Hypotheses about rationale for Iran strikes: 1) Blowing stuff up looks cool/tough 2) Quid pro quo for personal payoff with Saudis 3) Distraction from Epstein/bad polls 4) Mad Iran unsuccessfully tried to help Harris 5) Mad couldn’t get better deal than Obama’s What do you think?

I just don't understand this attitude toward the left. It just feels strongly that Yglesias's position is that leftists should vote for Democrats but Democrats should never do anything leftists want. His vision is coalition without power-sharing. It won't fly.

Appreciate the Bolts work on tracking all the local stuff, but kinda wondering if there’s been a big piece anywhere on this huge primary. What do the candidates stand for? Who is supporting whom? I’d be curious to read something like that!

100% correct. Unfortunately, I think there are not going to be very many Dems who are for this. It should be a big test in the 28 primary but I’m not sure it will be.

I hear El Mencho's supporters are thinking of building a statue of him sitting in the town square. It'll be el mencho on el bencho.

Appreciated the @pkrugman.bsky.social interview with @khanna.house.gov. Agree on the need for structural change, but didn’t see anything in this exchange that would rise to that level. Felt like sort of a missed opportunity for Khanna to assuage concerns he’s in the pocket of big tech, though.

DC Statehood yesterday

Yeah, I mean, anyone can be racist, right? Words are an imperfect expression of what people think. And a lot of how we diagnose racism is just based on observing language use inconsistent with high SES. Thus high-SES racists can sometimes pass in a way low-SES racists can’t.

Really appreciate this @perrybaconjr.bsky.social piece, but as a progressive I'm not ambivalent. I think AOC should run, and I think she has a great shot at the nomination.

This is good stuff! Closing potential loopholes for abuses of power is hugely important.

This is totally nihilistic. It relies on one of two premises. Either: A) The moral reasoning of abolitionists is unknowable B) The moral reasoning of abolitionists doesn’t apply today. We know A, and B is so obvious we don’t have to think about it because everyone still thinks slavery is bad.

Per usual, @hels.bsky.social is onto something. The words you use are insight into your essence. This is both why AI is so alluring (it doesn't judge us) and why it's so toxic. It robs us of our most fundamental form of human expression: language.

I think it’s pretty easy and coherent to read Kamala as an avatar for a decade-and-a-half failure of mainstreams Dems to find a “what next” after the ACA. Folks didn’t love Biden but beating Trump was important. Obama 08 was the last time Dems had a clear something to vote FOR.

I subscribe and I recommend! Even as they were just getting started and had basically no budget, the @51st.news local coverage was the best around. Now they're staffing up and delivering more. Help them become a great local paper by subscribing!

If the following of Nazi accounts wasn't enough, if the fun memetic interplay with Nazis online wasn't enough, if the full-throated abandonment of any of his former principles wasn't enough, look at the smug smile as he asks "for what?" He thinks the murder of Alex Pretti is a fun joke. Just sick.

Consequently, it’s become a wedge issue for Republicans, which is like half the point of electoral politics. Focus the game on your opponent’s wedge issues. Even Trump’s crimes/corruption aren’t really a wedge issue (no elected Rs will really condemn them), but this is.

This is like the 38th most important that happened in the last 24 hours, but in no place but DC can the president decide to shut down the city's largest performing arts institution. Another reason why we need to be the 51st state ASAP.

I genuinely believe that all instrumental arguments for the humanities are self-defeating. You should study the humanities because you will lead a better more fulfilling life if you know how to appreciate the highest forms of human expression.

Absolutely elite Christmas Eve content.

The thing is most people are good people! Why would one of these dudes randomly murder me in the middle of the night? No reason! People aren’t inherently violent against all other humans. And most of these guys aren’t even criminals!

Great thread!

The anti-Cinderella story everyone wanted! The richest team in MLS allowed to flout all the roster rules to buy a retirement title for Messi (who is still totally the best player in MLS). But does anyone care?

Any Democrat not willing to demand Hegseth’s resignation and investigate him and the commanders who executed this clearly illegal order for war crimes should resign or be primaried.

If some people have no due process, you can be called such a person and then you don’t have due process either. This is exactly why due process for immigrants is as essential as for everyone else.

This is actually a good argument for why the legacy political parties should embrace proportional representation or RCV or some sort of electoral reform. They have a chance for survival with it, but without, they could be totally swamped/overthrown.

This is really important messaging. More of this please, Dems!

This is example 45,338 of why left/liberal voters hate Democratic politicians. More concerned with doing favors for buddies than with actual democracy.

Yet more evidence that DC needs to cease any and all cooperation with federal agents who tried to kill a guy for having tinted windows by shooting into a car where *they couldn’t have known if there were other people present*. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

It's easy for "leaders" to hide behind the notion that you are "protecting the staff at your institution," or "not doing anything to make the situation worse," but the reality is that the situation is dire. You can either lead the fight against fascism or hide. But don't expect kudos for hiding.

It's genuinely insane that we don't have answers to basic questions about how our tax dollars are being used by MPD to support the abductions of our neighbors. Hold the hearings! Make the details public!

Just offering a reminder to those who infrequently tune into baseball that the Mariners and Blue Jays have each won more playoff games *this year* than the Pirates have won in the entire lifetime of someone who is 30 years old.

We have been told that the National Guard deployment in DC will cost the federal government $201 MILLION through the end of this calendar year. If the Guard is really staying through the America 250 celebration, the total cost to the taxpayers could easily top half a billion

Literally negatively polarizing themselves into being pro-monarchy.

I think this is true. I also think it's true that up until Trump, there was a check on bigotry at the top of the Republican Party (e.g., McCain saying Obama wasn't Muslim at a town hall). When you put an open bigot at the top, who can enforce rules of decorum down throughout the rest of the org?

Yes, you should be surprised and horrified by secret federal police running around our city kidnapping immigrants, crashing cars, launching chemical weapons and shooting and killing people. This is a thing you should be *perpetually* shocked by. We lose when we become numb to it.

This gives cover for Ds to come forward about every off-color thing they've ever heard a Republican staffer say. And that keeps this story - "Young Republicans are all Nazis" - in the public eye. Hopefully Dems don't opt for "message discipline" and try to make this, too, about healthcare.

I think this is right. The thing that has always fascinated me is the hypothesis of the politics-doers that *not the truth* is somehow politically better than the truth. Like, is there any theory of when/under what circumstances?

This honestly feels like the sort of thing that could bring the whole admin down. Dems should make absolute hay out of this. Brazen corruption. Everybody hates corruption!

Bowser testifying to congress and not mentioning the national guard or ICE is just utterly feckless. She's just totally out of step with voters in the city. My biggest issue is people being disappeared by ICE. She genuinely doesn't seem to give a s***.

CNN's quoting Jack Posobiec, and the NYT Mag won't quote Kevin Kruse. We're living through attempts at mass erasure of leftist (and not even extreme left) opinion in mainstream media (cc: @karenattiah.bsky.social) that represents the POV of >25% of Americans.

How close are we to a nationwide fugitive immigrant law that attempts to criminalize the most banal interaction with any undocumented immigrant under the guise of aiding/abetting? We’re near true 1850s anti-abolition stuff.

Racial profiling is blatantly unconstitutional. The fact that the Supreme Court doesn't understand that and is supposed to be the primary interpreter of the constitution is less an indication that racial profiling might be constitutional and more an indication that SCOTUS it isn't fit for purpose.

This is why “Abolish ICE” (or, perhaps with more nuance, “significantly circumscribe ICE’s power” was and is the correct position.

The people who authorized this all need to go to prison, either here or in the Netherlands.

It's painstakingly obvious that the only path forward is through either a total takeover of the Democratic Party and replacement of leadership or the creation of an alternative apparatus to win elections. Current leadership is simply not equipped for the moment.

Honestly, what is the point of @mayorbowser.bsky.social ? Acquiescing to the "papers, please" authoritarianism of this administration is a disgusting abdication of responsibility to the safety of District residents and a protection of our individual liberties. #FreeDC

Yes,Dupont Circle, a hotbed of crime and a low-visibility place.

The civility people are a sort of nihilist species. They think you're not supposed to feel anything. "Why are you getting mad? They're just words." Nothing matters except the discourse, and also the discourse doesn't matter.

This is so f*****. It’s a school. Kids deserve to go to school free of men in tactical combat gear.