My latest for Liberal Currents: I wanted to explain the core of Trump's appeal to his followers. There are many, many Republicans who are bigoted and cruel. But only Trump has made his followers feel like they can *get away with it.* This is why we need to prove him wrong at any cost.

ICE agents grabbed a 16-year-old asylum seeker--which they aren't supposed to do They kept him from his parents -which they aren't supposed to do They shipped him out of state, to a Christian ministry, which they aren't supposed to do. Then they *lost* him. www.startribune.com/how-ice-labe...

Guys, only 2 more weeks till daylight savings time starts.

Quietly, the Trump administration is now ending even the life-saving aid that they had promised would be preserved Reporting from @hana-kiros.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/...

This is exactly right. The Onion quietly left Twitter a month ago and... our weekly subscribers went up. It's because we're doing well here, on Instagram and on YouTube. As a business, being on Twitter is somewhere between useless or detrimental, unless you're selling boner pills.

Never gets old.

Hearing some pushback on this so I’ll just note that the Juice Bananas (which we will call “Big Wetties”) will cost 10 cents less a pound because some of its weight is water, it’s like how different fuel costs different amounts depending on content. Big Wetties and Old Dry Ones will cost different $

Sometimes people, like children (who are people), have too much energy and don't know where to put it. Social media has weaponized this phenomenon to drive engagement Maybe it's better to go read a book or something else during these periods

All gun ownership does is result in: people shooting their relatives by mistake, shooting someone in road rage, getting their guns stolen, or shooting themselves during a crisis. Almost never for self-defense (sub-optimal to pepper spray anyways) and never in U.S. history to stop authoritarianism

Performative public lying is a hallmark of far right authoritarian parties

This great book offers useful context for any "Rothschilds" references one might encounter in the wild. Some might mean such a reference innocently or generically, but the name "Rothschild" has long been one of the loudest dog whistles out there in far right circles. It is the ur-conspiracy theory.

What's more shocking than ICE's plan to cram as many 8,500 humans into massive, soul-crushing warehouses? Seeing the actual DHS floor plan that echoes slavery ships and history's worst gulags with no rec space but a gun range for guards My new column on the camps www.inquirer.com/opinion/ice-...

The subheadline on this NYT piece is going to turn me into the Joker. Like... this... is exactly what trans people have been saying was going to happen for years.

Alysa Liu telling 60 Minutes “I love struggling, it makes me feel alive” is a legit revolutionary statement from a Bay Area native in a time when copious amounts of time and resources are being put toward convincing us to opt out of experiencing struggle, friction and self-actualization

Often in my speeches, I say how the best activism rarely looks like activism. It looks like doing something you love and bringing it to others. When they connect with you in that way, it creates a sort of cognitive dissonance that can actually change hearts and minds.

Discuss

We actually have a good amount of supporters who disagree with me on a number of key issues. Every single one of them says they’re voting for me because they know where I stand and I won’t lie to them. The bar is in hell.

This 53 year old man who lived in my neighborhood w/no criminal record & who had been in the US for 30 years, was detained and thrown into a cold cell for days, caught pneumonia and COVID there and deported. He finally died. I am so angry. www.kptv.com/2026/02/21/n...

Had to be at least a decade ago that a NPR show hosted a historian who had published a book on the Stasi and the SS. It turned out the SS et al., had not been the magical intelligence machines at all but had relied almost entirely on neighbors lining up to rat out each other.

Remember this Empire and authoritarianism doesn't run on most people being gung-ho for the dictator It is run on most people being cowed into silence by a significant subset of the population that thinks it can use the system for score-settling and self-aggrandizement

Getting more AOC-pilled by the day.

I kinda can't believe that we're still at the point where SCOTUS rules against the regime & we all pretend for a minute that we aren't dealing with captured & lawless institutions. As if the immunity ruling, for ex, wasn't a blank check to defy, well, all the laws & rulings.

“If carried out, the shift would replace the current patchwork of local jails and privately run prisons with a centralized system of larger facilities, most of them industrial warehouses…”

What do you call a warehouse full of human beings?

I don’t understand why snow makes people think it’s more acceptable to not pick up their dog’s shit

I’m on a trip with my family so I wasn’t going to do a newsletter but then I saw that visualization of very grim data that I thought deserved some comment. And then I added other stuff, too. www.howtoreadthisch.art/a-visualizat...

The arrested state senate staffer is the chair of the Anchorage Young Republicans—or was until the news broke yesterday. alaskabeacon.com/briefs/alask...

its really amazing how many people on tv are simply on tv because theyre on tv

The only acceptable Democratic posture to me is conquering the fascists, undoing their destruction, sending them to prison and razing their buildings.

Here's another angle from the AP's Stephanie Scarbrough. Just so much joy and sportsmanship.

There are no "reasonable Republicans" because they long ago ceased to be a political party. A political party tries to court your vote. An authoritarian regime tries to keep you from voting, and all votes from counting.

CATO: “.. In short, seven independent research teams have now examined the “who’s paying” question and have reached essentially the same answer: We are.” @cato.org @scottlincicome.bsky.social www.cato.org/blog/white-h...

What. A. Goal.

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “The attack on empathy would have gained very little traction in the church if Donald Trump weren’t president,” our columnist David French writes.

The UK arrested Prince Andrew. Hakeem Jeffries is telling Democrats not to boo Trump at the State of the Union.

Something I choose to ignore but actually may be a much bigger deal than anything political I spend way too much time scrolling about is level of esteem at which any normie holds Malcolm Gladwell.

I recently received “The Bomber Mafia” as a birthday gift (heh). It was bad, so bad that I believe it cannot be read as a reliable account of strategic bombing in World War II. In so many ways, it demonstrates the worst tendencies of the “pop history” genre. My review (and latest)⬇️

It feels like this "phenomenon" or whatever you want to call it is invading every corner of modern society and may be the most destructive strain of thinking out there. It feels like an "inevitable endpoint" to some kind of capitalistic incentive that we desperately need to identify and extinguish.

This is a great piece but to me it kinda elides the truly objectionable thing about THE BOMBER MAFIA: the point of Gladwell's story, the thing he is twisting the facts to argue for, is the idea (embodied by Curtis LeMay) that indiscriminate massacre of civilians in war is actively moral

I think it's important for the "all government people are corrupt crowd" to really hear this. No. No, they're not. This is why I'm excited to see some of the laid-off federal employees start to run for office. Americans need to hear from those who've actually done the work of governing.

The brunchlord establishment press hates progressives (especially female) exponentially more than fascism and it's simply not subtle

Yes, and don't forget Brazil:

in any case social media is one of the worst inventions in human history, it should be burned with fire, whether that’s by repealing section 230 or by some other method bsky.app/profile/ryan...

Yeah, I hope people don’t come away from this post thinking “they must be stupid or hypocrites” instead of seeing these as two parts of a unified international power projection policy

The Brazilian political system is, structurally, very similar to the American one. But when they elected a Trump-style authoritarian back in 2018, their Congress and Supreme Court actually fought back. I went to Brazil to find out why. And what I learned surprised me. www.vox.com/politics/479...

i really love @alexiscoe.bsky.social's biography of washington because she gets at exactly this: the fact that "george washington" is a character created by george washington, a man so consumed with presenting himself as an example of republican virtue that he became one

Well which is it? Are you for birthright citizenship or against?

notorious radical left communist rag says tax the rich

Yooooooo!! @alexisgoldstein.bsky.social for Congress!! www.democracynow.org/2026/2/18/al... You know what to do: secure.actblue.com/donate/alexi...

seeing this shit while donald trump is president is enough to melt my brain