The reason this gets discourse above its weight is the same reason that a lot of terrible things get discourse above their weight--because, in 2026, the people who *do* believe in MAHA lunacy and repealing the 19th Amendment control all of the levers of power in America.

What gave it away

statement from UofL: "While it is acknowledged that Mr. Schnatter said the 'N-word' on a company call, there's another 'N-word' we urge you to consider here, and that's NIL"

Still feel like "Musk and his crew of incels destroyed a bunch of stuff they didn't understand and thereby hastened the deaths of millions of children" did not get the public attention it warranted.

Republicans have defined identity politics as "Any time someone who isn't a white male attempts to express political views or advocate for themselves in any way."

Imagine if every year the FBI had a celebratory dinner with the Five Families and told jokes about each other.

Wake up babe, new MAGA voter grid meme just dropped

remember a couple years ago, when sen. feinstein didn't know who or where she was, or what she was voting on, for a couple years, while her unelected staff covered up her condition and governed for her? if D's are serious about restoring trust in democracy, they need to put a stop to this stuff

That's because populism is fundamentally not about equalizing access to public goods or wealth, but instead about leveling a culture to a uniform height of zero. It's for ppl who want to never face judgment for indulging their most vulgar, immoral desires, from ppl who are in fact better than them.

They didn't quote her lawyer at all because he couldn't stop laughing.

This is historical, generational stupidity. MrBeast might have just made himself a first ballot bad client hall-of-famer.

Christian nationalism in the LDS community. At the time, January 6th had just happened and it felt uniquely salient. I had no idea what was coming next.

This one felt kind of inevitable

personally I'm not sure that his time as governor of Louisiana should be forgotten so easily.

"Public school is more about compliance than education" yeah man because sometimes you just gotta comply! This whole "it's about compliance, which is bad" attitude is why every doctors office and McDonalds now has a sign that reminds people they can't scream and curse at staff.

It feels like it should be trivially easy for the Democratic Party to add something into its bylaws fixing a hard congressional retirement age of e.g. 75. It wouldn't be a term limit, but it would incentivize people to get involved younger and would prevent so many of these situations.

It's absolutely fascinating to watch the upper leadership of the Catholic Church (the Papacy and College of Cardinals) become increasingly progressive, at least by Catholic standards, while the rest of the church seems to be sprinting rightward.

Two copy editors high-fiving so hard right now

for the past ten years, models of the electorate have been increasingly special-casing low-information low-propensity voters, increasingly making the posterior Oops! All Priors!

Some needed context here (🧵): The church does not typically litigate over the use of the copyrighted term "Mormon". For example, it never opposed the musical *The Book of Mormon* despite its misleading title, viewing it as a good outreach opportunity. "Mormon Stories" is VERY different.

This guy really needs to quit ripping off Star Trek all the time

Betteridge's Law is undefeated

Good. It's time for Democrats to step into the fire-breathing anti-corruption role, clean their own house, and then go absolutely nuts on the Republicans.

"I was mildly offended by a professor at some conference, so I decided to help the neo-Nazis destroy our education system" is a much too common backstory.

My great-grandmother's adoptive father was one of the engineers who designed and built the Spirit of St. Louis. No word on his opinion of Lindbergh.

I genuinely think that MAGA is sliding fairly quickly into solipsism--they don't believe that it's possible for them to cause real consequences for the military or anyone else, and they view existence as a zero-sum political game which they win by destroying things that code as liberal.

First: hilarious. Second: A core belief of Trump-brand conservativsm is there are and never have been difficult problems, only dumb leaders without the strength to be cruel enough to solve them. It's why they always look so baffled when pushing the "more cruelty" button doesn't seem to work.

Worth pointing out again that this is not genuine regret over engineering the election of an inept tyrant--it's buyer's remorse because Trump's specific flavor of gutter antisemitism can't overcome his love of the Netanyahu regime.

Clearfield, Utah Pop: 32,118 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearfield,_Utah Images: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4203883 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46153393 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5027300

Legally, the war itself is illegal under *United States* law (Congress hasn't declared war, no imminence); under international law it's arguable ('arguable under international law' really means 'legal in practice') given the actions of Iran's proxies. But within the war, the blockade is legal.

Genuinely a huge win for the good guys, if for no other reason than that it's massively humiliating for Alex Jones and the freaks who like his content.

There's a massive meltdown happening on Deznat Twitter today because the LDS Church apparently intervened rather...aggressively via backchannel means to kill a bill in the Utah Senate that would have stripped state-level social benefits from undocumented immigrants.

Tangential, but this reminds me of a very funny incident while planning my great-aunt's funeral. She had apparently said at one point that she wanted "The Power of Love" by Celine Dion played at her funeral, but my grandmother thought she meant the song of the same title by Huey Lewis and the News.

Yeah, IMO a more accurate assessment would be that 1) Trump is a deeply evil person who naturally does look up to people like Putin and Bibi but certainly is not under their thumbs, and 2) there are a lot of people around Trump whose policy preferences do line up with Putin and/or Bibi.

So is Palantir putting its entirely legacy into It Can Only Good Happen cause that letter is one of the most unhinged things I’ve ever seen a contractor publish

However, the realization that it was completely unnecessary also broke a dam in terms of dissent against the regime. They bet everything on turning Charlie Kirk into a sacred martyr and instead he's the butt of disturbingly bizarre and offensive jokes by edgy tweens.

Human bodies are complex, and medical science has often produced solutions that are imperfect or require ongoing treatments. It's important to realize this isn't some sinister plot and just that science is hard.

The Republican governance model is just a copy of the formerly Sourthern governance model: Protect a status hierarchy at the expense of creating a stagnant, moribund economy and then trapping people in it because no one with any other options wants to continue living there.

LeBron hitting that fadeaway jumper

This is actually a fairly big deal. It's normal for the more extreme/Trumpy candidate to do better at the GOP convention, and there were allegations that state party officials did their best to tip the scales toward Lee in various ways. It sounds like the allegations against him actually hurt him.

One of the easiest and most impactful reforms that Dems could make to SCOTUS (in addition to the weightier changes they need to make) is to mandate that "shadow docket" decisions have publicly released vote counts and written opinions.

the president of the united states is personally looting the treasury to the tune of literally billions of dollars and that he is not being immediately removed from office and tried for high crimes against this country is a devastating indictment of every part of our political system

MAGA Often Lacks Efficacy (Mole is one of the greatest foods ever invented by humanity)

My guess is briefers wanted him to understand this was "scary material," but not "thing you stick wholesale into a bomb" yet. Maybe someone came up with this. Not bad, honestly, given the pathologies you're managing with this POTUS.

Brazenly Unprincipled Retreat Rationalized In Toothless Oratory

Tostada at least starts with T and can be an appetizer: Trump often starts totally asinine, dumb actions.

"Luminous beings are we--not this crude matter."

Among all of Trump's many problematic deficiencies, the one that will sink his party is that he doesn't believe the economy meaningfully exists beyond the Dow and the price of oil. This hasn't been helped by the fact that the markets have shot up desperately every time he's feinted towards peace.

Riley Gaines is a great lesson: no matter how much you do to promote Trump and MAGA, no matter how aligned you think you are, if you have any independent values, morals, or ambitions beyond "serving Trump's every whim, even when they change day-to-day", he will eventually dispose of you.