Nazi is an epithet; rarely a description. (But, sadly, sometimes it is.) Fascism/fascist can be an epithet, but it's usually a description; an attempt to characterize a particular kind of rightwing authoritarianism. If you don't want to be characterized as fascist, stop doing fascism.

Nazi is an epithet; rarely a description. (But, sadly, sometimes it is.) Fascism/fascist can be an epithet, but it's usually a description; an attempt to characterize a particular kind of rightwing authoritarianism. If you don't want to be characterized as fascist, stop doing fascism.

The so-called “market structure” bill would shift large parts of crypto oversight from the SEC to the CFTC. That might sound technical—but in practice, it could gut investor protections and invite the kind of reckless speculation that led to the Great Depression. 🧵2/3

My issue is, ppl seem to be treating the Tylenol as equivalent to vaccine claim; on evidence, it very clearly is not. Also ppl seem unwilling to imagine industry shaping an entire research ecosystem. Not difficult for me to imagine at all.

In news that the HHS should be shouting from the rooftops: Availability of the RSV vaccine for pregnant people and RSV shots for infants lead to a 50% reduction in RSV-associated hospitalization of newborns during the last year! 🥳 Spread the good word, folks! #Episky

This is...more nuanced than you think "frequent and prolonged use of Tylenol during pregnancy is a potential risk. That said, untreated maternal fever or pain can pose risks to pregnancy and child development."

yo yo yo News I can use.

I'm quoted here on an issue I've been raising for years now: the dire economic implications of democratic decline. Business has been painfully slow to recognize the risks --- so it is really, really good to see business reporters covering the story.

I get why people respond to the “legal arguments” for the unitary executive. But since the real theory is obviously “a president I agree with should be above the law, a president I disagree with is even more restricted than the law says,” the “legal” discussion takes place inside a surreal fiction.

Behold, the utter obscenity of Supreme Court jurisprudence on political corruption

This appears to be the 3rd lethal US strike in the Caribbean. Once again, the specific "terrorist" entity targeted is not identified. No legal justification is offered for this premeditated killing. President Trump is asserting a license to kill outside of the law. 1/n

Corporations are, at best, amoral. If they think they can find business stability under authoritarianism, they will pay the "tax" & move on. Boycotts change all that & will force business to recalculate. They are probably the most powerful tool at our disposal at this juncture.

Bukele is taking a page from Putin's playbook, using a foreign agents law to silence the free press:

As we're again hearing nonsense about fraud in the 2020 election, I'm glad to see our (cc @ianshapiro.bsky.social) open access paper was published last week at @polbehavior.bsky.social. A thread, but tl;dr: belief in fraud in 2020 was fully rooted in white racial resentment doi.org/10.1007/s111...

"The Trump administration has learned to effectively weaponize the regulatory powers of the federal government to punish speech it doesn’t like from people it doesn’t like. [It] shows how far down the authoritarian road the United States has traveled in just 8 months." www.vox.com/politics/461...

I'll say this again: In my opinion, when companies and institutions cave to Trump despite the law being on their side, they are not misunderstanding the law; they are making an educated guess that the United States is heading in a direction where, in practice, the law won't matter.

In 2016, I answered a Q from a DCCC staffer on how to revitalize the Dem Party with: train & fund ordinary ppl (students; under-employed; retired) to cover statehouse/local issues. She looked at me like I had 3 heads.

"And what of the writers, the thinkers, and the pundits who cannot separate the great crime of Kirk’s death from the malignancy of his public life?"

Another US strike on a vessel alleged to be smuggling drugs in the Caribbean. Once again, the specific entity and individuals targeted are not identified—simply labelled as "terrorists." 1/n

A friend at Cato just did some great work quantifying this and his main point was to underscore how relatively rare it still is, to throw a bit of a cold water on the panic. But he also found, as any serious methodology inevitably does, right-wing outnumbered left-wing several times over.

The future of speech does not (or not simply) depend on First Amendment doctrine but on the state of our civic and political life. The challenges ahead, then, are not (or not simply) judicial. The rot runs much deeper than free speech law; fixing it will require immense work beyond the courthouse.

On the Trump administration's cruel disbanding of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium: my op-ed @statnews.com My 12-year-old son died from brain cancer. This research would have helped children like him www.statnews.com/2025/09/15/p...

"If you don't test, you won't have any cases," but for climate.

It's easy to govern if you decide you don't need to govern. The rest of us will be over there choking on the fumes while wracked with cramps from whatever was in the water supply.

Most persuasive framework to understand our current political moment is the place-based, authoritarian politics of petro-state oligarchs (which now includes a good # of tech) versus ...everyone else, with many in this category who have no idea what kind of fight they are in or what they face.

“With this move, they’re taking away the practical and material capacity of the federal government to do the basic elements of climate policymaking”

One incredibly injurious harm about our political polarization is the willingness of one group to treat another as an abstraction. Most often we see this manifest in right's campaign to dehumanize political opponents. But I very frequently notice it manifest as a sin of omission on the left.

Also, opioid crisis. If you want to think about policy "murder" & its catastrophic effects, don't forget about this. If you want to enumerate public health crises, don't forget about this.

Although the Trump admin has justified its use of force in the Caribbean by invoking Article 2 of the Constitution, it has still not offered any legal justification for the premeditated killing of apparent civilians. Nor have I seen anyone else offer a serious argument for why this isn’t murder.

I don't think I'm spoiling the last line by quoting it, from this fine essay: "We need to get up from under our desks and persuade our fellow citizens that the institutions that they have helped create with their tax dollars are incredibly precious and important." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/o...

Only 40 days have passed since Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were tragically killed by an unhinged Trump supporter, yet this story has largely faded from national awareness. We must not allow that to happen.

2 from @nytimes.com in 2 days about the Trump admin's unilateral disarmament as foreign adversaries attack our elections. "Since January, Trump has dismantled the govt’s efforts to combat foreign disinformation. The problem is Russia has not stopped spreading it." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/b...

This undersells what insurance exchange policyholders will feel if Congress doesn't act. The 18 percent increase is on the raw cost of insurance. But many will also lose enhanced subsidies that expire at the end of December. Those people will feel an average increase of *more than 75%.*

The Founders who wrote and passed the legal language "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" actually meant "Congress shall mandate a national religion, and it's 21st century evangelicalism mixed with some catholic converts," they just accidentally wrote something else.

Greetings from Prague. A patch of grass across from the Russian embassy

"Evidently China is farther along in its project than I realized, because Xi has reached the point where he no longer humors Trump. Which means that the Chinese believe America’s decline is terminal."

BREAKING: ICE is sending Russian dissidents back to Russia. When the dissidents arrived in Russia, the Russian authorities were given documents relating to their asylum applications in the US which under US law are confidential. This seems to be part of a secret agreement between Trump and Putin.

Pleased to speak with Katie Bo Lillis of @cnn.com about the legal implications of the lethal U.S. strike in the Caribbean. “There is a word for the premeditated killing of people outside of context of armed conflict.” “That word is murder.” www.cnn.com/2025/09/06/p...

The drop in US construction spend catches B of A’s attention. “.. recession signal.”

Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction 🧪 From Edward Tufte & graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d...

This tactic - pressuring corporations financially until they put a regime friendly voice in charge - is exactly how Orbán took over the free press in Hungary

going to the Iowa State Fair to preview the bold, bipartisan message of my campaign:

The single most important aim in American politics right now should be convincing the broad public that Trump is—absolutely literally, without hype or hyperbole—seeking to be a dictator. That’s never going to happen with Dem electeds constantly acting like even they don’t really believe it.

maybe there's a happy medium between this and "all our CEOs are on gear, special K, or drugs originally synthesized for the KGB and ordered in dogecoin" www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/b...

I worry about the safety implications, but I know that people in the District are extremely frustrated with the lack of transparency about these flights. Local officials are inundated with complaints about the long flights, often at low altitudes. The secrecy about those flights is a choice.

I think this is bad! I think it's bad when Sotomayor does it, too! If you want to make money from being a Supreme Court Justice, I think the two acceptable options are: 1. serve as a justice and collect a government salary 2. retire and do whatever you want

3 of the 8 women left in the US Open are Czech Incredible

“The whole airport area GPS went dark,” said one of the officials. After circling the airport for an hour, the plane’s pilot took the decision to land the plane manually using analogue maps, they added. “It was undeniable interference.”

I have an opinion piece in the New York Times today on how the labor movement has failed to step up to the moment in countering Trump, even as Trump unilaterally strips public sector workers of collective bargaining. Labor will die as a movement if this continues. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...