“In ways large and small, the United States has seen serious democratic backsliding. But while the Trump regime’s desire for authoritarian dominance is bottomless, its capacity is not.”

I’ll take any bit of good news I can find these days “Josef Centeno has transformed his downtown restaurant Bar Amá into Le Dräq, a new place that combines a version of Bar Amá and Bäco Mercat, the restaurant he closed during the pandemic.”

A beautiful essay by @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social: Birth Pangs www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...

“He’s still a supremely dangerous [figure], especially as he comes to feel increasingly cornered and aggrieved... But it’s become, over the past year, easier to imagine the moment when his mystique finally evaporates, when few want to defend him anymore or admit that they ever did.”

“According to historians and political scientists who study protest: very. From emancipation to women’s suffrage, from civil rights to Black Lives Matter, mass movement has shaped the arc of American history.” @justprotest.bsky.social

The Trump Country Diner trope has returned

“Shopping was once a feast of possibilities and has instead become a test of patience.”

CBS paid the president of the United States millions in bribe money and now they censor news reports so it does not annoy him. I don’t know how much plainer we can put this.

Speaker Mike Johnson Campaigns for Democrats in Upcoming Midterms

Jared Kushner’s firm means Saudi Arabia’s in too. So America managed to transfer control of TikTok USA from foreign billionaires in east Asia to foreign billionaires in west Asia, and from Chinese ruling party-connected oligarchs to US ruling party-connected oligarchs. Congrats?

I appreciate Trump settling the political violence argument with barely disguised hope that someone murdered the Reiners because they were mean to Trump bsky.app/profile/eric...

Everything wrong with political journalism in one graf. This is not a policy proposal that exists but that doesn’t matter, what matters is that someone “won” by asking it bsky.app/profile/larr...

I wrote about the "Appeasement Eight" Senate Democrats getting the party to fold to Trump in the government shutdown, and why it shows that pro-democracy Americans badly need a real opposition party, full of leaders who recognize the United States isn't a normal rule of law democracy anymore.

New: The Supreme Court DENIES Kim Davis' request to overturn Obergefell, the marriage equality decision. No noted dissents. www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...

Unfortunately still true bsky.app/profile/adam...

look I know being an engaged citizen IS the work of democracy but it is also the work of elected officials not to create situations where everyone has to be mobilized all the time to prevent them from allowing some kind of Dickensian horror on a Sunday night while you're in between loads of laundry

The depth of the shame of a country this wealthy and abundant allowing its people to go hungry is impossible to measure. The fact that a handful of people could fix this by paying their fair share of taxes while still remaining obscenely wealthy makes it even worse.

What, if anything, did the No Kings protests accomplish? I've seen that pop up in everything from genuine inquiry to sneering dismissal. For anyone asking or facing that question, here's an answer. Everything isn't all fixed, of course. But the protests accomplished at least these seven things:

"The dominant aesthetic of the administration comes not from antiquity but from A.I. slop, the tackier and more juvenile the better."

if you’ve ever watched the apprentice, that’s the world without arts or humanities degrees

the thing about the “official antifa” citation is that it is just definitive evidence that she’s a stone cold dumbass

Let it never again be said that a woman with no real reporting experience who fell for a Twitter account called "Official Antifa" cannot be the head of a huge news organization

I think it’s very interesting how emphatically these conversations are about inevitability—it’s time, it’s happening, like it or not, and in particular, a sense of: “You have to.” When it comes to treating an AI product as a person, I assure you that I do not have to. And you do not have to.

I love that there are millions of Americans over the age of forty who can be manipulated like 3rd graders in 1996 by deploying “that’s gay” in euphemism and that’s enough to make them think something is bad bsky.app/profile/atru...

separate from everything, the idea that 2020 was a squeaker but 2024 represents a historical mandate will simply be the death of me

The people calling for a cool down of public and political rhetoric just spent a week honoring their hate speech hero by threatening those with whom they disagree.

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

It's very easy after a shooting for authorities to say "we're looking into it and will keep you informed" and wildly irresponsible to make confident declarations and level accusations when they don't know. A conscious choice to stoke division, and try to use violent incidents for their own ends.

Same, Annie 🍂

NEWS --> Anna Gomez, the lone Dem on the FCC, tells me the Trump admin's pressure to oust Jimmy Kimmel may be unlawful as well as unconstitutional. FCC chair Brendan Carr may be committing censorship in violation of federal law. That and much more in my new piece: newrepublic.com/article/2006...

“While thanking his colleagues onstage, Hiller noted that with Somebody Somewhere, the writers had put together ‘a show about connecting and love in this time when compassion is seen as a weakness.’ He lingered on the last word, letting it hover for a beat in the room.” Couldn’t love this win more

“But along with its creator and star, Bridget Everett, Somebody Somewhere's beating heart was Hiller, whose work as Joel was indelible, unforgettable and utterly unique. It is exactly the kind of performance that should win and very rarely does, and the win is cause for celebration.”

the person behind this unhinged, anti-factual editorial is set to decide coverage at one of the nation’s major news networks

You can write this only if, by virtue of your income, identity, or both, you are utterly removed from the consequences of politics. To pretend that the racist, misogynistic, anti-gay vileness that Kirk spent his life spreading is secondary to the fact that he spread it "the right way" is appalling.

Explicit calls for violence, even war on many Americans, is very bad. Even worse since they have no idea who killed Kirk or why. But if you’re not familiar with these prominent right-wing figures, they regularly advocate violence and repression against the broadly defined Left, often based on lies.

No people on the planet will ever be AI. This is Orwellian bullshit. Zero people will ever be AI. This is no different from saying half the people in the country are television characters. Do not let anybody convince you that you don’t know the difference between a human being and a machine.

Thrilled to see growing consensus that Dems must step up in the Continuing Resolution fight. Key to doing so? Refuse to frame this as "shutting down government." Instead, call it what it is - refusing to be an accomplice to turning the government into a weapon against the American people.

Democrats don't seem to get that Trump's been destroying our government, shutting it down every day, killing programs, clawing money back that Congress appropriated. Why on earth would they "fund" a continuation of that? Their simple argument should be Trump has already shut down the government.

i cannot overstate how extraordinary it is for federal civil servants to do this

I have been saying the same thing for months

little known fact: In 2020, Republicans lost the White House and the Senate.

Trump's tariffs causes SSENSE to file for bankruptcy protection. Devastating to small designers, as SSENSE is an important retailer for them.

I have never seen so many public servants protest the mismanagement of a government. Trumpists will point to this as proof of the deep state, but the reality is that these are professionals who are desperately trying to get the public to understand how bad things are.

one thing i've taken away from surveys asking the public to evaluate trump's most authoritarian moves is that the ordinary americans have a much clearer sense of what's happening than most professional political observers

used to be you could get an indictment against a ham sandwich. now you can't even indict a guy who throws a ham sandwich. folks, www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/u...

“…I keep thinking about one poem, ‘Tincture,’ which at first I assumed they’d written post-diagnosis—until I realized it was published in 2018. ‘Imagine, when a human dies, / the soul misses the body,’ they wrote, going on to list the oddities and pains and pleasures of living in a corporeal form 1/

it has been said over and over but it’s worth reiterating in the face of this horrifying decision: RFK is quite literally joining the war on cancer on the side of cancer

kennedy is going to kill a lot of people

It’s not just the cowardice, and rapid abandonment of principles, that gets me. It’s the short-sightedness too. Does anyone think this regime will last forever? Because the stain of aiding it will. And while standing up now isn’t costless, there’s a good chance it pays off big in the future.