I'm watching coverage of the gov shutdown. Absent is the recent Supreme Court action allowing the president to rescind budgeted funds. They destroyed the negotiation necessary for this process. How can there be compromise when one side has established that they won't abide by agreements they make?

This article is worth an annual subscription.

the booker prize judges make a lot of fuss about having to read 153 books. but assuming an average weight of 750g per book, that comes in at 115kg of literature - or just under the weight of a single adult male ostrich

Guns don’t kill people. Rhetoric Jill’s people. Vance: "You don’t have to agree with my immigration policies. You don’t have to agree with Donald Trump’s immigration policies, but if your political rhetoric encourages violence against our law enforcement, you can go straight to hell.”

This is why defund the police was never a great slogan. (Also, many/most people understand “defund” to mean “remove all funding to the policy”, not “divert a modest amount of police budge to other social services” targeting mental health, etc.

People that are not resubscribing to Disney because they made a financial decision to de-platform jimmy Kimmel and then to re-platform him are missing the point that corporations operate in their financial self interest. 1/

ICYMI: Part One of my thoughts on how the “free speech culture” movement contributed to the moment of historical censorship www.popehat.com/p/how-free-s...

Can’t wait for the WSJ to publish an editorial that lawfare is bad but also the dems started it so <shrugs>.

“The FCC under Brendan Carr uses mergers and business interests of media companies as leverage to extract concessions, extract bribes, and extract censorship.”

This Week's Onion Magazine:

Trump's abuses lend additional weight to the great economist Ronald Coase's classic 1959 argument for abolishing the FCC. We don't need a govt agency that licenses broadcasters, and such an agency is inherently dangerous to liberty: reason.com/volokh/2025/...

The single biggest difference between MAGA/right and everybody to the left of that is total lack of shame/self-consciousness to one’s own hypocrisy among the former.

I will miss Bluey on demand.

"You tell me who misled his audience more: Jimmy Kimmel the comedian, or JD Vance the vice president." www.thebulwark.com/p/emergency-...

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.

One pretty foolproof way to know your government is fascist is when your government tries to punish you for calling it fascist.

How’s that for timing www.404media.co/doj-deletes-...

Posting a criticism of Charlie Kirk - much less noting something outrageous he himself said - is not “celebrating” his murder. Nor is it condoning his murder. It is simply saying that his political career and legacy are not something to be celebrated. And that is not the same thing at all.

This was a word AND he cussed 😂

I’m stunned by this. Would Perkins Coie fire an associate for lauding Charlie Kirk as a hero? I hardly think so. But to speak frankly about his divisive legacy at a time when so many are keen to distort and/or glorify it is now a fireable offense.

“Some of the people valorizing Kirk insist that all of his toxicity was acceptable because at least he was open to debate—a bar so low, you’d have to dig into the Mariana Trench to get to it.” That’s it. No notes.

After every high profile shooting we engage in the televised ritual of speculating whether this shooter belonged to team red or team blue, when the very mediation of real violence through such terms is part of what produces the intense nihilism that actually motivates so many of these shooters.

Condemn the murder. Mourn, if you feel so inclined, the loss. But recognize the dangers that lie within some of the Trump-MAGA response to tbe killing of Charlie Kirk. My latest. www.thedailybeast.com/why-magas-ca...

I’m so glad I follow the dictionary on here.

No notes

Not comprehending how the same @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social who interviewed me wrote this. I support the instinct to turn down the volume. But you can't simultaneously warn that we're the brink of authoritarianism while valorizing one of authoritarianism's most influential architects and supporters.

When you publish a website that posts the names and photos of scholars who have written or said things you disagree with and encourage people to surveil and harass them, you are not, in fact, a “free speech” organization.

rarely have I more acutely felt the dynamic by which Dems are held responsible for the rhetoric of every random left-leaning person on the internet and Republicans are not even asked to answer for their own personal words

If you grew up in a household with an evangelical right-wing parent, as I did, you already know that the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, like the reversal of Roe v. Wade, is the culmination of a 50-year project.

Whenever I see Dems claim they are out of power, there’s nothing they can do, I think of Brad Lander and how he escorted people to court while being comptroller and running for mayor. Do something or get the f out of the way so there can be more Brad Landers.

Vaccination schedules on the CDC website have already started changing under RFK Jr. So we published a guide to the evidence-based vaccine recommendations in place *before* all 17 members of the advisory panel were abruptly dismissed by the new admin. www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-... 🧪

Anyway big shout out to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for finding 13 women she didn't think it was worth believing after all, and by "shout out" I mean "primary"

Brad Lander: "I also need to thank some of the most important people in my life and on this campaign—I mean, of course, the NYT editorial board. Just kidding, of course: I love Wordle and Connections, but I really urge the Times to cancel their new feature 'Editorial Riddles.' No one likes those."

on top of just being purely blissfully happy there's the incredible spite bonus that every soulless little ghoul who decided to pretend they hadn't ever denounced cuomo is getting absolutely nothing in return

Happy Don’t Rank Cuomo Day for all who observe

Zhoran Mandami at a cat adoption event in Long Island last December. Just sayin’ #NYCprimary

#NYCprimaries #nyc

👋 Aussie living in NYC here. We have had ranked choice voting in Australia for over 100 years. Pro-tip: To maximize the power of your vote, rank FIVE candidates, not just one or two. This is the best way to block a candidate you don’t want to win and doesn’t harm your first choice.

Ask The Sophist about your media consumption www.indignity.net/ask-the-soph...

🚨Andrew Cuomo declining to back the two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "I don't think it's my place to say what solution I would solicit or advocate.. I just want a peaceful solution." I transcribed the full exchange on Israel on the Brian Lehrer Show ⬇️

I like telling authoritarians where to shove it in multiple languages

Scoop: Trump appointed snr state dept official sought stafff's internal comms w/ journalists, European officials, + critics of Trump for a “Twitter files”-style dump to try + prove that the State Dept's Global Engagement Center censored conservatives. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/01/1...

yes sir, I will do what you tell me

They are deadly serious about this. They are planning to throw millions of people off their insurance in order to afford a trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthiest 1%.

its clarifying for RFK to reveal he's basically one of those guys who gets really mad when a display at the museum tells them that dinosaurs had feathers, but for medicine.

The vibe that Dems are poll-tested cowards with no underlying principles will persist at least as long as they insist on maintaining that image themselves bsky.app/profile/murs...

Favorite example:

Mayor Adams is wearing his “in god we trust” American flag shirt once again. But this time it’s written in Italian. He says it’s Spanish to honor the victims of a nightclub roof collapse in the Dominican republic last week.