The backup source of authority (the States) and the ultimate source of authority (the People) are swinging into action as the federal government collapses under the weight of MAGA.

The contingency is the states, & then at the appropriate time, the voters. I think this past Election Day would in the Founders' eyes be a vindication of their efforts, however distraught they would be at what brought us to this point

all your thoughts are valid. in therapy. among friends. in a safe space you've constructed in some social manner they are not always valid in public. not EVERYONE has to validate your thoughts, and in fact, sometimes your thoughts are bad actually

i think that the internet opened up new and different ways for people to make mistakes about what it was appropriate to say in public and, unfortunately, shaming people for being cringe is the only way we have successfully gotten them to slow down

Crucial thing to watch: The Dem blowout wins suggest it'll be way more risky for GOPers to gerrymander, because the GOP safer seats may become more vulnerable than expected. Rs in those seats will now be very nervous. Exchange on this w/Dem operative Jessica Post: newrepublic.com/article/2028...

"Run government like a business!"

LGA Terminal B sent an email last night to its tenant airlines (United, Air Canada, JetBlue, Southwest, etc) that basically says "hey if you know wtf is going on, let us know?" Meetings between airlines and FAA didn't happen until *last night* for operational impacts starting *Friday*. Unreal.

A lot of discourse hasn't caught up with how the strong/somewhat breakdown is even more brutal. His core base of strong support is already falling below a quarter of voters! Even what approval he has is increasingly soft and halfhearted. Whereas disapprovers are much firmer in really hating the man.

W Bush got down to 25 in peak of GFC and I felt like people talked like we didn’t have a president, so maybe around there

Trump at a -16 net approval rating among all adults now, per our average at @fiftyplusone.news, and flirting with dropping below 40% approval. fiftyplusone.news/polls/approv...

You fucking people will let anyone off the hook for their violent hateful beliefs and all they have to do is say shiny words you like You’re all a bunch of Nazi tattoo forgiving, Jewish space lasers forgetting gullible marks getting played for fools As a Jew I suggest you all go fuck yourselves.

I admire his honesty in this case but I do not love it when the president's closest economic adviser fails to predict the massive negative impact of the administration's policy choices

Latest Army general to be jammed up over alleged wokeness is Pat Work, who led the Ranger company that fast-roped into the Korengal to recover the bodies during Operation Red Wings and was the 82nd brigade commander who dug ISIS out of Mosul

oops, forgot to tag the author of this excellent piece ... sigh, my kingdom for an edit button @beckpeterson.bsky.social

easy to miss in the punditry about Musk's pay package: he only becomes a trillionaire if he meets *a bunch* of milestones payouts begin at $2 trillion market cap + other conditions here's a handy graphic www.wsj.com/business/aut...

The Old Powers of earth are not for men to use. They were never given into our hands, and in our hands they work only ruin. Ill means, ill end. I was not drawn here, but driven here, and the force that drove me works to my undoing.

against the wishes of “dem base” online types, don’t the dems basically have one demand for reopening govt? Do the subsidies. The idea that any reporter (I know) is entertaining the idea of the gop trying to make a “deal” with Dems is ridiculous. It’s one condition that is popular among gop voters!

It's particularly bad in states with "part-time" legislatures (NH, ME, TX, MT, etc) where legislators make $15k on the high end and $100 on the low end.

Number of staff, too. Congressional and Senate offices are too small and it’s 100x worse at the state level. www.brookings.edu/articles/vit...

The New York City Mayor is technically in charge of 300,000+ employees. It's just insane you would pay him less than a partner at a decent lawfirm who oversees a handful of associates and paralegals.

The public financing system in NYC really deserves a victory lap. There's a good shot that Zohran would have lost the primary if he hadn't had public dollars to at least keep pace a little with Cuomo's money cannon.

high salaries and robust public funding for elections

ryan is right. people HATE hearing this. but it is just a matter of simple incentives. if you want a more representative legislature — and if you want a legislature more resistant to corruption — then you need to jack up the salaries. serving as mayor of NYC should net you a cool 500K *at least*

NH pays them $100 — yes, you read that right — and as a result they are all retiree tax exiles from Massachusetts.

you look at Texas, they pay the state leg $7,200 a year and as a result like half of them are car dealership owning reactionaries

people hate hearing this but it's 100% true, creating a huge pay gap between political leaders, their staffs, and other elites is a recipe for corruption. of course the flip side of that is taxes on the rich should be jacked way the hell up

The State of Wisconsin pays our governor $165,568 a year, and he's constitutionally ineligible for a raise while in office. By comparison we paid Luke Fickell $7,825,000 inclusive of salary and bonuses to coach the UW Madison football team to a 5-7 record last year.

The Mayor of New York only makes $260k. I bet there are police that make more than that in NY with overtime. We need to pay elected leaders more money and stop pretending it's some sort of calling. They're managing hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and millions of people's lives.

Appreciate the @theflytrapmedia.com shoutout in this great @taylorcrumpton.bsky.social read about the loss of Teen Vogue and what Teen Vogue meant for early-career writers, especially BIPOC and disabled writers, who face significant barriers to entering the field.

Heart Mountain xkcd.com/3162/

Repair Video xkcd.com/3163/

However flawed may be your reasoning, you are allowed, by all means, to claim the 2005 Pride and Prejudice as your _preferred_ version. De gustibus, etc. But if you tell me that it is the _best_ version, there is no other conclusion to arrive at save that you are quite seriously unwell. ;}

'An early 1920s evening dress by Boué Soeurs, as delicate & insubstantial as though it were pieced together in the night by Parisian magpies & little brown sparrows from scraps of Chantilly lace and faded roses stolen from sleeping seamstresses in high ateliers.' x.com/AnneLouiseAv...

The @changelingart.bsky.social auctions are returning, starting with 'Deck the Halls' later this month. Would there be interest if I were to auction this sketch from a few years ago? Inspired by a post on XTwitter by Anne Louise Avery, a flash fiction, one might call it (see below).

I cannot understand why they wanted everyone to automatically have rude content hidden, this is like 90% of the content on the site

This means if you are in the habit of saying things like "fuck Trump" or "I hope Cheney burns in hell", probably a good amount of your feed isn't seeing those posts because, unbeknownst to them, Bsky has shielded grown adults from "rude" "threats" like this.

The "service" includes settings for hiding certain types of content, warning you that the skeet contains such content before you see it, or simply turning off the filter. If you've never been here before, you'll find things like "rude" or "threats" are set to "Hide".

Next select Settings, and then Moderation on the next screen. At the bottom of the Moderation page under "Advanced" is a section called "Bluesky Moderation Service" that looks like an info box. It in fact leads to more settings.

Wondering why no one likes your posts anymore, even among your friends? It's because @jay.bsky.team and team have decided to hide a huge amount of content from all of our feeds by default. Here's how to turn it off. First go to the hamburger menu in the upper left corner

Once again, SCOTUS undermines the rule of law, its own legitimacy, and the lower federal courts with a 'back of the napkin' explanation that doesn't even bother to analyze the issue under the standards for staying an injunction—all to enable a bigoted attack on a targeted group.

Jackson says the decision is "more than merely regrettable. It is an abdication of the Court's duty to ensure that equitable standards apply equally to all litigants—to transgender people and the Government alike." And she faults the majority for ignoring "the animus evident in the Executive Order."

Jackson's dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan, says the evidence showed that gender-incongruent passports led to humiliating, invasive searches of trans Americans (including strip searches) since their gender marker didn't align with their appearance. The policy is both cruel and irrational.

NEW: On the shadow docket, the Supreme Court lets Trump resume misgendering trans Americans on their passports, claiming "the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment." All three liberals dissent. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

#Portland #ICE There are ICE vehicles at North Portland (St. John) schools right now, apparently intending to nab parents when they come to pick up kids. If you can, please go to: - George Middle School - Cesar Chavez School - Clarendon Preschool

Getting new details on this now: As the arrest unfolded, teachers pleaded with the agents telling them the teacher had a work permit. The agents went into multiple rooms looking for teachers while children were present. One teacher hid with a child in her care while the agents stormed the facility.

How did Georgia pull off their first statewide win in non-federal races in 19 years—and so convincingly? Turnout, turnout, turnout. The state's 10 largest blue counties made up more than 52% of the total electorate. That compares to 44.6% last year, and 45.3% in the 2022 Senate runoff.

The throughline of Mamdani’s campaign was a willingness to meet people where they were, in physical and ideological ways.

I am not a military strategist, but I have a vague memory that not feeding the troops was one of those big fuck-ups that Sun Tzu talked about.

For those who don’t know, Lina Khan gave tech bros hell AND her ass to kiss when she was FTC chair. She was busting monopolies left and right. Gave Amazon and Meta the finger too. This is an EXCELLENT addition to his team.

Am I the only one so far, looking forward to "The Wrath of Khan?"?