🧵 Democracy feels like it's in a rough state at the moment across the globe, and we hear various explanations, like polarisation, extremism, disinformation, and loss of trust. But what if those explanations are mainly symptoms and we've been trying to treat them rather than the underlying causes?

It occurs to me that there are Republicans in Congress who assured themselves a year ago that they’d be able to shut it all down if things ever got wildly out of control, not realizing that when things are wildly out of control is exactly the time that it’s hardest to shut it all down.

Honestly, all greater political considerations aside, it’s just really fucking obnoxious how many Americans seem to think it’s cheating for the other side to shoot back in a war. I mean look, I’m no fan of the Iranian regime, but buy the ticket, take the ride.

Claude is down :/ so I’m just running my sink

A big part of Donald Trump's appeal among his ~30%, ride-or-die core is that he's the first president to be sincerely, authentically stupid and incurious in the exact same way as the fabled Median Voter. *Nothing* about his unintelligence is a gimmick or a put-on.

“Parliament had turned over its constitutional authority to Hitler and thereby committed suicide, though its body lingered on in an embalmed state.” Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (p. 331)

It’s akin to how all young black/minority males in the U.S. are by default assumed by law enforcement to be criminals or inclined to illicit behavior unless and until shown otherwise

"The metric of deciding who is a legitimate target 'in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.'” from an article on US drone policy post-9/11

It is quite objectively a news story that the most prestigious media outlet in the world is deleting the president’s statements to conceal his insanity in a war crime threat, and other news outlets can report that story very easily in a way that could both inform their audience and peel off readers

This is insane

every political reporter in America understood one of the major stakes of the election to be exactly this — if Trump won there'd be a huge regressive tax cut for the rich and pain for the poor — and then decided to give more coverage to Tim Walz' national guard record. Why?

25th Amendment

This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.

I'm a bit of a broken record on this, but usurping the power of the purse isn't just one constitutional violation among all the many others. It is, uniquely and singularly, the death of constitutional government altogether. Game over, end of story, you now live in an autocracy.

first time really tuning into a war? welcome. Let’s go over some rules of how to behave. These are going to be especially important if it’s a war you oppose. 1. You are allowed an opinion. This is America. Whether you served or not. It’s done in your name so might as well speak up. 🧵

This thread is shocking in the best possible way.

For everyone wondering when the lunar flyby will be and how you can follow along, it looks like NASA will have live coverage starting at 1 pm ET Monday on YouTube/NASA+

A really fun article from @shalmarr.bsky.social about sitcoms as inculcators of liberal virtue.

This but also: It’s _not_ that a ton of people suddenly said they qualified for withholding of removal. It’s that a ton of people who _otherwise would have sought asylum before an immigration judge_ were instead barred from it, which meant a lot of _otherwise-asylees_ instead got withholding.

🚨 Ever Alvarenga, an asylum seeker, was driving to work Thursday morning when he was rear-ended by an ICE vehicle. He is still in the hospital after suffering significant injuries to his head, chest, back, & hands. [1/2]

More context on this #Artemis II image: * This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right * The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon: ☀️🌍🚀🌕

Also why you don't double-tap civs or threaten warcrimes on main. Iran's FM is not wrong here re: bridge “It only conveys the defeat and moral collapse of an enemy in disarray,” he said. Every bridge and building will be built back stronger. What will never recover: damage to America’s standing."

It's hard not to think of Paxton's definition of fascism when considering the extent to which the federal government under Trump has been reduced to a) a rogue murder state outside the nation's boundaries and b) a rogue, ethnic cleansing/mass deportation operation *inside* the nation's boundaries.

This is so, so well-articulated.

It says a lot about where we are that one can read the entire @nytimes.com story on the firing of the Attorney General of the United States without a *single* reference to that officer's duty to uphold the Constitution—which might just sometimes make it just a little hard to do the boss's bidding:

exonerated after FORTY THREE years in prison, only to end up falling in ICE detention immediately www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/u...

Not only is this bad and awful in its own terms but it makes me sick that it's not even congressional appropriations, just executive fiat

When you have senior white male military officers willing to end their career by raising concerns about the blocking of Black and female officers, it feels safe to say this isn't about ending DEI: the better historical parallel is Wilson's resegregation of the bureaucracy bsky.app/profile/nbcn...

now in fairness they managed it under Trajan, then the next guy immediately had to withdraw because it was so obviously wildly unsustainable and the elite class hated him forever for it and attacked it as surrender

I mean, I think the truth is worse and darker: Iran's leaders and the Iranian people find themselves essentially in the vice-grip of a mad god: Trump acts without reason or sense or moral concept, but he can at a whim inflict terrible death and suffering upon them and does so. More or less at random

Damn… this is an excellent encapsulation of the continuity between Trump and prior conservative movements without painting earlier iterations with too broad a brush.

Since the New Deal, the right edge of the conservative movement has been committed to the goal of eliminating all facets of the federal government that do good in the world, leaving behind only a war machine and a surveillance operation capable of containing the “internal leftist enemy.”

the trump administration is selling this country wholesale to rapacious, extractive industries that will destroy our collective resources for private profit morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/breaking-t...

The United States should abolish the presidency and become a parliamentary democracy

It’s arguably less a war than it is just a string of war crimes

And by extension, it also indicts the United States which time after time abets this behavior. The only reasonable conclusion you can make is that the US cannot be trusted to keep its word under any scenario because it will allow Israel to breach any agreement for any reason.

This, alongside the assassination attempt of Hamas negotiators in Doha, on the sovereign soil of a neutral country which was given the explicit role of meditation, demonstrates Israel's basic non-compliance with the most fundamental norms of international relations.

This is heinous, racist bullshit. Somali folks make Minnesota so much better and they don’t deserve this continuous hate from anyone, let alone a sitting President.

A lot of Trump voters I spoke to during the campaign were convinced the Wrong People were getting free stuff and that Trump would make sure the Right People (them) got it. bsky.app/profile/fact...

The notion that we need to prosecute more teens in federal court to control crime shows that the speaker doesn’t understand federal court or crime or teens.

Just to recap: Russia is currently helping Iranian forces try to kill US troops. In response, Trump is… lifting sanctions on Russia and threatening to pull out of NATO, which are the #1 and #2 items on Putin’s wishlist

The fact that Trump is going to oral arguments to pressure the justices to acquiesce to his attempted nullification of a constitutional amendment and create a stateless class for the first time since the civil war, illustrates what is really at the core of the Trump project and it isn’t tariffs.

So what this describes is ethnic cleansing www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/w...

Adam means that she is the daughter of immigrants, but it is worth emphasizing that *every* U.S. citizen who has not been naturalized is a birthright citizen, either by the 14th Amendment or by statute.

I started covering this last year, and I can't overstate how important this is: the Trump administration officially labeled some of the most commonly-used forms of birth control as 'abortion' jessica.substack.com/i/173447780/...

At a time when the federal government is blatantly refusing positions and promotions to people because they’re black, certain people want to pretend that everything should be “race blind” and that this ensures fair outcomes while saying that anyone black is necessarily unqualified. just awful.

"ICE agents will be stationed outside graduation events for the nation’s newest Marines to identify whether any of their family members are undocumented, according to the Marine Corps."

UCONN STUNS DUKE TO REACH THE FINAL FOUR! Ian Eagle, Bill Raftery, and Grant Hill on the call for the insane UConn go-ahead 3. 🏀🧅🧅🧅🧅🦅🚨🎙️ #MarchMadness #NCAATournament

If couldn’t see that Trump would be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy in 2024 and dismissed voices from around the world who said otherwise, I wouldn’t trust you to do anything more complicated than placing a DoorDash order.

Delighted to see @aclu.org @brucespringsteen.net teaming up for these ads (I saw it on SURVIVOR last night) promoting and defending the all-American value of birthright citizenship.