The design of the Constitution divided warmaking authority between Congress and the executive to prevent a president to take the country to war by themselves for any petty or self-serving reason. You know, like a king would. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

things every single republican president of your lifetime has done - started a war in the middle east - completely destroyed the economy

>discover new left-coded populist >ask supporters if they're cosmopolitan or herrenvolk >they don't understand >explain what is cosmopolitan and what is herrenvolk >they laugh and say "they're a good progressive ma'am" >see how they describe the working class >it's herrenvolk

This is right. And people hate to hear it, but Joe Biden’s single most important task was to Trump-proof the US. His task was to destroy the Republican Party to punish them for Trump, salt the earth over them, and implement big structural reforms to stop future R minority extremism. And he failed.

we were probably all up last night staring at the ceiling with our own version of the same thought running on endless loop, but mine looked something like this: I hate these people to a degree that feels simultaneously corrosive to the soul, and also the only righteous response to this kind of evil

An under-discussed aspect of how previous generations sometimes left us holding the bag is that they all seem allergic to mentoring. I’ve seen so many boomers or Gen Xers wax rhapsodic about how they wouldn’t be anywhere without their mentor, then disappear any time someone asks for their help.

It’d be cool if progressives didn’t point to fat people like “We can all agree this is a public policy failure…”

This is why you do stunts. This is why you do stunts. This is why you do stunts.

One of my most problematic traits is that I an super judgmental when rich or famous people have to use their influence to get their kids into colleges that aren’t particularly selective. Like you completely failed and should be embarrassed by all of this.

Trump's constant degradation of female reporters is unsurprising but the press corps' collective decision to treat it as background noise is actually kind of sickening

worth noting that the second rich people stopped being afraid of mobs tearing them limb from limb, they stopped building libraries and opera houses and stuff and started ripping the copper wiring out of the walls of society instead

"For much of the 2010s and likely before and since, it appears the crime rate of CBP agents and offices was higher PER CAPITA than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the United States." www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/accountabi...

the thing that’s so strange about the current american billionaire class is precisely the fact that they have chosen, as a class, to forego maximizing their own wealth in order to pursue cultural and political power, not as tools to further profit, but as the ends in themselves

I've never been a conspiracy theory guy, but you're never gonna convince me that there hasn't been a specific cabal of ultra-rich dullards trying to buy, strangle, and bring to heel all of the most important reality-shaping machines since the uptick in power labor had during COVID

if you want to be the violent wing your job is to choose high value, universally loathed targets, and to know that your job is to die or languish in prison for a cause that will spit on your name

Van Hollen has been much better than most Democrats, but once again, I am asking elected leaders to stop providing running commentary like a common pundit or beat reporter and instead tell *us* what to do about it or tell us what *they* are doing about it.

We did not properly punish the confederates. We did not properly punish the insurrectionists on January 6th. We have to punish ICE. They can’t be allowed to slink back into their communities quietly. Expose them. Arrest them. Convict them. Imprison them.

one of the agents said “okay we know” when we were whistling so i leaned in and whistled louder and he threatened to pepper spray me. i then said “are you scared of a fucking whistle dawg” and he very meekly said “no i’m not scared of a whistle”

Nancy Pelosi should have retired years ago and has made many terrible decisions but I will always be grateful that she told Rahm and everyone else to fuck themselves, held the House together, and got Obamacare through for all its flaws it is a vast improvement over what came before

my least favorite kind of social media punditry is "bad thing X must be because of Y" where Y = some shibboleth that's popular with those who share the poster's worldview one post at a time, it feels like this mental shortcut is grinding away at critical thinking skills and flattening all politics

americans hate it when they're shown on tv doing something cool

and, most relevant to Mr. Fuckley’s point, the Democrats cannot get anywhere if they accept the framing of permissive immigration as “risky by humane”. Thats’s how we got here! Permissive immigration is actually safer than a War on Migrants, we HAVE to stand by that.

if bovino is out and conservatives are turning on noem then there is a real opportunity to demand that miller resign too.

it is both true that firing bovino doesn’t change a whole lot in terms of policy and also true that they have put a lot of money, time and effort into trying to make him the “never back down, fuck you, we own this place” face of the operation, and unceremoniously kicking him to the curb is a retreat

Call the piece of legislation that ultimately abolishes ICE the Pretti-Good Act

This is clearly an empirical prediction about events based on my unambiguously first-amendment protected right to express opinions about the motivations of public figures and in no way constitutes a course of action I endorse or have the ability or desire to effectuate.

I am as explicitly as possible laying down a date-stamped marker that a federal immigration agent is going to die violently within the next calendar year, and that this will retroactively be used to justify policy. I am saying it here so I can angrily quote this at media figures when it happens.

We will need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission when these cruel, lawless people are out of office. They must be held accountable in order for our nation to heal.

How many January 6 insurrectionists were armed? Is the position now that Capitol police could have shot them all? Just trying to keep up

I’m completely fed up with elected Representatives saying shit like, “Republicans will tell you behind closed doors that they don’t agree with what ICE is doing”. Playtime is over. Professional courtesy no longer exists. Name them, record them, and make it public.

years and years of avoiding plain language and the active voice do make the choice to use it more impactful, I suppose

I have spent my entire adult life being lectured by Republican politicians and conservative legal movement types about how important it is to preserve the sacred constitutional right to self-defense of *specifically this person* and then secret police murdered him in the street

the "and you're surprised by this?" guys have never been less vital than they are right now

Once again, immigration is not even a problem. Immigrants are not more criminal, they don't cost jobs, they don't harm the economy. There is no reason for any of this. It is hurting ourselves to hurt them.

This really gets to the core of what makes Vance such a detestable figure

I really dislike this leftie tendency to use all of the horrible crimes this country has committed as proof that the country is irredeemable, when the people who fought against it often did so *as Americans* because it implies they were a bunch of stupid fucking rubes

one of my kinda more crank, unworkable ideas is that there are jobs where the people who self-select into them are not the people who you want & that maybe we should just sortition people into those roles. like there are some things that attract people to policing that you don't want in cops.

I would argue that the case for dismantling ICE has, at this point, virtually nothing to do with larger questions of immigration enforcement and reform, it's just clearly incompatible with a free and democratic society to maintain a secret police force with sweeping and arbitrary authority.

Even after Trump is gone, the world will remember that he threatened to forcibly seize the territory of a peaceful democratic ally, and our institutions failed to immediately remove him. That makes US dangerously unreliable, not just one senile gangster.

The “technically correct” part of open borders is that, for whatever problems a permissive entry program would have (and there would be some!), those problems pale in comparison to “giving the most fascist wing of the US govt more money”

As it happens though, the framers of the US constitution did say it: in the 4th amendment, the 5th, the 10th, etc. What they didn’t provide for is federal immigration enforcement of any kind, only “a uniform rule of naturalization.” Nor did they give the federal government a plenary police power.

this is your mission. roll up to this daycare in full tactical gear to harass some kids and teachers. when you get spooked by your own shadow like a panicked horse and start shooting your gun, our pedophile president will call the person you shot a terrorist. good luck soldier

Term limits allow lobbyists to run the show even more than they do now. My answer is to end the influence of lobbying by ending the private funding of campaigns. Just go all the way. These are public offices. They should not and cannot continue to be privately owned.

"village" mentality is what sustains conservatism. not being able to do anything without the Grandma Gestapo reporting your every move. depending on the easily withdrawn kindness of others instead of impersonal but reliable services. and of course obeying aristocratic landowners

YES. This is the core problem of "it takes a village." If people don't like you, if you are not charming, if you are the gender that has to do twice as much work for equal support, if your mother is a jerk, that's it. You're effed. Rights to publicly provided services is liberating, actually.

i really think there is legit political space for running on "we are going to dismantle ICE"

This is what the elites who installed Trump did it for. Not the only reason, but the main one. This is the explicit outcome they were trying to engineer.