Picture of the East Wing demolition of the White House taken on my flight out of DCA.

Today's remarkable split screen: Democrats: 'No Kings' protestors expect thousands of 'boisterous, joyful' rallies nationwide Republicans: Fallout from 'I love Hitler' group chat

It is obviously insane to believe that Medicaid fraud by "able-bodied men without dependents" is a serious problem in need of attention but also the idea that basic medical care should be dependent on working is fucking stupid, nobody is grifting through life because they love seeing doctors.

Showing up to No Kings with a sign reading “monarchy is an affront to human dignity but, when incorporated into a liberal democratic system, may nevertheless be a useful safety valve for nationalist and/or authoritarian impulses” and then getting clobbered by a Buttigieg-supporting grandmother

He’s right and he should say it.

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

It only happened once

Obviously this is all truly incredible content but I want to highlight that he does this whole thing while wearing a red “USA” hat.

The verse that goes "All over people changing their votes Along with their overcoats If Adolf Hitler flew in today They'd send a limousine anyway" is something that I, uh, think about sometimes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fC...

(Emergency room doctor watching a patient have a heart attack) “Do you have a passport or another government ID proving your citizenship?”

The specific ask is healthcare, but at root the principle is that if they need democratic votes, republicans don’t get to tell them to go fuck themselves and then blame them for the results. And at root *that* is about the republicans’ autocratic tendencies.

vance really does stand out for his absolute contempt for anything that looks like forbearance and generosity. his immediate instinct is always to demagogue and issue calumnies against his fellow americans.

Anna Gomez: “We must stand firm against every attempt to silence dissent, punish satirists and government critics, and erode individual liberty. To surrender our right to speak freely is to accept that those in power, not the people, will set the boundaries of debate that define a free society.”

Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.

This is a nuts-ass way to look at any of this. Trump has glommed on to long-standing ideas on the American far right, but his rhetoric has turbocharged those elements and injected them into the mainstream. The way out isn’t to just live this way, it’s to convince Americans that this is poisonous.

The right ignored the murder of the Minnesota House Speaker by a guy who had a hit list of Democrats he was targeting to flip control of the chamber to Republicans. Asked about that assassination today, the president said he didn't know who she was and a Fox host said he didn't care she was killed.

Look, they do not have the capacity or competence to do this at the scale they want you to fear they do, and your fear is precisely their greatest force multiplier. Everybody who is cowed into silence by their threats allows them a smaller pool to focus on.

Honoring democracy means eschewing terror as a political tool, but it also means taking people’s words and ideas seriously as a reflection of their goals and personal character.

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind

I was grateful to discover that someone had recorded @lisaoneillmusic.bsky.social singing "A Rainy Night in Soho" with the Pogues at one of their UK date - we saw them in DC and I just thought O'Neill's performance was utterly mesmerizing. youtu.be/5HGV-Ov2Hs0?...

All of this is coming from the same people who launched conspiracy theories during the Obama years about the federal government mobilizing troops domestically and who have, for 40+ years, argued that everyone MUST have guns lest the government send in troops. But . . . [cont'd]

I wrote about how Earth's wobble causes our view of the skies to shift over time. Here's a paywall-free gift link. With @fparis.bsky.social and @iamrumz.bsky.social

From Princeton Professor of Politics and International Affairs, @jshapiro.bsky.social.

dictator: whats going on advisor: regimes lowkey cooked bro. student protestors straight-up tweakin dictator: and the rebels? advisor, after a moment of grim silence: locked in

As long as they can rule the ashes….

Trump heading into an Epstein sex party

We are so fucking cooked.

It is bad that the Mad King and his viziers live in a bubble of complete delusion, but the reason we’re all currently fucked is that Congress, which was explicitly designed to be a backstop against an out-of-control executive, have ceded all of their power to him, both by statute and by inaction.

Living in America right now rules, the guy in charge of health thinks he can tell how sick someone is by looking at them, also his face looks like an old catcher's mitt and he wheezes when he breathes like Immortan Joe. But at least we can't get any packages from Europe!

At the core of transmisogyny is, inevitably, misogyny itself. The viciousness with which some people trash trans women for how they look, or their supposed artificiality, or perceived errors in their behaviour, comes from a fundamental loathing of any women who doesn’t conform to their expectations.

He can’t keep getting away with it!

Rudy Giuliani absolutely did not try to shortchange a sex worker and then was pursued by her colleagues, don’t you dare suggest such a thing

Right now, this very instant, the President that this person has hitched his wagon to is acting out his belief that America’s cities are war zones not fit for human occupation. What the fuck does gratitude for America mean to any of them except “agree with the MAGA framing of everything.”

i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.

Monarez is playing her weak hand perfectly, and should be a model for institutional resistance for the next four years: 1. Make them fire you 2. Don’t go along to get along 3. Don’t apologize, have confidence in your own integrity and the importance of your role 4. Always escalate the conflict

Justin Timberlake leaving NSYNC:

Hate hate hate the idea of “pivot to” anything. It’s all of a piece. “Donald Trump is illegitimately seizing powers not granted to him by constitution or statute to punish his political opponents, the whole country, the whole world.”

the crisis in which the University of Chicago is now engulfed -- one entirely of its own making, and which has led to the (hopefully temporary) suspension of admissions into numerous PhD programs in the humanities -- represents I think a seismic event in the history of American higher education 1/

Stupid sexy Flanders...

I think trump does lie on instinct but I also think he genuinely does not have the concept of lie and truth in his brain. It’s a very hard thing to imagine for normal people but someone like him genuinely does not process the world the same way

the thing everyone is going to have to accept is that the post-trump period, whenever it comes, will not and cannot be a project of national unity, it must be a project of partisan project of renewal, in the same way that reconstruction and the new deal were partisan projects of renewal.

the “feminist” “”gender critical”” crowd put on a good show for awhile but transphobia was always going to cash out like this: violent vigilante enforcement of patriarchal gender norms

This is the absolute nut of it. These people make a big show about “fairness” by implying that they are just interested in policing high-level competitions (something that every league already does) while pursuing policies entirely designed to stop kids from playing with their friends.

excellent eavesdropping moment there walking past two inebriated fiftysomething geordie radgie guys gazing into the window of a cat cafe and comprehending the concept (“the fuckin cats just sit on the fuckin tables like??” “d’y bring your own fuckin cat??”)

More and more people are asking “where are the fathers?”