The Jewish Labor Bund’s “history is the record of a search and a struggle for justice, dignity, and identity. And that struggle plainly has great relevance today.” Prof. Henry J. Tobias, 1972 @mollycrabapple.bsky.social on the Bund today:

"I say without hyperbole that this is the most brazenly corrupt action in US Presidential history," wrote Harvard University government professor Ryan Enos. "That it does not immediately lead to impeachment is a dangerous sign of how far the rule of law has declined."

“What Democrats need to understand, is that this is a moment of drastic, monumental change, initiated by a Republican Party poisoned by illiberalism and anti-democratic resentments and a figure in Trump who wants to arrogate despotic powers to himself.” www.liberalcurrents.com/democrats-ne...

… we have lost much of the civil rights act, most of roe v wade, most of the EPA, any remnants of a progressive tax code, the voting rights act. I’ll be shocked if the ADA makes it through the next two years. I want to vote for candidates who recognize the scope and are ready to try new things.

Springsteen’s catalog “keeps aging well because America refuses to age better.” “‘Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king, and the king ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything,’ Springsteen sang…when the song was first released in 1978. Under Trump, that old line has become a prophecy.”

Franklin Foer: “Every failed deal, every summit that yields nothing, every boast that goes unfulfilled, confirms what adversaries already suspect. A lame-duck superpower exhausts itself in full view of the world, and the world moves on” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Every step taken by the federal government to promote and advance scientific research in the US, which has been the mainstay of US economic growth and strength since roughly 1870, is now being reversed in order to retard or suppress scientific research. This is a conscious policy.

One of the VERY FIRST things done after the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was to have the text of the new Constitution translated into Dutch and German, which were at the time the two largest non-English language spoken in the United States. Here's the National Archives making this point:

What a crooked shithole this country has become. Utterly corrupt.

I think we’re entering a period of what you might call “cognitive obesity,” akin to what the development of processed food and car culture systematically did to our bodies at the population level. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/u...

“They’re here to kill us all.”

The war against Reconstruction never ended.

Everyone’s starting to understand that we’re having a collective breakdown and that fascism is the self-destructive and delusional manifestation of a breakdown right?

It's our duty to save the world from Trumpism.

Long story short, if you want to understand authoritarianism in America, you cannot view it as a foreign or unprecedented ideology. It has always been here. We've tamped it down, but it is an ongoing struggle. Hopefully we make progress after this madness is over, but it is never truly over. 8/x

Not only is authoritarianism not new, it is still in our living memory. Southern racial apartheid is more recent than the Nazis, and more relevant to understanding our current politics. As American politics have nationalized, the South anchors one of the two parties and exported its politics 5/x

Judges brought this on when a bare 4-3 majority decided they could overturn decision of BOTH the legislature and the vote of the citizens. That level of arrogance deserves being wiped off political map. This isn't some noble countermajoritarian defense of rights but a pure partisan power grab.

We've reached the point where one party has so obliterated the rule of law that everyone else continuing to abide by it will only hasten the end of our democracy. That's a recipe for chaos and violence. It's terrifying, and I don't know what we do about it.

We’re watching, and failing to respond to, a social engineering project meant to make impossible any belief in modernity having any positive aspects. This is a sociopolitical revolution, not a benign “political era.” An excision of alternatives to constrict human imagination and possibility.

Dangerous suppression of scientific findings that are critical to protection of public health.

There aren’t even any external factors or things out of your control to blame like Biden could do even if he still got blamed, this is happening because of actions of One Guy, abetted by one party, and the guy who did it keeps telling u to be grateful for his doing it

Story of our time: “once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers.”

How is this being treated as normal? A Republican governor is declaring a state of emergency to cancel n ongoing election for Congress. If you think this is ends with redistricting, you are not paying attention.

Unlimited funds for death and destruction; no investment in our own people. What a country.

“The proper civic posture, in Shapiro’s view, is to vote for the wannabe usurper, trust the guardrails, and treat the people warning about the usurper as the dangerous extremists corroding democratic legitimacy.”

It is by no means the worst thing that the Israeli government has done, but if I wanted to make a cover for a book about what worship of the nation-state is doing to Jewish identity and practice, I can hardly think of a more resonant image than this one.

“Today, international inspectors say, Iran has a total of 11 tons of uranium, at various enrichment levels…. Virtually all of that cache accumulated in the years after Mr. Trump abandoned the Obama-era deal.”

So weird how people keep placing these massive bets on the futures market that magically pan out. Probably nothing to be concerned about.

Hegseth's repeal of universal flu vaccines is nonsense on so many levels, but his claim vaccine mandates were an "era of betrayal" irked me as a historian. Here's my response, in @thebulwark.com this morning; www.thebulwark.com/p/george-was...

“Who is going to fight alongside the U.S. when the U.S. betrays the people who stood alongside us?”

SPLC says it's being investigated by the DOJ, months after cutting FBI ties with them & the ADL. This is an outrage. Dragging the groups who track white supremacists into court is a green light for the white supremacists. Jews get less safe. Democracy gets weaker. And they're doing it in our name.

I'm certainly not opposed to punishing these soldiers, but it is hard not to notice that they're facing harsher punishment than IDF soldiers who committed document war crimes against human civilians. www.cnn.com/2026/04/21/m...

Pennsylvania's auditor general, a Republican, audited 210,000+ new voter registrations under Gov. Shapiro's new motor voter system to see if noncitizens were registering to vote. They found one. One. And that was because a PennDOT staffer erred. It was fixed before the driver left the office.

In the same manifesto, Palantir's owners argued that we need a national military draft, that soft power is over, and that we were too hard on Germany and Japan after World War II. I don't think that company should be allowed to exist anymore.

“Balls and strikes” 🙄

Pope Leo XIV: Woe to those who manipulate religion in the very name of God for their own military, economic, or political gain, dragging that which is sacred into filth. The world is being ravaged by tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters.

July 21 1935: The Führer orders a new reception hall and ballroom to "entertain foreign diplomats" at the Chancellery. Underneath the dance floor is an air raid shelter. A 2nd deeper bunker is built next to this in 1944, where he would spend his last days as the Reich collapsed.

Traitorous.

How quickly Trump's promise of "no more foreign wars" turned into "pivot the entire economy to World War II-era levels of weapons production for our foreign wars"

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”

“We must usher in a new era of liberal democracy, renewed. We have an excellent way of life to promote. Liberal democracy has given the world the freest, fairest, most humane societies it has ever known. It is a record to be proud of—and to extend.” www.jaynordlinger.com/p/freedom-an...

“He was surrounded by people, but Mr. Trump was somehow an isolated figure. … For the most part, Mr. Trump sat and impassively watched blood and saliva sprayed out from the fighters beating each other silly in front of him.”

The last years have revealed a Jewish politics that is profoundly narrow-minded - that sees every political question as a choice of survival or domination. That’s a tragic misread of Jewish history. We have never worshipped power at the cost of allowing a hard shell calcifying around our hearts.

It’s been a dark week. Our president is mentally and morally deranged. But the truth is we put him there. In this moment, Americans need to face hard truths. And that’s what Jimmy Carter tried to offer back in 1979. Maybe this time, we’ll listen. My latest: www.liberalcurrents.com/after-a-dark...

One of the favorite tactics of the Nazis was to ascribe crimes committed by an individual to a group. While the crimes may, in some instances, have been real, that did not make the group guilty of them.

This administration is the most openly racist administration since Wilson invited the KKK to the White House.

Brutal.

"Other countries are our property, and we dictate their behavior. You know, like women in marriage."

There was no agreement yesterday. Just indecision.