"The point will be to force the generals to applaud such statements, to broadcast that applause—and thereby to signal to all their troops, and to the American public, that the military brass is on board with Trump’s authoritarian agenda." www.thebulwark.com/p/remember-t...

Since every Republican in Congress is repeating their false talking point over & over that “Democrats want to shut down the govt to give free healthcare to illegal aliens,” it would be helpful if some Democrats in Congress could address that argument with facts at some point.

something something hegemonic masculinity

Here's Michael Knowles a month ago once again calling for the "eradication of transgenderism" and here is a man who threatened to shoot up a gay bar because he wanted to "eradicate transgenderism." This was retweeted by prominent conservatives such as Chris Rufo. This is stochastic terrorism.

Embarrassingly moronic bullshit that tens of millions believe. The worst part of it is they know they are lying but trust that their voters won’t know the difference or care. They have to distract from Trump wrecking the economy and driving prices up somehow.

This repeats a previous cycle from 2023, when Musk threatened to sue the ADL after they accused Twitter of promoting anti-semitism. Back then, a lot of free-speech and progressive voices supported the ADL, sometimes begrudgingly. Now, that support won't be there

Welcome to America, where masked and armed federal officials will chase you down if you criticize the President.

Amazeballs stuff from WaPo leadership here... *shakes head It can be said that there are many layers to WaPo... but when you see their perspectives opened up like a blooming onion, it looks like just another carcass on the legacy media landscape posing as pillars of principle & objectivity.

one day we might prop up establishment wealth and power, another day we might just prop up establishment wealth and power

also see: "liberal media bias," "Conservative censorship epidemic," "cancel culture," etc.

Justice Kavanaugh: “If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.”

He cites Hillary’s ‘deplorables’ comment as an example of this but she went out of her way to say many of Trump’s supporters are good people! She was trying to separate voters with legitimate concerns from 4chan psychos and right wing media turned it into a gaffe. She was doing what he wants!

Is that effective campaign messaging? I don’t know & I don’t care. It’s true. It’s my job to discover and say things that are true. The radicalization of the American right is *the* political story of my lifetime and the public should know about it. Politicians can do what they like with that.

Coal's decline is primarily due to expanded production of natural gas, which is cheaper and cleaner, beating coal on the market. The other main factor in the decline of coal jobs is automation, as the dwindling industry relies more on mountaintop removal. This is cultural nostalgia, not economics.

Cornell is cancelling a distinguished professor's classes on Gaza and suspending him because of the complaints of a student who previously served in Israel's military surveillance agency and was literally recording the comments of other students in class and deliberately derailing discussion.

This. Always, at the beginning and the end of every day, this. American capitalism has killed American democracy. Money translates directly into political power in the US.

In Pie from a few years ago. Will be even worse now.

yep, they'll try to keep it much the same the first 6-8 months to try and avoid scaring people off, but they won't be able to control themselves and I suspect the impact ultimately won't be subtle

This, in a nutshell, is the dilemma for actual conservative faculty on campus. It is very hard to reconcile sincere commitment to free speech w right-wing demands to shutter that speech. (Left-wing demands too, but less cognitive dissonance there). www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/u...

anyway, Sinclair is fucking terrible

I'm both disgusted and fascinated by how we now have just wall to wall pseudo-journalism where all the important context and rough edges are sanded off to avoid offending sources, advertisers, and our mad idiot king you'd be better off watching cartoons

Fortune writes an entire story about Sinclair's effort to ban Kimmel "to protect communities" without making a SINGLE reference to Sinclair's long history of airing election fraud conspiracy theories and medical disinformation

www.csis.org/analysis/lef... This report is framed irresponsibly and distorts the reality of extremist violence. The header is that left-wing terror is on the rise, and of course that will be the bite-sized takeaway. (1)

We are so humiliatingly deep into tinpot dictatorship territory. The government has just brokered the coerced sale of a major media platform to an ally of the president, who is openly boasting about converting it into (even more of) a partisan propaganda outlet.

Kristi Noem: How DARE you accuse our glorious ICE agents of racial profiling. Head of the Chicago raids: We are stopping people based on “how they look, how do they look compared to, say,” a tall, middle aged white guy.

I know it’s nothing new but it’s striking how fascists take the exact wording of the left’s entirely correct assessment of them (eg “own the legal system,” “obviate the social contract” etc) and just copy & paste it and add nothing original except open calls for mass murder.

Sherman didn't go far enough

79. American citizen.

We can dunk on Silver. But the folks wildly hyping Adams in 2021-22 included Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden. The desire for a prominent BLACK politician who was pro-police and hostile to the BLM movement was broadly shared within elite Dem circles. They ignored obvious signs he was corrupt and inept.

Confirming what those who have worked for Ellison have known for decades: imperious asshole.

Larry Ellison envisions a surveillance state in which techbros rule. '“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.'

Trump’s awful but it’s important to note he’d be different and potentially less harmful kinds of awful if he weren’t advised and manipulated by some of the most evil people in American history.

Too many good sections to clip... The shredded arguments are scattered all over the ground in this one.

LOL

This might make more sense if WH weren't exclaiming that they're carrying out an economic revolution, singlehandedly controlling the regulation of nearly all previous legislation & EOs, congressional spending policy, trade & domestic commerce, etc. I mean, he didn't inheret an unfolding catastrophe

By using the comparative legal logic of the author in this piece, any1 doing impersonations of famous people would be subject to identity theft charges The common themes, rhetorical devices & tactics used in RW writing to justify their positions are impossibly obvious &they all sound very childish

🧵⬇️

24 hours after Kash Patel releases a statement to “clarify” that the agents went there AFTER the riot was well underway, & Fox reported Trump’s claim was false, Johnson continues to intentionally lie about it on national TV. Maybe he should pray about why he lies constantly. bsky.app/profile/atru...

Whole thread...

One final thought on this. It is astonishing just how fully right wingers have come to dominate social media. The default for teenagers who are on the internet is for them to be sucked into a world where they are bombarded with content from Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Andrew Tate, Fuentes, Peterson.

We have to stop dehumanizing ICE agents while they are doing their important job of dehumanizing us

Kennedy timed his retirement to make sure Trump got an extra pick on the court. It is not "partisanship" that is threatening American democracy. It is people who do not believe in democracy.

The agent admits he treats immigrants like "they're animals" and that he tells his kids that they are animals "all the time"

Reminder that when Border Patrol agents were caught posting sexually explicit and racist comments on Facebook, they were allowed to keep their jobs cnbc.com/2021/10/25/b...

I just think we should not be sending American boys 2 or 3 thousand miles away from home to do what Portland boys ought to be doing for themselves.

The "15 years ago, everything was good" line can slip into some part of the sensical center of the brain as easily as cold bare feet slipping into a warm pair of boots in winter if we're not mindful of the metrics of the moment are and how misleading our memories are...

This bananapants Yarvin tweet is a perfect example of why it's more useful to think of the US right as a movement defined by emotions and imagination, more than it is a movement defined by anything we could reasonably call "ideas." Yarvin is a first-rate reactionary fabulist, and a 7th rate thinker.

So top Portland cops wrote & *testified* that fed agents have been "instigating and causing" conflict. They said agents were firing pepper balls unprovoked and "without any apparent warning" When a Portland chief called a federal agent w/ Qs, the agent hung up. www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/0...

Very good thread on the necessity of court reform and some remaining challenges to adding it right at the top of the democracy-restoring agenda: