Turns out when House Republicans called for today's hearing on "a threat to the Supreme Court’s legitimacy," they weren't talking about its centuries-spanning track record of replacing 'Rule By The People' with 'Rule By Well-Connected White Guys Named John'? ballsandstrikes.org/court-reform...

When lawyers lie to a court, the third branch cannot function. This is why we tolerate the regulation of speech in courtrooms - like criminal penalties for falsehoods - that would be unconstitutional anywhere else. The court need not wait for bar discipline; she should sanction counsel herself.

It’s also true that GOP “trifectas” have been more impactful for the vast majority of this period because they also have SCOTUS. things accomplished during Dem trifectas get challenged and whittled down by the courts in a way that’s just not true for GOP ones.

I think about this a lot in terms of my kids’ schools giving everyone computers thinking it would be basically the past but with computers, when really it’s the present with computers and kids constantly finding websites to play games in class faster than the district can block them.

One phenomenon I’ve noticed is that people who get ensconced in the Fox News alternative universe, but are not quite as crazy as the modal guest/host, often end up imagining they are “moderates”.

Great comeback, but the smoke from the fire would drive off the bees, so their AI might make them think you were on the fence

incidentally, a problem I have not yet seen covered - free to a good home! - is that AP plays a pillar role in election calling in the United States and their financial condition is such that they will be stretched to do this this November and may not exist in anything like today's form by 2028

The only thing breaking about this is the constitution. Of course Trump was going to trot out some bogus explanation for why he doesn’t need anyone else’s approval: he never concedes that he does.

it is truly absurd that this lawless attack on the rights of trans kids succeeded the conservative legal movement runs on bigotry and unchecked audacity ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

People grew accustomed to delivery food being really cheap, before investor subsidies ran out (and ICE threatened much of the workforce delivering it). But if you have more limited income and want someone else to make food, you can walk and pick up your dinner in many urban areas.

I honestly think that if Jeff Bezos were forced to pay 90% of his money in taxes tomorrow he’d be happier. People would be nicer to him, rather than obsequious to him.

This New Yorker cartoon is accurate but a gut punch.

In a nutshell:

Thanks for clarifying this background, which I didn't appreciate. I was just saying that the failure of the referendum doesn't mean that people hate funding government, just that asking them that without being able to clearly articulate the upside is ~doomed to failure (the point of the rule).

The whole premise of this "ballroom" is that you've got the nation's most secure military command center in the basement, and a top-security military drone installation on the roof, and between the two is an impossible-to-secure quasi-public space for foreign spies to have dance parties.

He’s not wrong, but it’s also true that if you accept that a single man in command of the U.S. armed forces can start outright war against another with no plan, checks or consequences, any system of international law comes under such strain that worldwide freedom of navigation is implausible

I didn’t really like “don’t look up,” as a movie, and this isn’t as binary, but if global food prices spike markedly the amount of suffering is going to be immense and the mechanisms in place to ameliorate it have been degraded significantly from what they were even a few years ago

This synopsis of what might happen with the new Google AI glasses that allow Gemini to speak directly to you is as amazing as it is troubling

Maybe when they keep saying that kids need to learn how to use AI they’re speaking from experience

I'm not a plumber. But I'm pretty sure that's not how sinks work.

The failure of Trump’s 2020 election subversion plot turned in part on the willingness of a small group of Republican officials to defy him — almost all of whom have since been purged from power.

Even if the money obtained was literally burned, we would all be better off.

These RCT results (via Swayable) get at the big problem. The right wing immigration ads Dems ran both built public support for the ICE nightmare we are living now, AND were politically disastrous, showing clear backfire on candidate choice questions. They made voters want to vote for Trump.

I’m not sure why this isn’t being mentioned more, but: IRS policy for 50 years has been that the sitting president & VP get audited every year, in an effort to reassure the public they’re not corruptly abusing the office to enrich themselves.

However appalled you are by this, it’s not enough. It’s a frank statement that Trump and Trumpists are above the law and need not even plausible excuses to loot your tax dollars. It’s a total failure of our civic institutions.

Very strange new trend is happening at my office. People putting names on food in the company fridge. Today, I had a tuna sandwich called Steve.

The idea that race and partisanship would be too entangled to identify voting restrictions as racist would have seemed absurd to the authors of the 15th Amendment, given that it was itself adopted at a time of racist partisan disenfranchisement www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Feels impossible to convey to anyone under 35 or so how SI’s whole thing for decades was “we have the very best sportswriting.” That was the brand. Three generations of kids like me grew up with SI as the inspiration for our careers and as the dream job we all aspired to.

depressingly accurate post, as much as we want Retribution on here (and it’s the correct policy) a lot of folks saw 2024 as “Dems say the Trump is going to destroy everything, Trump promises everyone several ponies” and their takeaway was “promise everyone ponies, they’re a bunch of dipshits”

The fact that the Harris campaign made their direct pitch of "these fuckers want to destroy our democracy, don't let them," Trump barely denied it, and it still flat out did not work has done a lot of hidden damage to the Democratic party and, more broadly, the American psyche

When a regime clearly holds the rule of law in contempt, and views itself as completely above the law, it and its agents don’t have any moral argument for the protections of the rule of law.

UPDATE: Three adult men at the Islamic Society of San Diego have been killed during the active shooting, said San Diego Police Department Chief Scott Wahl during a press conference now. Two shooters confirmed dead. No motive yet. "We are considering this a hate crime until it is not," Wahl said.

The criminal justice system doesn’t just demean defendants, it degrades and lowers its participants.

it took this country five decades for the surviving interned Japanese-Americans who were deprived of absolutely everything and imprisoned for no cause to get $20,000 in reparations per person. we are currently awarding the guys who did the Beer Hall Putsch five years ago orders of magnitude more

Key tip here:

The Trump administration will not rest until every elite institution has purged itself of black people. ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

The man who bankrupted a casino has now also managed to produce the first football world cup nobody wants to attend, there has never been anyone else who ever possessed this level of ability at failing

xAI promised employees $420 if they submitted their tax returns for use in training Grok on how to do taxes. They never received the payments. All of the elements of a classic Elon Musk grift; weed joke, unpaid employees and a vaporware software feature that will never work correctly.

The primary purpose of your federal government's top law enforcement agency is enriching Trump-adjacent weirdos who sue the government

So you CAN get reparations you just have to be a reactionary white person who tries to overthrow the government because black votes shouldn’t count

seems like jared polis thought this would make him look like an enlightened and humane centrist instead of a dumbass

Not nearly enough reporting about what's happening in Cuba, which the administration is attempting to squeeze, punish, and coerce into submission and violent self destruction. This is so much worse than the embargo. It's hideous. Haiti, Cuba, ongoing boat strike murders: anti-Black foreign policy

“.. We spotted nine Polymarket accounts .. who made collectively $2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. Military operations. .. “.. Now, here is the crazy part. 98% win rates.” @mediaite.com www.mediaite.com/media/news/6...

When a federal agency tasked with protecting all Americans decides to mandate a specific religious worldview, it ceases to protect democracy and begins to threaten it.

critically this was the case in 1870 when the 15th amendment was ratified! there is literally no such thing as partisan gerrymandering and manipulation of voting rules in the south outside of the context of “white reactionaries want to neuter black political power”

The glamorous job of a DOJ attorney; trying to bankrupt undocumented immigrants with no savings, just to make their life even more of a hell. Congrats to every lawyer involved, now quit your job.

no, this is a bad idea. it's two separate problems and tying them together just makes them harder to fix. the problem with low pay in congress is you end up with only rich assholes willing to do it. that makes minimum wage increases less likely.

9 years was not an excessive punishment. Peters was a county official who used someone else’s security badge to let a fellow election denier access the whole county's voting data. That is an extreme breach of public trust for the purpose of undermining our democracy; harsh deterrence is vital.

1. Egg potato and cheese tacos are incredible 2. The evidence for it being a “debate” is that a Republican said something about it hoping an article like this would get written bsky.app/profile/anam...

Also, the GOP has had SCOTUS for my entire life and has a 6-3 majority today with hard right ideologues by any definition occupying *at least* 3 spots