Feel like its bad that federal officials believe they can act with impunity in assaulting a United States Senator. Late stage empire shit. www.nj.com/news/2026/05...

Go get him Tiger

And as C.S. Lewis's charming devil Screwtape said: To get the man's soul and give him *nothing* in return-that is what really gladdens our Father's heart.

For anyone wondering why I’m a big fan of TX State Senator Nathan Johnson, who just won the Democratic nomination for TX Attorney General, read this: acasignups.net/22/04/27/not...

My wife has a message for every American

That's great, but detainees are freed every day (and new ones flow in as fast). A few days ago, a dozen were released.

Surprise! -- to all idiots who take anything Trump says at face value

High drama at Delaney tonight. Volunteers erected a blockade across the driveway as ICE tried to transfer a pregnant activist's husband detained there. He was not transferred.

My 2cents: - shame on the judge if this doesn’t result in searching contempt proceedings to identify and hold accountable every last person involved - I’d be surprised to learn that the acts described aren’t state-law crimes prosecutable by a local prosecutor, whether prosecuted federally or not.

lmao, @maxnesterak.bsky.social, amazing work

Just reflecting that this poem comes to mind constantly www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91413/...

Need more be said? www.documentcloud.org/documents/28...

I think my Angry Larry Levitt series must be complemented by an Angry Katie Keith series. Republicans continue to astonish the most scrupulous and decorous healthcare scholars.

Really, Republican response to the high cost of health coverage beggars belief.

Today in CMS lying, by Katie Keith: www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore...

ACA marketplace enrollment is down 13.5% year-over-year as of April. How low will it go by year's end? A look at enrollment attrition in past years. The 2017-2019 period looks like the best analog.

You may have heard that Republicans in Congress drove ACA enrollment down by ~20% by refusing to renew enhanced subsidies. Their administrative followup: 1. Strip coverage from the lowest income enrollees 2. Introduce plans with $15,000 deductibles 3. Shorten enrollment period

Ladies and gentlemen, the Trump administration's response to the healthcare affordability crisis: "The final rule [for the ACA marketplace, 2027] touches on topics such as expanded access to catastrophic plans with even higher out-of-pocket costs..." $15,000 deductibles! Get in line...

Bay of Pigs

The Guardian's list of 100 novels set me musing about great books I don't much like, and so I started writing a self-admonitory post about not considering one's dislikes a badge of honor. Halfway through I realized I'd already written the post -- in 2011.

Emily Litella for President! www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjYo... Democrats also want more violins on TV

Imagine if Trump met Jesus. The mind bends.

Who's going to write a novel titled Irreparable Harm? A watchword fir the Trump era.

Krugman: "rest assured that the Chinese will use Trump’s debilitated status to their ultimate advantage, pressing for concessions on Taiwan while letting Trump bleed away what’s left of U.S. credibility on a failed war." open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

My mother visited China in 1975 by invitation to observe early childcare. Viewing her slides, I said the children look happy. She said, "Totalitarianism makes happy children."

This sounds like a column premise for @jonathanbernstein.bsky.social "On issue after issue, both in Washington and in state capitals around the country, Republicans are giving Trump the stiff arm."

Ever heard the ethnic joke about the [country of your choice] that planned to fly to the sun at night?

Fruit of @wqxr.bsky.social fundraising: It just dawned on me that "underwrite" and "subscribe" have the same literal meaning.

Anyone have the lowdown on this agreement? Looks like DHS agreed to postpone work on the threatened Roxbury detention center until after it conducts an environmental review (or other review?), but that can only be inferred below.

When you hear fraudster Oz claim that the 3 million drop in ACA enrollment is due to fraud cleanup, keep this from @charlesgaba.com in mind acasignups.net/26/05/12/bre...

Murdoch created Trump

Visitors to the Geo Group-run Delaney Hall immigrant detention center in Newark can enter with only two things in their pockets: i.d. and credit card.

They think they're Old Testament judges

“The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass relates only his own views on slavery; we cannot properly assess the merits of his book without giving equal time to his slave owner.” (I’m pretty sure there were actual reviews like this in 1845.)

"Enjoy your visit," one guard at the Delaney Hall security booth likes to say. It's kindly meant....

In the visiting room at the Delaney Hall detention center, when 50-70 visitors are let in all at once, a subset immediately lines up at 4 vending machines to buy drinks and snacks for their poorly fed loved ones. This seems very American to me. Fascism with vending machines.

Declare victory, Accept defeat, Pretend to end, Rinse, repeat.

"The White House believes it's getting close...LOL www.axios.com/2026/05/06/i...

Remembering these foibles of the late great John Sterling fondly -- this was written circa 1994:

You most prove you're worthy. Eat roadkill and sniff cocaine off toilet seats.

In the visiting room at the Delaney Hall detention center, when 50-70 visitors are let in all at once, a subset immediately lines up at 4 vending machines to buy drinks and snacks for their poorly fed loved ones. This seems very American to me. Fascism with vending machines.

"as a result of the Iran debacle, Trump’s presidency has been a net positive for the global green energy revolution." open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Thanks @juddlegum.bsky.social for reporting that ICE has stiffed third-party medical providers for 7 months -- and many detainees have died following egregious medical neglect. This is proto-Nazi conduct. popular.info/p/ice-has-no...

This was one of my favorite Onion pieces ever, but 12 years later I have to admit, with some bafflement, that my cohort expressing their preferences here are in a distinct minority. theonion.com/christ-artic...

Really good job overviewing the likely year-long enrollment attrition in 2026.

Last weekend I was present when a detainee walked out of Delaney Hall. I found myself thinking of how in the first months of the pandemic, hospital staff would sing Here Comes the Sun when a patient got off a ventilator. Then I thought how I'd sing it if we ever get past Trump to an elected Democrat

n an era in which we may never trust the federal government again, an all-payer state healthcare system looks pretty good. Here Merrill Goozner, long an advocate for the Maryland model, testifies in favor of an Illinois bill that would replicate it.

Kind of recursive, isn't it. Our deepest long-term problem: You can't have a democracy when one of two parties won't play.

"all of Israeli Jewish politics, essentially, takes place within an ethno-nationalist framework, in which the very language of democracy itself is really, largely confined to the idea of democracy for Jews." open.substack.com/pub/peterbei...