I rarely say “major breaking” and rarely put out these video hits, but this is pretty major.

NEW: The health official who led the public response to the Hantavirus outbreak has little background in public health and previously was a penile implant specialist who hosted a podcast where he questioned the 2020 election and compared the Biden administration to Nazis. www.cnn.com/2026/05/15/p...

Can we come up with a new term for "left-leaning," say, "democracy-promoting"

You know. This was not a breakdown vector I had pictured. No gas, sure. But Your Engine Seizes Because There's No Lubricant Oil had not occurred to me.

Trump is really the 2nd president of the Confederate States of America.

‘We aren’t socialists, we’re just better at accounting’ is a killer line.

Watching a series of former Confederate states rush to eliminate any vestige of black representation in the House pretty much answers the question whether the Voting Rights Act was still necessary.

Marginal tax rate at the end of a pitchfork is 100%

the net negative for US politics was Elon buying twitter and turning it into an explicit right wing propaganda site at that point there was simply nowhere for the online left to maintain any influence with pols and institutions, at least in the (shrinking) text-based social media sense

The Liberal Currents Merch Shop is Live liberalcurrentsmerch.printful.me

When Sterling K. Brown talked about the shortening of TV seasons these days, I saw a lot of people saying "but I like shorter seasons." Short seasons are killing the TV industry. The artists and crew that make these shows can't live on short seasons.

The president’s mental health is a global crisis.

I'm so proud to be a part of the Working Families Party! I can only give $10 a month, but together we can make such a positive difference for all people.

Once more, for visibility: "Bullet trains will wipe out short-haul flights."

All I want is total humiliation of every individual enabling this, the national seizure of every financial asset under their name, and the generational destruction of their political party

The Roberts Court, the Trump White House, and the national GOP are acting like this is their one big shot. Either they secure the lasting end of US Constitutional democracy, or they’re in very serious trouble from the backlash. And they’ve already gone so far that there’s no other possibility.

@menendez.house.gov I'm going to need you to get really comfortable with Proportional Representation. We are not getting a democracy back without a system change.

@openlibrary.org When edits are made to works and authors through the website, how long does it take for those to become available in the data dumps that are made available every month?

I asked Virginia State Senate leader Scott Surovell why Republicans always seem to find a way around such procedural obstacles whereas Dems are so often stymied by them. The exchange got interesting: newrepublic.com/article/2102...

@katiebrennan.bsky.social I know the NJ minimum is higher, but can we just do away with the tipped worker exemption? Minimum should be minimum for everybody.

DEAR RESTAURANTS: Your servers are not volunteers. If you can't afford to pay them more than 2.13% of what you charge, you can't afford to run a business. Thank you!

@archive.org Do you know why the OpenLibrary bluesky account is removed?

After all this time, agreeing with bill once again is just wild

"Making [proportional representation] a “hundred days” reform . . . would upend our calcified two-party system. Only a few party insiders and timid squishes would miss this most contemptible aspect of the old republic." "What would a multiparty U.S. House look like? Let me speculate . . . "

Californians! Social media is full of the idea that waiting until the last minute to vote in California's election is strategic. But not if you're voting by mail. Attorney General Rob Bonta warns voters to mail ballots at least a week ahead of the June 2 election.

This hasn’t just broken containment. It’s reaching escape velocity.

Also, Ryan, no, she "sacrificed her political career" because Trump refused to endorse her for senate.

next Democrat president should have a "$5 a swing, bring your own sledgehammer or use ours" event.

let me be clear: put me in charge and I will absolutely, unequivocally, without any hesitation firebomb the ballroom

I hope she is sitting in her mold castle having just the worst day because of this

The vestiges of fascism, should we ever escape it, should be publicly and vengefully annihilated. Bulldoze the ballroom. Blow up the arch, if it ever gets built. Shred the plane for scrap. Strip his name off everything. Seize his skyscraper and implode it.

How it’s going How it’s going to go

evangelicals have finally created. the golden calf. from the classic bible story “don’t create a golden calf”

Want to reduce the use of antidepressants? Try a universal basic income, 4 six-hour work days per week, and lots and lots of paid vacation time. That might help.

this is the closest I've ever come to actually suggesting a "one neat trick" suggestion for anything, but I'm so serious here. the Virginia Constitution gives the legislature the power to set retirement ages for judges "REGARDLESS OF THE TERM TO WHICH ELECTED OR APPOINTED." make it 54 right now.

Hey #Lousiaiana, You can sign onto a recall petition.

insane every blue state in the country needs to pack their own state Supreme Court immediately if the unelected law wizards want to make donald trump a god-king with a 30% approval rating their power must be broken at every level

Meanwhile in Ohio

wasn’t particularly worried before. now… i’m a little worried!

I personally love to read shit like "U.S. Pauses 'Project Freedom'" in headlines. Not all good jokes need to be complicated.

I go on about this occasionally, but state legislatures are the most insane U.S. example of this.

Luckily for us, John Roberts has been utterly unable to hide the fact that he is a lifelong political operative who puts the interests of his party above his duties as a justice. A smarter partisan might have gotten away with it, but he's just a low-grade hack. And he'll be remembered as one.

happy 9th anniversary to the day we watched Zendaya fall madly in love with Tom Holland in real-time

trump and hegseth are presiding over one of the great Ls in american military history.

Again, Republicans never, ever, ever say they want a "strong Democratic Party." It's just not a thing they care about. They have an agenda, and they want to enact that agenda with as little resistance as possible. I want the agenda I support to be enacted with as little resistance as possible, too.

Trying a new thing! Remember, if you want to get your own reading before the end of the year, hit up my Ko-Fi. ko-fi.com/patheticbarrel

@openlibrary.org I'm getting a 403 error when trying to edit authorships. Is there a known issue at the moment?

A failure to learn would be the next Dem president, likely next Dem trifecta, coming in and acting like yay, Trump's gone, we can all go back to normal policymaking agendas now, while surrounded by the still-smoldering ruin of the constitutional system. There must be a new constitutional settlement.