Hey, y'all! Just hopping on real quick to note Elon Musk's desire the start a new third party called the America Party. On one hand, congrats on picking the most generic, overused name. On the other, this is never going to happen. 1/3

Hey, y'all! Posting today with a bit of sad news. Oona & I started this pod five years ago and it's been a ridiculous rush ever since. We've met amazing people and the fan base has been truly amazing. That said, matters of personal health have made it harder and harder to create each episode. 1/4

Hey, y'all! We're back from our holiday hiatus to tell you the story of a cute little cat named Stubbs. In the late '90s the small village of Talkeetna, Alaska made the town bodega cat their mayor. This is the story of not just Stubbs, but of Talkeetna itself.

When you make eugenicist arguments, a Nazi will happily agree with you. "So you agree that mentally ill people are dangerous? We both agree that fat people need to be punished? Sounds like we're both disgusted by gay and trans people my friend" They'll nod along happily as you say Nazi shit.

We failed to stop fascism's rise. Now it's dancing about on the White House lawn. I don't know how to fix all this but I do know that the shit we've been doing won't get us out of this one. shatterzone.substack.com/p/we-failed-...

Already there are wannabe local influencers here in Chicago making all-caps posts about ICE raids in neighborhood Facebook groups because their friend saw an unmarked cop car somewhere and they consider that evidence enough to growth-hack off of people's fear. Listen to trusted orgs, not randos.

For a man of God, Raphael Warnock sure seems to be voting like he doesn't believe Hell is real.

Still probably one of the best pieces ever written about the people who do go Nazi and what that looks like. This is from the 1940s but every time I read it the more I appreciate the game Dorothy Thompson played. 

Chicago Legal Responders Network has produced a series of short videos about what to do if ICE shows up at your house, stops you while driving, etc. Available in Spanish and English. Please share with those who may find them useful. Here's what to do if they show up at your house.

The instinct people online have to make a dumb clichéd joke in response to other people suffering in a way that will never affect them is really fucking annoying

@jesspish.bsky.social raises the relevant questions about the opening salvo on immigrants and the eagerness of Democratic “centrists” to cooperate with what will inevitably prove to be a historic travesty. substack.com/@sheriffs/no...

Is it just me or are a lot of big Blue accounts absolutely silent about the Laken Riley Act?

Just so we’re all clear: -Dems bend over backwards to Netanyahu’s every whim carrying through with financing a genocide, Bibi wants Trump to win and it costs Dems the election. -At the request of Netanyahu, the Tiktok Ban bill is Revived under a Dem President, closer tying it to Biden moreso

I want to do a quick “How To Tell That This Is An Op” tutorial, because apparently some propaganda tank or trollboard somewhere decided it’s time to send out Leftist Trolls, and they’re both very bad at it but also very effective. So let’s talk about How To Troll, Generic

Going to be interesting to see if Rep. Robert Menendez starts voting more favorably with Trumpist bills all of a sudden

The Wall Street Journal says there will be a splashy ICE operation in Chicago on Tuesday. While the headline is lurid, the actual operation described in the piece (100-200 agents) seems not that unusual for ICE (google Operation Cross-check). Expect a PR blitz, though. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Dems are on board to pass Laken Riley in the Senate, a bill that mandates detention & deportation of immigrants *accused* of petty theft. Bill was amended to add that any immigrant accused of assaulting an officer should suffer same fate. This country is going to hell in a handbasket.

I've seen people dismiss the Pornhub bans, sometimes couching their dismissal in an anti-porn stance. What I don't think they realize is that the people pushing this stuff conflate porn with LGBTQ people and sex education and are part of Project 2025 mashable.com/article/free...

@debtcollective.bsky.social sent out an email newsletter yesterday that took the breath out my chest, warning people to screenshot and save their student loan payment just in case the incoming Trump administration/DOE DELETES people’s PSLF standings b/c loan servicers arent keeping track.

NEW — Young Lords founder and revolutionary José “Cha Cha” Jiménez passed away on Jan. 10 Read these letters of love from Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr., son of the late Black Panther Party revolutionary; and the actor who played Jiménez in ‘Judas and the Black Messiah.’ thetriibe.com/2025/01/lett...

Hey, y'all! Thanks for your patience in waiting for our next episode. In the mean time, we have a new side project! Fascist Dem Tracker is a blog that follows fascist bills, notes what makes these bills fascist, and name the Democrats that voted to pass the legislation. Hope to see y'all there!

The first fascist law on the docket is HR 29/SR 5: the Laken Riley Act. The bill has been introduced by Rep Mike Collins (R-GA-10) and, if passed, would require federal imprisonment for any undocumented immigrant arrested for theft of over $100.

Genuinely impressive that in just 30 years we created this vast digital resource of human knowledge and then monopolized it down to three guys everyone hates

Hey, y'all! With the start of the newest Congress, @gadflypod.bsky.social is kicking off a new project: the Fascist Democrat Tracker. We will be posting bills that are fascist in nature, why they are fascist, and which Dems voted to pass them. For more details, check out our intro post.

Of the three blatantly fascist bills to go through the House thus far (HR 23, 28, & 29), two Democrats have voted yay on all of them: Henry Cuellar (TX-28) & Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34). Two prime examples of when voting blue no matter who just results in electing fascists anyway.

Happening now, a transgender sports ban is being heard in Congress. This ban might ban trans people from dancing, darts, and even chess in many universities. It'll also target 9 year olds playing soccer. I'm covering live, follow along with me. live.house.gov

Trump didn’t just come up with the Greenland stuff. The tech oligarchs he serves want it for resources. There’s a difference between ignoring his madness and looking past the very real agendas and designs harbored by the people who control him. And we’d better learn that difference quickly.

*screams in Umberto Eco*

What's a substack alternative that you've used and recommend?

As we see Democrats join Republicans to empower Donald Trump's anti-migrant regime, note that this is just the endpoint of Democrats' 2024 detached "follow the polls" strategy — campaigning as diet Republicans; losing as diet Republicans; legislating as them. A cycle with no end:

Von Hindenburgs all the way down

Was LAFD defunded by $17.5 million? YES Some council offices and the mayor are now trying to cover for their disastrous budget by claiming that they approved new LAFD contracts, which happened 6 months AFTER they approved the FY24-25 budget, leading to services and 58 LAFD positions cut

I feel like one of the many tiring things in the near future will be arguments why we shouldn't primary the 40-50 Democrats that consistently vote for fascism. Like all grim predictions, I really want to be wrong.

To kick off the #resistance, 48 Dem congressmembers vote in favor of a law that would allow the DHS to detain and deport any undocumented person arrested for for theft over $100. Not convicted. Simply arrested.

Today, 48 Dems joined Republicans in the House to pass the Laken Riley Act, a far-right, Trumpist law that would aggressively target people accused of nonviolent crimes for deportation. Of course Ritchie Torres was one of them. Find all their names here: clerk.house.gov/Votes/20256

It's gotten ZERO attention (this article doesn't even mention it!) but this law authorizes state AGs like Ken Paxton to seek court orders forcing the executive branch to detain and deport specific people, overturn individual humanitarian parole decisions, and cease issuing visas to entire countries.

maybe hot take but this shit sucks. putting a spotlight on people of color and immigrants who supported trump doesn't result in anything more than mostly white people making snide remarks about leopards and faces if not outright salivating over that person's suffering. this isn't doing anything.

There are some who say “your life won’t change much when trump is President” and I get why they’re saying that in the sense that I’m well off and a citizen who was born here to parents who aren’t gonna be deported either, but all else aside fuck yourself, I have a conscience

It's never a good sign when Gerald L.K. Smith is involved

Slash Bandicoot

My unpopular football opinion is that all fantasy leagues should play the whole season. The chaos of week 18 and good teams benching their starters is the pure distillation of fantasy football. And that is the spirit of random chance.

So many of us on the academic side tried to warn people that the republicans were using porn bans as Trojan horses for attacks on other at risk groups and were setting up a cascade of increasingly authoritarian and dangerous attacks on rights.

This shit is so much worse for Democrats than any of the things they scold leftists for doing

The unavoidable endpoint when fascists take over and the legal definition of obscenity is based almost entirely* on vibes. *if memory serves, the only hard line take in obscenity law is that '2 girls, 1 cup' should be illegal.

Elon Musk is a good example of how terrible people become increasingly radicalized into the far right simply because the far right is a community that accepts cruel, terrible people. It's tempting to say Elon is going "mask off", but I'd wager Elon didn't know who Tommy Robinson was 5 years ago. 1/

This is the content we need. No bad takes to be found.

The 'silver lining' phrase from BlueMaga/#resist types is that they find some comfort in Trump voters suffering from his bad policies. It keeps getting clearer that the subtext of that is they cannot wait for everyone who said anything bad about the party or Biden to also suffer for their amusement.