Incredibly relatable city government scandal

The Klein Coates discussion is very good and very revealing - pundit class is structurally dependent on the possibility of a reasonable politics of persuasion, otherwise what is the point of punditry? And Coates just rejects that.

i agree with this, and i find it particularly frustrating because the number of actual elected democrats doing this — particularly on reproductive rights — is legitimately very small at this point, klein's not even representing a plurality view within the democratic party

I’ve heard Ezra now twice take one part of Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables” speech, without mentioning the rest of it, which does exactly what Ezra calls for Dems to do. I recognize that we have a politics of sound bits, but in full context the speech hits differently than he suggests.

Ta-Nehisi Coates with the key question for just about everyone www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/o...

This is of course a double-edged sword. Congrats, general - civilians are in charge of you. Should have chosen a different career if you didn’t like it. But also, this is why civilians need to actually have expertise and know what they’re doing. Can’t be young *and* dumb *and* get respect.

It is only possible to believe this if you know literally nothing at all about academia. That is the only way.

one thing that comes up in clausewitz is how in war the moral (by which he means character) and the intellectual are inseparable. your fears and hopes will drag your intellect around like a dog if you let them. to see clearly through the fog of war and all its phantasms requires moral courage.

one thing i will add about this interview: in it, klein is gapingly honest about the emotional drivers of his intellectual work, which is to his credit. what is less to his credit is how this vindicates the most central criticisms of him. he wants the world to be one way... but it's the other.

it's a great interview, and what's striking is that at the end of the day both klein and coates believe in winning people over. the difference is that coates thinks you do this by telling them the truth, and klein thinks you do it by empathizing with them and recognizing their concerns as Real

This chart just blows my mind.

Want to co-sign this as someone who works in philanthropy. Conservative donors and foundations have been willing to invest huge sums for general support, correctly assuming that it would produce long-term gains. The liberal approach to philanthropy has been pretty much the exact opposite.

your daily reminder that hope is a floatation device- grab it with both hands 🖤

I guess, as always, my question is why? What is the utility? How is this better in any way than actually having experienced diplomats and subject matter experts? As one contributor here actually notes, these models have biases baked into them by the nonexperts who built them plus hallucinations!

Everyone continue to go bugfuck insane

I do think that a lot of our more traditionally-raised media figures *cough cough Ezra Klein* extremely overestimate the popularity of this stuff largely because the astroturfing of it is just off the scale. TPUSA and things like the Free Press are the constructs of a very small base, but $$$ tells

I appreciate the great support & enthusiasm on here for this effort to create a record of the Smithsonian's exhibits.

So, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to further one’s own reputation and that of one’s Department. That keeps universities keen and prevents tenure from being a lazy sinecure. But yes, we w/tenure need to defend our less secure colleagues far more vigorously & consistently than most of us do.

I really need the smart people on this site to stop reacting like the pronouncements of individuals that always lie actually represent the ground truth and most literal reality of what is going to happen. Maybe today will be the day they’re going to follow through but so far it hasn’t been ever.

Kagan: The so-called irreparable harm that the Trump administration says it suffers is merely "the price of living under a Constitution that gives Congress the power to make spending decisions through the enactment of appropriations laws...a frustration any President must bear."

We currently have a Supreme Court that seriously claims (with no explanation) that the current occupant of the Presidency suffers irreparable harm by having to follow existing law, the constitutionality of which has never before been in doubt or even questioned.

lmao

Or more to the point, they’ll finally decide these cases on the merits, where each will go against the Trump admin 7-2, but since it’s now 24 months later the remedies will be almost nothing. Just a “whoopsie, but now precedent is the next guy can’t do that!”

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?

This is, funnily enough how they passed the first CR- Vance went around to the holdouts and told them that it didn't matter what the numbers were, the executive would just spend what it felt like on what it felt like.

This also breaks the current negotiations even worse than they had been already. Why would democrats trust any deal they made with Republican colleagues if the executive can just basically say “nope, not going to spend those funds!”

Please apply for our next roundtable! www.cfg.cam.ac.uk/news/2026-in...

This is a ridiculously broad understanding of the President's foreign affairs powers -- that the Executive Branch experiences "harms to [its] conduct of foreign affairs" when it is must spend foreign aid money appropriated in a bill signed by the President. Whither Congress's power of the purse?

This is an infuriating and shameful scandal. The Roberts Court is condoning Trump’s law breaking, again, pure and simple. There is no serious path forward for democratic government without Supreme Court reform.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court greenlights Trump's "pocket rescission" of $4 billion in foreign aid appropriated by Congress. Kagan, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, has a sharp dissent. She says this "result conflicts with the separation of powers." www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Yet again, the GOP supermajority steps in to allow Trump to break the law. The case will be decided on the merits later, it says, when the damage cannot be undone. But in the meantime it is giving the Trump administration a green light to engage in impoundment.

AFB Ysterplaat today: Change of Command Parade for 35 Squadron OC Col Tamara Thomas-Herwels outgoing & Lt Col Pieter Scherer incoming, and Acceptance of Command Parade for 505 Squadron OC Lt Col David Magwayi incoming. Congratulations on your new appointments!

Mogadishu, Somalia. ruined palace, mosque, tower, old town early 20th century #archivesxt

H/T to @jdcushman45.bsky.social this is indeed really really good.

The point of funding deals is to secure money that helps people. If the administration plans to just illegally ignore any deal you make with them, what’s the point of making a deal? Don’t take it from me, take it from,,,,, Steve Womack, a senior GOP appropriator.

Getting to the All GOFOs Meeting on monday and yelling "Holy shit its Fat Leonard!" to see how many book it for the exits

🇩🇰🇸🇪 #Denmark accepted an offer from #Sweden for a #military counter #drone system during the upcoming #EU summit. Not said what system. A likely offer would be LOKE. Recently deployed to Poland to protect #Gripen. 1/2 DK MoD to TV 2: nyheder.tv2.dk/live/krimi/2... Photos: Saab AB

repeating the phrase "full books" as I slam my head against my desk until I pass out

The South London Warlords is open to all comers from 6:30 til 11pm every monday night

Gabbard just eliminated the 2025 Global Trends report—probably one of the most objective and comprehensive intelligence products that helps policymakers craft national security strategy in uncertain futures. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...

@yalebooks.bsky.social have outdone themselves with the cover of my new book. Out in January for anyone interested.

See the latest book review written by Augustine Meaher on 'The Special Operations Executive in Malaya: World War II and the Path to Independence' by Rebecca Kenneison, Oxford, Bloomsbury Academic, 2025: doi.org/10.1080/0308...

anyway i appreciate formalizing the precedent that making false statements to congress will actually result in criminal charges

Damn, man, you're saying they took old material that had already been rejected as a criminal case and repackaged it to create the appearance of wrongdoing? That's fucked up, who would do that.

A lot of folks view their vote as a little gift they give to a politician who catches their fancy, rather than an act of collective action on behalf of the less fortunate. You are not giving out a rose on The Bachelor, you're acting in solidarity with millions of other people.

wanting to remembered as a hero is self-interest, but also altruistic. you can virtue signal your way into actually doing the right thing.

Today is Quintidi the 5th of Vendémiaire in the year 234. Vendémiaire is the month of vintage. Today we celebrate horses.#JacobinDay More information on horses

Another reason to demand RFK Jr's impeachment is that it helps to normalize a removal politics that's sorely missing in the US. Our politics needs a widespread sense that contempt for proper service to the public can get you kicked out of office

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance. africasacountry.com/2025/09/the-...

They are planning to execute my client* tonight, even though the victim’s son, Will Berry, in an extraordinary act of courage, has asked his life be spared. I will be on here all day reposting Chotiner jokes and despair-scrolling, AMA