Thanks to @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social for highlighting the work of @krutikakuppalli.bsky.social who is doing excellent health communication on #hantavirus and helping sort the information chaos happening right now.

This is in part why we're estranged from my husband's family. They will not acknowledge that the people and organizations who they support threaten our lives and the lives of our friends as LGBTQ+ people.

We're the good guys. No. Not now, and too often, not in the past. The US too often made assistance contingent on some capitulation or required some benefit from the aid recipient in return.

1. The Magna Carta was forced on King John to *make him follow the law*. 2. English common law has always had a problem with ensuring the application of precedent in good faith. Maybe, just maybe we need to start thinking about *judicial reform* and the options available to us.

People paying attention from the beginning knew Ukraine was fundamentally changing how to fight a war. There's a huge amount of innovation being done at an incredibly fast pace and (relatively) low cost.

Whodda thunk "Crosseyed and Painless" by Talking Heads would accurately represent the epistemic crisis perpetrated in bad faith by Samuel Alito and his bank of corrupted judges? Facts just twist the truth around Facts are living turned inside out Facts are getting the best of them

Just a reminder: the corruption of the Supreme Court is the end of a long game played by powerful people and organizations: the Koch Brothers, the Uihlein Family, Leonard Leo, Paul Weyrich, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Federalist Society.

The acquiescence in the United States to racism, xenophobia, ableism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, and anti-Catholicism is both stunning and in perspective, expected. American Exceptionalism was a lie used to mend a fracture created in our origin.

Great job alert!

We've been skidding towards an Article 1 constitutional crisis since Nixon's thugs hijacked the Paris Peace Talks in 1968, again in 1979 when the same people interfered in the US hostage negotiations with Iran, and *all* of Iran-Contra. No more impunity. Accountability, even if it's painful.

De-MAGA-fication is going to be a massive project. Future Congresses are going to have to think big. The reforms might have to be bigger than those that came after Watergate: newrepublic.com/article/2099...

Good to see: Senator Adam Schiff tells me that if Dems win Congress, wholesale fumigation and reform of DOJ will be essential due to Trump's world-historical corruption. "DOJ is in shambles," Schiff says. He and others lay out ideas on preventing future travesties: newrepublic.com/article/2099...

Rex Jr. needs community-based care to have a full quality of life. Medicaid delivers that. Republicans want to slash it for Trump’s war in Iran. Whose sibling has to lose everything before they stop? 😤 #HealthcareNotWarfare

Current state of the game of the US: 1. Turn it off and back on to reset it, but this time make sure everyone reads the rules; 2. Put the game pieces, board and rules that were destroyed during the party in a bag and throw them out, or; 3. Drink a bottle of bourbon and turn over the game table.

It's almost as if there's a concerted effort to concentrate agricultural land in the hands of a few corporations and individuals. I'm sure that will work out well. /bittersarcasm Inequality is unsustainable.

Then on May 17th, a talk with (IMHO) the two best lay writers on American law and history working today: @jamellebouie.net and @adamserwer.bsky.social. www.chicagohumanities.org/events/atten...

10/10. No notes.

Labor movements have made the world markedly better, more equitable, and more democratic. We should all celebrate May Day. sharemylesson.com/todays-news-...

The lesson of today is that Critical Race Theory has always been true about everything.

The Republican Party and its enabling organizations have successfully returned the United States to a pre-Civil War racist and anti-egalitarian oligarchy against the will and interests of a majority of US citizens. Stop pretending this wasn't intentional. They told us this is what they wanted.

Every on of the flag officers Hegseth has removed from service is more qualified to serve as Secretary of Defense than Hegseth.

The court has simply recreated the pre-Brown world in allowing racial discrimination across a broad number fields as long as it is “facially neutral,” gutting the Reconstruction Amendments in the process.

Example #5,831,713 of the corruption of the Roberts Court and the anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian intent of the Federalist Society and their fellow travelers.

Another piece of shit and precedent for a future Administration to clean up.

A reminder to folks that where we are as a country and a culture is not because things done in the past have worked but because they repeatedly failed. Accept that much of what's been done in the United States for the last 40+ years has failed to deliver benefits for the vast majority of people.

This morning's dyspeptic thought: that America has become a multi-level marketing scheme where "success" demands ever-increasing fealty to worse and worse people. Now I'm trying to get motivated to overcome my aversion to what this country has become.

RFK Jr. and the CDC’s top official, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, don’t want you to read this. Paper shows that 2025-2026 Covid-19 vaccines were effective. They censored it. That’s exactly why we need to read it. So, we published it in Inside Medicine! Take a look... open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

I've hit that moment in this year's garden cycle where I'm questioning what I need to do, in what order, and if I massively fucked up. This also applies to *waves hands* everything else going on right now.

@espiers.bsky.social writes calmly, simply, and directly about something that never should happen in a healthy society, and why people will misunderstand and misuse the action, the actor, and what created and enabled both. .

Extremely well done. Can confirm all of this. We used to live 500 meters north of the so-called Hinckley Hilton. The Nerd Prom and the accompanying parties, in particular the Vanity Fair party, were monumental pains in the ass for folks in the neighborhood. There is alway a shitload of security.

Appreciate this detail from CBS News reporter Jennifer Jacobs. It's an important part of the story that seems to be missing from a lot of comments & coverage.

Occam's Razor say the simplest explanation is often the most likely. Start with incompetence. Then factor in malice and mendacity. We can and will never know what happened at the WHCA Dinner on 25 April 2026. But it's not the narrative that's being manufactured and disseminated now.

Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are all planning huge layoffs. Amazon got $17.5B in federal tax breaks last year. Jeff Bezos is worth $271B. Meta saved $13.7B in taxes. Mark Zuckerberg is worth $231B. Microsoft saved $12.5B last year. Its CEO is worth $1.3B. This is what a rigged economy looks like.

Is this criminal and/or illegal, or just the normal social interaction of obscenely wealthy and powerful people? We won't know unless there's investigation, indictment, and prosecution of the people involved. FWIW, Martha Stewart was prosecuted and found guilty for much less.

🧵 I’ve spent the last couple years studying authoritarianism around the world, and wrote a book about how to defeat it. Three things that happened in the U.S. THIS WEEK left me convinced things in here are going to get worse before they get better. But there are specific things we can do. 🧵🧵

Honestly, it’s exhausting to have such dumb, corrupt, incompetent, reckless and evil people currently running the country. What a sad expression of the failure of education and morality in a country that once could pride itself on advancing talented and capable people.

This may have been the whole point.

Still feel like "Musk and his crew of incels destroyed a bunch of stuff they didn't understand and thereby hastened the deaths of millions of children" did not get the public attention it warranted.

It's leg day. I'm not taking questions, reading emails or messages for a while. I'll spare you attempts at thirst trap selfies, too.

Performative public lying is a hallmark of far right authoritarian parties

This is the future that Trump & GOP want for all of us in our old age. As states struggle to operate under the draconian Medicaid cuts that GOP enacted with their big beautiful Bill, this is gonna be become more frequent. #DV1 #ProudBlue #Voices4Victory #USDemocracy apnews.com/article/ohio...

"The indictment is a grotesque attempt to recast white people as real victims of racism. In the DOJ’s telling, advocates who spent decades dismantling the Klan are its secret benefactors, 'enriching' themselves by secretly creating racism — something in such short supply it can only be generated."

The bass, correctly, is in the back. Bonus for Sue Mingus in the front seat.

Funny AF. Also a follow.

I have many issues with public relations and crisis communications. But it turns out that if you don't want to embarrass yourself as a public figure or organization, following the guidance and advice of communications professionals is pretty sensible.

*Checks notes* Amazon is alleged to manipulate markets, causing both other retailers and producers of goods to change their prices, mostly to increase them. But do tell me about how unregulated markets are good for consumers, and partisan politics ensure fair elections and good governance.

Assuming we don't destroy the planet, one of the worst legacies the period of American Hegemony will leave behind is the utter stupidity, vacuousness, banality, and evil of Donald Trump's utterances on every form of media. Spare me the ramblings of low IQ, low morality cis white men.

Unlike Texas, VA maps approved by voters Unlike Texas, VA maps temporary Unlike Texas, VA maps only drawn in response to other states Unlike Texas, VA maps not racial gerrymander

*taps the sign* Stop using generative AI. AI Slop is not making you look smarter, or making your life better. It is measurably making the world a worse place in many ways.

You should watch and listen to @joshtpm.bsky.social and @espiers.bsky.social talk about independent media, its origins and its importance. And then subscribe to @talkingpointsmemo.com and www.elizabethspiers.com