BREAKING: The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 100-page opinion -- says it is unequivocally, lopsidedly easy to determine that the Trump administration's view of birthright citizenship is wrong. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

The government is in full shutdown and the Republicans are refusing to call the House back into session. Want to know why? Because we have secured the final vote on releasing the Epstein Files and they don’t want it out. Call GOP and tell them to swear in @adelitaforcongress.bsky.social.

"Everybody Hurts" is a song that never goes out of style, one we need now and will keeping needing. @charleshughes2.bsky.social on all the new versions, for No Fences Review

I know it’s tempting to roll our eyes whenever celebrities ‘take a stand’ or do activism - see Gal Gadot’s Imagine video - but the fact is, this is more of a stand than most of Congress is willing to take. It’s easy to mock, but more prominent should be doing this

We simply have to become more serious people and less self-serious persons. I swear.

So many hot takes about who will win/lose the shutdown, but so little discussion about what's at stake. The stakes here are whether Congress makes the law or the president can rule by diktat. Everything else is commentary.

👀 Just Now -- President Trump in the Oval Office said a government shutdown gives his administration the power to cut benefit programs, which include Social Security and Medicare. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Fuckin yikes, man

A farewell to my friend, Kaleb Horton, a great writer who died unexpectedly this past weekend.

““We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”” They’re not being coy about their vision for the future.

Thank you David Cross. (I never want to hear Bill Burr bitching about how there should be no billionaires ever again. He’s right, of course, but not so funny when you know it’s just a bit he workshopped)

David Cross folks.

These are correct words. All correct.

And now I'm just spelunking around and here's this Facebook post by Kaleb Horton from September 2017. It was three months after MTV dumped its freelancers. I'm sure it would have been a piece there; instead he posted this on FB just to have it written out: Toys 'R' Us as societal microcosm.

Say literally everything you want about Uber and I’ll agree with you, but if You lived in a city without a taxi culture (so all of them that didn’t three major league sports teams) in the Aughts you know that nothing took more drunk drivers off the road than Uber.

If Trump actually believed he was popular as he always says he is, he would not be trying to rig next year's election. But he and Republicans know that waging war against the American people is not popular and are trying to avoid democratic accountability. apnews.com/article/redi...

Gathered a few thoughts and lots of links about/by Kaleb Horton, an old soul and fantastic writer who died young over the weekend.

Interesting that Trump would announce he's sending troops to Portland with authorization for "Full Force" days before the nation's top military brass have been called to Quantico. A test to see who will oppose unlawful orders? Strikes on Venezuelan boats have already met resistance....

So many great Kaleb Horton pieces... On Merle Haggard and David Lynch and road food and Norm McDonald and this insane unforgettable epic about the 1976 Chowchilla, CA school bus kidnapping... R.I.P., Kaleb

Eeeeyow!

Kaleb was off-the-charts smart and funny, and just a wholly distinctive writer. A terrible loss…

Yes, but let's be clear. Watergate was a middle school prank compared to the unprecedented corruption & constitutional crimes now happening Every Day. We left Watergate-level crimes 300 miles back on the interstate.

if you dont stop calling us nazis we will have the secret police disappear you to a slave labor camp

Excellent work here by Carl (and thx for the No Fences Review link re my piece on critic Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Roll as a candidate for "OG" "poptimist" move)

Pritzker: "One of the reasons Trump wants to send troops into cities is bc he wants to be able to take control of the 2026 elections...if they've got troops in cities, & it becomes a kind of norm for people, then it won't be abnormal for them when they're going to vote having troops at ballot boxes"

“DEI” for these people just means integration and the enforcement of civil rights laws www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/r...

One reason I do not think Trump is going to create a 1,000 year reich is because he failed to cancel a middling funnyman and immediately pivoted to trying to outlaw not having a headache.

Big K.R.I.T. keeps the devil off Memphis, Nanci Griffith and Sonny Curtis fight the law, Martha Wainwright shouts save the country, save the country, save the country! Here's this week's Turn It Up recommendations from No Fences Review (w/ @charleshughes2.bsky.social )

entire press has gotten bullied into treating charlie kirk as if he was one of the most important americans alive and not a modestly popular podcaster

hey so this is insane

Just now, 11 state and city lawmakers were arrested by DHS police on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza after a hour of demanding access to the ICE lock up on the same floor. @thecity.nyc

This piece advising citizens to shut up rather than express their political views, written by a member I believe of the Kansas City Star's editorial board, gives me zero confidence that this major press outlet will even feign to champion its readers free speech rights

On Margo Price, Kimmel and listening to what women say the *first time* www.dontrocktheinbox.com/special-note...

At this late date, NYT’s continued insistence on both-siding the rise of authoritarianism amounts to collaboration

Shout out to the American Federation of Musicians

This is the top headline on CNN. A good warning sign that your country may be becoming a dictatorship is when your plain-jane straight news networks start saying “Our country is becoming a dictatorship”

Ta-Nehisi Coates has written the best yet commentary on last week's events, while pundits, politicians and others have disgraced themselves in their whitewashing of of this man's legacy. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/c...

Didn't make the article but key point is, what if I told you that there was legislation in the 1800s that gave millions of dollars to HBCUs? Then what if I said it was being done to ensure that other insts never had to integrate? Now you can see what this is www.insidehighered.com/news/institu...

FFS. We're fighting people whose statements make very clear that, no, they do not think we are going to have to live with each other, and worse, whose actions and policies are intent on making certain they won't have to

Highly recommend Natalie Weiner on country music and Robert Altman's Nashville. (If her essay piques your interest in "Nashville"/Nashville, @charleshughes2.bsky.social and I took a deep dive into the film back in June. Link in comments)

Robert Redford playing a gentle incarnation of death, coming for a frightened old woman in The Twilight Zone episode "Nothing in the Dark" (1962). An extraordinary performance then, terribly bittersweet today

reminder: when they come for you it won't matter what you *actually* said or did, they don't care about that

This film, released as I was beginning my senior year in high school, made such an impression on me: Its music, casting, tone and performances. Still one of my favorites. R.I.P. Robert Redford

JD Vance is doing the Reichstag Fire the right way. by Ezra Klein

My story:

i have said this before but when “getting rid of race in admissions” for the administration means “you can’t even try to reach out to underrepresented communities and encourage them to apply and if you do it is illegal discrimination against white people” then the actual goal here is segregation

New music from Robbie Fulks and Willie Nelson, KIRBY and Wednesday, CMAT and JD Crowe, and more, from No Fences Review w/ @charleshughes2.bsky.social

the Trump administration told The New York Times that IUDs, hormonal implants, and the Pill are actually abortions open.substack.com/pub/jessica/...

This is the leader of the Democratic opposition, under fascism.