Republican senator now publicly defending Mark Kelly

Went with my eldest to premier of an excellent documentary and Q&A about the antebellum tourism industry and its dark underbelly. The film, “Natchez,” named after the Mississippi city, won the Tribeca Festival’s Best Documentary award for 2025. Officially in theaters 1/30/26

A Fox News poll released today:

We saw this sobering documentary at the “Other Israel” Film Festival the other night, which I recommend highly. Kudos to JCC Manhattan for being the only venue in the United States willing to screen this award-winning Israeli filmmaker, Tal Michael’s, latest work. www.mmjccm.org/event/festiv...

The Epstein stuff thats already been released points to conduct so monstrous that I don’t think I want to know what the GOP (and surely others) are trying so hard to keep under wraps

If you told me in 1990 that, in 2025, a black President of South Africa had filed a lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians and, at the same time, a U.S. President named Donald Trump had accused South Africa of genocide against white Afrikaners, I wouldn't have believed you.

After chaotic hearing, High Court rules Netanyahu can’t fire Shin Bet chief Bar for now https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-chaotic-hearing-high-court-rules-netanyahu-cant-fire-shin-bet-chief-bar-for-now/

"We cannot leave the security of Europe in the hands of voters in Wisconsin every 4 years." - France Minister for the EU

I heard Mahmoud Khalil is being interviewed for an Ambassadorship position in the Trump administration while in detention www.ynetnews.com/article/s1mv...

Powerful. www.threads.net/@justcherie/...

Another self-debasing national embarrassment.

If you think it’s morally acceptable to oppose Israel’s nonnegotiable condition that Hamas be removed from control over neighboring Gaza then you have lost your way, at best. www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/...

February 2025: Mitch McConnell and Steve Bannon join Mike Pence and Liz Cheney in The Resistance

If "Trump Derangement Syndrome" exists, it appears that belief in the "The Russia Hoax" is a false positive diagnosis.

When has a nation in a defensive war of survival ever before been pressured to disarm and sacrifice itself to avoid civilian casualties on the other side? Protests calling for an Israel arms embargo have only strengthened the extremists while impeding peaceful Israeli and Palestinian co-existence.

Here is a very helpful Project 2025 tracker: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

If Fox News’ own Juan Williams says so… thehill.com/opinion/colu...

There are even some creators who feel “ripped off” but can’t manage to absorb the hits like a billionaire tech bro

We passed a law. They don’t get to force people to petition the king for mercy. We are still a democracy and this will be found illegal.

Dear Trump-voting Jews: Two things can be true at once: 1- the Democratic Party helped platform left-wing antisemitism in order to avoid alienating its base; and 2- the Trumpublican Party will platform right-wing antisemitism as long it's practiced by Trump loyalists who will serve the kleptocracy.

Cannot stop thinking about how Octavia Butler wrote a book in 1993 about climate change. It opens with deadly fires in LA in 2025. In the story, a fascist President has just won office with the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again." She was a modern day Nostradamus. If only we'd listened.

The internet had the potential to make humans so much smarter and interconnected. Instead, it's dumbing us down and siloing us off. A real tragedy.

Among the author's conclusions is that recent rumors of President Trump's promise as Israel's savior are greatly exaggerated.

Here’s Volume I of the Special Counsel’s report, along with a cover letter from Smith to Garland: www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

Even those who would prefer to hold Bibi and Gallant responsible for the carnage in Gaza rather than Iran and its proxies should support H.R. 23. The ICC can't claim Palestine is stateless and under occupation and yet also a nation state sufficient to establish ICC jurisdiction. tinyurl.com/yhczxdd7

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded to Trump’s proposal to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico by pointing to a 17th century map of greater Mexico and suggesting a new name for the US. “We are going to call it América Mexicana. It sounds pretty, no?” Trump is a global laughingstock. 🤣

#Canadian Official Trolls #Trump Right Back With A Counteroffer. "How about if we buy #Alaska? And we’ll throw in Minnesota and Minneapolis at the same time," said Ontario Premier Doug Ford. www.huffpost.com/entry/doug-f...

1/ Qatar is not a party to the treaty that created the ICC and could not be compelled to cooperate with the ICC. But if the protest movement were really about saving Gazans and not condemning Israel, then it could’ve pressured Qatar — an important U.S. ally — to extradite Hamas’ leaders on 10/8/23

Neither impressed with McConnell’s 12th hour politically bulletproof display of moral outrage, nor convinced it’s not just another cynical performance (this even despite he himself is a polio survivor) www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/u...

The Trumps say that “the crypto industry will do ‘a great job’ of policing itself when it comes to illicit flows” of terrorist cash. Evidently a corrupt industry’s investment in a corrupt politician yields better returns than an ordinary investor’s bet on the company itself, and much greater danger.

New: Liz Cheney statement on Trump latest on January 6 committee (thread) mailchi.mp/greattask/ch...

Reports that Bashar al-Assad on plane to do Joe Rogan’s podcast in desperate attempt to save his regime

How is it that the oldest and (we claim) most exceptional democracy in the world is so bad at it? We look more like Orban's Hungary every day, and meanwhile South Korea and even Romania seem to have gotten the memo that foreign interference, cult leaders and oligarchs all threaten their democracies.

1/

NEW: Elon Musk spent a total of $238 million to elect Donald Trump

I don’t find it complicated to believe that cold-blooded murder is not a morally acceptable way to combat corporate greed, or even to honor a loved one whose life was claimed by it.

New research shows that social media users share information they know to be false, motivated to signal political loyalty. What does this mean for the effectiveness of fact-checking initiatives? Prithvi Iyer considers the findings.

1/ The MAGA GOP's casual inclusion of Social Security in discussions of entitlement cuts is the culmination of its relentless conditioning of the Trump voter over time to embrace self-sabotaging public policies that few Americans would have countenanced even a generation ago. tinyurl.com/497jxb9w

1/ Not at all surprising that, according to Spotify, my most played songs for 2023 included three by Israeli artists. Two of whom I’d not heard of until after 10/7. The third, Avishai Cohen, could easily have been listed anyway since he's already one of my favorite contemporary jazz trumpeters.

Much will depend on John Thune's leadership approach as successor to Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the OG of Trump-enablers. The cowardice that Sen. Thune and so many of his GOP colleagues displayed during the Trump impeachment proceedings and on other occasions does not inspire confidence.

The final House results have now landed as 220-215 for the GOP. That means the House majority came down to the 3 NC seats the GOP flipped thanks to its brand new gerrymander. And that gerrymander hinged on NC's supreme court flipping in 2022. I wrote this last month: boltsmag.org/state-suprem...

It took only ~2.5 hrs for the National Assembly to gather a majority of members (190 of 300) and generate a unanimous vote (190 of 190) to vote down the emergency martial law. The law says the president "shall comply" with parliament's vote, but doesn't specify a time frame.