16 hours in, my guess this was all intended basically as a coup to put VP Delcy Rodriguez in power (likely without her knowledge but 🤷). At least for democracy & human rights, that might be even worse than the "opening shots in a war" scenario. All speculation, but let me explain:

52% disapproval among white people seems like a notable problem for a party with a one-issue platform of white supremacy.

We tell our kids that they have to get each other a Christmas present. So they've started going to the store together. They each pick out something they want of equal price, and each one pays for the other's. They think they are getting away with something but actually I couldn't be prouder.

Just so we are all on the same page, when Trump says that 11 months ago he inherited a ‘mess,’ this is the mess he inherited.

25 years ago today, SCOTUS elected George W Bush president of the United States by blocking completion of a voting canvass in Florida. A subsequent canvass by the Associated Press showed that Bush's rival, Al Gore, had won the race in Florida—and thus the contest for the presidency—by 700 votes.

A $12 billion bailout for farmers sounds like a lot, but / 3 million farmers = $4,000 each. The tariffs cost the avg family $4,900 each (Yale budget Lab) so they don't even cover tariffs alone (farmers still have to buy food, unless their families just eat mountains of raw, unpurchased soybeans).

I really can't emphasize enough that if you care about local politics, all you gotta do is show up. Just a regular schmegular person showing up. Literally just show up consistently in person and within a remarkably short amount of time, you will have a shocking amount of influence.

Social scientists spent the last 50 years arguing that racism is still prevalent in US even if it's covert (racism w/ a veneer), unconscious (racism w/out intent), or systemic (racism w/out racists). Along comes MAGA, which embraces gutter racism while claiming that teaching about racism is racist.

The hustle that Trump's fixers are putting into getting the pardons signed ASAP suggests that *they* think he's near the end of his term. Or maybe they just want to fuel the perception that time is running out, as that increases the price?

This is one of the most important exposés published in WSJ in several years, and it derives from intercepts and analyses by foreign intelligence services studying the conduct of Trump and his inner team. It's first and foremost a wake up call to the people of the United States.

This is murder. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Republicans are purposely and strategically incompetent on antiterror; they hope for violent attacks they can frame as terrorist, to justify accelerating the terrorist violence they’re already enacting against the US civilian population.

AOC: "This is about, do you understand the assignment of fighting fascism right now? And they assignment is to come together across difference no matter what."

Show us on the doll where the sandwich hit you.

This right here, this exact sentence, is THE problem in American political journalism. The IRA *was* cheap energy and good jobs! That was the whole bill! Democrats did precisely what political pundits are telling them to do and the pundits just ignore it.

My grandfather still participated in the *most dangerous* anti-fascist gathering in American history! But sorry Wendell; it's no longer the largest. (He would understand, and approve.)

It's dangerous to say, but since it is true, it's more dangerous to not say: The Supreme Court of the United States is not a legitimate body. It's been deliberately and systematically captured by ideologues on behalf of an anti-Constitutional project, and its extremist members have been bribed.

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

Everything that's wrong with legal journalism in one New York Times headline and pie chart. If all these "legal experts" are so shocked by the threats to the rule of law, maybe they're not the experts we should be asking in the first place. All of this was foreseeable. Many forecast it.

This is such an essential phrase: “The only Constitutional rights upon which we can depend are those we extend to the weakest and most reviled among us.”

The South Korean Ministry of Defense has awarded medals of merit to 11 officers for disobeying direct orders of superiors during the martial law fiasco, orders that they deemed to be contrary to the constitution and endangerment to democracy. www.chosun.com/english/nati...

We are witnessing a swift and sweeping consolidation of media (traditional and social) into the hands of a small number of billionaires who are actively aligned/aligning (both via free will and coercion) with Trump and his right wing political party. This is (I’ll say it) a fascist project.

We're about to experience the first modern recession caused substantially, and perhaps primarily, by racism.

The New Yorker asked me “how bad” today’s Supreme Court ruling was. I boiled it down to one paragraph: link.newyorker.com/view/5bda429...

If federalized National Guard troops can't generally enter another state without that state's permission, then they can't _transit through_ those states either. The only way to get into DC is to go through VA or MD. If both those have Dem governors... ?

🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics. The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.

The precise moment when and where in recent weeks America crossed that invisible line from democracy into authoritarianism can and will be debated by future historians, but it’s clear that the line itself has been crossed. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/america-ti...

"One was an open paramilitary wing of an openly fascist political party, the other is an unaccountable government force operating without clear uniforms, identification, or transparency... for an openly fascist political party."

This is step one in how we lose free and fair elections. It’s not that Trump will “cancel” the midterms. It’s just everyone has to vote in person, and urban downtowns will be filled with ICE checkpoints and intimidating National Guard troops to “double check” that only citizens vote.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

It is everyone's patriotic duty to click on the link here, and maybe also click on a few of the ads.

I almost want to sign up for Paramount+ again, quickly while that South Park episode is still up, then cancel again as soon as they pull it down. It's like training an ostrich - it probably won't work at all, but your only hope is to have a quick feedback loop.

"A canary in the coal mine of the rule of law." This is an immensely important story about the DOJ being turned into an institution that is breaking the law at the behest of the President...the kind of story that would have tanked previous administrations. [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/p...

In case laws matter at all anymore, the reasons given in this letter in no way whatsoever fall within the President's statutory authority over emergency tariffs.

This bill is what happens when weak party leaders can't contain members outbidding each other, piling more and more extremism in an insane logroll. Leaders with effective control, who care about the party brand, constrain members not just so the bill gets passed at all, but to prevent the backlash.

When JD Vance says he’d eagerly make the United States poorer, weaker, unhealthier, and less free if it means he’ll see fewer brown people around and get to enjoy image of cruelty against them, I believe him. If anything, it’s weird and disturbing that so many still do not.

I want to reiterate that countless conservative judges issued universal injunctions against the Biden administration, and the Supreme Court never halted the practice. Now, barely five months into Trump's second term, the court puts an end to these injunctions. A brazen double standard.

Today the GOP justices on the Supreme Court endorsed migrants being sold into slavery. They'll claim otherwise, but that's the reality — today's decision permits Trump to send people from countries around the world to any global hellhole that accepts a U.S. financial incentive.

Among many other things this is a proliferation nightmare. The lesson learned will be never negotiate with the United States.

crashing the economy and starting a war in the Middle East Donald Trump has finally become a conventional Republican after all

Trump delaying a decision on bombing Iran for two weeks (probably two weeks renewable) is good news.

Silver Spring, Maryland, Tesla Dealership. Unsold cars getting loaded to be taken away.

When things get difficult over the next few years remember today. The number of people who want democracy vastly outnumber the people who want a king.

No kings

For nearly 80 years, the Fulbright Program has been one of the crown jewels of American research and cultural exchange. Again I say, if you wanted to dramatically undermine American power and influence around the world, you would be hard pressed to do better than this admininstration.

Federal actions in Los Angeles echo the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) in more ways than one. Chinese exclusion was obviously rooted in racial anxieties, but it was also rooted in a fear of California generally.