the legal framework against CSAM was strong and well-established, and the Trump administration has effectively destroyed it because one of their own makes it.

Would like to take this moment for us to appreciate the contrast with Biden admin Latin America policy which at least featured attempts to make things more democratic and helped ensure a smooth transition of power in Brazil.

This person went on a buying spree over the past 24 hours. Fresh wallet. Only existed since Dec 27th and has only bet on Venezuela-related markets. polymarket.com/@0x31a56e9E6...

I DECLARE A PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY

Don't you usually have to traditionally...defeat and occupy a country before you announce that you're occupying that country?

Among the many reasons you don’t kidnap a foreign head of state at gunpoint even if you have the capability, is that it sparks consequences you can neither control nor anticipate.

Harsh words from @kaine.senate.gov, who sits on the Senate’s armed services and foreign relations committees, and asks where Trump will deploy military forces next

The legal justification the WH gave us for attacking Venezuelan boats in int’l waters without Congressional approval was weak, and exposes the WH and military staff to domestic and international criminal prosecution. They have not even sought to justify strikes within Venezuela.

yeah I figured it out.

so cool that when Kurosawa made Seven Samurai, he was like, "What if a movie absolutely ripped for three-and-a-half hours straight?"

This is quite an important point; if you are a UK citizen with Twitter on your phone, opening it up is like playing Russian roulette that the algorithm might commit a strict liability offence on your behalf.

Jan. 2, 1776: Today marks the earliest known appearance of “United States of America” to describe our country. Stephen Moylan, a secretary to Gen. George Washington, employs the phrase in reference to efforts by the American colonies to obtain foreign assistance: 1/4

They gentrified the tinfoil hat

Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt's Nazi Staffer, by @chancephillips.bsky.social. The first ever story broken by @liberalcurrents.com, we remained the only one covering it for weeks after, until the Guardian picked it up. www.liberalcurrents.com/missouri-sen...

blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration!

We are *all* Real America in the same way a naturalized citizen who took his oath five seconds ago is exactly as much of a citizen as someone whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower.

Seriously though, Liberal Currents is a great publication and Alan wrote some really good articles for them this year.

make the IRS woke ICE

May 2026 be better than 2025! The De Brailes Hours,13th century. (BL, Add 49999, fol. 40v)

Fred Groincock United States, Census, 1940

The Kilmar Abrego Garcia case is instructive. If they can’t be allowed to do what they want to *this one guy*, how can they have the power to remake all of society in their rancid image? They know this, which is why they’ve pushed so hard on it. But they also keep losing.

The past year has been terrifying. Really, the past two—I lost a lot of sleep in 2024 over the promises of the Trump campaign, promises they immediately sought to make good on. But at the end of the first year of his would-be dictatorship, I am calling it: we are going to win.

Most normal substack history post

Yeah, man, the only difference between your career and Mark Rufallo’s career is the political stuff.

The part in the Gospel of Matthew where the holy family just kind of hunkers down and waits for the tyrant to die is officially the most relatable version of the Nativity story this year

“In the end, is Lindsey offering us Prometheanism? Or just repackaged patriarchy? One starts to hear echoes of Charles Haywood's "Foundationalist Manifesto," which (. . .)combines radical technological visions with retrograde gender and political norms.” www.liberalcurrents.com/are-we-prome...

there was a bill to forbid Virginia prosecutors from getting defendants to sign away their constitutional/Bill of Rights rights, giving them up for years. wild, right? youngkin vetoed the bill boltsmag.org/fourth-amend...

youngkin brought back a Jim Crow-era policy of voter disenfranchisement under him, Virginia became the *only* state to practice the harsh rule that anyone with any felony conviction ought to remain barred from voting for life boltsmag.org/virginia-gov...

two headlines to remember what sort of person and governor youngkin has been: a brief 🧵

Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it's really important you know that the scene in the Seminary's Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up. I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.

it is extremely funny that RFK both does not believe in the germ theory of disease and is a lab leak truther

We occupy a very specific niche when it comes to the public discussion of history, and that niche is serious answers to the question of how bamboozled Hitler would have been by big chungus memes. www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

Besides a suitable jharokha, pretty much all the elements have been refined/gathered, I just need to fuck around with the composition so that it doesn't look like a pile of miscellaneous assets

The KKK went from marching through French-American communities in Maine as a way to intimidate "Papists," to then endorsing Paul LePage for governor Truly, America is a large country, with many people in it.

Catholics represent fewer than 20% of US adults, however, they make up 61% of the population at risk of deportation. Trump’s immigration crackdown is disproportionately hitting Catholic communities, who are slowly coming to appreciate it, as the Church leadership does, as a war against Catholics.

Bizarre little men. You still have control of the board

It probably says something about how sick I am that I’m struggling to tell of this means “the Catholic Church should not be the state church of any US state” or the far more likely “we must drive the Catholics from this Protestant country”. My family is Catholic.

Dec. 28, 1775: "A British American" makes an appeal for independence, an idea still considered radical even among the most ardent patriots. "Cruelty and oppression compel us," he writes from North Carolina. "We must separate, or become the labouring slaves of Britain, which we disdain to be." 1/4

I don't want them dead, of course - that would be un-American! - but I want to see them realizing that their ideology will remain a curse, a warning for the next generation or more and like Babylon 5's Vir, to 'look into their eyes and wave, like this.' It is not the best of me, but who is perfect?

Though the motivation is unbecoming, I suppose, I work in the hope of being around on the day that we can reassert what America *should be* and bury these so-called 'Heritage Americans' who are the least American of us and their ideology. I want to see them encompass the magnitude of their failure.

Republics are already unusual, rare, beautiful things, historically speaking. A republic composed of some small sliver of every country, people, language and culture is an even more wondrous, special thing. And to have it have succeeded so remarkably. To betray that...I have no words.

I am supposed to be a 'words' guy, yet I find that I lack the words to fully express the sense of rage and betrayal that I feel, having been raised to believe in the beauty of the United States as an - imperfect - pluralistic republic, to see these quislings try to turn it into a boring ethnostate.

'Heritage American,' noun. 1) An American insufficiently committed to the founding values of the United States. 2) An American actively betraying those principles. 3) A white supremacist euphemism used by [2] to mean 'white people.'

A silver lining: Car bloat enhances the appeal of cheap, fun, modest-sized golf carts. This year they became legal to use on public roads in South Carolina, Cleveland, and Corpus Christi (plus a slew of suburbs). IMO the golf cart boom is one of 2025’s best mobility trends.

In a letter to the French govermmemt Bonvouloir is enthusiastic for the Americans’ chances: “They have an unbelievable eagerness and goodwill: it is true they are led by capable people.” 4/4

France is known to want payback for Britain after losing the Seven Years’ War to its rival; splitting the colonies from London would be a powerful blow. Bonvouloir tells Congress’ committee that acquiring arms and powder for the patriots would be “a mere mercantile operation” posing no issues. 3/4

Dec. 28, 1775: The Continental Congress’ Secret Committee makes its first in-person contact in its quest for foreign aid. The five members including Benjamin Franklin sit down with Julien Achard de Bonvouloir, a French merchant who comes with a letter of recommendation from George Washington. 1/4