“Most of the days the federal government has ever been shut down, Donald Trump was the president.”— @howtoreadthisch.art www.howtoreadthisch.art/red-versus-b...

“Most of the days the federal government has ever been shut down, Donald Trump was the president.”— @howtoreadthisch.art www.howtoreadthisch.art/red-versus-b...

“Finding a business model that compensates the creators of content is not just a moral imperative, it’s a business imperative. Economies flourish better through exchange than extraction. AI has not yet found true product-market fit.”— @timoreilly.bsky.social “Create more value than you capture.”

Perfect fall day for a quiet hike with the dogs in rural Maryland at the Glendening Nature Preserve. JugBay.org Autumn 🍂 foliage may be past peak, but there were still gorgeous colors illuminated in strong sun.

Yup. A judge can swear @adelitaforcongress.bsky.social in to Congress. But Congress first has to vote to allow it to happen. Click thru hear and watch Grijalva explain it in a nice smart, concise video.

Today, I learned from @pkcapitol.bsky.social that a federal judge can swear in a Representative, but it still requires an act of Congress to authorize them to do so. s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?tra... Speaker Johnson continues to keep the House out of session during the longest shutdown ever.

Trying to figure out what #SCOTUS just did with #SNAP, and why Justice Jackson temporarily froze the district court's ruling? Via "One First," me on what's going on—and why I think Jackson's move was savvy, notwithstanding the awful circumstances that forced it: www.stevevladeck.com/p/190-snap-wtf

I see more stickers & fliers than graffiti on the public streets & infrastructure of Capitol Hill, after months of steady evolution. They show takedowns & rip-downs of messages, images, & public art someone disliked. Like fences in 2020, these surfaces are makeshift bulletin boards of dissent.

I stopped to bear witness to a protest at the U.S. Supreme Court on our morning walk back from the vet’s office. I never tire seeing the vigorous expression of our constitutional rights to peaceably assemble, speak, associate, & petition our government for the redress of grievances in civic spaces.

The mayoral transition will be “defined by transparency” says Mayor-Elect Mamdani. The way a campaign transitions into governing is a bellwether for what follows, as we’ve seen at every level of government. I’ll be watching, like millions of New Yorkers, to see how this one keeps spreading the news.

Universal swing in action: "What we saw last night was a directional shift toward Democrats in 99.8% of counties that held partisan elections." www.gelliottmorris.com/p/seven-data...

A sneak peek at the cover of next week’s issue, which celebrates Zohran Mamdani’s historic win. #NewYorkerCovers https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/451hFM

For any unfamiliar with the quality of journalism at Teen Vogue, it's well known for hard-hitting stories on "politically sensitive" topics including climate. Then there's CBS: the only major network to increase climate coverage in the last few years. They just axed nearly their whole climate team.

Teen Vogue has had some of the most useful coverage of labor, politics and culture under Lex's guidance—and especially because of the audience it reached. This is a real loss, and a shameful act of whitewashing by Vogue.

Forrest Smith, the only National Park Service engineer cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells, lost his contract, leaving 93 orphaned wells on park lands unmanaged. These leaking wells release methane and toxins, threatening human health and the environment.

NOAA’s National Weather Service holds the federal responsibility for tsunami warnings, and has historically been a primary supporter of seismic data collection in Alaska

Happy Howlaween 🐕 🎃 from Daphne and Lucky! 🦁

“The fight over attention is the central fulcrum point in contemporary politics.”— @davekarpf.bsky.social Trump is clever at using spectacle & controversy for attention in mass media & online. @govpritzker.illinois.gov is drawing attention to authoritarianism: newrepublic.com/article/2025...

DHS says our new piece is "dishonest, slanted, and fundamentally inaccurate" but won't say why. Here's the story where we show with evidence that DHS spliced together clips spanning years and multiple locations to create its own reality. Gift link wapo.st/4nuDGwf

Change one letter, ruin a candy: Candy Porn 🎥🍬🌽

The buck stops with Biden, but @karinejean-pierre.bsky.social (& @jenpsaki.msnbc.com Ben LaBolt & Ron Klein) are accountable for poor communications & public engagement of White House — a key reason so many Americans didn’t know about admin policy & accomplishments. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

NEW: DHS is looking to build mobile surveillance units for regular trucks that combine AI, radar, high-powered cameras, and wireless networking into a single system capable of spotting movement from miles away. @dell.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/dhs-wa...

Hypothesis: Widespread adoption of Wordpress, Drupal, & social media across US government is why we are seeing new unethical or illegal messages on .gov during a shutdown; it’s easier for officials to update webpages & accounts than a decade ago, when contractors & furloughed IT staff couldn’t do it

The real news about Trump’s announcements “is less about what they will accomplish, & more about what they likely won’t.”— @CitizenCohn.bsky.social on Trump’s unfilled campaign promise to make IVF free for all Americans: www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-empt...

While I was offline, our swans have had 5 cygnets

The Founders anticipated the possibility of a corrupt, venal, lawbreaking, wannabe monarch president. What they did not expect is numerous people achieving prominent national office and not wanting to guard their own power. The combo of ego to run but pathetic absence of ego in office stands out.

Good, tough analysis from @charliesavage.bsky.social “A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have been murders.”

“Corruption, across history, is practically synonymous with autocracy. Abuses of power for personal gain are both an inevitable consequence of unchecked power — that’s why the checks existed in the first place — and part of the playbook autocrats use to stay in power.”

Calling someone a fascist, Communist, libertarian, socialist, neoliberal, progressive, conservative, or anarchist may be hyperbolic, false, or apt. That does not incite violence. Dehumanizing rhetoric primes people for state or extrajudicial violence: animal, vermin, scum, cockroach. Don’t use it.

As with corruption in government, the sovereign remedy that will restore trust in the Democratic Party is transparency & accountability, @kenmartin.bsky.social. If a consultant class put profits over public interest, show it in an autopsy, remove officials & aides, & put guardrails in place.

OGP is dead in the USA: the GSA is deceiving the American people about an active plan, the advisory committee is gone, the secretariat is disbanded, & the White House makes a mockery of core values daily.

Secret donations to presidential ballrooms also enable bribery, when public access to presidential records is at an all-time low.

Yep

NYT - Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire and a major financial backer of President Trump, is the anonymous private donor who gave $130 million to the US government to help pay troops during the shutdown. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/us...

A White House official used an official account on X to tag the employers of an American citizen about speech he disliked.

I don’t need to explain why it’s wildly unacceptable for the military to be illegally privately financed by the president’s wealthy allies, right?

🦮🦮🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁

approximately seven million people were out in the streets protesting last week. these people need to grow a spine. www.ft.com/content/1377...

At Law Dork, I wrote a guide to what is happening in the challenges to Trump's National Guard deployment efforts. Expect significant rulings from the courts — including the Supreme Court — in the coming days and weeks. There are two key hearings set for today.

Persephone: Like you’ve never eaten fruit to show respect to your host when offered fresh pomegranate on a CODEL to Hades

💔🏛️🇺🇸

NBC News finds that: -- ICE has shortened its training from 13 weeks to six. -- Nearly half of recruits couldn’t pass an open-book written exam. -- Recruits "are supposed to attest" they can pass the physical-fitness test, which requires them to run ... 6 mph. www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

Excessive government secrecy literally makes you sick. Great FOIA reporting from @propublica.org.

History books, veterans, family, friends Indiana Jones, & space fascists in Star Wars convinced this child of the 80s that Nazis are the worst. I never dug Communism. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, totalitarianism=Hard pass. I’m a farm boy from upstate NY, raised in Philly as a Quaker. Social democracy FTW 🇺🇸

Senate Majority Leader Thune said he hopes the White House withdraws the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to lead OSC, after @politico.com reported on racist texts. Senators Scott, Johnson & Lankford all signaled they could not support him. www.politico.com/live-updates...

The Internet is a proper noun.

Former officials & journalists who cover the justice system couldn’t recall a previous instance in which a sitting U.S. attorney texted a reporter & chastised them about coverage of grand jury testimony in an active case — & then tried to claim “off the record.” www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna...

Probably not great to have pretty much every major site on the internet running through Amazon’s Virginia infrastructure. downdetector.com

If you haven't read @rgoodlaw.bsky.social and co-authors' full study on the "presumption of regularity" in Trump administration litigation @justsecurity.org, just featured on @60minutes.bsky.social, you can find it here: www.justsecurity.org/120547/presu...

there’s a major AWS outage going on right now that’s taken down Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, Perplexity, Roblox, and lots more of the internet. US-EAST-1 is down and impacting a lot of services that rely on AWS www.theverge.com/news/802486/...