The fact that VP JD Vance and Richard Grenell went to Romania—on behalf of the Trump Administration— to advocate for Andrew and Tristan Tate, who by all accounts, were rapists running a coercive sex ring, then permitted them to come to Florida, should be a crazy, crazy scandal.

My pre-write turned out to be 70% a. CDC's comms have been wildly irresponsible; b. If I couldn't prove lettuce is not from Taylor Farms, I wouldn't eat it; c. Taylor Farms gave MAGA Inc. $1M USD less than a week after FDA postponed food traceability rules. www.patreon.com/mattbc/posts...

The U.S. tax agency’s top attorney was forced from his role in recent days after refusing White House demands to participate in tax audits, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Every time they make it harder for foreign students to study here, they're just jacking up the tuition costs for American students and robbing America of incredible new talent too.

BREAKING: Taylor Farms pulls all iceberg lettuce sourced in central Mexico from U.S. market in cyclosporiasis investigation. AND Sysco, a huge food supplier, has stopped distributing Taylor Farms processed iceberg lettuce products frm Mexico. Our story. 1/2 www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

When journalists asked me "where we will see the effects of DOGE on outcomes?" one of my responses was "during crises...as long as media connect the dots." Well, dots connected: www.wired.com/story/cdc-cy...

Is this the first arrest of an ICE employee for shooting someone?

Tillis prodded a rape survivor to go public with allegations against Hegseth, promising her that it would sink the nomination of a dangerous man to a powerful position. She did, at significant risk to herself. Tillis then cast the deciding vote in favor of Hegseth. He has always been a coward.

What a graphic. @cnn.com #$NVDA #$TSLA #$AEO

HOLY CRAP! The documents Trump just released following his speech show that Russians worked with American officials to advance stories about Burisma and Joe Biden being corrupt. Someone is going to get fired tonight for accidentally allowing this one to be declassified.

Maine ICE shooter has history of severe mental illness, multiple psych hospitalizations, mil PTSD, chronic violence agst at least two wives, and threats against mutiple family members and more. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-mus...

I think a lot of people are about to find out that recalls are technically voluntary

This is straight crooked shit. We should prosecute everybody. Trump, the people working on this for Trump, and everyone who buys this from him.

"Ashley Brouillette told a reporter that she wanted to speak publicly because she had previously reported concerns to his superiors in the military about his mental health. She said he was abusive in their relationship."

“There’s a whole Institute for disparity” says Vought. And it has run about 1% of the NIH budget for years. To cover health disparities acros/ ALL health domains.

We need to be able to call evil by its name.

The recall includes 3,080 cases of Pillsbury Bread Rolls "Hard Roll Dough" and 1,260 cases of Pillsbury Bread Rolls "Kaiser Roll Dough."

I have a piece in the NYT today arguing that the law should permit victims of ICE abuse to sue not just individual officers, but supervisors and policymakers like Stephen Miller and Gregory Bovino. A Democratic president and Congress could do this in 2029. And they could make it retroactive.

ICE and Geo Group are blocking an investigation into a possible tuberculosis outbreak at their concentration camp in Aurora, Colorado.

This isn't how you do science. "Find what causes autism" is a legitimate goal, and one scientists have been working on for as long as we've known about autism. "Find a link between autism and vaccines" isn't science, it's propaganda masquerading as science because it assumes the link exists.

Unless I'm much mistaken, military health care already includes hormonal therapy for people with medical conditions that require it. So he's talking about making people who don't need it take hormones.

Completed my first piece of furniture! Simple white oak shelf unit with sliding dovetail joints between the sides and the top/bottom, and through dowels for the shelves. Learned a lot (like you ALWAYS need more material than you think!) and had a lot of fun making it! #woodworking

Literally gender-affirming care

Looks like this game has gotten really, really weird since I stopped playing it many years ago.

The New Mexico Attorney General's Office says Trump's Southern District of New York has refused to provide his office with unredacted Epstein files to aid in its investigation of Epstein's Zorro Ranch.

In America today, the wealthiest 1% is now worth more than the entire American middle class. That never happened before.

If this is true, the lesson should be not be to declare victory (ok, take one minute to enjoy the victory), but to redouble pressure on the whole indecent mass deportation regime

Is Taco Bell growing their own lettuce? No. They get their lettuce from companies like Taylor Farms (that has 1/3 of the market *including hospitals*). This is deflection on the part of the federal government, which specifically cut funding for food safety screening/testing.

“Blanche Was a Driving Force in [Trump’s] Retribution Campaign, Emails Show” Glenn Thrush for @nytimes.com 🎁🔗

Elon Musk's xAI has installed more than double the number of gas turbines than it has publicly acknowledged to power its Colossus 2 data center project, without federal permits, and the pollution is hitting predominantly Black neighborhoods the hardest reut.rs/4bIghEm

They aren't claiming the officer feared for his life, but "feared for public safety" when Guerrero attempted to flee. But he was not the target of the warrant. Which means they had no reason to think he was dangerous. Fleeing an immigration stop does not make you a threat to public safety.

The best story ICE could make up, after 12 hours, is that ICE agents shot someone in the head because they believed the person they shot, who was not accused of any crime, was a different person also not accused of any crime, and so "public safety" required killing them on the spot.

I have no idea why any reasonable person would believe anything tech companies say about anything at this point, AI related or otherwise hostile skepticism should be the public default

This isn't tenable. Should be a prereq for Democrats: Create a way to hold federal law enforcement officers civilly liable. Make it retroactive. Do the same for policymakers like Noem, Mullin, and Miller, whose unconstitutional directives are predictably ruining lives and wreaking destruction.

We put the newsletter to bed just before news of the ICE shooting in Maine. I urged a focus on Epstein at Blanche's hearing. But I'd add that Blanche's DOJ has refused to investigate ICE shootings, and has tried to impede states and localities from doing so. open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

New NSF policy essential bans all collaboration with Chinese scientists. This is another disaster for science. www.science.org/content/arti...

"Five people, including three U.S. citizens, were killed as a result of those shootings, nearly all of which involved officers firing at people in vehicles." "The driver weaponized his vehicle" has become a license to kill, with no risk of a follow-up investigation.

In 2020, I’d sometimes check my phone during a 12+ hour virus testing shift - exhausted but grateful I could do something to help my community in overwhelming Bad Times - and see a new admin PSA like “drink bleach!” or “try horse dewormer!” and think, God, am I just shoveling sand into the ocean?

Reminder: Memphis is still “under full-blown occupation” by ICE. Task force members have reportedly killed at least two people in four days.

Great evening watching World Cup soccer and putting together my birthday present! If you like LEGO, I recommend this model. It turned out great!

Burnout: Paradise changed the racing genre in ways that you still see today. Just a shame.

The Times says federal agents turned up on the doorsteps of several of its journalists to force grand jury testimony next week over their coverage of the Air Force One plane gifted to Trump by Qatar. n.pr/4bwYQ9F

Not the use of the word "detained" here to make it appear as though the settlers have some legal capacity to be doing this. If i ran up on a US Rep with a rifle and prevented them from leaving it would be, correctly, described as kidnapping; and doing so with political ends would be terrorism.

Me as I continue to write NIH grants like it is 1999

🧵This story is insane in so many ways that others are more qualified to analyze. Can only add that viz US foreign policy, Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, acting as viceroy of Venezuela is derelict, unconscionable, & impeachable. The SecState's time is scarce, valuable, and not outsourcable. 1/

Either equal parts ketchup and yellow mustard with generous amounts of sweet pickle relish OR spicy brown mustard and grilled sweet onions. Depending on the quality of the dog and my mood.

My dad recently said, about something else, "You can't expect a pirate to plant," and I seethed with rage that he did not drop this insanely useful metaphor ten years ago.

🚨🚨🚨 "The three men who were arrested during an operation that resulted in the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo said a federal officer fired at them almost immediately after exiting his vehicle and that at no point did the driver veer in his direction." wapo.st/4ydn1Ux

ICE agents are claiming the wrongfully target man had attacked them during a traffic stop. That’s not what the latest video footage shows. trib.al/dFWOwuQ