environment without algorithmic assistance, where people can ignore them"

I need to use up my @nytimes.com gift links for December and can't think of a better story to share than this one about DOGE's disastrous fails and disruptions: "The group’s biggest claims were largely incorrect...And its many smaller cuts added up to few savings." 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

Thousands of members of the Canadian Armed Forces are spending Christmas away from home – standing on guard for our freedoms, and those of our allies. In this increasingly dangerous and divided world, we are ever more grateful for your service and sacrifice. Merry Christmas.

"It is logically impossible to simultaneously be evil, corrupt, and incompetent" is an absolutely amazing take to have in the year of 2025

Good framing, NBC News, the Speaker (a Republican, if I recall correctly), who previously had them out for weeks rather than work on the shutdown or release the Epstein Files, is now skeedaddling off while one party is shouting for them to remain and get it done. But CONGRESS, sure.

NASHVILLE - TN HS Dems Tennessee High School Dems deliver a petition to Senator @MarshaBlackburn to stop the just-announced government partnership forcing TP USA chapters into every school in Tennessee. (“to stop far right extremism”)

Check out the Kavanaugh FN 4; I think it's pretty clear that the Kavanaugh Stop thing has gotten to him:

The US State Department is now going to be deporting people and/or revoking visas over Benz, Taibbi, and Shellenberger’s “censorship industrial complex” hoax. Let that sink in. This is what the Twitter Files pretext was actually about. Water boys for authoritarians. www.state.gov/releases/off...

The Supreme Court just handed Trump a rare — and very significant — loss www.vox.com/politics/473...

The full video (18 min) is really sweet. www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9XN...

kavanaugh not beating the allegations that he’s a dumbass

Btw, I am not often an openly, you know, *positive* person. But this is may be the thing about writing for the NYT I love most even though I’ve never had to benefit from it. They are not afraid of lawsuits. Their lawyers are small adorable bunnies but if you fight them they will nuke you

Turning Point USA was founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery Two of their major policy pushes were a more prominent gun culture and zero COVID restrictions Bill Montgomery died to the COVID virus Charlie Kirk died to gun violence

This combination in fact describes most people in charge.

Btw this is one of the biggest reasons why it’s not as easy as people think to start up independent newsrooms or just be an indie journalist on substack. If you are actually holding powerful and rich people to account, you WILL need legal representation. Not a matter of whether but when

There's so much weird about this, and one of those things is that this dude is a governor of a state so why is he taking on this federal role too?! Other than his abject fealty to Trump, of course.

Conservatives have long worked to brand antisemitism as a problem that exists exclusively on the left. The chaos at AmericaFest this past weekend suggests that narrative is collapsing, and the MAGA movement is being forced to confront its own internal fault lines.

the quality of work that bari weiss produced at THE FREE PRESS was dogshit-tier bad (even by the standards of right wing slop) but it was a financial success anyway because Substack's right wing owners and other oligarch benefactors heavily promoted it. A timeslot hit

this image is maybe the single greatest joke in TRADING PLACES. and also a pretty apt description of the trump/vance/national conservative vision of america

THIS is among the most important list of documents the public needs to see. www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

DOGE was premised on one of the deepest lies of American politics: that the federal government doesn't work well & is wasteful. Since the federal government at least was actually quite well run at the level of ordinary bureaucracy & has intense rules for constraining waste, it could never succeed

This is an almost shockingly wise essay. I'm glad I've finally read it.

Trump: "I'm gonna protect women whether they like it or not." -Oct, 2024

"A Miami Herald reporter witnessed the agents forcefully removing Dayana — who is 4-feet, 11-inches tall and weighs 85 pounds — from her white Toyota Corolla. The footage shows Dayana yelling at the reporter to help her and that she was a United States citizen"

Well this is a beautiful edition

I love that he's explaining the housing crisis from the landlord perspective

Billy Ray Valentine. Capricorn.

and it's that depiction of extreme wealth that i think is so relevant today. since it is impossible, if you are paying a little bit of attention, to escape the sense that the extremely wealthy today do not think that the rest of us really exist

okay fair warning for people who have never seen this movie. it was made in the early 80s so there are some moments which are...rough

i honestly cannot think of a modern movie or television show — except maybe succession — that presents the super wealthy as cruel and bigoted as this movie does. one of the duke brothers drops a hard R!

this movie is among other things a pretty stark portrait of urban inequality

as per a post a few days ago about nostalgia and popular culture, this movie — which was shot in 1982 — gives you a glimpse of what life was actually like for the working poor in the early 80s.

love to see bill cobbs in anything. one of the greats

it is crazy to think that eddie murphy was only about 21 when he filmed this movie. just a remarkable amount of skill and talent and he is still a half decade away from his peak.

mvp of this movie imo is denholm elliott. every single face he makes and line he delivers is hilarious

the rich in this film are presented as greedy, venal eugenicists and it is probably a kinder and gentler portrayal then they deserve

watching my favorite christmas movie and what is possibly the great american comedy about class and race

It takes less than 90 minutes for Louis Winthorp to go from privileged 1%er to thinking shooting rich people in the kneecaps might be a good idea because they're needlessly cruel and like, yeah he gets it

The best essay about this film that I've ever read, and I've not only read dozens, I've written a few myself. Hooray for Mary!

The "free speech warriors" continue to push for censorship

Amateur hackers are using Photoshop to undo redactions in files released by the Department of Justice in the Epstein case.

Weiss knows this, if Jenkins does not, maybe she shouldn’t be commenting on stories where the subjects are unlikely to comment and will go to great lengths not to, and write arounds and the like are necessary and common