Reminder: SNAP benefits are around $150 a month and have substantial restrictions on how they can be used. No one is getting rich by scamming the state for SNAP benefits. It’s not worth the effort!

The US is the world's largest oil and gas producer. Yet, "China is now making more money from exporting green technology than America makes from exporting fossil fuels."

Walmart & Amazon workers across the US depend on SNAP b/c billionaires choose to employ people at minimum wage & provide no health insurance. Most people that use SNAP are children, elderly, & working adults! No one is "living off benefits" they are barely surviving w/ these benefits.

lowering the price of obesity drugs, while raising the price of food and health insurance.

A List of Things Said to Have Been Ruined by Women 🧵

The sun also shines in the US, but we've decided to double down on coal and natural gas while actively blocking investments in solar, wind, and other renewables.

I am not one to judge lady politicians on their hairstyles, but if there is one thing NOT notable about the former mayor of Chicago, it would be her hair. Or rather, the notable point would be how not beautifully done and not luxurious her hair was

Further evidence that the our failure to prosecute him the first time around explains where we are today. Brazil and South Korea both offer examples of how proper checks and balances are meant to work.

What about the Venezuelan Christians in boats that he’s ordered killed, the Christians he sent to Ecuadorian prisons, or the many Christians ICE is terrorizing?

Hakeem Jeffries, out here making a strong case that AI should definitely take some jobs!

study after study after study shows that literally just handing people money and telling them "do what you want with this" reduces homelessness, increases food security for children, makes it more likely people will find and retain jobs.1

Studying social sciences & humanities makes students more left-leaning, controlling for initial views & major preference, driven by cultural views. Implies that if all students majored in business, college–noncollege ideological gap would shrink by 1/3 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

A data-sharing agreement that gives the Department of Homeland Security access to hundreds of millions of Americans’ Social Security data contains alarmingly few provisions to ensure accuracy, security or privacy, experts say. By @jenafifield.bsky.social

Phoenix streets are dangerous. Halloween has the highest pedestrian death rate & car crashes all year. Kids are 3X more likely to be killed by a car on Halloween!! What follows? Advice for kids to be more careful. No advice for drivers to slow down & take extra care or PHX to design safer streets

Russell Vought and the OMB insist they have the authority to freeze, redirect, & refuse to spend Congressionally appropriated funds for 10 months, but then somehow lack the authority to cover SNAP with emergency funds. Everything is punitive with this administration.

"People come up to me, and say, 'You know, thank you for deciding not to run. I really appreciate it.' They like me. They appreciate the step that I'm taking. We have talented, young, progressive leaders that are more than ready. I love to think about making space for them," says @smith.senate.gov.

Welch: "This has nothing to do with the shutdown. The law requires and the funds are available to continue SNAP right now without any interruption. So that is a decision the president is making on his own to allow people to go hungry."

You can only have 20 people living in a home next door to JD Vance if 17-19 of them are white children advancing his pro-creation agenda.

Does this mean we get Obama for a third term? He’d be younger and fitter in his third term than Trump was in his first!

Honestly at some point you have to start doing psyops with these people: Have Obama announce that he will seek a third term tomorrow. Then watch all the con law “scholars” and Fix News MELT DOWN trying to explain why he can’t but Trump can. (It’s like Newsom taking over his social media persona)

Remarks from last week’s press conference in Little Village after more ICE presence and aggression.

The whole point of a national government is to scale up the stuff we cannot do locally or through private institutions. Religious orgs, neighborhoods, & food banks aren't enough. This is why we pay taxes, to redistribute resources to meet basic needs that keep society viable.

Walz: "They are paying contractors to pay down the East Wing but they're not putting money into the food bank. So if there's a sense of frustration in America, it's very real ... when the White House press secretary said their top priority is the ballroom, we could not disagree more."

3rd International Conference “Integrity, Open Science and Artificial Intelligence in Academia and Beyond: Meeting at the Crossroads” December 17-18 Online & Free Call for abstracts and registration: armgpublishing.com/3rd-internat...

Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.

This is a choice. Those who choose to govern in this manner should be replaced by those willing to govern in the public’s interests.

The House of Representatives is out of session indefinitely, bc the best way to empower the executive, further Miller's hunt on immigrants, & complete Vought's destruction of federal agencies is to ensure the legislature is defunct. Welcome to the Project 2025 grand finale!

More from the scene

Total federal spending is up +7% in 2025 over 2024 year-to-date to Oct 20. The story that the fed govt is tightening its belt is contradicted by its own real-time expenditure data. Admin spectacularly hammering some things but raising spending elsewhere. Was -7% just after Inauguration Day.

Records obtained by ProPublica indicate that food banks across the country were expecting more than 27 million pounds of chicken, 2 million gallons of milk, 10 million pounds of dried fruit and 60 million eggs that never arrived.

Do Cuomo’s campaign staff also hate him?

Surprise!

The self-censorship continues... "I was the editor of Governing, a magazine and website covering state and local governments. But after facing increasing internal censorship pressures — largely to avoid critical coverage of President Donald Trump — I refused to go along, and I resigned."

So now executive branch agencies are making cash payments to the executive? I suppose with the blessings of the Supreme Court and the silence of the US Congress

Yeah, we can crowdfund for public radio, arts, national parks, healthcare etc. OR - hear me out - we could spend our tax monies on purposes that serve our communities. We don't have to live like this! We're a wealthy country that can afford public services. Abolish ICE & we can afford even more!

Putin is enjoying every minute of this administration!

Amazon fixed it in 3 hours. Zoom is back, but Canvas is still down... "Given that small errors can happen even without the whims of a vindictive world leader telling companies what to do, it seems sensible to try and think more deeply about how much we want to route through the United States."

Solidarity!! Last week, Indiana University fired the director of student media & halted print on the Indiana Daily Student newspaper. Yesterday, Purdue’s student paper printed the banned edition & drove two hours to deliver it. Incredible www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/l...

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NSF review panels being delayed / postponed. Standard practice during shutdowns. But this time around adding to an already over-stressed workforce.

"For the first time since the 1960s, the earnings gap between men and women has widened two years in a row...with women earning 80.9 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2024. That compares to women earning 84 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2022." www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

To be clear: LA County has declared a state of emergency BECAUSE OF the federal government. The Feds, LA County is (correctly) saying, have CAUSED the emergency. This is a striking political moment of internal collapse. Local govts feeling compelled to protect their ppl from … their own govt.

The human costs of Trump's war on government

At what point is “I don’t know” or “I haven’t heard about that” an unacceptable response from our political leaders? Anyway, Johnson knows exactly what’s going on and why.

The struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. 1/2

Fixing by destroying - same way they fixed USAID, CDC and are working to fix Dept of Education and the US scientific and research & development enterprise

Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”

Cutting funding to educate and support children with disabilities so we can bail out Trump’s buddies who invested unwisely in Argentina

The animal rescues are overflowing with dogs and cats. Many are offering free or very reduced adoption fees bc they are overwhelmed. Is this the economic canary in the coal mine for middle and working class families - dropping a pet bc they can’t afford basics like utilities and groceries?

During a military-style raid on a building in Chicago’s South Shore, one resident heard a knock on his door. 

It wasn’t the feds —  it was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for help. He let them hide in his unit for the next 3 days. chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...