When you speak up for something, you take a risk...even when you're speaking about saving the environment, animal rights, human rights, civil rights, empathy, compassion or science. Somebody will always place their political or religious views ahead of everything you believe in & know to be true.

From NRA v. Vullo, a 9-0 SCOTUS decision, May 30, 2024: "Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors."

When it comes to foreign policy, Trump is the master of penultimatums.

My favorite cycling hero (and perhaps my favorite hero in general) is Gino Bartali. Twice a winner of the Tour de France and the Tour of Italy, Gino was a national celebrity, a hero even, during the time of Mussolini and the Second World War. He was also a devout Catholic. 1/3

On location near the ICE facility in Farmville, VA. Over 200 folks here standing up for the right to due process.

Aside from the incorrect data (the DC homicide rate is not 41 per 100k residents, it's 24 per 100k), there is an interesting point of commonality with all the other cities in the list: They all have stricter gun control laws than DC.

Might be time to flood the ICE recruitment website with fake applications.

I'm thinking "Secretary Kegseth" has a nice ring to it.

About 20% of prostate cancer patients have negative PSA tests. My father had prostate cancer, and despite continual monitoring after treatment, doctors still failed to catch it when it metastasized into his spine. Quay's assertions are flawed.

"One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own." - James Baldwin

Straight white men we need to organize and be in the front lines. This is it we have been called upon. No more letting the minorities and women do the fighting. As being the only demographic with protection from the government we have to take point. So white boys let’s fuck them up.

You can't simultaneously claim that no one is above the law and deny certain persons due process. If they're not free from prosecution, then they're not free from habeas corpus.

I had the privilege to address the crowd today at our local protest march. Here is the text if anyone's interested. substack.com/@photosynthe...

Because the current administration can't execute economic policy with anything remotely resembling forethought, the constant changes to the system have basically broken it. Only El Naranjo could make a deal this artful. www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/c...

El Naranjo planning a military parade for his birthday at an estimated cost of $113M gives me some serious North Korea vibes. At the very least, it is fraud, waste, and abuse of our hard- earned tax dollars.

What a strange mindset: that whatever real or imagined economic pain one experienced under Biden is completely intolerable, but the widespread and very real pain we're experiencing now is some sort of patriotic duty.

I just don't understand how so many Trumpers got so fucking deep into the kool-aid. People that I've always considered rational, thoughtful. Either they're pulling all their information from a couple sources and buying into the lies unknowingly, or they've doubled down on insanity.

MAGA wants to take the US back to the "great" post-WWII era. Including the polio, measles, and tuberculosis, apparently.

The folks who wish women and minorities would just "get over" over 3 centuries of oppression are the same ones in an uproar about 60 years of civil rights.

Life's backwards Life's backwards People turn around The house is burned The house is burned The children are gone Sinéad O'Connor, "Fire on Babylon"

DOGE is focused on cutting the agencies that promote the general welfare, but not the ones that arrest, deport, and kill people.

Federal hiring DEI policies have been replaced by DIK policies (Donald is King).

Every day I think, "What the actual fuck!?!"

So I'm guessing "no new wars" didn't include trade wars, or the war on different cultures, or the war on transgender persons, or the war on science.

If the Republicans keep using C17s for deportation flights, it's going to cost about $13.2 billion just for fuel.

Insanity: The deportation flights Trump used military jets for—that Mexico refused to accept—cost the U.S. up to $852,000 per flight to attempt to deport just 80 migrants at a time. To compare, flights directly chartered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement cost just $8,577.

"analysis of the roll-out and implementation of Secure Communities between 2008 and 2014, suggests that there is not empirical support that immigrant deportations reduce serious crime and make communities safer" econofact.org/does-deporti...

It boggles my mind that you can present primary-source evidence to people, and they will simply ignore it.

The “free speech defenders,” ladies and gentlemen.

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” - FDR

The Capitol Rotunda has been traditionally used for presidents lying in state. This Monday, it will be used for a president lying to *all* states.

"Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea." - James Madison

For Trump's lawyers to file a brief that uses the peaceful transfer of power as the argument for not releasing a report on how Trump interfered with the peaceful transfer of power is hypocrisy on the grandest scale.

“The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.” - Joseph Goebbels

I, for one, am a huge fan of the technology of the immovable political border, which has prevented more violence than any other technology in the history of mankind.

Never forget.

"...clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience... Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts... And be thankful.

Why do some folks seem to have such a problem with erring on the side of compassion?

Just finished Lindsay M. Chervinsky's "Making the Presidency" - some fascinating parallels between the machinations of the Arch-federalists and what's happening now. The fact that the nation survived the election of 1800 gives me some hope.

For years, Trump has promised to imminently release his infrastructure plan, health care plan, tax returns, & medical records. But he never seems to get around to it. But he did promise today to pardon J6 defendants on his first day in office. That he has time to do immediately.

I see very little of Christ in Christian Nationalism.

Seeing the NY Times and Washington Post suddenly running headlines questioning Trump's "mandate" and discussing his Project 2025 connections make me want to vomit.

"American history suggests that inequality is not driven by some fundamental law of capitalist development, but rather by episodic shifts in 5 basic forces – demography, education policy, trade competition, financial regulation policy, and labor-saving technological change." cepr.org/voxeu/column...

Atoms are binary. They are either intended to be hydrogen or helium. We can't just scrap this worldview just because of a handful of exceptions

Six decades later, Star Trek may still be the only franchise based on the ideas that diversity is strength, justice is the measure of civilization, bounty is to be shared, peace is worth the price, and all these things can be achieved. We need more shows that look ahead and find goodness.

I learned some stuff about Bluesky I did not know by reading this. Maybe worth passing it on to others so we can all start getting the full benefit of the 🦋.

Is it just me, or is Trump basically casting a new season of Celebrity Apprentice?