Rob earned this. Smile! #Phillies

The takedown of Stonewall Jackson has taken an interesting and dramatic turn. Kudos to Walker and Walker.

"Minutes after right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at an event in Utah on Wednesday, far-right influencers and extremist communities lit up social media with calls for violence against the left."

Trump: fascism time Bmore Mayor: fuck off Md Governor: fuck off DC Mayor: “DC Mayor Bowser on Wednesday credited President Trump's directed surge of fed. law enforcement. ‘We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city.’” We have a Vichy mayor

"The top story of the moment is the one story that our most influential newsrooms won’t touch: That the United State has become an authoritarian state." — Dan Froomkin @froomkin.bsky.social presswatchers.org/2025/08/we-h...

Land of the free?

6 months ago, in the shadow of the night, Israeli soldiers took 16-year-old American Muhammad Zaher Ibrahim from his family. He’s been imprisoned ever since. He’s suffered from scabies & lost 25 pounds. Remember Sayfollah Musallet, the young American killed by settlers last month? They’re cousins.

Much voter education needed in PA this fall.

Avelo Airlines has a contract with ICE to fly deportation flights for profit. Join the Hell No, Avelo campaign. Avelo is expanding. Their "Philadelphia" flights operate out of Wilmington. Sign the pledge. Spread the word. This must stop. Hell no, Avelo. #OneMillionRising www.GroundAvelo.org

Israel's massacre of Palestinian journalists has been unconscionable. And the silence of western journalists has been an utter abomination to our profession. And to humanity. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/...

This is an interesting spreadsheet that @maggiekat.bsky.social shared. It’s the work of @jonathancohn.bsky.social and it shows the percentage of times Democratic Senators voted against Trump. Senator Ed Markey is the winner! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Lemme just say if President Bernie Sanders had unilaterally imposed, by executive fiat, hundreds of billions of new taxes, personally browbeat executives about job cuts and investments and then fired the head of BLS, the Chamber of Commerce and the business orgs would not be sitting idly by.

The very clear message is that the BLS head will be fired if they do not produce numbers that meet Trump's approval. In related news, these are the last set of BLS job numbers we can assume have not been doctored.

One small but impactful retreat by this cruel regime.

"The answer came back days later in an email from Spencer Chretien, the highest-ranking official in the State Department's refugee and migration bureau, saying the program is intended for white people."

Behold, Philly Hoagie Roll Rat!

a rough translation of the final sentence: “Since AFP was founded in August 1944 we’ve lost journalists in conflicts, and have had wounded and imprisoned co-workers, but none of us have any memory of having to watch a colleague die of hunger.”

Why is the @nytimes.com reporting that Trump is said to have a “benign condition“ without noting that CVI is actually a progressive disease? Is it that hard to point out obviously false statements?

Interesting call to action from Terry Moran

I was just with ~100K people on the #OneMillionRising call, learning about authoritarianism & how people power & acts of noncooperation can stop the attacks on our basic rights & our democracy You can learn more, there are 2 more calls in this series. Sign up! www.mobilize.us/mobilize/eve...

Go #Phillies

Have you told your PA legislator we need cyber charter funding reform now? "If the legislature punts... they're going to really harm a lot of students and a lot of districts."

“Maybe the real revelation here is that we've reached a point where Superman's core values — helping others, welcoming strangers, standing up to bullies, believing in hope — are considered controversial.”

It is still unclear to me what lessons have been learned from the 2012-13 #PHLed school closings fiasco. (A thread based on my recollections of that experience). www.inquirer.com/education/ph...

Trump's Big Ugly Bill also... -Gives huge tax breaks to Big Oil and private jet owners -Limits Medicare drug-pricing negotiations -Undermines the IRS' free tax filing program -Delays minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes An ugly nightmare from top to bottom.

Yikes: The $4B federal tax credit scholarship program aka private school vouchers is still in the big bad bill, reported by @washingtonpost.com. The parliamentarian had nixed it but it's back, presumably amended. It gives a 100% tax credit for donations to private school scholarship orgs. See p 396

Call your senators today. $1.1 trillion cut throws 12M people off Medicaid, so wealthy folks keep their enormous tax break. "The scale of the proposed reductions in Medicaid is unprecedented in the history of the program, which has tended to expand coverage over time since its creation in 1965."

Rep. Evans was expecting primary challengers.

Zohran Mamdani’s win has inspired over 3400 young people to raise their hands to run for office just since Tuesday. It’s now @runforsomething.net’s biggest candidate recruitment moment since the election. A new generation of leaders is here.

The Senate bill now has a huge problem. Several of the Medicaid cuts were just ruled out by the parliamentarian, including the most controversial, the changes to the "provider tax" that would starve states of resources for their Medicaid programs.

This webpage from Jeff Merkley provides a running account of all the awful stuff that the Senate parliamentarian has ruled out of order in the big bad bill. I fear that few of us have a handle on how much awful stuff is still crammed into the bill.

“Mr. Clinton said he was drawn to Mr. Cuomo because ‘We’re both sexual harassers who live in Westchester.’”

One analyst's view: “This is the great irony. Although Trump has sought to eliminate the nuclear threat from Iran, he has now made it far more likely that Iran becomes a nuclear state.”

We live in a rogue and dangerous country. Do what you need to do to maintain your internal peace. Hold the core of your spirit. Pray for peace. Commit yourself to justice. And just rest.

A call to action for all of us on Juneteenth.

"He was set to meet with progressive lawmakers, he said, including Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, and Representative Maxine Dexter, Democrat of Oregon. But, he said, on Tuesday, he was told that his visa application had been rejected."

Yikes

Why should Pennsylvania taxpayers fund cyber charter schools at the same tuition rates that they pay for brick-and-mortar charter school tuition?

From Philly, joining in #NoKings mass call on next steps for the movement, and celebrating the turnout 5M people on Saturday. Zoom channel is full - but watch it on YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECEb...

Holy shit, New York! Here’s the full view. #NoKings #50501Movement

“Express gratitude”??!!

Rep. Rashida Tlaib leads a new letter to the Trump admin demanding safe passage for the Gaza Freedom Flotilla to deliver aid & food to Gaza. Signed by Summer Lee, Chuy Garcia, Pramila Jayapal, AOC, Mark Pocan, Greg Casar, Delia Ramirez, Al Green, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar.

Remember this whenever people say Republicans "speak to small-town America".

Erasing history. What a pathetic move by Hegseth. apnews.com/article/harv...

Big news: The Trump administration has essentially proposed shutting down tribal colleges and universities, displacing more than 20,000 students. My latest for ProPublica:

Why Frederick Douglass thought today’s holiday was the nation’s most important.

Phew!

did some yapping about this youtu.be/9e6nJ8-9kms

Philly folks who care about the labor movement should check out this talk. I've known this guy for a while 😉 and he has a lot of important insights from the research for his new book.