A whooping cough outbreak in an elementary school down the road. Meanwhile I finally got around to reading Candle In the Dark and only a few pages in, you get to its eerily prescient passage. Sigh.

A GOP that- Rationalized murder. Fetishized violence. Killed with remorseless glee. Pardoned violent mobs. Threatened genocide. Which raises the question: have Democrats gone too far?

A federal employee asked ICE to detain and deport a widow so he could gain the inheritance of her late husband’s house, per a probate judge. At 85 years old, the widow was not likely the “worst of the worst” ICE claims it targets. @mclem.org @douglasrivlin.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

What a week to be giving a lecture at Fort Ticonderoga on the Canadian campaign during the American Revolution, which was doomed by an outbreak of smallpox and mixed messaging on whether not soldiers should inoculate.

July 21 1935: The Führer orders a new reception hall and ballroom to "entertain foreign diplomats" at the Chancellery. Underneath the dance floor is an air raid shelter. A 2nd deeper bunker is built next to this in 1944, where he would spend his last days as the Reich collapsed.

Who could have imagined the Church of England would speak out in support of the pope

The federal government – ICE, FBI, and more – is spying on you without a warrant. This week, Congress will decide whether Kash Patel, Stephen Miller and Trump can keep spying on Americans. If that scares you (it should) this thread is for you.

“they want polluters to be able to cause broad public harm without consequences.” How has this type of subservience to the worst corporations not been turned into a slam dunk countermessage?

I’ll never understand these performances of institutional guilt at a time of unprecedented state assaults on free expression and academic freedom. Esp since the story of higher ed over the past decade is not a “woke” takeover of campuses but increasing rationales for and mechanisms of that assault.

1/ I was reading an investigative piece about Viktor Orban's party scrambling before Hungary's 2026 elections. Buried in it was something that stopped me cold. His team was panicking because social media companies had changed how they operate in the EU. #DV1 #ProudBlue #Voices4Victory #USDemocracy

Buried in the chaos: the big ugly bill passed solely by Rs at Trump’s demand accelerates the crisis for Medicare and SS. Per CBOs updated projections, Medicare could be insolvent by 2040—10 yrs sooner—and SS by 2031. All this to give tax cuts to billionaires and leaving the rest of us struggling.

Cover of The Lancet: @thelancet.com www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

When faced with a shockingly exploitative new employment contract that would’ve forced them to sign away their IP, their likeness rights, and their power of attorney, Jupiter Jetson and her coworkers at Sheri’s fought back—fast. They organized a union in SIX DAYS. www.thenation.com/article/econ...

Last month, a Pennsylvania farmer rejected $15M from data center developers to sell his farmland. Another in Wisconsin turned down $80M. America's farmers and others across the country are pushing back on Big Tech. This is what integrity looks like.

This indicates the FBI wanted to pursue a criminal child sex trafficking investigation into Donald Trump based on this woman’s account. She refused to cooperate. When Trump came up an FBI interview, her lawyer demurred, citing her “fear of retaliation”

In a 5-minute phone call to dispatchers, a federal immigration officer requests police backup last October to help with a kid tailing him on a motorized bicycle. "I need someone here now, or else I'm going to have to shoot this kid," the officer said on a recording of the call obtained by OPB.

Through her eyes: "I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

this is a really powerful piece.

Radiocarbon dating shows these prints date to the late Iron Age — moments in the lives of people who walked this landscape two millennia ago, a few centuries before the first reference to the Picts. #Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen! More to follow! www.abdn.ac.uk/news/25127/?...

Refunds for corporations, but not you. finance.yahoo.com/news/bessent...

A federal panel made up entirely of Trump appointees just greenlit his massive ballroom, reportedly larger than the White House itself. The panel received 2,000 public comments on the East Wing renovation. 99% were negative. They approved it anyway. Unanimously.

😕

The New York Times smeared AOC for saying “um”

No medical intervention is risk-free. It’s senseless to fear a routine immunization while preventable diseases can result in invasive procedures, IV antibiotics, permanent brain damage. We need to be willing to ask hard questions about medical neglect of a child www.independent.co.uk/news/health/...

Cc: John Roberts

both parties are not the same

What in the cotton-picking dystopia are we doing now?

Trump claims to 'fix' housing? Meanwhile, families face climbing prices ＆ can only afford a literal shed on wheels! He blames everyone but the profiteers he protects. #TrumpAffordabilityChaos

FACT CHECK: Of the ~$170B+ in Ukraine assistance approved since 2022, an estimated 55–65% was spent in the U.S. — replacing older weapons, boosting domestic production, and funding U.S. defense contracts. Roughly 20–25% went as direct budget support to Ukraine. It was not just cash sent overseas.

A post so smart I'm almost afraid to share it. www.garbageday.email/p/the-only-t...

The American empire, with typical extravagance, is trying to do both.

The English Scots and Irish with their long history of getting along as one people

Because legally qualified American voters don't want to be harassed and intimidated by masked gunmen as a condition of going to vote. Is that really hard to understand?

Extraordinary piece by @joycewhitevance.bsky.social.

Herbert Hoover economics on steroids. Just what Putin wants Trump to do. fee.org/articles/the...

They must be SO mad watching Renee Good become the murdered folk hero they wanted Charlie Kirk to be

/8 A huge part of what makes it very hard to convict Jonathan Ross for murder was baked into America generations before Trump was President. That’s the primary factor that lets law enforcement kill with impunity, not Trump. Dick Wolf has killed more black men than Leopold II.

Everything Charlotte writes is worth reading, but please give your time to this. “The country needs to understand the career that Hegseth is so shamelessly slandering in his quest for political retribution.”

The story was always already about an impoverished unmarried couple facing a pitiless bureaucracy, having a baby in a barn, and then having to hide from a tyrant. The baby grew up to say that the poor were blessed and the neighbor is he who shows mercy. You can’t hide from the politics of all that.

Perp walk #venezuela

Domestic terrorist fails to gain access to a child care center; pouts about it to TV news.

Senator Angus King gives Pete Hegseth a lesson on confederate traitors.

Folks look at you like you're crazy when you say we're in the midst of the worst, most unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis in American history, & then it's a day, & the president is illegally monetizing the office & stealing the power of the purse. Again.

I hope people understand that if Trump gets his way America will soon be part of the global axis of evil if we aren't already. You see it in the Caribbean, you see it in Ukraine, and you see it with Trump trying to buddy up to Xi. We are a malevolent force.

MacKenzie Scott: *donates $50M every 10 hours° Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir: "I want to see people hang"

Breakfast costs HOW much??? Grocery bills tell the truth Trump won’t: he promised lower prices, but costs keep climbing. Biden knew—EVERYONE knows—broad-based tariffs and economic uncertainty are pocketbook poison, but Trump does what he wants, and families pay the price.

🎶 So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Yippee kiyay, motherfucker. Now I have a machine gun. 🎶