And the fact that nearly all Republican election officials may slightly tilt the board in Repubs’ favor but in general care about clean elections.

Yeah, I just think that the mess here is that they need the votes in the purple areas that are going to decide the house just as much as the dems do. I admit that pure fuckery could maybe affect the Senate, but that would involve the Feds in buttfuck nowhere Alaska.

They could try to nullify the results, like when they tried to take over central tabulation operations in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia etc. They could try to influence the results by voting restrictions, intimidation, etc. But I don’t see how they would cancel the elections.

I think it's also telling what actual tools Trump has here are limited and they actually just tried to use them in '25. Both NJ and California had federal poll observers from DOJ - it did nothing. There's no magical "cancel elections" button from the federal government.

He doesn’t have an army of goons. He’s got a few thousand immigration officers he can move city to city. Military wouldn’t do it. Courts ruled he can’t take control of the Guard just because. And he’s got no paramilitary street fighters bsky.app/profile/howi...

He’s telling members of Congress they won’t be paid after Dec 31, 2026 Besides, he can’t make California or New York or Michigan cancel their elections. So what’s he going to do, strongarm Repubs in Idaho & Oklahoma & Alabama to cancel theirs? We should take it seriously but notice weakness

Remember that Trump tried to seize the voting machines in 2020. It went nowhere In 2022 Kari Lake was one of the only people who refused to concede. No state overturned the results of their elections. Trump is more unpopular than ever. And too many Senate Repubs want to be the 2028 nominee

That's me :D

I like BlueSky. It is BY FAR my favorite.

Hello #PortfolioDay! I love drawing my OCs and people's OCs.

I'm all for individuality and free expression but sometimes I think people wanna "Be different" for the sake of it or worse without any sort of substance. It's basically just online hipsterism to "Hate a popular thing" cuz it's Mainstream"

It also kind of misreads the coalitions right now. Voter suppression tactics, deleting voter rolls, etc. hurts low propensity voters the most - and there are just as many of those in the GOP now.

One thing that may be important to note is that DJT is 100% an impulsive and not at all restrained boy and has been angling for the insurrection act since day 1. The fact that they have NOT used it should indicate that they are not nearly as confident about it as they portray.

She looks great 👍 This just needs to be as "aggressively OKAY" as either the 'Twisted Metal' show or 'Rings of Power' and it will instantly be the best 'Tomb Raider' thing ever made, so everybody who ISN'T about to have their thigh-gap politicized by oozing dweebs on YouTube should relax.

And given the Gen Z protests in 2025 and how 2026 is shaping up, I can't help but think this will be a year of convulsive protest and social/political uprisings too. And this time, I suspect the US and Europe will not be immune.

In working on the 2016-2024 period, I've been thinking a lot about the global social uprisings in 2018-2019, which were cut short by the pandemic, then the global cost-of-living protests in 2022-2023 and the anti-incumbent wave of 2024. And none of that pent up grievance has been addressed.

The amount of servility we've seen so far in this term — everything Mark Rutte has said in the last year, for instance — makes me extremely skeptical this would happen given the consequences. But we might find out either way soon enough.

More than an attempted coup, where a mob tried to seize Congress on live television did? There's not going to be an implosion about anything. It's either a slow slide towards oblivion where everything gets incrementally worse as people try to live normally, or a slow grind in the opposite direction.

So, just to be clear, the doomer position is that we are *not* about to begin WWIII and that we Americans are going to have to restrain and defeat Donald Trump ourselves, while the optimistic position is that WWIII may and should happen and that many people will die.

Anybody who posts on this platform that we may not have free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028 is engaging in a particularly insidious form of voter suppression. We have had many elections since November 2024, and the Democrats have kicked ass in most if not all of them.

I mean lets face it The Sequel Trilogy IS the most "Mandated" Star Wars thing that's come out of the era and I like those movies. But deep down I think Lucasfilm would have WAY prefered to start out with making things like Rogue One, The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, Bad Batch, even Rebels.

“I do not understand the concept of martial law in the American constitution”

🚨A new product stand for ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ has been found in Brazil 🚨 #starwars #TheMandalorian #ahsoka  #grogu #dindjarin #fennec #bobafett #bokatan #TheMandalorianAndGrogu

i suspect that is how a lot of 21st century problems will get solved. not by some kind of popular mass mobilization or via spirited debates, but by small groups of technocrats that labor in the shadows to engineer fixes in the background

I’m gonna say it: it’s stupid how psychotic people get when birthrates are discussed. If you scream at and shout down anyone who isn’t a handmaids tale type when the subject comes up, then the policy space is going to be dominated by them, for what’s clearly going to be a consequential issue.

Like China possibly getting older before it gets rich has the potential to be one of the more important geopolitical events this century. Sorry but this is a real thing! It is going to matter. There are also a lot of weird freaks obsessed with it for psycho-sexual reasons. It’s like that sometimes.

HIGH chance that Kinbergs trilogy is 10-12

for years, the USG was bound less by the strictures in law and more by general norms and a sense of personal duty to "the public". if you sufficiently erode at norms and fracture how officials conceive of "the public", you wind up in a v dangerous place where the only check is mental fortitude

depressing but this increasingly just the lesson for every single servant and every aspect of american life

I have managed to convince my wife to watch all of the Star Wars movies and series in chronological order. Some we've never seen before and others she hasn't but I have. I have always been a huge Star Wars fan but getting older it feels I have less and less time to enjoy...onward to adventure!

If you think/recognize that my generation conducted itself shamefully with how we received the Prequels? Recognize at least the POSSIBILITY that you are doing the same thing with at least *some* of what "Star Wars" has released between then and now. Because it rhymes 😉

Sigh. Guys, I've been MORE than ready for a "Let's honestly reappraise the Prequels and how GenX treated George Lucas about them" discussion for a long time now; but it's going to be an intellectually dishonest circle-jerk if we're ONLY going to do it in the context of "DISNEY ERA SUCKS" Be better

#shera #catra Old WIPs that I will be reworking. It was an attempt to make myself a dakimakura (my friend bought one for herself, and I wanted too). I'm not sure if I'll post the full version if I ever finish it, as I don't want to see it being sold somewhere on alxpress or other thieves'dump

One step closer to getting a well-deserved Oscar win only for people a couple weeks later to start spouting asinine “this sucks, actually” takes until the sequel comes out and reminds people that good movies are in fact good.

Seth Rogen seems like one of the few dudes in his specific niche who hit middle age and immediately chose to become a cool adult instead of an old teenager.

This article was made to get y'all to share it with no backing. Check your fucking sources before spreading misinformation.

Because @brittrankin.bsky.social shut off replies and quotes, I wanna combat misinformation now. 1. Inside the Magic is a notorious clickbait slop site. They lie. 2. If you read the actual article you can see how poorly written and poorly sourced it is. 3. Ahsoka season 2 is airing this year so.

This is where you end up when you buy the hype re: "Gen-Z nihilism as direct permanent pipeline to the ideological right" 🤦‍♂️ You're not going to turn "Twitter uses 'white liberal moms' as a silencer for outright misogyny" into a real praxis bc those guys don't believe in anything but gooning to anime

This is not a novel observation, but I really don't think the admin quite understands the level of radicalization that is happening to opposition elements that were not previously radicalized in the slightest.

One reason things like Andor are honestly more depressing than inspiring is I just think the Star Wars galaxy as a society is a far more healthier one than actual real world society which is far more sick right now and gonna need a whole overturn from the ground up.

There's just something special about seeing these black-and-white Looney Tunes shorts. This one is "The Daffy Doc" (1938). #SaturdayMorningCartoons

We cannot be in such a media illiteracy epidemic that we have to explain this. 1. They're not done filming yet. 2. Alan Silvestri hasn't scored it yet. 3. Because of these things the movie is even remotely close to being finished being edited. If ANYTHING this is just the assembly cut. THINK!

Fascinated or surprised? Because of ALL the things that have "surprised" me over the last 15-20 years, that whole strain of behavior never once has 🤷‍♂️ It always just seemed like the most natural progression from this vantage.

Many of you have become drama-addicted doomers, and you seem to think it's important for the rest of us to join you. Yes, things are bad. But change is within our power. Grow up. Act like sober, responsible adults in a democracy instead of cynical, all-is-lost teenagers. Now get off my lawn. /5x

I wouldn't be hanging on the outcome of court cases. I wouldn't care about special elections. I wouldn't bother with scandals or big news stories. I'd be just trying to stay intact until the regime destroyed itself or was destroyed by a foreign power. /4

I'd be running my life differently - my finances, my church attendance, my social engagments. I would assume not only that all of us are in danger, but that all of us are capable, intentionally or not, of endangering *each other*. In other words, I'd act as if I were living in Moscow in 1937. /3

I'd still be writing and speaking, but I'm old. But... I'd be having talks with everyone I know, friends and family, about not getting sideways with the authorities. I'd tell them all to them to steer clear of me and anyone even remotely like me. I'd post here, but I would not invite engagement. /2

I wonder what any of you would do differently in your lives if I said "yes, America is at this moment a fascist nation." Because I tell ya what, if I thought so, I'd be doing things differently. For starters, I wouldn't bother worrying about elections or candidates or whom to support. /1