is this good

I am not kidding even a little about the necessity of starting with Reconstruction 2 if there is to be any hope of making this a country worthy of survival.

I really hope this becomes the black eye it deserves to be www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

*Court rules that Trump's policies are illegal but allows them to stand anyway* is the best summary of America in 2025 I know.

Some of the names have changed since I wrote this last November, but the central reality is, sadly, upon us. snyder.substack.com/p/decapitati...

weeks after Gretchen Whitmer took part in multiple photo ops with Trump, Trump says he's "looking at" pardoning men who were convicted of conspiring to kidnap her

Claremont fellow Scott Yenor via Claremont’s The American Mind seeks to reassure conservative women w/ jobs (eg, Megyn Kelley) that “tradwives” can have “side-hustles.” 🙄 Yenor belongs to a secretive Christian men’s society started by Charles Haywood who explicitly advocates sex discrimination. 1/

The rule of law lives or dies on our willingness to act—occasionally with grim resolve. It’s time for people who value justice to screw their courage to the sticking place.

This is a funny story because of how it establishes that all around the world, even the most nihilistic ultra-rich freaks are realizing this shit is stupid, wasteful, and unnecessary and Trump is like "the big plane has a couch in it, it's the highest premium leather," www.forbes.com/sites/jeremy...

This ruling would effectively make the Voting Rights Act unenforceable in 7 states if not overturned. Trump's Justice Department could just refuse to sue to enforce it. Less than 10% of successful VRA §2 cases since the 1980s were brought solely by DOJ—even a future Dem DOJ would face severe limits

This new Times piece on the last month of American bombing of Yemen has some insane details. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/u...

Trump saluting Saudi officials at the Royal Court in Riyadh

Sources told WIRED that Capitol Police prevented the men from entering the copyright office, but a spokesperson for the law enforcement agency denied that officers escorted anyone out or denied them entry.

The Qatari "gift" to Trump is actually only one in a long list of the administration's corrupt acts and conflicts of interest. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

In a new Op-Ed, “Article 3 Project” Senior Counsel Josh Hammer—a Claremont alum, NatCon signatory, Federalist Society campus speaker, & Newsweek editor—asks “Did the Trump administration ‘politicize’ law enforcement by siccing ICE agents on WH critics & foes?” His answer? “I simply do not care.” 1/

I cannot emphasize enough how alarming it is the president does not understand how bad these supply chain shortages will hurt the overall US economy for the short and long-term as a result of his economic policies and his administration's approach to international trade.

"While Musk celebrated his first cuts, DOGE began going after entire offices and agencies it viewed as politically progressive or opposed to its goals. The GSA’s 18F office ... was one of the first targets."

#Libya #TrumpDeportations Just last year the State Department cited “harsh and life-threatening” conditions in Libya’s detention centers and found that migrants in those facilities, including children, had “no access to immigration courts or due process.”

my latest for @wired.com takes a look at the rising movement among black “memory workers” who are fighting against trump’s war on history www.wired.com/story/trump-...

Trump and DOGE are making devastating cuts to agencies and programs that serve the public — all in the name of rooting out "fraud and waste." Meanwhile, the regime is reportedly planning a military parade for Trump's birthday that could cost an estimated $92 million.  Hello?

New from 404 Media: Mike Waltz has inadvertently revealed the obscure app the government is using to archive Signal messages. Made by a company called TeleMessage. Use of the Signal clone raises questions about how messages being secured, what classification of info www.404media.co/mike-waltz-a...

People still do not grasp that the constitutional right to due process is afforded anyone inside the U.S. REGARDLESS of status. Even if you’re just visiting here.

Dr. Anthony Fauci urges Americans not to accept "Normalization of Untruths".

Trump is about to foreclose on the homes of 90,000 Veterans. www.rawstory.com/trump-vetera...

"The millions who will die due to this administration’s policies have lives, names, friends and family who love them. Let them not just be figures in scientific papers—let their memorial be the whole earth." — @gregggonsalves.bsky.social

The DOGE vision for government technology involves centralizing Americans’ private data. But this isn’t a new idea: it’s one that has been considered, reconsidered, and left alone many times over the years—for good reasons.

Big Journalism (esp. @nytimes.com) failed to adequately & accurately cover the #handsoff pro-democracy demonstrations. Local outlets did *much* better. Newsroom leaders need to defend democracy from autocracy. Read our latest blog post. 1/n mediaanddemocracyproject.substack.com/p/local-news...

!!

Do CBP officials have the authority to search your phone at the border? The short answer is yes. Here’s what you can do to protect your digital life while at the US border.

Well, since he handed control over the Interior Department to a DOGE operative, I guess he has plenty of time to help.

The 19 richest U.S. households saw a $1 trillion wealth increase in 2024, a rise that exceeds the size of Switzerland’s economy. These 19 households now control $2.6 trillion in wealth — almost as much wealth as the bottom 50% of American households. If this isn't an oligarchy, what is?

How many conflicts of interests does it take against Musk before action is done? Reading the complaints and where they fall in the federal government, no wonder he'll stay on for as long as he can: to gut them. Tesla *DOJ $1.82B *EEO $462MM *SEC $240MM #ProudBlue www.latimes.com/business/sto...

Oof.

This is just wild on how The Atlantic interviewed Trump. I mean, does anyone pick up unknown numbers anymore *other* than the President of the United States?

‘It’s a Heist’: Real Federal Auditors Are Horrified by DOGE WIRED talked to actual federal auditors about how government auditing works — and how DOGE is doing the opposite.

A cache of more than two dozen police records recently reviewed by WIRED show US law enforcement agencies regularly trained on how to take advantage of “connected cars,” with subscription-based features drastically increasing the amount of data that can be accessed during investigations.

Note how much of what Trump is trying to destroy, from Radio Free Europe to transatlantic trade, is precisely what the Russians most want him to destroy www.nytimes.com/2025/04/26/u...

NEW: PublicSquare, a website that lets you search for businesses in your community that explicitly want you to know they endorse Trump/MAGA values, is backfiring as people use it to boycott those businesses. www.huffpost.com/entry/public...

The Trump administration is walking back visa record terminations for thousands of students across the U.S. after suffering numerous losses in court and admitting last week that officials do not have the authority to terminate students’ immigration statuses by revoking their records.

my feed should have been buried today in statements from electeds, statements from advocacy groups, breaking news alerts, etc etc. it should have been aggressive and impossible to miss. that ... did not happen.

URGENT: This is not a crime A judge has the authority in her courthouse to excuse a defendant for God's sake Trump tried this in 1st term & he was thrown out of court 👉 www.courtlistener.com/docket/14997... PS the violation here was Patel's tweet & that's why he deleted. I'll be filing complaint

America was founded by those who defied kings—not by those who bowed to them.

@hcrichardson.bsky.social So powerful, I cried...

"18F worked just how Musk and his team pretend that they want government to work. But when his team found it, they destroyed it." — @waldo.net

(AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had an internet connection that bypassed the Pentagon’s security protocols set up in his office to use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer, two people familiar with the line told The Associated Press. apnews.com/article/hegs...