Breaking NBC: Bill Pulte, a top Trump housing official, just referred Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell to the Justice Department for a potential federal criminal probe, based on allegations of mortgage and tax fraud related to a D.C. home.

Gift link. She was homeless and trying to save up for braces. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...

Thread.

Cruelty. Point. Note also the role of the Cicero Institute, which is basically the personal think tank of Joe Lonsdale, Thiel protege and cofounder of Palantir.

i saw a police memo this year that accused some random Harvard grad of being a violent extremist for a post that just said “ICE is a terrorist organization.” somehow this is even dumber than that. great work, @safety.bsky.app

Hey look at that

Pizzagate: If you replace the word “hot dog” with “little boy” and “pizza party” with “child sex orgy,” you will see the lengths these elites go to cover up their crimes. Real elite emails: Send me nude pictures of those 8th graders we abused last weekend post-haste! I am the Ambassador to Turkey.

If the Republic is saved by Lauren Boebert and MTG bringing down Trump, well, that would make for a heck of a movie

BIDEN'S DOJ HAD ALL OF THIS INFORMATION, REMEMBER, AND IT NEVER LEAKED Which says a lot of things about Garland, for one, and also puts the lie to all this "weaponization of the DOJ" bullshit that MAGA keeps spewing

Important to understand the Epstein stuff and the fascism and the corruption are, in a lot of ways, really all the same story from different angles: powerful men who can and do abuse vulnerable people around them because they can, and because systems of elite accountability catastrophically failed

can't overemphasize how cynical this is. he could have switched his vote anytime over the past months and made an actual difference; instead he waited till the exact moment he became irrelevant.

"I don't want to come early to find Trump in your house." Brave survivors are going to sink more than this depraved pedophile-protecting POTUS. (It's why Maxwell must testify at a hearing bc she's already been caught lying. Last living *convicted* witness.) 🦋 bsky.app/profile/jonc...

NEW: Jeffrey Epstein said in emails that he had been advising the Russian government on how to deal with Donald Trump, one of several cases in which he wielded his connections to try to influence the course of foreign affairs. w @nahaltoosi www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

the newly released Epstein emails are getting coverage on Fox News 👀

The Epstein files are clearly more damning than we assumed, which is saying something.

Not that I'm remotely complaining but how in the actual fuck were these emails released to the oversight Dems who are in the minority?

One response would be: according to the emails, he asked Epstein “to stop.” But (assuming he did) it’s important to ask: stop what? We already know, for instance, that Trump was not happy about Epstein recruiting girls from Mar-a-Lago. Asking him to stop THAT is not asking him to stop raping kids.

New at Can We Still Govern: The IRS is a key agency and its decline is emblematic of Trump-era mismanagement. @vanessawilliamson.bsky.social & Eliis Chen lay out the questions that Democrats should be asking its new leader. Incredibly informative piece. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/five-quest...

Since I actually study many of the works the right claims to revere, this has always been obvious. I keep wanting to reenact that scene from Annie Hall, but with the authors of classic texts: “I have Montesquieu right here!”

High on their own supply.

The war Trump is threatening is not just avoidable but stupid and illegal.

Ppl need to understand what's happening here. The GOP response to the shutdown was: You're gonna cave, or we're going to hurt vulnerable people by shutting off SNAP. The Dems, unwilling to let that happen, caved. Having watched that, the GOP is now saying: "Give us what we want on abortion or ..."

*blinks*

The perfect New England holiday item doesn't exi–

Breaking WSJ: Fannie Mae watchdogs who were removed from their jobs had been probing if Trump appointee Bill Pulte had improperly obtained mortgage records of key Democratic officials, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to people familiar with the matter.

BREAKING: SCOTUS extends Justice Jackson’s administrative stay in the SNAP benefits case through 11:59p Thursday—presumably hoping to moot out the request if the shutdown ends. Jackson wouldn’t have extended the admin stay and would deny DOJ’s stay request. Earlier: www.lawdork.com/p/trump-admi...

Thanks, Trump.

Jeffries: "It's unbelievable that for 7 plus weeks Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva has been denied the ability to serve more than 800,000 people in Arizona because Republicans are running a pedophile protection program."

Yep.

Saying you inadvertently backed the US into a “National Security Event” isn’t the flex he thinks it is.

NEW: The US has deported a longtime Oregon firefighter who was arrested by Border Patrol while deployed at a major wildfire in Washington state. José Bertin Cruz-Estrada, separated from his family, is speaking out from Mexico for the first time: “I feel betrayed ... What am I going to do now?"

The theory they describe sounds like what I do when I don’t recognize a word, before I reach for the dictionary. But, um, I already know how to read, including, importantly, what sounds the letters stand for.

Up to 323 cancelled CSR study sections. That's more than the 204 sections cancelled earlier this year. Rescheduling is going to be a hot mess with NIH staff reductions and study section members heading into finals and holidays that limit availability. 🧪

Josh Marshall: The Status Interview – Or How To Write Up a Senate Purge List. I assume that the otherwise inexplicable absence of anything about campaign finance reform must reflect the idea that it’s up to the Courts. But I think we should amend the Constitution to say that money is not speech.

Joyce Carol Oates sitting across a desk from Kendrick Lamar: "So I'm putting a team together..." Isaac Chotiner knocks on the open door.

I can't stress this enough as a super volunteer for the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates. This should prompt you to get MORE involved, not less. Show up and use the existing infrastructure to make it work for all of us. In my neck of the woods, we've seen a ton of local victories this way.

Mood (the top one.)

He should go first, with the stipulation that “crimes “ includes not just mugging someone but tax evasion, labor law violations, environmental violations, not to mention instructing your minions to fire half the federal workforce while scraping the Social Security database.

The ignorance of this man surpasses all belief. ___ Ignorance/stupidity distinction is important. He clearly has a kind of cunning. And his live NFL commentary was as good as typical guy in a bar. But the IGNORANCE—God save us. Somebody ask him to name branches of armed services pre-1947.

Let's bring back droit de seigneur while we're at it. It's only right.

This seems like the most straightforward and also basically accurate message.

About @adamserwer.bsky.social ‘s piece on fantasy and racism: when I read early (eg, 19th century) racists, their view of race seems drawn from animal husbandry. Someone must have written about the effects on racism of moving to a model based on Tolkien and D&D; anyone know where I can find it?

This is a big deal.

The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

"Scared of Charlotte" is a whole new level of "scared of cities" that I'd never even considered possible

It’s not at the top of my list, but we need to reform the pardon power.

After yesterday’s surrender, we’re launching the largest Democratic primary program that we’ve ever run. We will not back any Senate primary candidate unless they call for Schumer to step down as Minority Leader. If you’re as pissed as we are, join this campaign to rebuild the Democratic Party. 👇

Pre-ACA, ~45% of the price of individual insurance plans went to marketing, administration, and profits. (The ACA required that to be reduced to 20%.)