I’m going to term this the “no take backs“ proviso.

“The U.S. has a complex political system with checks and balances and many veto points.”

So, they're giving GOP congress members the green light to flat-out lie in spending negotiations, with the knowledge that the money won't get spent in the end.

Not only is this foreign aid stay an assault on the separation of powers and rule of law, it’s also an assault on Congress as an institution. If Congress can’t tell the executive to spend money, what can it *actually* do?

Supreme Court rules 6-3 that congressional appropriations are optional: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

Why would Democrats agree to any budget deal when all of it can be overturned by executive fiat?

The concept you are reaching for is political repression. www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

I can’t believe how depressing it is to watch this. I know I’ve said it before, but this sucks.

Congress has the power of the purse; but no one has standing to challenge the administration’s refusal to spend the money appropriated by Congress as Congress intended … is quite the position!

apnews.com/article/jimm... A whole lot of conservatives simply refused to learn that attempting to manufacture controversy without authority, clout, or follow-through is just the Streisand Effect on steroids. Dude's ratings are through the roof and he won this standoff every conceivable way.

I feel bad for the intern tasked with finding proof of my wokeness: "And finally, Daniel Pemstein of NDSU assigns mainstream American Economic Review articles on income inequality and racial discrimination. He also conducts research on political candidates’ use of “toxic” language on social media."

Here's a little #rstats script I wrote to automate creating Google docs for my students for an assignment. The idea is that the history in the Google doc will help secure the integrity of the assignment by discouraging gen AI use. #academicsky Link: gist.github.com/saudiwin/986...

Over 14,000 physicians currently practicing in the United States, concentrated in underserved Midwestern+Southern states, are currently working on H-1B visas. This is the high-skill visa program, lifeblood for critical sectors, that the US Administration is sledgehammering. doi.org/10.1007/s116...

UCLA’s funds reinstated after yesterday’s court order! Thanks to the brave researchers and their amazing counsel, including Dean Chemerinsky, who brought suit. This is just another turn in the ongoing fight, but a great result for now.

The richest man on earth owns X. The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok. The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post. See the problem here?

Excellent. More of this, please.

A campus message today from UCLA vice chancellor for research Roger Wakimoto after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration last night to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in NIH grants: “Our hope is that the agency will abide by the judge’s ruling” www.latimes.com/california/s...

Really want more headlines like, “Most unpopular President in recent history says crazy shit,“ instead of the endless normalization of extremism that we get every day. www.economist.com/interactive/...

Do any of the professors or journalists or teachers also get their jobs back or nah

It is worth understanding that they’re not exactly trying to dismantle education as much as they’re trying to co-opt it.

Maybe we can try unplugging our campaign finance system and restart it?

"When nearly one-third of all political contributions get recycled back into asking for more contributions, we've created a system that exists primarily to perpetuate itself while enriching fundraising consultants." data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-fundra...

"Autism experts at the CDC were neither consulted for the White House’s long-awaited autism announcement nor asked to review a draft of the findings and recommendations, CDC scientists told @kffhealthnews.org" Always read @amymaxmen.bsky.social: kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Nunziata was GOP chief nominations counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Played a key role in Roberts’s and Alito’s confirmations. And now he’s speaking out against Trump’s assault on the rule of law more firmly than most Democrats. Read this. Consider it a challenge to match his urgency.

It's impossible to overstate how problematic it is for the White House to demand payouts or company stakes in the course of approving deals, hand-selecting acquirers, demanding corporate compliance or anything else.

A fundamental premise of MAGA is that there are no facts, just vibes. Evidence and science have equal status as Internet (un)informed opinion. Whatever you want to be true, is true as long as you feel it strongly.

Medical ethicist Arthur Kaplan, quoted in the NYT: “The announcement on autism was the saddest display of a lack of evidence, rumors, recyling old myths, lousy advice, outright lies & dangerous advice I have ever witnessed by anyone in authority in the world claiming to know anything about science”

Infant mortality in the USA

The whole administration in one quote

This is incredibly misleading article. Literally everyone who reads it will be stupider as a result.

We have learned nothing

Democrats should become the anti-corruption party. 72% of voters think a member of Congress would likely accept a bribe if offered one. 80% say donors run DC. The solution isn’t left vs right, it’s clean vs corrupt. But first, Democrats must reform themselves and reject big money.

This is literally false

Giving a bully your lunch money is only a temporary downpayment for future bullying. We ALL need to step up for the first amendment. By-the-way, for the record, this ex-Disney employee finds Jimmy Kimmel very talented and funny. mh

I’m in Vienna right now. A city which went from being the intellectual and cultural capital of the world to a “provincial backwater” (to quote Brian Barry) in a couple of decades due to nationalism, anti-semitism and fascism which drove away the leading scholars and artists it didn’t murder.

"journalists must sign a pledge not to gather any information, including unclassified reports, that hasn't been authorized for release" or lose their press credentials - openly authoritarian www.npr.org/2025/09/20/g...

There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.

In a less insane time, if it was discovered that the President of the United States said this privately to their AG, it would’ve triggered an all-encompassing, impeachable corruption scandal. Here, Trump is saying it publicly and it’s just another Saturday.

Honestly this is disturbing on so many levels my mind just fragmented and rebooted.

"The note appears 'to have been added after the beverage was handed off, likely by someone else...'" 🤔

RIP U.S. innovation. Between gutting the H-1B program, purging US scientists from civil service, slashing research grants, and disappearing international students off the streets, our government has made a conscious decision to kill America's roll as a global leader in science and innovation.

This is good. #USFascism explained in 90 seconds…

WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The American regime is planning to install a new prosecutor to more efficiently target its political opponents

“What we’re seeing is an unprecedented attempt to silence disfavored speech by the government,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. “Donald Trump is trying to dictate what Americans can say.” https://to.pbs.org/46AYg7U

The future is here and it I really dumb!

It’s destabilizing to realize how fragile it always was.

Endangering children to own the libs.

In a meeting that devolved into confusion and near chaos, federal advisers on Thursday voted 8 to 3 against vaccinating children under four years old with a combination shot that protects against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/h...

When someone says one thing to gain power and then a contradictory thing when exercising that power, the most useful lens for understanding it is power, not hypocrisy.