Democracy dies in deference.

No more pretense or excuses. Trump and his team have made the white supremacist foundations of this project explicit and clear. If you enable this you need to face who and what you are. But you can always choose another way. Choose humanity. Decency. Equality. Democracy.

Don't be chickenshit.

Charlie Kirk was a loathsome human being because he celebrated violence against people he didn’t like. Don’t be like Charlie.

This is a demand, that if raised loudly by the base, the congressional Democrats will have an incredibly hard time avoiding or ignoring. What are they going to say? That this is a distraction? That it’s too complicated? That they can get this deal without leverage? That Latino voters can drop dead?

Trump's Birthday Card To Dead Sex Pest Epstein As Gross As We Imagined www.wonkette.com/p/trumps-bir... By Gary Legum @glegum.bsky.social

The new CDC director is trying to kill you. Not just “the most vulnerable”; you, me, everyone. This is a comic book-level evil scenario.

This story is unbearable. Read it anyway.

“We should all remember Washington, D.C.’s most violent day was sparked by Trump himself. What’s more, D.C.’s safety won’t come from militarization, but rather through decreasing unemployment, ending ICE’s kidnapping of neighbors, and restoring funding to Medicaid, SNAP and public schools.”

A million times this.

News --> Top Dems are demanding that the Pentagon disclose any/all internal memos and policy guidance involving DHS's push for more militarization of domestic enforcement. It's a response to our reporting on DHS talks w/Pentagon on this. Details in my new piece: newrepublic.com/article/1990...

I wrote a thing, a roundup of some of the resistance going on.

The Holocaust Museum ushmm.bsky.social has an opportunity, as an institution not connected to the Smithsonian, to highlight Trump’s erasure of history. State control of historical narrative and its role in incipient fascism would make for a timely exhibition. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I have been placed in Facebook jail. If you know me on there please spread the word.

STFU, RFK Jr, you ridiculous idiot. You don't care about the wellbeing of patients. You care about politics. You are actively undermining doctors' ability to protect their patients from measles and COVID. Your party forces women who have miscarried to bleed out in parking lots over your politics.

@americanair.bsky.social We’re booked to fly from Bermuda to DC via Charlotte. Our flight has delayed by several hours & now we have been told that 2nd flight will be to Baltimore instead of DC, landing at 10:15 We cannot afford a cab from Baltimore to DC. This is completely unacceptable.

New from me on Substack. open.substack.com/pub/peterbir...

We have appended an Editor’s Note to our story about President Kennedy, who was declared dead from bullet wounds in Dallas, Texas. After publication, the Times learned that he also had a preexisting back condition.

Who among us hasn’t given a birthday card to the world’s most notorious pedophile in which we draw a picture of a naked woman and write “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey. May every day be another wonderful secret.”?

“Superman is too woke!” Literally the first page of the first ever appearance of Superman:

People who are handcuffed and taken away without warrant, Miranda warning, or officer ID, are victims of abduction. Facilities that forcibly detain people of a single ethnicity indefinitely, without indictment, trial or conviction are concentration camps.

Hillary’s “deplorable” statement was made in the context of an argument that most Trump voters were good people deserving of empathy. Yet it ignited a firestorm of negative coverage by the NYT, which pounded on the issue for weeks, permanently branding Clinton as a hater of the white working class.

It’s appropriate that, on this especially fraught holiday weekend, my 232nd #ScholarSunday thread is my longest yet, full of so much public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy! 🗃️ americanstudier.substack.com/p/scholarsun...

@volts.wtf I’ve just finished this book and I think it’s brilliant. Wanted to strongly recommend it to you. mitpress.mit.edu/978026204964...

ICE arrested Job Garcia while he was running errands in LA. Job is a US citizen, a scholar, and a brilliant photographer. He’s also my friend. But none of that should determine his humanity. ICE must release Job Garcia immediately.

the story today is of a profoundly low energy military parade being met with millions of americans in nationwide protests denouncing the dictatorial pretensions of the president

i’m so fucking fed up with this shit. when journalism outlets can’t even accurately and honestly say what’s happening to journalists—that they’re being attacked by cops and federal jackboots—then we are really and truly cooked. under scrutiny!!!!! i can’t. i can’t.

It's been really demoralizng how much the press mindlessly repeats the lie that the National Guard was sent to quell violence. It was sent to start violence. People know this, so just say it.

“I received your missive with gratitude, as I and my compatriots have five hours now awaited orders to approach a moderately busy intersection in a mid-sized American city to confront as many as eleven or twelve of the enemy, all cleverly disguised as ‘dishwashers,’ ‘nannies,’ and ‘landscapers.’”

I’ve always liked Peter Coyote, but wow that post of his that’s going around is so wrongheaded. A protest is not an “invitation to a better world.” A protest is a disruption of the status quo. An attention-grabbing blast of sight and sound meant to be unavoidable. An insistence.

Cops-- pathetic. Fuck off. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/youre-a-bu...

My piece in McSweeney’s today. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-l...

ICE is evil

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd. It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

i think it should be a bigger story that the president held a meeting with a foreign head of state where he ranted about the most gutter white supremacist propaganda you can find on the internet

If you don't want to be compared to the Gestapo, one neat trick is to not engage in a campaign of terror around the country wherein you kidnap people off the streets to slave dungeons in accommodation of an autocratic fascist and his nationalist movement's desire for racial purity.

And the tasing sent him to the hospital. Where ICE refused to let his lawyer speak to him.

This lady is all of us.

Every college and university should do this to remind Americans that attacks on these institutions are actually attacks on all of us.

Imagine you were dealing with a person who would report that there was two and there was also this other two but didn't want to add them up to get to four, because getting all the way to four felt like making a statement and they didn't want to alarm anybody or be accused of making an accusation.

This is SO much worse than Hillary‘s emails—it’s not even in the same universe. Don’t let them make that bullshit comparison. She wasn’t sharing war plans. She wasn’t in an unsecured text group sharing classified documents and state secrets. She was actually qualified for her job and not a traitor.

I have to say I think it's appropriate for people to come across our border unofficially. Many are climate refugees or refugees from the consequences of US policies in their countries. Plus making our borders more oppressive is not the same thing as making them stronger, whatever that means.

That’s kohlrabi. “Cloture” is a gathering characterized by informal conversation.

Crowd at Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan’s town meeting in rural Belmont, Wisconsin, is so large that it spills out the door of the local community center. The repeated demand from farmers, retirees, teachers, small business owners: “Do more to push back against Trump and Musk!”

Now THIS is what I’m talking about 🔥 @housedemocrats.bsky.social @democrats.senate.gov

Trump alleged without a shred of evidence that Obama wasn't a U.S. citizen and the media scrambled. Now the former head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, who served in the KGB in Moscow, says Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and the media completely ignores the story.

If anything, it would just be nice to see someone make an energetic case for a pluralist democracy, rather than this pathetic whimpering about egg prices and norms.

the whole 2020-2024 era of “dems shouldnt aggressively use the levers of power bc then republicans will do the same thing when theyre elected” sure looks dumb as dog shit right now huh