Gotta love the executive summary of the 47th President: “Churkin … understood Trump after our conversations. It is not complex. He must be seen to get something; it’s that simple.”

A need to preserve a “free-market economy“ is a Republican mantra— That’s not what we have. Regulatory capture and no meaningful taxation is a “blood- market economy“. Social Darwinism. Red in tooth & claw. Hierarchical dominance at its finest.

Scientists *are not* becoming more political. Politicians brought their increasingly delusional ideologies onto the turf of science. We’re just trying to clean the sewage off our doorsteps. www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

Looking forward to the trials of the ICE and CBP We will hang their heads in buckets under every fence and tree And America again will be the Nation of the Free When Nazis get their due (Revised "Battle Hymn of the Republic", for the 21st Century)

Apparently it wasn’t sufficiently satisfying to starve mere millions of poverty-stricken human beings served by USAID.

NPR this am, @steveinskeep.bsky.social interviews Johnathan Greenblatt about Mamdani persecution campaign. Asks if he considers fair criticism of Israel to be anti-semitic. Listens politely as Greenblatt dodges question & spouts modernized kitten-torture allegations. Moves on to next question.

Journalists (rightly) are trained in the art of storytelling… But sometimes (this time) they need to let go of the narrative they’ve weaved over a period of years and report what’s actually happening around them. (Let’s see if they’re listening.) Great piece/thread on this:

At more than 123 million, the number of displaced people globally is the highest it’s been since records were kept (i.e., WWII). But yes, immigration we’re seeing now (and the suffering that politicians callously use for personal gain) is but the first trickle of what will become a great flood.

The will-he-won’t-he on The Trump Show has gotten incredibly stale and predictable…

NYT's "The Morning" tackles tensions between the three remaining SCOTUS justices who are still (somewhat) tethered to the law and the Constitution: Shaking my damn head. The word you're looking for here is not "pragmatism".

Maybe... Democrats should instead recognize the reality that AI and automation have already decoupled employment from capital. The American Dream has fundamentally changed, and the only path away from the Oligarchical American hellscape we're trudging toward now is to recenter *all* human dignity.

Time to open an ICEhunters repository, perhaps? Loose the Wisdom of the Crowdsource to hunt the hounds of hell...

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

Donald wants to delay the American public’s inevitable realization that he’s a Lame Duck. (One might say, “Donald Lame Duck”). Much as obscuring his health issues delays the inevitable realization that he won’t survive this term, never mind a third.

Once upon a time a time in America, putting a joker like this in charge of a unit would end in murmurs of “let’s frag the lieutenant“

This stems in part from Trump’s belief that everybody {who has wealth & power & therefore matters} commits the kinds of crimes that he committed, so any prosecution of those crimes is selective prosecution. Doesn’t occur to him that not everyon’s a criminal

The 21st century finds humanity locked in a struggle between a worldview rooted in recognition of the need to mitigate an array of existential threats to continued human civilization, and a worldview rooted in male chimpanzee dominance behavior.

'let’s avoid phrases like “convicted felon” and “twice-impeached.” Stating facts makes us look biased.' I recall 2024 twitter conversations in which editors of national newspapers expressed this exact sentiment. (They were even more resistant to "Leader of the Jan-6 attempted coup".)

The Republican coalition has shrunk itself into a corner, where they can’t afford to lose any element of it— no matter how corrupt or detestable they may be. The rest of us should see that as a weakness to exploit, and act accordingly.

They will do whatever they can to intimidate the American people against using their collective voice. They know, as we know, that We the People are all that stand between us and their dreams of dictatorship.

RFK is correct that Trump Derangement Syndrome is a pathology, but he’s bass-ackwards in thinking that the Columbia Associate Professor is among those directly suffering its effects…

That one‘s a punch to the gut…

"Ethics, shmethics..." This is the Trump Administration we're talking about, after all.

“SCOTUS says so” no longer seems to have any coherency nor any correlation whatsoever with what the Constitution and/or Legislation would mandate…

The Trump Administration considers intimidation and terror tactics to be their most effective tool for achieving policy goals. Let that sink in. The current US government is a terrorist organization.

Nothing says equal justice under the law quite like posting blatantly illegal notices at the top of your website!

I was struck by the realization this morning that— for both the persecutors, and the persecuted— this generation of college students considers the term "debate" to be a valid euphemism for "hate speech". It is a deeply saddening commentary on where American society has arrived.

If on the other hand the words Hegseth spoke today make your heart sing, you should do the treasonable thing and follow the orders he’ll be giving in the coming days…

That’s what worked well from roughly 1933 to 1980…

The Unitary Executive theory is a simple restatement of the premise that, if you disagree with the will of the People, the best way to thwart is via dictatorship. Antebellum redux.

This piece is a brilliant riposte of Ezra Klein’s recent “bigots will be bigots” vision of America…

“Bread and circuses”… Except the bread is reserved for billionaires, and there’s not much suspense in a gladiator combat pitting a speedboat against a U.S. naval destroyer.

I often wonder how much of Trump's weaponization of Justice is for propaganda purposes, vs a desire to enact retribution on those who caused him pain, vs he's a fucking moron who really believes everyone is just as corrupt and criminal as he is.

We must all weigh the risks of being silent and compliant against the risks of being courageous. Down the coward’s path lies tyranny and violence. Look to the Civil Rights movement, or more recently South Korea, as examples of our better angels.

Dark times in America.

Long story short: Courage prevents worse suffering. Cowardice is a sure path to tyranny. Folks seem to have forgotten (or never knew?) that the Civil Rights Act in America and the end of Apartheid in South Africa would never have happened had not many, many brave souls squarely faced oppression.

Crap on top of crap on top of crap from these burgeoning Authoritarians. The entire Republican Party is now a mobile mountain of manure.

Testing the waters, so to speak, on unlawful use of force...

The “Quincy Punk” theory of why the bulk of the media landscape is completely botching their coverage of Tyler Robinson’s Alt-Right extremist origin story… Doesn’t help that Groypers/Nazi groups have decades of experience misdirecting any normie understanding of who they are via “lulz” tactics.

Fox News (ergo the Republican mainstream) has gone full-on Mao Zedong Cultural Revolution on us. Ask historians of China where that led for the three decades that followed, if you’re not already sure.

How do we know that Charlie Kirk's shooter was a far-right (White Supremacist) extremist? Well, for one: Law enforcement brought him in alive.

Also know as: "The Night of the Long Knives".

If the American system of Justice were designed for quick trials, this man would be in prison instead of in the White House. It’s a deeply saddening to contemplate how America’s institutions pale when compared to countries like South Korea and Brazil.

Also known as "The Authoritarian Ratchet".

NPR interviews Matt Schlapp on the death of Kirk… He begins by lauding the Pied Piper of bigotry & a plea that we all just get along. By the end shows his true colors (after a reference to the assassinations of Wisconsin Democrats), applauds NPR’s loss of funding & devolves to full-on rage-splutter.

I don't think it's a coincidence that a far-right extremist (who'd called for release of the Epstein files) was shot at a gathering in a state thick with far-right extremists who've teetered on the edge of violence for a decade. But I've got sense enough not to imply I know what happened.

Makes more-than-a-lick of sense that folks who are lonely and working through the trauma of abuse would be much more susceptible to a movement coalesced around a violent, narcissistic strong-man/con-man. Frames MAGA in a light that clarifies the picture.

Whelp. At least the majority on the Supreme Court of the United States is no longer bothering to hide their swastika armbands.

Given the persistent and growing chasm between the lived experience of Trump's weakness & failures, and the media's narrative of a strongman leader, one would almost think there were other forces at play in wide swaths of the media landscape than accurate, unbiased reporting.

”Many worry”. Maybe “NPR worries that accurate reporting would be perceived as bias”. Because an accurate headline would read “Anyone with an understanding of the scientific method knows” RFK’s report on autism will be groundless.