check out this interview I did with @flaminghydra.com about the work I am doing to defend democracy in an age of fascist gangsters. Lessons from an education at Punk Rock University. flaminghydra.com/canadas-char...

New: ICE has bought a tool that tracks the locations of hundreds of millions of phones globally, updates every single day. Usually harvested from apps and advertising www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...

SCOOP: The federal government will deny the MTA tens of millions of dollars in requested security grant funding because NYC and NY state are "sanctuary jurisdictions," Streetsblog's @davecolon.bsky.social and @dmey.bsky.social have learned. nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/09/30/t...

NYC #civictech could decry Eric Adams' last-hour renewal of the opaque Big Apple Connect program, in a giveaway to Altice USA and Spectrum. Story by Zachary Groz for @nysfocus.bsky.social,who is staying on the #govtech beat in NYC and nine-figure spending favors by the insider-driven Adams admin:

"Chuck Schumer threw Donald Trump a six-month lifeline to keep the government running, and Trump spent those six months looting the country and trashing things." These particular people don't need to be in charge of political comms and enormous fundraising arms. Time for others to give it a shot.

Kamala Harris’s election memoir shows just how deluded the Democrats still are | Nesrine Malik

A great piece from David. Politics aside, it would be trivially easy to do this in New York. Change the direction of a few streets so drivers can't cruise in a straight line for blocks and blocks and you'd get a lot of the way toward making the city a lot more pleasant and safe.

New: Frank Carone, Adams' longtime confidant who headed his ill-fated reelection campaign, has already started working the phones to line up donor support for Andrew Cuomo, per sources. "Of course I did," Carone said when asked if he has made such calls. www.nydailynews.com/2025/09/29/a...

A good point in here: If Kirk deserves praise for engaging in good-faith debates with opponents, is there any evidence he was actually persuaded and changed his mind on anything? flaminghydra.com/issue-412/

What makes a loser: defector.com/what-makes-a...

TODAY: @tomscocca.bsky.social and @mariabustillos.com have a chat about omnipresent pundit Ezra Klein. "Klein himself has now demonstrated, across thousands of words and with multiple interlocutors, that he himself is completely immune to persuasion." flaminghydra.com/ezra-klein-d...

Hakeem Jeffries praised Eric Adams: "served courageously and authentically for decades." Trump's DOJ dropped corruption investigations against Adams; former FBI official Tom Donlon was pushed out after flagging what he called a culture of corruption in Adams' NYPD. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

so @chatterton.bsky.social turned off replies and quote posts so i can't reply to him, but eagle eyes will notice that all of the posts he says are about bluesky's reaction to today's interview were posted between 16 and 120 hours ago

Americans living in poverty grew by 9.3% from 2019–2024, per new Census annual report, reaching 44 million Americans and 10 million children. Someone could text Biden's campaign, e.g. Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe, to ask if they were aware of these statistics as Dems touted the Biden economy.

Days after the Trump admin issued NSPM-7 targeting what it called "agitators," with Stephen Miller crowing about how the FBI et al will use it to investigate Americans, the Cato Institute @cato.org homepage features... nuclear power. One meek blog post in right-hand rail on order.

This reporter helped expose the falsity of ICE's narrative on the fatal shooting of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez. His work is a perfect example of why we don't have secret police. Journalists have a constitutional right to cover protests and their aftermath. Release @peoplesfabric.com immediately.

Soon-to-be four industry lobbyists direct the EPA office that regulates pesticides and industrial chemicals. I guess one can get a sense from social media if the #MAHA movement is on board.

TODAY: @mariabustillos.com visits the new headquarters of Internet Archive Europe and chats with Brewster Kahle. “Let’s go! Move forward with a game of many winners, and put it within our own value system.” flaminghydra.com/freedom-and-...

Drove past the former Grittz’s Pzzaz in Milwaukee, the jazz banquet immortalized as the fancy restaurant in “Major League” (1989)

What happened at SCOTUS today? The case over $4 billion in foreign aid led to an unsigned Friday SCOTUS order that, in effect, means Trump can overturn certain laws — and that preventing him from doing so is a "harm" for which SCOTUS can grant him relief. Here's my report at Law Dork:

At the Brewers game back in the home city and there’s a playground. At old County Stadium, we didn’t have a playground, we learned how to keep a scorecard and between innings we could ask Rick Manning about the hotel buffets in Kansas City and Cleveland.

New York environmental groups are warning that Gov. Kathy Hochul is not standing up to Trump on the approval of a fossil fuel pipeline. Voters are already signing petitions and groups are appearing at the candidate's events. @nysfocus.bsky.social

The EPA office overseeing toxic chemicals and pesticides is run by three former chemical lobbyists, and is about to welcome a fourth as its new leader. Our latest:

ByteDance will hold bigger-than-expected stakes in the new TikTok companies that will allow U.S. operations after national security concerns, per Reuters. Months before the election last year, TikTok hired lobbying firm Ballard Partners, run by one of Trump's top campaign bundlers Brian Ballard.

TODAY: @dianamoskovitz.bsky.social re-watches All the President's Men,"a classic 1970s post–studio system paranoia-fest that just happens to take place in a newsroom. It’s about having real reasons for suspecting your phone is tapped or your car is being followed" flaminghydra.com/robert-redfo...

Billionaire Ronald S. Lauder bankrolled most of a $900k fine for super PACs found by New York State to have illegally coordinated with GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin. Lauder is a longtime Andrew Cuomo backer, as the GOP-aligned IDC blocked NY Democratic bills with Cuomo's blessing...

Microsoft will no longer allow Israel to use its cloud services to enable its mass surveillance of occupied Palestinians – "the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza"

I know there's a lot going on but this is a huge deal: Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin will stop providing abortions next week in an apparent bid to keep accepting Medicaid. The GOP budget law "defunds" PP affiliates that offer abortion care after October 1 We broke the story on @autonomynews.co

A tech and telecom industry group sponsored House staffers to attend a fireside chat with Jay Bhattacharya and an editor of The Free Press in Aspen over August recess. Don't worry! The congressional staffers also heard from Lockheed Martin and SpaceX.

On Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s first term, and community policing and more, by Naomi Bethune: prospect.org/politics/202...

I'm sure that tech watchdog groups who support AI regulation in states will get equal time with congressional staffers, just as Meta and Google and OpenAI have in opposing them. All they have to do is fly out dozens of Hill staffers for an upscale weekend in the Bay Area. Voilà

ALSO TODAY: @annamerlan.bsky.social on trying to learn a language the worst possible way. “I could cry at all that’s been lost, and the absurdly slow way I’m trying to win it all back.” flaminghydra.com/alles-klar/

54% of voters have a negative opinion of the Democratic Party, per Quinnipiac Poll out today, the lowest level in the poll since 2008. 53% said their top economic concern is the price of food. Hill staffers are taking sponsored trips to hear from Big Tech companies about AI and meet with Palantir.

Do you even follow politics if you don't know about the ModSquad?? They're the newest dark money moderate Dems!! Their PAC is funded by finance donors. They sent Senate staffers to visit Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) last month. So yes, their 11 members include Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona.

House and Senate staffers were given sponsored trips over the August recess to attend conferences on AI policy and company tours with Google, Meta, Palantir, and SpaceX, according to travel disclosures.

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Republicans in Congress are dealing big blows to small businesses right now. One looming one is the dramatic increase in health insurance costs for those who buy through the ACA marketplaces. Half— half! — of people under 65 using the marketplaces are small business owners and employees.

Ask reps in the Blue Dog Coalition, in #WA03 and #CA46 and #CA13 and #CA21, if they'll read this piece by Aaron Regunberg and Zephyr Teachout: "The industry also used capture-and-kill tactics to shut down the development of alternative energy technologies before they could challenge fossil fuels."

A June 2023 report identified how the Biden admin could have spurred a "nationwide industrial mobilization" in clean energy, e.g. by making a large priority order of heat pumps or solar cells. He left the authority on the table, though environmental groups petitioned him before he took office.

Over a third of donations are used to raise more donations, per new Bonica analyzing FEC data. data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-fundra...

Someone could share this report with Wendell Primus, health care adviser to Speaker Emerita Pelosi for 18 years, at his perch at @brookings.edu. Since 2021, average out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs have jumped by 36%. What about the subsidies doled out to for-profit insurance companies?

The Commanders’ D.C. stadium deal is an abomination: defector.com/the-commande...

For now it counts as satire… My latest in @flaminghydra.com: “Transcript of Official Testimony Before the House Anti-Anti-Fascist Committee” flaminghydra.com/anti-anti-fa...

Kamala Harris said on MSNBC, "I always believed that if push came to shove, those titans of industry would be guardrails for our democracy..." Her campaign was steered toward Liz Cheney by Precision Strategies consultants with corporate clients like private equity and Bank of America. Oh, and Uber:

TODAY: @benehrenreich.bsky.social has the transcripts of a future Congressional hearing. “ That’s right, Mr. Congressman. It was a Cracker Barrel. Wherever you find Cracker Barrel you will find Antifa personnel. It’s because of the Country Boy Breakfast.” flaminghydra.com/anti-anti-fa...

Kamala Harris on MSNBC now saying she “always believed titans of industry” would be guardrails for democracy but now—shocker—she reports that turns out they’re not. Only, she still’s waiting! “At some point they’ve got to stand up.” This kind of willful naïveté & denial doesn’t need airtime.

The two crypto groups scored a big win this year when Trump signed one of their priorities, the GENIUS Act. The crypto industry overall is on pace for record lobbying spending, with Coinbase, Crypto-dot-com, and a16z each on track to surpass last year. See more: readsludge.com/2025/07/23/c...

I have no idea how law students are supposed take seriously anything they learn in constitutional law when the Supreme Court's entire approach to precedent and stare decisis is just "does Mister Trump want us to overturn it right now" ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/trump...

A satellite imaging company aims to map every inch of the globe on a daily basis, providing government clients with "near real-time analysis" and AI decision-making. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick oversees it after serving on its board, and with his family investment firm holding a large stake.

If Donald Trump were anyone but the president, his third random killing would have been bigger news than his second and the fourth would have been bigger news still