The richest man on earth owns X. The second richest man on earth is about to acquire TikTok and his family could soon own both Paramount and Warner Bros. The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post. See the problem here?

If GOP wants to abolish the filibuster over this, awesome. It helps Rs way more than Ds. It’s also a central reason for loss of faith in government over the last 25 yrs. Rs can reopen the govt tonight if they want. If they want to do it to make sure 15 million lose their health care that’s on them.

I think Ezra Klein's take is that America is on the verge of a major step up in terms of sectarian violence, and he is afraid of that, and thinks very major compromises are worth it to avoid that outcome. Admittedly sometimes he says/suggest otherwise, but it's my overall impression.

It will never not be amazing to me that journalists and other people in positions of public influence willingly stay on a site that is being openly manipulated on every level by one of the worst human beings on Earth.

I just think that the proportion of tweets you send about the impending doom of electoral democracy vs how much blue sky and progressives suck is very telling of one’s priorities, and from the outside you gotta wonder about the incentives and incidences that landed one at said ratio

Integration is the single best technology we've ever developed for producing less terrible white people, and that's why they hate it so much

Jeffrey's file doesn't exist and it was probably written by Democrats anyway. Please excuse him from the assignment to present it today. Signed, Epstein's mother.

If the Supreme Court thinks universal injunctions are unconstitutional, to wait until *now* to say that, in this of all cases, with this of all presidents, is a devastating indictment of both its impartiality and its prudence.

Authorities have reportedly captured 57-year-old Vance Boelter near his Green Isle home

Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated last night, was the Speaker of the Minnesota House in the 2023-2024 session, when Democrats ran the state government. That means she had a leading role in shepherding the many landmark reforms that Dems adopted in that period—an important legacy. Brief 🧵.

Here's my set of takes on Biden and his age and ability to do the job. 1) The decision to seek reelection was very obviously the wrong one, and indeed I'd say catastrophically so. *At the time* it may have been defensible but with the benefit of hindsight, it was a terrible mistake.

I don't understand how the Times can never determine whether Trump is lying but can say with certainty when he is joking.

In Soviet Minnesota, the last piece takes you!

Walz: If you say you love freedom but you don't believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love is not freedom, it is privilege.

going to need to start hearing from governors what they intend to do to protect residents of their states from the federal government

you can have cult of personality-based authoritarian consolidation or you can blow up the economy and make everyone’s lives noticeably worse but it’s difficult to see how you manage both

In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS rules that the blood-dimmed tide is to be loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence should be drowned. Sotomayor dissents

Between this and fucking with social security and defying judges openly I think Amerimaidan 2025 is pretty likely now. Not a certainty by any stretch but they need to do a hard reversal that Trump and Elon will fight like hell to avoid.

Revealed preferences theory suggests that Wall Street executives value their ability to call their subordinates gay at approximately 8 trillion dollars

Gonna keep saying this: In the 1840s, Southerners insisted that they could kidnap any person they alleged was a slave without any state or federal process. This turned even minimal process into resistance and raised the salience of the issue, which radicalized a bunch of people against slavery.

The longest floor speech in the Senate was in opposition to the Civil Rights Act. So poetic that Cory Booker is about to beat that record.

Hi. I’m an expert in modernizing legacy government software systems. This is profoundly stupid and will definitely fail, and it’s just a question of whether our social security system fails along with it.

Fear of a massive electoral wipeout is, quite literally, the only thing that has any chance of getting GOP reps to break w Trump. Spread the word. Keep protesting. Keep calling. Go to town halls. Put the fear of god in these fuckers.

People don't seem to understand that the existence of fair laws and open courts perceived as just, and the end of vigilante justice/violence as dispute resolution aren't independent and coincidental occurrences.

If Trump tells the conservative legal sphere to suck his orange balls instead of treating them like noble philosopher kings, they’re less likely to be shameless hacks for him. If he burns down the bank the oligarchs thought he was going to let them loot, it matters. You get the picture.

I wish Chuck Schumer would put as much effort into opposing Republicans in Congress as he does opposing his own constituents on social media.

Midwestern governor with a one-seat legislative majority: The coward RethugliKKKans may dash themselves on our rocks if they wish, the tide and the seabirds will leave no trace of their remains New York/California Democrat: I’d like to vote against things I oppose but that’s not realistic

Just an obvious point that anyone with the inside word on when these these total reversals are going to be announced is in a position to make almost limitless amounts of money. Don't forget that given the kind of people who make up this administration.

Time for Dem-controlled states to come up with BIG plans for the census. If they are going to wreck it federally, states still have a lot of ability to ensure a good count at home. In fact, this could really screw red states who will embrace the sabotage in fealty to Trump.

So I want to point out that the Trump admin is complying with court orders in some places, but seemingly not in other places. What could this mean? Well, a couple different things, which I will try to detail below.

This is the way

They're jailbreaking the federal government and gonna brick it

Polish PM Donald Tusk, speaking before his flight to London for the European Ukraine summit: “500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians. [...] Europe today lacks the belief that we are truly a global force.”

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in Kyiv with world leaders calls Zelensky a hero, fighting a war for 3 years which was started by Russia. She urges Europe to increase support to UKR now, says Zelensky must be at the center of any negotiations with Putin #Voices4Victory youtu.be/JNs6wRvSpSU

I need you to prove you're not wasting taxpayer dollars doing pointless busywork by doing this thing i just admitted was pointless busywork

Safest way to respond to queries from a busybody agency justifying your job is to feed them answers they can’t understand without context. 1) Completed draft TPS Report 2) Solicited and incorporated feedback on TPS Report 3) Submitted TPS report for approval in advance of deadline. Etc.

Begging some hero in the Department of Ed to rename the student loan record file folder "DEI training materials" before unlocking the door for the DOGE bros

New via NYT — The CIA sent the White House an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal work force. One former agency officer called the reporting of names a “counterintelligence disaster.”

Just imagine if as much rage were as directed at the Republicans for what the Republicans are doing as there is at the Democrats for what the Republicans are doing.

A lot of the commentary on DOGE is wrong-footed because it doesn’t understand the central points of this thread. I’m pretty confident DOGE *will* break something major at some point. Elon will grow impatient at any sensible caution.

I think Americans, blessed with relatively stable government for a long time, assume there is someone, some adult, who will step in and make things right before the President does anything REALLY bad. There’s not.

What I should have done in the beginning - here's a starter pack of 20-odd experts who journalists or others might want to read/talk to to understand the gutting of the administrative state (as opposed to broad decline of democracy etc). I've focused on academics go.bsky.app/MaC7vnv

Who Can Stop Elon’s ‘Team’ Wilding Its Way Through the Federal Government? talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who-c...

They are going to break the Federal government. Not in the sense of breaking its will, but basic mechanical functionality. Hiring. Payroll. Accounts payable. Accounts receivable. Not sure if this incompetence is willful or negligent but it’s where we are heading. www.reuters.com/world/us/mus...

If you wanted no leaks you should have gone into Settings -> Security -> Configure privacy & security -> Privacy options -> Other -> Configure -> Media interface and clicked “Disallow.” The Leak setting is on by default but we understand your privacy is important so we’ve made it easy to opt out

republicans immediately blamed the fire on democratic environmental policy and leadership. democrats have not said anything about the fire's connection to years of gop climate denialism. this is kind of a fundamental difference to how both sides approach politics.

Biden just needs to release it with executive immunity

I should write the Passive- Aggressive Bureaucrat’s Handbook. I usually don’t like sharing my decades of experience with the Dark Arts (usually fighting these tactics in organizations resisting some sort of workflow change), but the next four years look like an exception.