This is really just blut und boden now and I can’t stress enough that while the GOP has long been skirting around this type of thing it is very notable and significant that they’re increasingly willing and able to just say it out loud

Tisch has her problems and admittedly the bar is on the floor but she’s the only commissioner in recent memory who has taken misconduct, favoritism’s, nepotism, and impunity in the ranks even vaguely seriously. The unions haven’t explicitly confronted her but I doubt she’d be their pick

Dem Senate defectors just slowly morphing into the "hope you're hungry, for nothing!" meme

Also people are gonna try to spin this as CYA or 4D chess or whatever but remember, none of these people expected these emails to be public. These are their unvarnished accounts and views!

Signal is a net good for society but one unfortunate consequence is the era of wealthy elites keeping a digital paper trail of them saying “boy do I like to commit financial crimes, manipulate politics and have sex with minors” is probably over

Beyond the obvious takeaways in these emails is the always fascinating insight that a lot of these rich freaks are in constant contact with each other and make society-shaping decisions by basically riffing on barely-legible text or email chains

Idly amusing myself by trying to imagine the response if, say, roving, masked IRS agents were subjecting people to mandatory face scans to ensure that they did not owe back taxes

Wow, a Long Island jury awarded $112 Million to 674 immigrants who were unlawfully held by county police so they could be handed over to ICE

When I got hit by a car and broke a finger here a few years ago I just splinted it myself. Later on I got hit by a car again (NYC has improved but is generally a terrible city for cyclists) and someone called an ambulance, which of course I refused. We don't have to live like this

Next time Trump or Marco Rubio are bleating about how badly they want to protect Christians, someone should remind them they had a group of Iranian Christians, among others, shackled and shuttled back to the regime

NEW: The US has deported a longtime Oregon firefighter who was arrested by Border Patrol while deployed at a major wildfire in Washington state. José Bertin Cruz-Estrada, separated from his family, is speaking out from Mexico for the first time: “I feel betrayed ... What am I going to do now?"

Insurance is a dark horse slowly suffocating spontaneity and fun wherever it resides

The WiFi is out yet again and now Spectrum has helpfully informed me that I've used up all my mobile hotspot allocation and will have throttled speeds until next month 👍🏼 luv 2 have Consumer Choice in the Market

I don’t think both political actors and journalists say often enough that at least some portion of contemporary MAGA political agitation is explicitly that they think you should probably die

We have received firm, tangible, credible assurances that Lucy will position the football in the manner set forth in the framework agreement

Seeing a decent number of takes like this but this seems pretty short-sighted. There will be steep material costs to torpedoing key aspects of the ACA. There have been dire costs to insulating the GOP from the consequences of its own agenda

This is additionally darkly comical to me given I am not going anywhere for thanksgiving and have lived in NYC for 12 years, longer than I have ever lived anywhere, yet it was I who could not vote

The main issue here is that most people, including teens, have no real concept of that journalists actually do, of they understand “journalists” to mean “TV talking heads,” which is not the same thing

My take: implementation of Zohran’s policies is a tall order, *but* Tuesday’s election results themselves will help from practical and political standpoints. Not only did the housing ballot measures pass, I think it shows Hochul she has to worry more about leaving behind Zohran voters than Stefanik

I think a lot of people would be legitimately shocked to learn what a typical House staffer gets paid. And these are the people actually running the government

AP reporter Regina Garcia Cano looked into a few of the men killed in Trump's extrajudicial strikes on Caribbean boats. "They were laborers, a fisherman, a taxi driver. Two were low-level career criminals. One was a local crime boss who contracted out smuggling services" apnews.com/article/trum...

Also it’s insane to call USAID a “Biden-era program.” It was established by JFK!

*Democrats demand costs be subsidized, Republicans shut down the government to prevent it* ABC News: abcnews.go.com/amp/US/insan...

There are no words for how evil this is

You gotta almost hand it to the guy being like “yeah I was fully corrupt the whole time and I don’t have to pretend otherwise now. I did that shit”

I’m a little unclear on the legal authority to make these arrests. These drivers are basically definitionally documented in some fashion. SCOTUS cleared the way for indiscriminate detentions, but immigration agents are still not allowed to just cart off people who are nonremovable

This is the kind of stuff that really drives home that these are true believers, bona fide anti-immigration zealots. This is not 200,000 people, it is *200*. That is nothing, I wouldn’t even call it a rounding error, it would go fully unnoticed. But they are taking steps to strip them of protections

I think this is a legitimately important question for the future of the polity. People whose first memories are under authoritarian regimes often end up scarred and skeptical of government authority for life. It will be tricky to convince some of these toddlers that government can be good

People are gonna dunk on this but his suits do convey something (and they are, fortunately, fitted but not 2010s slender)

*most corrupt and dishonest guy you’ve ever seen* “my honor demands I resign!”

The factional grifters will hate this, but the Mamdani-Spanberger-Sherrill axis actually suggests the outlines of a broad, emerging Dem coalition organized around both anti-Trump *and* affordability politics, not a party bitterly divided against itself.

Time to send Schumer to a nice farm upstate, he’s earned some rest :)

Spencer does it again. Precision and mastery, like an Olympic shooter

Me pitching a 5,000-word feature: 🙂 Me writing a 5,000-word feature:

Folks, while we're all procrastinating waiting for election night, consider this: Our journalism at Bolts has no paywall, but it requires a lot of resources. We're a nonprofit, and we thrive with your support, gifts, subscriptions. And right now is the GOLDEN time to make your support multiply:

Spectrum has had a wifi outage in my area for hours, so I've almost run through my mobile hotspot allocation in my own apartment because I have to work. Reached out to ask them to reset it and they were basically like GFY, and it's just wild how companies basically do not give a shit anymore

As we see indicia of big turnout in today's NYC mayoral election, worth keeping in mind that roughly one in seven adult NYC residents are categorically barred from voting. If you're on the fence about turning out, remember that this is a privilege many of your neighbors do not have

An entire economy now based on, dependent on, theft

An ad about how the Dilbert guy got treatment out of a direct line to the same president who’s shutting down the government to force everyone else to pay higher insurance premiums is just a freebie at this point

In my journalism classes, I use this example from over seven years ago of CBP faking an increase in assaults on agents as a way that numbers can be mathematically accurate but entirely misleading. At least they were a little more tame with the increase back then...

When I lived in Mexico City as a teenager, it was well understood that conspicuous security was a status symbol, like wearing a Richard Mille or driving a Lamborghini. The truly extravagantly wealthy had professional, discreet security teams, but the mere millionaires favored gaudy, visible guaruras

We are actually gonna go to war because the president is watching too much OANN or whatever

There isn’t and has never been a dominant “liberal media.” This is a pure concoction of bad faith actors and the media neutered itself trying to get a gold star from the people who wanted to destroy it

News on Trump boat bombings --> Rep Adam Smith, top Dem on Armed Services, tells me GOPers are failing to press for testimony from the top Pentagon official who recently resigned, potentially over the strikes. Appallingly, we may never hear from him. New piece: newrepublic.com/article/2025...

One way to think about the tariffs is as a means for Trump (and his family) to establish leverage over other countries, which he can use to enrich himself and establish a separate base of power from Congress.

Can't overstate how fucked up it is that unraveling what is arguably the greatest achievement in the history of humanity is now a motivating issue of one of the two dominant parties in the U.S.

You'll work in the mines and eat nutrient sludge and you'll like it! (But also if you don't buy stuff you are killing the economy)

Not the main point here but it's funny to see that it's not just MAGA men that seem unable to get jackets that even remotely fit

"Neither campaign has responded to my request for it to weigh in on the pregnancy of the AI-generated cartoon bill."