A version of this thought has been haunting me since Trump’s second inauguration

This is culturally really dangerous. Functioning societies depend on most people mostly following the rules even when they could probably get away with not doing so. That breaks down very fast once a critical mass decide that makes them saps and suckers.

"You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?"

If you don’t know about this, you need to read up. It’s the single bloodiest massacre in the history of Reconstruction, and it was perpetrated to overthrow the results of an election. It was emblematic of the sabotage of Reconstruction. And SCOTUS nullified the prosecution of those responsible.

Yep. The fact that our military occupiers are just standing around bored all day does not make them any less military occupiers of our national capital.

Wrote about how Hegseth’s effort to resegregate the upper ranks of the US military ties into the larger MAGA project to restore hierarchies of race and gender: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Living thru the worst Model UN ever

HE WENT TO YALE!

Trump was elected to wipe the trauma of the first black president from American history, a task which included scrapping the nuclear deal that had the US in a much better strategic position than before this needless, unconstitutional war of choice against Iran

Under the DOJ advisory, Trump underlings can destroy papers and records documenting executive misconduct without committing obstruction of justice, provided the generating of records is routed through White House offices. That's a temptation to election interference and other forms of misconduct.

so, he should still be removed from office as soon as humanly possible

Coming up on MSNOW at 6pm ET to talk about Trump's genocidal threats: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

A: how does racism get normalized? B: Man, I dunno. A: Oh hey look, this racist guy just made a great point! B: what else does he have to say?

Whenever someone says "there are no civilians in [country]," they are making an argument for genocide.

A terrible person being against something all decent people should be against does not make them a decent person. Correlation ≠ causation. Thank you for coming to my “Don’t Be an Idiot: for Pundits” talk

hmm, what if i told you that it wasn’t

Calling my congressman and leaving a message saying “I think that you should try to stop the president from committing nuclear genocide this evening” is now how I wanted to start my day.

Trump is and has been the loud, intoxicated guy at the party who has been threatening everyone on and off all night. Now he's pulled a weapon. He's got a lot of his people around him, but no one says anything. They could stop him, but they won't, because they are fundamentally gutless.

In a functional system, he would already have been removed

Despicable.

The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics held that you can do anything, it’s just a matter of willpower. This administration runs on the Red Lantern Theory: Any failure to achieve a geopolitical goal can be ascribed to insufficient cruelty & brutality.

Constitutional lawyer here. I don't think it would violate the Constitution for the VP/Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, but the intended constitutional remedy for this behavior is impeachment & removal. The fact that that remedy is politically impossible is a scandal and a crisis.

I'm a bit of a broken record on this, but usurping the power of the purse isn't just one constitutional violation among all the many others. It is, uniquely and singularly, the death of constitutional government altogether. Game over, end of story, you now live in an autocracy.

A ditch in Roseland, Louisiana, seven months after an oil facility exploded here.

Reviewing my notes app from this week. Yep, that about sums it up.

Hegseth is certainly finding new and exciting ways to alienate his subordinates.

this is the chaplain btw. wonder why he was fired.

It's a relief that the Supreme Court appeared so skeptical of Trump's arguments on birthright citizenship. But it's still a scandal that the case got this far to begin with.

Jokes aside, there is a perfectly rational reason for not prepping for this obvious to come question: you are betting/hoping that the Republican appointees are going to play ball because you know damn well your case is an absolute loser.

Just so you understand, this is as if you prepared for argument in front of a panel that included Cookie Monster, and Cookie Monster asked you a question about cookies, and you had not thought about cookies in advance.

👇🎯 Today in "Neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party"

The fact that Trump is going to oral arguments to pressure the justices to acquiesce to his attempted nullification of a constitutional amendment and create a stateless class for the first time since the civil war, illustrates what is really at the core of the Trump project and it isn’t tariffs.

“Support the troops and arrest their families.”

Liberalism needs liberals. It doesn't need other ideologies to fill the gaps. "The fact that conservatives and socialists aren’t moved by liberalism doesn’t mean that it’s not moving. History is full of people who fight for freedom. People are fighting for it right now." @liberalcurrents.com

It is extremely wrong how Dems talking point on this is that paying TSA by EO is totally legal and he should have done it sooner. It is not legal, that $10B is only for border security and TSA is not border security. He's stealing the power of the purse, stop saying he should have done it sooner!

Nearly cracked my screen liking this post.

Something else about this (and yes, what I’m about to describe is under the paywall… paying for journalism helps keep it alive) piece We’d confirmed that in recent days Trump has been making snide, genuinely annoyed comments in private about jd vance and tulsi, that they weren’t warmongering hard…

Old and busted: Great man theory of history New hotness: Despicable man theory of history

probably the most depressing thing I’ll read this week

Just got detoured going to the Metro. Crawling with cops, feds, and national guard. All I could think about is what a chickenshit country we’ve become.

The same people who platformed this guy are going to totally buy it and sell it to the rest of us and it’s going to suck

The ProPublica union has voted to authorize a strike. Around 150 journalists, videographers, copy editors and more voted to authorize, with 92% of the union voting yes. ProPublica allegedly rejected restrictions on replacing jobs with AI, and hasn't met other union concerns.

Johnny Appleseed gravesite and reenactment site of Fort Anthony Wayne (Ft Wayne, IN). We had an overnight at the latter and some mom brought bug spray and I just remember bugs falling from the ceiling like a horror movie so took sleeping bag outside. Still get the ick thinking about it.

Important to evaluate this criticism of the U.S. war on Iran *and*, independently and generally, this critic.

“Over the weekend, Donald Trump and top US officials spent much of their time begging American allies (and also Trump’s good pal Xi in China) to bail him out of the economic fiasco he created with his illegal war. The amount of begging was jarring and unbecoming, even for them.”

What a paragraph. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

new @documentedny.bsky.social: meet Iranian dissident Shayan*, who’s been detained by ICE for a year and a half while the government fights his asylum case. He’s won; they’re appealing. He fought for the regime change Trump wants and keeps getting punished for it. documentedny.com/2026/03/13/f...

This is my shocked face.

To quote Max Verstappen, "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bus."

Gonna try this again since every time I've logged on today I've gotten angry at the administration. ::ahem hem:: A very happy birthday to my dear wife, @daralind.bsky.social. There is no other person I'd rather live through the end of the republic with. OK, so that's probably not the right tone.