New Washington Post poll on who voters blame for the government shutdown:

My god. “Watson said she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans. Kids were separated from their mothers…’It was heartbreaking to watch…seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible.’”

Immigration authorities are continuing to patrol with D.C. police weeks after the expiration of President Trump’s federal takeover, leaving some local leaders and residents alarmed about D.C. police’s role in immigration enforcement.

ICE had made only 85 arrests in Washington from Jan. 20 through the end of July. But from early August until mid-September, ICE made around 1,200 arrests, according to officials with knowledge of the data. We detail how that happened: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/u...

While the shutdown will undoubtedly impact some District residents employed by the federal government, local services will not be affected. We may also see some cutback in federal services and that will also affect District residents. My statement below

my latest is expanding on the observation that your view of the politics of opposition to the administration depend largely on your view of the election (gift link)

“Trump’s remarks were not…merely among the most disturbing or dangerous ever delivered by a US president. None, even during civil war or other moments of unrest, has so openly and hostilely targeted their own civilians.” @djrothkopf.bsky.social www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-gener...

SCOOP — The White House instructed all federal agency leadership on Tuesday to send out a mandatory message to workers blaming the impending potential government shutdown on House Democrats, The Handbasket was first to learn. Absolutely no modifications to the email were permitted. My story:

For as much as some members of Congress say the D.C. government is dysfunctional and should be disbanded, it's worth noting that the D.C. government will open and operate normally tomorrow because elected officials can do stuff like, you know, pass annual budgets.

In a sane country with competent leadership, the 50 highest-ranking Democrats would call a press conference to denounce what just happened as a threat to the republic and demand Trump's immediate impeachment and removal from office. I don't know he could make his intentions more clear.

The U.S. president just ordered all the military generals to an unprecedented gathering in Washington, then told them that they should plan to participate in a war on American cities.

pete hegseth, who you will recall has been accused of domestic abuse and sexual assault, has announced a new policy by which you cannot file anonymous complaints of mistreatment. sex criminal solidarity.

On this date in 1943, John Wilson was born. He ably served as Ward 2 Councilmember and as Council Chairman. Our city hall/county seat/statehouse is named for him. He is sorely missed. Here’s a 2018 @tomsherwood take on him: washingtoncitypaper.com/article/185261/

This is now the second attempted terrorist attack on the LGBTQ community in a week as "revenge" for Charlie Kirk. This follows an attempted mass shooting of a gay bar in Arizona. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

It is revealing for several reasons: 1. Klein seems incapable of understanding (or admitting) that Kirk was not engaging in debate to persuade people, but to rile up his base by humiliating his opponents. That’s what made his content go viral.

Targeted attack on a dockside restaurant in North Carolina. Three dead. Suspect a former Marine sniper in Iraq and Haiti who tried to sue the US govt for “genocide against straight men by the LGBQT community.” Flags at half mast? Endless op-eds? Victims’ faces on coins? www.cnn.com/2025/09/28/u...

In new memo, Pete Hegseth says 200 members of the Oregon National Guard will be "called into Federal service effective immediately for a period of 60 days." Follows Trump's call for a military response in Portland. Has similar feel to deployment to L.A. that began in June.

Border Patrol agent talks about how he knows that the people he's arresting at this nutrition bar factory in NY are "literal street rats" who would "eat our kids"

I’ll be restrained as well: You don’t know enough about research methods to understand what constitutes “lowest-quality work” and should refrain from making any claims about it until you can.

Great conversation with @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social, one of the smartest people I know about politics and policy. We discussed what's unique about Trump's authoritarianism compared to his 1st term and autocrats abroad and why Dem thinking is trapped in old paradigms. www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2up...

Sure seems like the president just instructed the military to use lethal force against US citizens.

Feel like if this is how the law works, there’s no reason to make a budget deal because there’s no reason to believe anything that you win via Congress will actually happen anyway.

BREAKING NYT:   Trump just fired a U.S. attorney who insisted on following a court order.   Michele Beckwith, the top federal prosecutor in Sacramento, was fired hours after she reminded a Border Patrol chief to abide by court-ordered restrictions on immigration raids.

Repealing Citizens United and going back to the prior BCRA regime wouldn't do anything to fix our politics. The "money in politcs" reform we really need is diminishing wealth inequality in society more broadly.

Here's my new Cato post on Trump's executive order declaring a broad law enforcement crackdown on a range of speech and political activity by his opponents, much of it plainly protected by the First Amendment, on the pretext that it promotes, incites, or justifies violence. @cato.org /1

JUST IN: A new class action lawsuit challenges ICE's warrantless immigration arrests in Washington, D.C., which they say are occuring without probable cause and based largely on perceived ethnicity. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

genuinely crazy to me how unitary executive advocates read the vesting clause as granting a huge scope of essentially royal "inherent" powers. one would think that if the framers intended to give the president royal authority, they would have just said so.

For @newyorker.com: I wrote a crash course on how John Roberts empowered the current destruction and lawlessness in Washington. There’s a perception this began with the immunity ruling, but he has long been pushing the idea of an unrestrained, unchecked presidency. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Heritage Foundation has released an absolutely insane policy proposal to label all trans people as domestic terrorists. It uses completely made up instances of terrorism and made up statistics but facts don't matter to them. They want us all eradicated.

MAGA's crackdown on political dissent after Charlie Kirk's killing is an appalling moral panic. (new @msnbc.com column)

“Who was arrested in Trump’s D.C. crime emergency?” The @washingtonpost.com analyzed more than 1,000 charging documents to find out. A superb piece of journalism here. And exactly what you want to see from our local paper. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

In another era (this morning), I wrote about how institutions are again doing the hard work of validating the administration’s intimidation tactics. www.pbump.net/o/the-climat...

Political violence is horrid and should be condemned whenever it occurs, even if the victim is someone whose views we find grotesque. That said, we do not have to sanitize the victim either. Kirk absolutely did NOT practice politics the right way.

Some coverage of the federal takeover of DC would leave you thinking the main consequence is National Guardsmen laying mulch. No. It is masked agents terrifying schoolchildren. Please read this crucial article from @teoarmus.bsky.social on how DC communities are trying to protect families.

A National Guard report accidentally emailed to the Post says veterans and active-duty troops view the D.C. deployment with "shame and alarm" @alexhorton.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

New numbers show ICE is devouring US law enforcement: 1 in 5 US marshals, 1 in 5 FBI agents, half of all DEA agents, and over two-thirds of all ATF agents are now assigned to ICE enforcement. These are agencies with critical jobs they're now NOT doing. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/ice-is-eat...

One thing that has been consistent in my discussions with folks on the Hill: They have no idea how District government works. And yet... they feel compelled to legislate on District affairs and governance.

The Supreme Court just ruled this meme is constitutional.

the maga constitution doesn’t allow any institution, public or private, to explicitly work to ameliorate racial inequality but allows the government to racially profile

Thousands march to the White House united in our demand. We want federal forces out of DC Now!! Free DC! Free DC! #WeAreAllDC #FreeDC

This is abhorrent. America should not tolerate a president relishing in Pinochet-style rule over our own citizens.

OK, time for a #jobsday chart thread. Starting as always with the big picture: Job growth has basically stalled out. Revised data showed that employment actually FELL in June, the first net loss since December 2020. The economy has added ~30,000 jobs/month in recent months. #NumbersDay

America lost 7k construction jobs in August, and overall job growth in the sector is now at its worst pace since the pandemic Over the last year, the US has lost 31k jobs in residential construction and only gained 78k jobs in nonresidential & civil construction

The Justice Department's acting deputy chief was caught on a hidden camera saying that the government will "redact every Republican" from an Epstein client list and "leave all the liberal, Democratic people."

NEW: We are suing to block the unlawful deployment of National Guard troops to DC. Armed soldiers should not be policing American citizens on American soil. The forced military occupation of the District of Columbia violates our local autonomy and basic freedoms. It must end.