The extent to which this administration personally targets and continues the assault on people who embarrass and shame it is particularly despicable.

Also they “uncovered”… a bunch of people doing what they’ve been pretty openly doing for months?

If you adopted, as your guiding heuristic, "not a single voter knows a single thing about policy or politics," you wouldn't be entirely accurate, but you would be closer to the truth than the impression most people who follow politics have.

Another day and further evidence that spectacles, trophies, and grievances are key drivers of this administration's policies.

pretty funny that Trump's aides are all too scared to tell him that $18 trillion is batshit crazy

American Caligula.

Over 21K people on this #NoKings Eyes on ICE call. Check it out. www.youtube.com/live/4xBUa67...

"Sen. @edmarkey.bsky.social coauthored a letter to the CEOs of Apple & Google asking the companies to pull X from its app stores due to Grok’s repeated generation of nonconsensual sexual imagery ... On the same day that he sent the letter, Markey made 5 posts on X." @phileil.bsky.social

By DHS’s circular logic, a warrant for home searches should never be needed, since there’s no privacy interest in the evidence of crime that (an executive branch agent has determined) will be found there.

NEW: 150 days of Kavanaugh stops, and it just keeps getting worse. Kavanaugh stops would always be bad. As a tool in the Trump administration's authoritarianism arsenal, they are worse. The consequences are everywhere. This evening, at Law Dork:

Looking forward to seeing the operatic adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in March. But will need to go out for a couple cups of tea after, since as everyone knows, once Britten, twice chai.

BREAKING: Over 680 members of the National Academy of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering have endorsed articles of impeachment against RFK Jr. (1/2 🧵)

Once back in high school I was waiting at a bus stop with some friends, and a very visibly strung out woman approached us and insisted we must be there in order to smoke crack. There’s… a lot of that going around.

Trump is trying to use Operation Metro Surge to meddle in Minnesota’s elections -- Pam Bondi told us herself. Let us explain.

With a few exceptions, the items in this list are already the law. Republicans are saying it’s unrealistic for Trump’s goons to follow the law.

While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot. I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.

My god, her testimony. It’s just infuriating. youtu.be/E5-m5u0qzDU?...

he's so close to figuring it out!

I want to reiterate that this shit is nuts. A federal invasion of state-run elections, an intelligence community invasion of federal law enforcement, a White House invasion of a criminal investigation, and a president’s insane treasonable sore loser obsession all rolled up and muddled together.

‘‘Why do they want Fulton County? Well, that’s obvious. It’s the biggest county in Georgia, and it houses Atlanta. If you control Fulton County that basically guarantees for Republicans they win every statewide race."

Each and every German dances to the strain Of the I was not a Nazi Polka All without exception join in the refrain Of the I was not a Nazi Polka Goering was a crazy we wanted to deport Sing the I was not a Nazi Polka We all thought that Dachau was just a nice resort Sing the I was not a Nazi Polka

Hey, remember that time I said that pointing out that AI is giving bad data to ICE is missing the point because ICE doesn't actually care if the data is good? Check out how right I am.

Every accusation is both a confession and a rationalization. Imaginary weaponization of government is the excuse to actual weaponize government. Imaginary election rigging is the excuse to actually rig elections.

Trump’s claims about non-citizen voting are bullshit. They are simply a pretext to undermine public confidence in the legitimacy of election outcomes, unless they align with Trump’s personal, self-serving desires. His claims are also provably false, w/ hard data. 👇 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/o...

JUST IN: Federal prosecutors in Chicago move to dismiss charges against another defendant tied to Operation Midway Blitz. Erik Meier faced trial 3/9 for resisting a federal officer. Once the motion is granted, he will be the 16th of 32 known defendants cleared. No known convictions.

They are trying to make this a thing. A "moral panic" is not just public outrage at immorality. It is a concept with independent meaning and history. An essential element of it is media distortion, which Lehmann and Soave are contributing to. See Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972).

Trump DOJ: “As Heraclitus wrote, one cannot step twice into the same river, therefore…”

I can’t really answer this one because there’s just a ton of songs that are unmistakable from the first chord. A big chunk of the Beatles catalogue for starters.

Wrote about some of the history of the Wyden Siren from @wyden.senate.gov and why we should take it VERY seriously when he sends a cryptic letter like he did yesterday.

@wyden.senate.gov's record of warning that there is deep and constitutionally-serious dirt being done by the intelligence agencies in secret is unblemished. The vaguer he is, the filthier the dirt is. This is the vaguest I've ever seen him

DOGE isn't really gone, it's just become the way that the Office of Management and Budget operates, writes our friends at @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social. prospect.org/2026/02/05/d...

Gallego getting Bessent to just say that taxpayers will pay Trump $10 billion if he wins is why most Trump officials who testify just berate the senators instead.

The proud vulgarity, the anti-intellectualism, the hostility to art & high culture aren’t just a faux-populist aesthetic but intrinsic to the agenda, because the core of the agenda is anti-civilization, a repudiation of everything the best art embodies and celebrates.

"What [MAGA authoritarians] fear most is the plain truth of being human." Interesting reflections. Not the main point of the piece but it's pretty astounding that MAGA figures think the anti-ICE protests are operating in Trump's political favor, as Alan shows here. Let them think that.

Trump found this one weird trick to put your tax payments right into his own pocket.

LoL what? Rents are decreasing because we had a construction boom followed by a crap economy.

I don't think the president should be able to steal $10 BILLION from the taxpayers just because he's decided he can

You really need to read this to appreciate how deranged it sounds. The standard view that judicial warrants are necessary to forcibly enter residences is blamed on “subversion” by “deep state actors.”

As far as I know, this is DHS's first effort to explain their position that I-205 forms allow entry into the home. They rely on the dicta in the 1960 Abel case (before Payton) and re-imagine the plurality opinion in Lucas as if it were the majority (and then overrely on it).

Important: the longstanding Department of Justice manual on election offenses emphasizes respecting states' lead role, not doing voter interviews that might chill voting, and, vitally, not seizing ballots or machines until states have certified a result. But now the manual has gone missing.

“Visible state violence against sympathetic civilians was the beginning of the end for Jim Crow. It may be a turning point now, too.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/o...

Amazing. If a professional wrestling crowd is chanting "fuck ICE," it suggests to me that large swaths of the culture are not just upset over ICE tactics, they're coalescing against mass deportations as a broader ideological project. newrepublic.com/article/2060...

my most right-wing take is loving my spouse, playing with my kids, and letting my favorite sportsball team make me suffer every weekend is a good life bsky.app/profile/nota...

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

NEW: The top Trump-appointed proseutor in MN says his office is dropping "pressing priorities" to manage crushing immigration workload. His short-staffed office is doing constant overtime and bouncing between contempt hearings. The bleak assessment: www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

good morning, never die on this hill

Organizers of the National Prayer Breakfast invite Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez, the dictator of El Salvador, best know for his torture camps and friendly relations with drug cartels, as a featured speaker. The invitation is a good demonstration of the political values of Christian Nationalists.

It's hilarious that Trump is lazily going through the motions of the National Prayer Breakfast as his cult is planning to erect a literal golden idol of him.