@sethcotlar.bsky.social Has the United States ever had a VPOTUS so obviously compromised and owned by a single individual?

Sounds like Republicans ought to get all the Republicans who form the Republican majorities in the Republican-led House and the Republican-led Senate together to pass the budget that Republicans wrote with the Republican White House and that Republicans now insist absolutely must be passed.

Greta Thunberg, deported to Greece, says the targeting of the Sumud Flotilla is "not the story" @teenvogue.com — instead, she says: "Israel once again violated international humanitarian law by preventing aid from getting into Gaza while people are being starved.”

Trump is now threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act to bully courts into letting his illegal military occupations proceed unchecked by rule of law. Inventing a fake crisis wholesale to bulldoze what's left of constitutional restraints: Unhinged despotism. Okay, then. Make him invoke it.

She called out world leaders for sitting by and watching a live-streamed genocide without taking action.

You're the Speaker of the House of Representatives, doing nothing while a Mad King steals your constitutional authority & violates the law every day. Also, you control a majority in Congress & can't keep the government open. Also, stop lying in front of microphones every day.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court just rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal of her criminal conviction for recruiting and grooming teenage girls for sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein. The decision means that her conviction and 20-year criminal sentence remain in place.

“These assaults are not incidental or unintentional. They are undertaken by design to intimidate journalists on scene and to frustrate and suppress coverage of the federal officers' actions toward protesters and immigration detainees.”

This is the thing I wish I could get through a lot of Dem politician's heads. Your colleagues in congress believe you are demonic. And they mean that *literally*.

Indigenous Nations Plan Tariff-Free Trade Corridor Across US-Canada border ino.to/agDxSX2

Since 2015, huge swathes of the media platforms people use as their windows into "reality" have been bought up by MAGA-aligned billionaires. Is it any wonder that the Trump admin has been fairly successful in getting millions of Americans to buy into his framing of "reality" while the Dems struggle?

Like… it's kind of right there, no?

do phasers work against cthulhu

Here’s an idea for a reporter: Gather some retired cops or MPs together and show them how ICE handles hecklers and protesters. I guarantee you’ll get some amazing copy. Especially if your outlet lets you reprint profanity.

CPD has 20+ injured on duty this afternoon, most/all from federal use of gas. Related: no arrests by CPD, no documented uses of force by CPD. (I wasn't everywhere / didn't see every skirmish. And possibly some late-entry TRR forms to come.) Saw two federal arrests, saw one on video didn't witness.

Federal agents hurled tear gas at people on a busy Logan Square street, outside a grocery store and near an elementary school. Reckless, undertrained ICE hires are a danger to everyone. This is terrorism against US citizens.

Wow, they did all that and got *two* suspected gang members? Suspected? Wow. And two of them? Wow. Plus a guy with a previous charge of marihuana possession? Wow. Wow, that is impressive. Wow, when are we throwing these heroes a parade? Wow.

DHS says an operation last week in which agents raided a Chicago apartment building, rappelled in from helicopters, broke down doors and detained numerous residents, resulted in the arrest of two suspected gang members. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

When you drag a woman by the hair, beat her and force her to kiss your flag, that’s how you tell the world you are the Good Guys

Weaponized gratitude is a key tool in the abuser's toolkit. The goal is to convince the victim that they owe the abuser so much, they should feel guilty for wanting to complain.

When Leavitt claims that Portland is war-torn, reporters should ask her where in Portland this is supposedly happening? What's the death toll? How many structures have been destroyed?

and scene

In a brilliant tactical move, Speaker Mike Johnson is announcing that the weasels who make up the Republican caucus will be spending the upcoming week in their districts where I'm sure they'll be very happy to hear from constituents about the government shutdown Republicans caused.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Congress has not authorized the use of military force.

The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault. Congress has not authorized the use of military force.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. Congress has not authorized the use of military force.

ICE is running around Chicago harassing people for not being white. Just a year ago, that was illegal in the United States and now it’s commonplace. That’s not making America great again.

Surreal moment for America. Needless to say, if the normal police ever pulled something like this — pulling every single person out of an apartment building and handcuffing them to run warrant checks — they would be sued into oblivion. Yet ICE is going to get away with it entirely.

I know these guys are all dumber than a sack of hammers, but it is fascinating to see the military decide “logistics are gay” in real time

We've had fuckups in the White House before, but never a president who seemed so deliberately intent on being a fuckup. It's been said before, but if these people were actual agents of an enemy power seeking to divide, dismantle and destroy the USA they wouldn't be doing anything different.

You can't raid and arrest everyone in an entire apartment building, or even legitimately get a warrant to do that, any more than you could for a whole neighborhood. That would be a general warrant. This is the most specific core the-British-did-it-to-us thing the Fourth Amendment is written to ban.

Libertarians watching Government goons fast rope from black helicopters into a Chicago apartment complex, drag Americans from their beds, and leave them hogtied naked on the street:

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later. harpers.org/archive/1941...

Two senior Republican appropriators agree it doesn't make any sense for Democrats to agree to a government funding deal unless Trump actually adheres to the deal. The Democratic alternative CR had language that would address this, but the White House came out strongly against.

US farmers are saying they "just need temporary help, until things get better." Here's the thing. US farm exports- which are mostly soy- CANNOT get better. Other countries expanded their soy industries to fill China's demand. We've walled ourselves out of the global market, folks. This is it.

the president of the united states wants to use the american military to kill american citizens on american soil. that's the whole story!

The flew the entire military leadership in so they could see for themselves that the Secretary of Defense is a mouthbreathing dipshit and the Commander in Chief is a senile, weak old man who might keel over at any moment.

I've been thinking about that Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates convo. Specifically, how Klein kept saying that Coate's pragmatism in positioning his work in line with those who came before him fighting for rights they knew were unlikely to come to fruition in their lifetimes was depressing /1

I can't get over how the right-wing doesn't understand modern militaries, with the majority serving non-combat roles. You think the best IT security & logistics personnel spends two hours in the gym every day to look like the cast of 300? They're at furry conventions and model train shows.

There is no measured way to say what I am about to say. If the Supreme Court agrees with the Trump administration to end birthright citizenship, we must end this current Supreme Court. I do not say this lightly.

Is this supposed to be a threat? They did this exact thing while the government was open

This is the man that ICE just detained. This isn't about catching criminals, it is about Ethnic cleansing www.iowapublicradio.org/news-from-np...

The superintendent they just kidnapped is a former Olympic athlete who runs footraces with the kids from his schools while wearing a maroon suit and a bowtie. This is quite simply about the people in power feeling threatened by Black excellence.

📍 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋: Civilian men are increasingly posing as ICE agents -- wearing plain clothes, masks, unmarked vehicles, to kidnap, threaten, and sexually assault immigrant women. #AbuseofPowerWatch

Remember that the Trump Administration demands you idolize these agents and not condemn them. But they’re Gestapo trash.

To a great degree we’re dealing with the fallout from a generation of men who got lucky once during a specific moment in tech evolution, made to feel as gods, but are all now suffering their mid-life crises having accomplished nothing else of note. These men have made nothing other than money.

Vaccines don’t cause autism. Tylenol (acetaminophen) doesn’t cause autism. Miniscule trace pesticide residues don’t cause autism. Aluminum doesn’t cause autism. Fluoride doesn’t cause autism. The biggest predictor of autism? Genetics. And we recognize autism better today. 1/

I've said it before, but I think the current spree of memekillings is the product of an ideological transition. It's hard to parse because it's rapidly evolving. It's clearly derived from far right precursors, but it hasn't progressed to coherence yet.

“There is no joy more intense than that of coming upon a fact that cannot be understood in terms of currently accepted ideas." Astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who decoded spectral lines to deduce the elemental composition of stars, was born #OTD in 1900. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️ 👩‍🔬 Image: Harvard Observatory