Pour One Out for Spelling Reform

Yesterday on social media, I saw someone use the word "pore" as in "pore over a document" correctly.

The fact that I noticed it told me how unusual the correct usage is.

I was remarking on this to my other half tonight, and it made me wonder about the etymology of the verb pore. I assumed it's not related to the noun pore, since they seem to have no meaning in common.

It turns out I was right about that. Pore, the noun, has a clear etymology from Old French, Latin and Greek, and before that Indo-European.

The verb pore, however, is a word of unknown origin from the 13th century. "Perhaps from an unrecorded Old English *purian, suggested by spyrian "to investigate, examine" (cognate with Old Norse spyrja) and spor "a trace, vestige."

Pore (two different meanings)... pour... poor. Who really needs those different spellings? The more I think about it, the more I remember I like spelling reform.

Vast Carelessness and Smashed Up Things

It's hard to post about anything today but the idiotic financial bloodbath Trump is imposing on us all. 

As Senator Chris Murphy explained in a thread on BlueSky, the tariffs are not economics but a political tool made to "compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief," similar to the ways that kings in the past used taxes and other means to punish and reward detractors and supporters. Murphy isn't the only one to say this, but his thread is a nice summary of it.

Everything below the line is from the attributed account, and is shown in chronological order starting yesterday — late Wednesday morning the day the tariffs were announced.

___

People will say this is the result of a presidential election, and that’s partly true. But the Constitution does not delegate tariff power to the president, and he is only able to impose these ruinous, peace-destroying taxes because Congress has let him do so. Congress can end this at any time.
Robinson Meyer

there is a greater than zero possibility that the market tanks so badly tomorrow morning that Trump walks this whole thing back, which would be the funniest outcome, in a very dark and still-damaging way.
Tom Tomorrow

Life comes at you ... at exactly the rate it promised to come at you during its 4-year re-election campaign where it told you exactly what it planned to do literally thousands of times.
Craig Harrington @craigipedia.bsky.social

I tried to simplify it to my kid like this: you buy something at the store for $50. Then Trump says that store stole $50 from you so he's going to tax the store $25. Store now charges $75.
Mike Masnick

You can totally see how this mf bankrupted a casino.
Jason Coupet @professajay.bsky.social

thank you donald trump for your diligent work as you make the US a stagnant, backwater pariah state and playground for sociopathic tech oligarchs
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

i miss discourse that didn’t involve the collapse of the government
Marisa Kabas

We all know what's going on here, right? Tariffs not as economic policy, but purely to consolidate political power. From here on out, every day for Trump will be one of CEOs, presidents, prime ministers showing up to grovel, kiss the ring, ask for special favors. That's a gravy train of corruption if there ever was one. And now that everything is artificially, deliberately depressed, all he needs to do is lift some of these tariffs in "surprise" moves, say, 6 weeks before the next election, and stock markets jump.
Gernot Wagner

The absolute callousness of announcing a 44% trade tariff against Myanmar this week, of all weeks.
Dara O Briain

Of all people, the Wall Street Journal's editorial board took off the gloves, put on brass knuckles, and with relish waded into the Trump Tariff brawl. "Liberation Day is Buy Another Yacht Day for the swamp."
Professor Furious

March saw the third-highest number of layoffs in U.S. history, and 80% of them were caused by DOGE. This was before the tariffs. It's just...unbelievable
Will Bunch

As has been stated quite a few times, Republicans could shut this down at any time if they wanted to.
Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social

Liberation Wednesday followed by Tanking Thursday
Jen Mercieca

The thing is Hoover had a strong humanitarian record before blowing it all up
Adam Miller @ajm6792.bsky.social

I’m not an economist but it would seem that, at a certain threshold, there may be diminishing returns to how much market bounce-back occurs as actors begin to fully price in chaos. You don’t have to touch the stove for long to get a pretty bad burn
Sean Sellers @sellazz.bsky.social

People don't miss manufacturing jobs. They miss the effects of having 30+ percent union density. And we can build worker power again, with good policies, for the jobs most working class people actually have today rather than hoping mumbo jumbo will make it 1955 again.
Osita Nwanevu

I really wish I could directly post gifs here that I have saved because I have a gif of a kid setting his own crotch on fire for no obvious reason and then having the fire stamped out by his friends and there's no better metaphor for what's happening in the US right now
Dr. SkySkull

is this what they meant when they said daddy's home and he's going to punish us
Tom Tomorrow

Republicans went nuts and accused Biden of tyranny when he tried to cancel student debt. Right now, their guy just imposed the biggest tax rise on Americans in modern history by fiat, unilaterally, with no congressional or judicial approval.
Mehdi Hasan

Everyone wants there to be a grand scheme behind all of this but the terrible truth is that extremely stupid people are in charge and they have a fanatical devotion to wrong, childlike concepts of society and economics cooked up by right wing radio hosts in order to sell tainted dietary supplements
Ian Boudreau

As far as I can determine, Trump's supposed legal authority to impose these incredibly sweeping and destructive tariffs rest largely on the idea that trade deficits constitute a national emergency. How on earth is this remotely legitimate?
Greg Sargent

People who told everyone that masking was the worst possible thing to be asked to do are now telling USians to "sacrifice" and it's so ridiculous.
Prisonculture

fun fact about President Businessman: he didn't just bankrupt *a* casino. He bankrupted *multiple* casinos.
Tom Tomorrow

Ok I'm just going to say it: I don't even think President Sanders would be this bad for the economy.
The Alternate Historian

The American public:


Rich Cassara @rjcassara.bsky.social

Ohh "America First" was a hit list
I am no longer kidding @internethippo.bsky.social

Companies are not going to invest more in American manufacturing under an administration that contradicts itself/changes its mind every 5 minutes.
Elizabeth Kolbert

Make America Great Depression Again
A.J. Bauer

Transportation Covers

Rachel Cole, curator of the Northwestern University Transportation Library, posted what I think may be the longest image thread I've ever seen on BlueSky.

It includes dozens of covers from the library's collection of transportation studies, which means it's a glimpse of both 20th century graphic design styles and what the world of transportation professionals thought was worth studying or documenting for posterity.

Here are a just few of the ones I thought were most notable for my idiosyncratic reasons. Aside from looking through the ones she posted, Cole also said the whole collection can be searched here. 

 The oldest one I saved was also the plainest. I assume it's from 1951 since Triborough was founded in 1946 by the infamous Robert Moses:

I thought this cover illustration about the introduction of containerization was visually excellent in its graphic strength and sly meaning… and also it informed me about when that revolution in shipping occurred:

Based solely on the illustration style, I would place this cover around 1970, and I would really like to read the contents of this report:

This piece is also probably from the early to mid-1970s. These days the use of a rainbow would get it banned from distribution in too many U.S. institutions:

A 1976 publication from the energy crisis. Too bad it didn't have an effect:

Not a great design, but another report I'd like to read. That's a bus stamped into a pill in the center, and the hard to read headline near the bottom of the cover reads "Take twice daily relieves congestion, headache and gas pain."

Wisconsin, a State of Drunkeness

I've seldom seen a U.S. map where one state stands out so distinctly from all the others:

As the title says, this is a map of drunkest and driest counties, where green is the lowest percent drunk, yellow is mid, red is high and purple is highest. Drunkest means excessive drinking.

I don't know, though I assume, that the data is self-reported. Not too surprisingly, the Bible-belt states of the South have a lot of green, as does Utah and parts of Idaho and Nevada where there are a lot of Mormons as well. I was surprised about how green New Mexico is. Not sure what that's about. Montana and western North Dakota are drunker than I would have thought.

But the standout, and the reason for this post, is Wisconsin.

On one hand, I'm not surprised, because I know Wisconsin has more bars per capita than any other state, but dang, look at the immediate color change all around that state: the difference between Illinois and Wisconsin, between the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Wisconsin, between the northeast edge of Iowa and Wisconsin. 

Minnesota is the only state whose counties have a little bit of drinking commonality with Wisconsin, and the one county in Wisconsin that's not red or purple is next to Minnesota as well. It's often said that Minnesota and Wisconsin are near-twins, but this is one obvious way that they clearly are not.

BlueSky, March 2025, Part 2

Here's the rest of BlueSky for March 2025, covering March 15–31, in reverse chronological order—starting at the beginning with the most recent posts (today) on March 31.

The previous post ended mid-month just as Democrats were about to go along with Republicans' Continuing Resolution. The Department of Homeland Security deported 200 Venezuelan men (sic) to El Salvador because they have tattoos, defying a judge who had ordered the planes to return. Another international graduate student, this time a Turkish woman named Rumeysa Ozturk, was abducted off the street and disappeared. Many lawsuits were decided against the Trump administration. Universities and law firms kept caving to Trump's demands (with some exceptions). Tesla Takedowns were on-going throughout the month.

Signalgate happened, finally making a negative news story that lasted more than a day. At the end of the month, Elon Musk was bribing Wisconsin voters with $100 checks and $1 million prizes if they went along with his view of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. He claimed (as usual) that everyone who opposed him is paid by George Soros. Trump's threatened tariffs were about to go into effect, causing markets to go even lower.

Again, I've forgotten to mention some major things (Social Security! Taking over and closing down multiple agencies! It's just too much.)

I've moved some of the less timely images up or down in the order for better visual balance.

Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed account.

___

I'm just an old country website proprietor but im gonna guess that having a far-right militia with guys dressed up as Hitler as the defense/face of a company which sells high dollar electric cars probably isn't as strong a business proposition as some people seem to imagine.
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social

Going to be vague about specifics for this person's privacy but I have just had a conversation with a person I know who had absolutely no idea that Trump wants to take over Canada, and had a vague idea that Elon is doing some good work cutting waste. I did my best, but as many have noted, the problem with these conversations is that you sound like an insane person when you start describing the things that are happening.
Tom Tomorrow

Someone explain to me why it's illegal to give an old lady a bottle of water as she's waiting on line for hours in the sun to vote, but it's totally cool for an ultra-billionaire to bribe voters with million dollar checks in Wisconsin.
BrooklynDad_Defiant! @mmpadellan.bsky.social

Here are some nice mushrooms:


lukelukeluke

BREAKING: The House will vote on the SAVE Act this week. If the bill passes, more than 21 million Americans could be blocked from voting.... The SAVE Act would be the first voter suppression bill ever passed by Congress. Lawmakers should be protecting the freedom to vote — not restricting it. We urge Congress to reject the SAVE Act.
Brennan Center

As of Friday, there have been 46 cases in which federal judges have blocked Trump policies. The rulings in those cases have come from 39 different judges appointed by 5 different presidents (of both parties) to 11 different district courts across 7 different circuits. Maybe it's not the judges?
Steve Vladeck

If a single Democrat votes for the SAVE Act, they deserve to be primaried and voted out.
PinkTweets

Such a distillation of the con: guess who got Musk's $1 million check yesterday? The head of the Wisconsin College Republicans.
Ben Wikler

I firmly believe we could break a lot of logjams if someone, somewhere in the vastness of America summoned up the courage to actually arrest and detain Elon Musk for his blatantly criminal actions.
Faine Greenwood

The dollar amount of the embezzlement crime Marine Le Pen’s party committed, for which she is responsible, over 12 years is roughly the same as what Elon Musk illegally spent on a single state Supreme Court election just yesterday
@sababausa.bsky.social

MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished, Anne Applebaum writes.
fancynancysays

It is utterly fucking bonkers that the VP of the United States held a press conference on the soil of another country, declared his intent to take over that country, and implicitly threatened military force if that country didn’t comply.
Radley Balko

This is stupid. Trump did farmer bailouts last time, and it ended up costing taxpayers ~$23 billion to bail out farmers. It will cost more this time. For comparison, the National Science Foundation's annual budget is ~$9 billion.
David Ho

Take him down. TAKE HIM DOWN:


Cyndi @savannahpeace.bsky.social

Musk is a Special Government Employee, which is a government consultant that can be brought on for a short period of time to provide specific knowledge. They have no decision-making authority or management authority, they report directly to a fed employee. That's it. Press could drumbeat this. Special Government Employees also have to follow the Hatch Act Law. They cannot be part of any activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office or partisan political group. For SGEs, it's only when they're on-duty. When is he off-duty?
Costa Samaras

A president musing about invading allies and breaking term limits isn’t leadership — it’s lunacy. Power without restraint isn’t strength, it’s danger. This isn’t a joke. It’s a warning shot. The Constitution doesn’t bend for ego.
Shadow and Light

The 2024 US annual national security threat assessment from the Office of the Director of National Security mentions #climate threats ~20 times. Trump's 2025 report? Not once. The 2024 assessment mentions Greenland zero times. The 2025 Trump report? 4 times.
Peter Gleick

If you have to pay people to vote your way, it must be hard to comprehend people hating you for free.


Bearded Stoner

Not surprising but absolutely wild to go on stage and blame bad things on a nefarious billionaire who is pulling on the puppet strings of politics while you are the richest man in the world who is on stage because he's spending millions trying to influence an election!
Charlie Warzel

musk, yesterday: it's so mean how people call me a nazi
musk, today: everyone who doesn't like me is being paid by a nefarious jew
daniel sieradski @self.agency

I think there’s probably power in being up against people [like Musk] who simply can’t conceive of anyone caring enough to act without being bribed to do so. It means that they cannot imagine, or thereby prepare themselves for, a driven opposition.
Rebecca Traister

I feel that if, in 2010, you had told me that Citizens United would lead to someone literally giving oversized $1 million checks to voters in exchange for their votes, I would have called you a delusional conspiracy theorist. And I would have been wrong.
Death Becomes Her superfan @issuefortyfive.bsky.social

can't imagine how bad Trump's dementia will be in 2028. And the Republicans will all have to pretend he's making perfect sense.
Dean Baker

If the Marine LePen conviction happened in the U.S., fully 75% of the pundit class would be calling it the death of American democracy. Meanwhile, Musk is buying votes in Wisconsin, Mike Johnson is casually floating the elimination of district courts, and Trump insists he’s not joking about a third term.
robert p. baird


Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social

The “methods for doing so” [Trump running for a third term] are (1) getting two thirds of Congress and three fourths of the states to repeal the 22nd Amendment and (2) declaring himself king. That’s it. Stop treating this despotic bullshit as if it’s some worthwhile thought experiment we have to consider as legitimate.
Kevin M. Kruse

NYU canceled a planned speech by the former president of Doctors Without Borders because she planned to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and cuts to US AID. This is what actual campus censorship looks like.
Radley Balko

The choice to have people snatched up by plain clothes officers is absolutely a signal to all those white supremacist militia groups…
Mary Annaïse Heglar

Inevitably what'll happen, soon, is video will appear of masked plainclothes white men yanking a woman off the street into a van, and then ICE or CBP will go "no, actually that wasn't us. "And no one will be able to figure out whether they're lying, or ever see her again.
Pookleblinky

Abolish ICE is not an absurdity statement. ICE was created in 2003 as a response to 9/11 – we do not need it. We already established that following orders isn't an excuse.
Kate Sánchez @ohmymithrandir.bsky.social

And "Department of Homeland Security" still sounds like heavy-handed cartoon dystopia stuff.
Keith Snyder @noteoff.bsky.social

It's not just that "every accusation is a confession"; it's also that every accusation is a RATIONALIZATION.  The lie that the other side is rigging elections rationalizes vote suppression.  The lie that legitimate investigations are "weaponizing government" is the excuse to weaponize government.
Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social

weird. research funded by oil and gas companies is inevitably bullish on carbon capture and storage. I wonder why that might be?
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

Thinking about Trump’s tariffs. Thinking about how boycotts helped bring down apartheid South Africa, how hard Israel fights to avoid that fate. Never that I know of, before Trump, has a country decided to boycott ITSELF!
David Oscar Knuttunen

Day 68 into the GOP takeover: Prices are going up. Consumer confidence is plummeting. Classified info is being leaked. Social Security is being dismantled. Residents are being arrested for their political views.
Katherine Clark @whipkclark.bsky.social

Genuine why do a Nazi salute on stage then cry about leftwing people not liking you for being a Nazi? He simultaneously is desperate for edgy online right wingers to love him but psychologically incapable of handling the obvious social consequences of doing things that crowd likes. Pathetic man.
lastpositivist.bsky.social

When you look at the list of institutions they want to defund: libraries, museums, the Smithsonian, public schools, PBS, NPR, archives, you can clearly see that the real threat to an authoritarian regime is an informed and educated public
Carmen @tomesandtextiles.bsky.social

In 2024, 92.5% of all new electricity brought online globally came from the sun, wind or other clean energy sources:


Assaad Razzouk

Look, it’s a whole lot. Courage and integrity are in short supply. Do what you can to take care of each other and stand up for each other. Things won’t get better on their own, but they can get better. They could get better. That’s enough.
Costa Samaras

I think punditry would be a lot healthier if people made the case for their policies and position on the merits first rather than framing everything they advocate for as a good electoral strategy. 90% of the time, it's what they support on the merits, so just make that case.
Jonathan Ladd

Elon Musk has been a walking SEC violation for a decade and no one cared. The entire Trump era could have been avoided if the US took white collar crime anywhere near as seriously as it does low level drug crime.
Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social

If you're a white person talking about Nazi Germany in a Black person's mentions, I implore you to re-evaluate your entire lived experience and education instead of bothering us. Where do you think the Nazis got their inspiration from? How many times must we say the same things over and over again?
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.bsky.social

The fact that Brad Schimel, who’s running to be A JUDGE [in Wisconsin] — a person whose sole function is to preside over, and protect the law, is accepting ILLEGAL help from Elon Musk to win his election, is another example of how deeply corrupt they all are. Why hasn’t Brad Schimel denounced Musk?
@jtaylorskinner.bsky.social

the obvious root cause of an obsession with other people virtue signaling is a self-aware shame about your own vices and a commitment to never changing
Sen. Lemon Gogurt @ugarles.bsky.social

One of my favorite protest signs. Seen in the wild: St. Paul, MN a few weeks ago. Great work! I'm working on my own signs for the #HandsOff protests on April 5th:


The Dissenting Fox

Me, after jumping in a Time Machine to go talk to teen me: in the future you work as a senior reporter at Rolling Stone magazine. Past me: omg that’s AMAZING. You mean I get to interview mick jagger and... Present day Swin: uh no, you don’t do any of the cool shit. You cover Donald Trump and... Past Swin: UGH. I’m a senior reporter and they have me covering a game show host with middling ratings, why would they do that to us. Me: ……. Better sit down for this.
Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social

Turns out the Deep State was just the rule of law and the people who implemented it.
The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social

Elon’s had fourteen kids with four different women, allegedly through sex-selective in vitro fertilization, giving them names like Exa Dark Sideræl and Tau Techno Mechanicus, and it’s amazing we don’t talk about how thoroughly weird that really is.
Kevin M. Kruse

Hiring your brother is the original affirmative action for white people.
Chris Hayes

Under the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge:


Bryan @bryanformhals.com

If the military academies are purging libraries of “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.,” “Einstein on Race and Racism,” and a biography on Jackie Robinson, how long will it be before they eliminate classes on the Geneva Conventions and military obligations under international laws of war?
Peter Gleick

Thus far, the review of Nimitz Library’s holdings has identified 900 books that may run afoul of the defense secretary’s verbal order. According to a second defense official, they include “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.,” “Einstein on Race and Racism,” and a biography on Jackie Robinson. The Trump book burnings are beginning.
Peter Gleick

I know it’s tempting to see ICE kidnapping international students as random acts of cruelty, and that’s right, but also the inevitable chilling of international enrollments, which generate 5% of US Higher Ed revenue, will put more pressure on institutions to accept blackmail terms for federal funds.
Matt Seybold

all but one Republican Senator voted to allow banks to fuck over poor people more:


Molly White @molly.wiki

The internet ruined the world in 30 years and the comments section has become flesh
Rob McCallum

And no way to repair the damage and restore trust unless the GOP is completely dismantled and remade. There will be more Canada-friendly administrations ahead, of course, but how can anyone partner with a country that swings so wildly back and forth between reasonableness and utter lunacy?
Steve of Winnipeg

There is no texting enabled on White House government phones, there is no Messages app and you can't download one. There's a special approved (and secure/archivable) slack-like messaging app that everyone is allowed to use, that's it. Have reporters asked the White House IT Office if anyone is allowed to or if it's even possible to install signal on a White House government phone? (it is not)
Costa Samaras

living with a 13 year old is like living with a 7 year old and a 21 year old who take shifts being your kid
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com

Courts willing to follow the Constitution and the law are the only things standing between us and Stephen Miller’s dystopia right now. And he isn’t happy about it:


Ron Filipkowski

If any random man in a mask can say he’s the police now, all it means is more women and children foreign and non foreign alike are going to be kidnapped in broad daylight and no one will stop them - we all get that right
Bailey McCann

Instead of tracking down child traffickers or drug dealers, Rubio is telling law enforcement to comb student newspapers to see if someone wrote something he doesn't like
Dean Baker

It's blowing my mind that Tech Dirt is covering politics better than most explicitly political journalsitic outlets
Charlie Jane Anders

Vance claiming that Denmark isn't doing enough to keep Greenland safe is pretty rich, considering we're the only country currently threatening Greenland.
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob.bsky.social

Yep:


Mehdi Hasan

Elon Musk claimed that 40% of calls to the Social Security Administration were from fraudsters. Actually, it's 40% of the fraud was by phone. That's a big difference, but apparently too complicated for Elon
Mehdi Hasan

Further clarification, it’s 40% of “direct deposit fraud” — not all fraud.
Marc Bandman

RFK is a eugenics freak first and foremost and everything falls downstream from that. he *wants* excess deaths. he thinks that only the "fit" should survive.
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

Elon’s coming to Wisconsin to hand out million dollar checks in his bribe scheme. They should arrest him when he does.
Kevin M. Kruse

If anything, the New Deal didn't regulate enough – as it allowed states, unions and corporations to discriminate against African Americans even as they benefited from public funding and power.
Will Jones

Counting active-duty, reserves, and contractors, some 3 million Americans are under direct/indirect authority of DOD. Every one of those 3 million—EVERY ONE—knows that if he or she had sent real-time info about combat operations on commercial platforms, their careers would be over. And worse.
James Fallows

Lots of Democrats, after 2020, dismissed arguments to curb the DHS and local police as reckless. What they mistook for radical chic, though, was just realism — and a recognition that unless curbed, surly law-enforcement institutions pose a threat to constitutional self-governance.
Greg Greene

the american electorate wants great power with no responsibility. americans don't realize their easy access to treats come from the exorbitant privilege comes with being the unipolar hegemon. this is why i say it's a form of hegemonic suicide. america had the entire postwar consensus built around it and decided liberal internationalism was woke
Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social

The Smithsonian is not overseen by the executive branch. Settled law. He doesn’t even appoint people. More lawsuits will follow.
Glenn Fleishman

Conservatism succumbed to fascism as easily and rapidly as conservatives long (and inaccurately) warned liberalism would succumb to communism.
Seth Cotlar

This is a real tweet posted by the official White House government account. Yes, really:


Kaylan_TX

The core "ideology" of political liberals for decades has basically been "let's do stuff that helps people." They've often fallen short in the application of it, but that's been the core belief. The Right built out more ideological lore, but the core belief was "we should rule." And so.
Jamison Foser

Trump is now arresting Putin's opponents in the U.S. and sending them back to Russia so Putin can imprison or kill them.
Jonathan Ladd

Note to editors and producers: If an executive order demands action that is illegal or outside of the president’s authority, then you should not describe it as ordering something. You should say it seeks to achieve some outcome and then note it is illegal or beyond the power of the president.
David Rothkopf

Not gonna lie, it's hard to overstate how much contemporary evangelicalism has broken the brains of American conservatives, an ideology that allows you be ontologically righteous with no actual demands on you so long as you are a considered "a good Christian"
Reconstructionist @unavaleable.bsky.social

Hypothesis: musk's actions dismantling the government will cause way more greenhouse gas emissions then Tesla has ever saved
Costa Samaras

I think one difference between ICE and Nazis is Nazis didn’t grow up being told don’t be a Nazi.
Schooley

NEW: Signal has never been permitted on White House or Pentagon devices, but incoming Trump officials started using it when the Trump-Vance transition refused government IT help to avoid record-keeping laws and kept using it after Inauguration Day.
Andrew Feinberg

If Paul, Weiss and Skadden don't think they can out-litigate the doofuses in Trump's DOJ willing to take these cases, why would any client stick with them? Have a spine. You're not going up against top legal minds here. You are the top legal minds.
Ben K. @benjaminkabak.com

I wish people hated fascism half as much as they hate feminism
Moira Donegan

Really feel like I’m losing my mind: government OBVIOUSLY cannot punish an individual law firm for hiring someone it disfavors! It’s ludicrously unconstitutional and I feel like without a day of law school I could argue the case. And yet the best paid lawyers in the country are folding?
Chris Hayes

Apparently when people like Rubio claimed to be opposed to Castro's authoritarianism it was the Castro part they opposed, not the authoritarianism part.
Seth Cotlar

They’ll never accept it, but everyone who cast a vote for Donald Trump did real, generations-long damage to the United States and the west in exchange for essentially nothing of value.
southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social

Given Trump's "asylum for Boers" policy and his new nominee to be ambassador to South Africa, I think it's a safe bet that if they'd been in power back then, they'd have been deporting people for anti-apartheid op-eds.
Radley Balko

Can someone ask Rubio to show us all what line in the Constitution refers to "ruckus creation"?
Mr.Eddie8976

I have a number of friends of my vintage who grew up in Eastern Bloc countries and they have *all* told me that the patterns they are seeing in the U.S. right now are uncannily familiar.
David Bowman @dlbowman76.com

This is monstrous. We have absolutely evil people running this country. It's time for the decent people supporting them to stop and refuse to be part of this fascist action.
Fred Wellman

Monstrous. That's my only response to the news these days coming from White House, which is truly a white house feeding on the despair and emotions of people like vampires.
Kerri Arsenault

Another I-can't-believe-we're-even-debating-this moment. "The 'mandate of the electorate' permits us to brazenly violate the Constitution" would be a dangerously stupid argument from the Reagan administration after he won by 18 points in 1984 (and they wouldn't have made it). Trump won by 1.5.
Radley Balko

No matter your station in life, there is astoundingly little separating you from those men in that cage behind Kristi Noem. No charges, no attorneys, no hearings, no trial. Just conjecture and brute force could be enough to justify completely dehumanizing you, too.
Gillian Branstetter

What people in every part of higher education need to understand is that Republicans now want to do to universities what they’ve tried to do to labor unions: erase them from the institutional landscape. The question is how much you want to collaborate in your own destruction.
Chris Hayes

The women in my mom's fancy old person semi-assisted living place are ready to riot. They're seriously talking about petitioning to get a Tesla takedown protest as an approved group outing so they can make use of the shuttle bus.
John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social

What Rumeysa Ozturk is apparently getting deported over — signing on to a campus op-ed in support of a student govt resolution calling for institutional action by the university —  is not just the essence of protected speech, but the kind of thing that critics of disruptive protest claim to support.
Angus Johnston

It’s not a war plan it’s an attack plan.
It’s not rape it’s sexual abuse.
If there’s not enough evidence to assure conviction, then it’s a hoax.
Very tired of a decade of this dumb game, but glad to see them have a hard time playing it this time.
Brian Beutler

Closing rural post offices will do the same thing that closing rural schools has done: Empty out rural towns. Why? To sell off farmland for rock bottom prices to the oligarchs. Water and mineral rights and CAFOs polluting with impunity. It’s been the plan for decades.
Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social

Disappeared Tufts Human Dev. PhD student Rumesya Ozturk is also a graduate of Teachers College - she’s a dev. psychologist studying children’s media and prosocial development. She also bakes without recipes and binge-watches cartoons. She is our colleague and she was abducted on the street w/ our tax $.
Ellen Roche

Several years ago, I read a local news story about social emotional learning (SEL) in school. A bunch of the comments were from local people opposed to children learning empathy and I couldn’t believe it. Now I know it’s true. MAGA folks hate empathy. They think it is a weakness.
Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social

They are arresting people on the streets, terminating their visas, and disappearing them for writing things they disagree with. This is where we are. Two months in. Right now. If you think they won’t begin coming after citizens soon, you are mistaken.
Clint Smith

!!!!


Jon Cooper

International students are being hunted on their campuses. For raising their voices for justice. This is pure evil.
Naomi Klein

As I've documented before, recently Trump returns again and again to the phrase "the likes of which nobody has ever seen before." It's the only phrase of approbation he can come up with quickly. Every time he says this (which is a lot), it's a tell of his cognitive decline.
James Fallows

Just remember all this if there is a catastrophic intelligence failure under this administration. Because they will *immediately* try to crush dissent and offload blame.
Chris Hayes

The number of people who think that DOGE is a good idea that just went a little wrong is ... discouraging. People really, genuinely have no idea how the federal bureaucracy is built or how it works.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

The constant throat-clearing that "obviously there's a ton of fraud and waste in government, but this isn't the right approach" is infuriating. Outside of military spending, there's minimal true waste...and what waste there is is often prescribed by Congress (ie Medicare not negotiating drug prices)
D Lavoie @djlavoie.bsky.social

The current antisemitic administration can't be the arbiter of what is antisemitic. I think everyone knows this.
Prisonculture

Not having to wear masks is the essence of American freedom. Here’s why my agents cover their faces while kidnapping students on college campuses. by Donald Trump
New York Times Pitchbot

I tell you what, it was pretty simple and easy to explain the existence of trans people to my kid (at age 5) and it is going to be WAY harder to explain to him why masked and hooded people grabbed a Tufts student off the street in a neighborhood he's in often
Celeste Ng @pronounced-ing.bsky.social

imagine what marginalized people could do if they got 10% of the benefit of the doubt that the media gives these white guys
Tamreen @scriptor.bsky.social

it's been years upon years of labored "campus culture" op-eds from salaried writers hectoring students about free speech, and now the state is kidnapping students for their speech in broad daylight
JP @jpbrammer.bsky.social

I don't care what side of the Israel-Palestine conflict your sympathies lie on, snatching up people with a valid student visa for the crime of writing an OpEd is naked fascism and if you don't oppose this you are a threat to this country's most basic values
Everything's Computermeyer @niedermeyer.online

Legal residents getting kidnapped by plain clothes agents of the state for expressing their political opinions isn't something that happens in democratic countries.
Max Berger

Just a reminder: having a functional moral compass right now is going to make you feel bad all the time; don’t mistakenly hate yourself for that.
Steve Edwards @the-big-quiet.bsky.social

The people whining about how they’re getting yelled at for driving a Tesla should try biking for transportation so they can see how you get treated when people actually hate you on the road
@qclstridium.bsky.social

Texting war plans to reporters is clearly bad. But the fact that America’s top leaders communicate about 40% via emojis is also freaking me out
Bill McKibben

Jeffrey Goldberg thinking he was being pranked and then realizing he was actually just in the war plans group chat is such a good microcosm of how it feels to be alive right now, everything seems fake until you realize it’s actually real and incredibly stupid
Yell In a War @jelenawoehr.bsky.social

I posted earlier about signalgate.

The chief of staff of a Republican state senator in Indiana once emailed me his boss's schedule for the week by mistake, but now that I know Pentagon war plans are on the table I feel really shortchanged.
Kevin M. Kruse

hello ok i am awake what did i miss
tell me every thing


darth™️

I'd like to announce my innovative response to the challenge of teaching writing in a world of large language models. I call it the "12-student class." One instructor, 12 students. Best news is it already has a proven track record. Where's my millions in investor cash?
John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social

All joking aside... Most whiz-bang school reform is merely an attempt to sidestep the cost of doing it right. We know what it takes to educate young people in a humane and meaningful way.
Jack Schneider

Climate and environment folks are rightly dismissive of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's hamhanded vision of green abundance. They tried for sustainable prosperity, but ended up at Cornucopianism. It's a rookie mistake, at a time when getting it right feels more important than ever. Pro tip: If you hear some invoke "sustainability innovation," then describe an imaginary technology that somehow allows us to ignore the hard physical limits of life on a finite planet, you're hearing someone who doesn't understand the question.
Alex Steffen

If Trump issued an Executive Order requiring all newspapers to send articles to the White House for review before publication, would newspapers report it is a “requirement” or “mandate”? Or would the fact it’s preposterously illegal and unconstitutional make right into the lede and headline?
Chris Hayes

Musk does not think living humans are important to the future. Of course he’s actively targeting everything intended to sustain life. We’ve got to stop pretending a guy in a cult that prioritizes artificial humanlike consciousness over real humans has normal motives.
Yell In a War @jelenawoehr.bsky.social

One thing that is clear from these headlines is that the big news orgs don't have a vocabulary or strategy for how to report to readers when the President claims to do something he not only lacks authority to do but even the power to do. That's a very basic, foundational thing.
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social

The only thing standing between Donald Trump and his authoritarian dream is the courts. But to defeat him, we need lawyers willing to litigate against him. Trump is trying to intimidate lawyers and law firms to stop fighting. At least for me, it won't work. I wear his scorn like a badge of honor.
Marc Elias

American cheese is just regular cheese with 70k in hospital bills
PieGuy @ilovepie84.bsky.social

The USA hanging on by a temporary restraining order, which suddenly feels like the restraining orders abused women get to tell their abusers to back off.
Rebecca Solnit

Trump's America doesn't have a Department of Education but it does have law enforcement openly working as publicly funded private muscle for a billionaire car salesman.
jaguarr @the-jaguarr.bsky.social

The premise that women and people of color who make it into positions of authority are "DEI hires" and the white men made it on merit is the exact opposite of reality and anyone who's paid any attention to the world for more than 5 minutes knows it.
Naomi Kritzer

This old tweet made the front page of reddit, or so I hear.


Evan Urquhart

the speed at which these guys have broken everything has given a lot of folks who should know better the impression that they are an unstoppable force and the only option is to negotiate the terms of surrender. just because the clown car goes very fast does not mean it isn’t full of clowns
Micah @rincewind.run

i have yet to see a picture of kash patel where he doesn't look coked out
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

The post-1945 world order was created almost entirely to the advantage of the United States and Trumpers whining on about how unfair it has been to them is certainly a Thing.
Alan Allport

so much commentary on what Dems should be doing at this moment has an unspoken Step Zero of “get the media to pay even a little bit of attention to you”
post malone ergo propter malone @proptermalone.bsky.social

my most conservative-coded trait these days is that i honestly think that the worst possible thing that can happen for young men is for the entire society to coddle them. what they need to hear is that they have one life to live and they have to take responsibility for it. no one is forcing them to gamble on crypto or sports betting. no one is forcing them to treat hard work and diligence like it's "for girls." no one is forcing them to retreat from any kind of connection with other people. take. responsibility. for. your. life.
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

We solved acid rain so successfully that it has become a talking point used to oppose solving environmental issues, it's maddening
James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social

#boycottTESLA BOYCOTT TESLA:


Calçotada bien cargada @nocomproindepe.bsky.social

My Kingdom and more for anyone to realize that awarding yourself a government contract is not a conflict of interest. It's corruption. When the bank teller takes the money out of the cash drawer and puts it in his pocket that's not a conflict of interest either.
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social

“My first thought was, ‘This is a witch hunt’” Federal civil rights attorneys ordered by the Education Department to document the nationalities of protesters
Gillian Branstetter

The American ruling class in 2024 was amongst the most powerful individuals in the history of humanity. Their decision to let Elon Musk and Donald Trump destroy the global financial and political order to do the dumbest version of fascism is an incredible self-own.
Max Berger

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.
Timothy Snyder

Brian Kilmeade calls for the end of due process: "It's not practical to think we can do due process on 8 million people ... if we're gonna give every one of these guys a day in a court and a lawyer, we can't do it. They don't deserve it."
Aaron Rupar

The only piece of actual wisdom I have ever learned about US politics is "Never believe something is too stupid to happen."
Hamilton Nolan

BREAKING: Yuval Abraham, co-director of Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land," says Israeli settlers beat his co-director Hamdan Ballal, injuring his head and stomach — and then Israeli soldiers invaded the ambulance he was in and seized him. Ballal's whereabouts are now unknown.
Prem Thakker

I'm old enough to remember when Republicans went batshit over the rumor that the ACA was going to "kill grandma." Now they're actually going after Social Security. I'm not that old...
Mary Annaïse Heglar

Green cards and valid visas no longer have meaning. "…the Trump administration has invoked a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state sweeping power to expel foreigners who are seen as a threat to the country’s foreign policy interests."
David Ho

This is what we’ve come to, and so quickly:


George Takei

So let’s be very clear about this - DOGE isn’t saving America money.  It is now among the costliest domestic programs in our history; and certainly the most significant wealth destroying.
Simon Rosenberg @simonwdc.bsky.social

On this day in 1944, 76 Allied prisoners tunnel out of the Stalag Luft III POW camp in Sagan, Germany. All but three are recaptured; 50 will be executed by the SS. The story is later immortalized in the film 'The Great Escape.'
MilitaryHistoryNow.com

some more congestion pricing wins:
Broadway attendance: up 21%
Restaurant reservations: up 7%
Pedestrian traffic: up 4%
Retail sales: up $900M
Commercial leasing: up 61%
Subway crime: down 37%
Car crashes: down 50%
Honking complaints: down 69%
Sam @samd.bsky.social

“congestion pricing is a policy unicorn - it accomplishes a key goal (reducing congestion) & raises money. This is in contrast with highway widenings which are the opposite: they cost money (often billions of dollars) and fail to accomplish the goal of reducing traffic due to induced demand)”
Greg Vann

This is so surreally corrupt it’s hard to even grasp. US media is incapable of processing it - directly using the White House to promote a meme coin with hidden ownership structure. This is the most openly corrupt act by a sitting President in the history of America. It is now 4.40 PM – and Politico, WaPo and NYT are simply refusing to cover it. NYT wrote 35 articles speculating on the POSSIBLE corruption of Clinton Foundation. Which was never found:


Tero Kuittinen

“In Silicon Valley, behind every libertarian is a fat government contract.” –Olivier Jutel
Gil Durán

Even if somehow some powers found a way to put 47's destruction to a stop and get Musk out of the paint literally today, I don't think everyone understands there is no quick "fix it." Even now. We're already looking at years of work just to get back to where we started, in less than 2 months As distressed as I am by what 47's actions mean in real time and the immediate future, the idea of what rebuilding institutions is going to look like *whenever* the US gets to the other side of this, with so much institutional knowledge being wiped out, is even more distressing.
Naima Cochrane @stillnaima.bsky.social

EVs resolve one issue of automobile dependence: tailpipe emissions. They are as bad as ICE vehicles on noise (over 20 MPH), space, and embedded carbon and significantly worse on tire particulates, road wear and lethal crash force (20-25% heavier, faster acceleration). Cars don’t solve car problems.
Bella Chu @isabellachu.bsky.social

Some people LOVE to tell me that scientists have lost public trust because we were wrong about something, we communicated badly, we swore or cried or acted fallibly human, or whatever. That’s bullshit. Scientists lost public trust because disinformation campaigns like this stole it and eradicated it.
Angie Rasmussen

“How your kids treat you when they no longer need you to survive is exactly how they felt treated when they needed you to survive.”
King Leo @nywiseass.bsky.social


TommyBoy @tampatom69.bsky.social

Why on earth would anyone want to pay Columbia $400k for four years in a Zionist panopticon?
Ali Winston

ANDREW CARNEGIE: Lived his final days in disappointment that he had not met his goal of giving away all his money, especially for libraries.
ELON MUSK: Hopes to gut Institute of Museum and Library Services; its $266M in grants is about what Musk spent to elect Trump.
Quite Uninteresting

The stupidest fucking thing about giving in to Trump on anything is that HE NEVER KEEPS HIS WORD. Trump is never bound by contracts, laws or what he said five minutes ago. He cannot be trusted. He's not a good faith actor. Giving him what he wants will never make him go away. Might as well fight.
Nash @radiodeadair.com

The plot of “Ocean’s X” is a bunch of billionaire buddies conspire to pull off the biggest heist in history, robbing the richest country in the world blind, and covering their crime by destroying that country’s government, institutions, system of law, people, alliances, allies, and future.
David Rothkopf

To provide context to Costa's point, the literature shows that public funding does not crowd out private funding: the opposite happens. Radical innovation occurs through public sector R&D, and government funding is essential in supporting early-stage technologies and sending signals to the market.
Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social

From the William Morris Co. 1910:


Darren McLean

Decades from now, people will pay trillions of dollars every year to get back to the climate that we have today.
David Ho

Justice Louis D. Brandeis: To strip us of the safeguards of liberty, authoritarians promise us “efficiency.”
Peter Norton

The Vice President is a long-time adherent of a bunch of self described monarchists, neofascists, and race realists and the press has never showed it an ounce of interest. Maybe 1/20th of the voting public has any clue. If you want to learn about it you have to go to podcasts and independent outlets
W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social

Pretty sure any journalist with a little patience and a search engine could produce a fascinating story about the breadth and depth of sex predators within the MAGA movement.
Kevin M. Kruse

From 2010 to 2016 (latest data I have), NIH research contributed to EVERY drug approved by the FDA
Mark Cuban

Elon Musk is an egomaniacal sociopathic drug-abusing conman with a breeding fetish. It’s absolutely insane that he’s in a position of power over the entire US government.
Leah McElrath

Trump says he will withhold federal tax dollars to Maine colleges unless the Gov of Maine personally apologizes to him.
Ron Filipkowski

Trump's only move. Blackmail. He's doing it to everyone: law firms, companies, colleges, states, Canada, NATO, Ukraine. He was impeached in the first term for it. It's the only "art of the deal" he's ever known: strongman mafioso extortion. He'll re-run the same play forever until America collapses.
Will Stancil

The absolute irony of an executive order compelling everyone's tax and personal info into a giant fascist database coming from the 2X presidential candidate who refused to release his own tax returns.
velourazure

NEW: President Trump's pledge to deport millions of immigrants has pulled thousands of federal agents and investigators away from investigating drug trafficking, sexual abuse and many other types of crimes.
Brad Heath

Hot take: STOP calling it “generative” AI. START calling it derivative AI, or regurgitative AI. It doesn’t generate anything new, it only repackages stolen human work (and gets it wrong half the time anyway)
Maggie North @maggienorthauthor.bsky.social

"Yes, there’s danger in opening our gates to this statue. But there’s also danger in keeping it out… the danger of eroding the sanctity of the gift-giving process."


McSweeney's

Fodder for novels about our times:
1) Trump Commerce Secretary Lutnick says people won't really notice if Social Security misses a payment cycle:
2) Lutnick just bought a house in DC for $25 million, all cash
3) Seller: Bret Baier of Fox
James Fallows

“Often, middle-aged people are astounded when they start helping an aging parent or another relative and find that the median annual cost of a semiprivate room in a nursing home is $111,325, according to an annual survey by Genworth, a company in the long-term-care planning business.”
Kathleen Bachynski

Hear me out: Trump has dementia, is acting out on decades-old remembered grievances, the few members of his family with a lick of sense have all but abandoned him, and he's surrounded by sycophants whose careers depend on massaging his dementia into actionable quasi-policy.
Hunter @hunterub.bsky.social

Donald Trump’s billionaire Commerce Secretary has financial advice for Americans:
1. Please buy Tesla stock to help poor Elon Musk.
2. Shut up and don’t complain when you don’t get your Social Security check.
Elizabeth Warren

new trump executive order requiring manhattan elite to give him the respect he has always craved
Tom Tomorrow

New Trump executive order declaring Queens part of Manhattan all along. And making him king of the Met Gala
Helen Kennedy

When you unintentionally highlight how efficient the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid office is:


Chris Bennett

We need to reclaim the idea that "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" isn't terrifying, but is the very foundation of what it means to organize society, keep the country safe, share resources, and help people.
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

Everyone’s like “this can’t be fascism it’s too dumb” but they don’t understand that fascism is in fact almost always very dumb! Fascist dictators are cruel and stupid men. And it’s popular because many people are cruel and stupid!
Amber Sparks

In this climate it’s easy to forget that gender dysphoria’s real, a tiny share of the population experiences it, most of those who do are miserable and transitioning tends to let them lead happier, more fulfilling lives. And “small government conservatives” use the gov to relentlessly bully them.
Joshua Holland

The UK is stagnating because we destroyed our economony, constitution, and international credibility chasing anti-immigrant sentiment:


Toby Buckle @polphilpod.bsky.social

Today I learned that Tesla insiders (executives, board members, etc) have sold *1.46 million* Tesla shares over the past 12 months, and bought precisely *zero*
ryan cooper

You can’t legally beat your child to death, or shoot them with a gun, but there are many ways to legally just let them die. That’s why I’m not interested in making sure parents have more power. Children need more rights. Your parent’s religious beliefs should not leave you with a shortened lifespan. We shouldn’t allow that to happen.
Ashley C. Ford @smashfizzle.bsky.social

It’s weird how climate went from something not many people cared about to something we could be persecuted for.
David Ho

we have to find a way to win this because I refuse to accept a world in which the biggest assholes alive get everything they want
Micah @rincewind.run

I dunno what this is, but a constitutional republic, it is not.
James Longhurst

Living under fascism: 0/10, do not recommend.
Jen Mercieca

Remember 1983’s “The Day After”?  There was a woman who wouldn’t stop making her bed as the sirens were going off.  It drove me crazy at the time; now I understand.
IantheCovington

Whenever you get on a plane in the United States, remember that your life is in the hands of air traffic controllers who are being intentionally traumatized.
Jarrett Walker @humantransit.bsky.social

Is it at all surprising that a convicted felon would ignore a judge's order?
Stephen King

These are the states that will suffer most from Trump’s executive order to gut the Department of Education.. Not the deep-blue states that Republicans love to attack:


Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com

Funny how "erasing history" only applies to tearing down Confederate monuments, emphasizing the role of enslavement in the development of the U.S., and renaming military bases named after Confederates, but not to acknowledging historical Black, Brown, queer, and trans folks
Austin McCoy

There is a deep irony in the fact that they are making Trump, the most checked-out person to ever occupy the oval office, the standard-bearer for the unitary executive
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

Blackness was invented by white people who wanted some way to describe who was enslaveable. Whiteness was invented after that, to differentiate from Blackness. Before the Atlantic slave trade, everyone had a nationality/ethnicity and various amounts of melanin, but no racial designations.
Angela Sutton

Hegseth deleted all mention of the Holocaust from Pentagon websites. Here is why we need more investigations into antisemitism at American universities.
New York Times Pitchbot

Anemone in pink:


L Wasson @wassonl.bsky.social

One way to understand what’s happening is that Republicans want to do to academia - colleges, universities, science, medical research - what they did to labor.
Chris Hayes

“In my six decades of legal practice, I have never witnessed a trial as unfair as the one against Greenpeace that just ended in the courts of North Dakota...Greenpeace has a very strong case on appeal” –Marty Garbus, a longtime first amendment lawyer
Garry Peterson @resiliencesci.bsky.social

Fossil fuel companies should be forced to pay the public trillions in damages for the costs of their planetary arson. Instead they are trying to shut down one of the most important and storied environmental groups in the world. It's shameless — and it's not over.
Naomi Klein

“In the end, more than half the jurors selected to hear the case had ties to the fossil fuel industry, and most had negative views of anti-pipeline protests or groups that oppose the use of fossil fuels.”
dendromecon

Last week they asked us to believe that a campus organizer was so dangerous that he didn't deserve due process. This weekend it was anonymous men with tattoos whose names and stories we may never know. Today it is a Georgetown faculty member with a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies
Matt Cameron

hammer motel sign, kearney, nebraska, 1980:


old roadside pics @roadside.xor.blue

Look there's nothing in the constitution that says you can't just make up a secret organization that directly and totally controls the existence of every agency and department of the government
Hemry, Local Bartender

You've probably seen it, but we should keep raising up what an ICE official actually wrote to a court on Monday: "The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact… the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose."
Adam Isacson

I guess with all the other open-air graft going on it's easy to overlook, but the U.S. Commerce Secretary using his official position to go on cable news to tell people to buy the stock of his boss's largest campaign donor is just astonishingly corrupt.
Radley Balko

in retrospect it's kind of funny that sci fi was like "imagine a world where robots gain sentience, but humanity refuses to grant them personhood" but in reality every loser techbro loser thinks chatgpt deserves more rights than like, actual people
alix e. harrow

YouTube’s play button doing the lord’s work:


Keith Edwards

You know, when they describe the Jackie Robinson story as "Woke cultural Marxism" maybe normies will start to notice how insane they are
Don Moynihan

given how quickly the right moved to criminalize pipeline protests i honestly wouldn't be surprised if we see a proposal in the near future designating tesla dealerships as critical infrastructure and juicing up penalties for vandalism
molly taft

The USIP seizure was essentially a mini-j6, right down to the destruction of property. Only this time, they showed their guns, and the cops were on their side. This won’t be an aberration.
Jeff Sharlet

Every exchange between a reporter and a Trump flak: “Any comment on today’s plane crash?”
“President Donald Trump was elected by the Greatest Mandate (no homo) in American ‘History’ but Shifty Adam Schiff and Pocahontas still stand in His way when it comes to rooting DEI out of soybean Farming.”
Kevin M. Kruse

Not sea glass but fragments of plastic car tail lights, indicators and brake lights, probably washed into storm drains after heavy rain, eventually making their way to the sea. #oceanplastic:


Lego Lost At Sea

The fact that the world’s richest man works at the behest of the executive and can buy out the legislature is massively outside the scope of what the framers could have imagined. there’s is simply no constitutional measure that can guard against something like this
Maya Sen

A few days after Trump put Bhutan on his black list, ICE has detained Bhutanese people who are legal permanent residents and refused to explain the detainments to local officials.
Radley Balko

increasingly convinced that DOGE isn't so much an office of the white house or a federal advisory committee as much as it is a criminal organization in the RICO sense
Joshua Erlich

It is, in fact, possible for a small number of dedicated individuals to affect real change by putting pressure on a system's weakest points. It is exactly what Trump and his ilk have been doing since 2015.
John Brown stan account

Le Monde reporting that a French scientist traveling to Houston to attend a conference was denied entry to US after a search of his phone and computer revealed messages critical of Trump's science cuts, "which [says CPB] conveyed hatred of Trump and could be qualified as terrorism". Computer confiscated
Paul Cohen

The Fed's inflation expectations for 2025 are now 2.7%, up from 2.5% in December and 2.1% before the election.
Steve Rattner

The administrative machine Dems built in post-WWII years is one of the great wonders of the world, responsible for untold miracles, but it was built, and exists, under well-funded, non-stop attack. All the design choices, and all its current features, must be understood in that context.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

It seems like when you write a decision giving the President king-like powers, you shouldn't be indignant when he acts like a king:


Melissa Murray @profmmurray.bsky.social

"All I can say is that on this earth there are plagues and there are victims - and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the plague." –Albert Camus
Hari Kunzru

If you were outraged by the crimes against civilians on Oct 7th but not by the many more crimes against civilians *since* Oct 7th – just this week: kids being burned from head to toe; having their limbs amputated without anesthetic – then you don’t actually care about crimes against civilians.
Mehdi Hasan

Cartoon by Bill Bramhall:


Jon Cooper

The real problem is that Musk is, in a way, torching his own cars.
John Schwartz

Trump on USAID: "Look at the fraud that we've caught. We've caught so much fraud." (DOGE in fact has not caught any fraud
Aaron Rupar

I don't think people understand the *massive* gulf between fire injuries/deaths and traffic violence. Here's an example:
Average annual fire injures in Berkeley: 2
Average annual traffic injuries in Berkeley: 694
Warren Wells, AICP

Trump perpetually acts shocked and outraged to discover incredibly basic facts about our system of government. Yes, judges sometimes block the acts of elected officials, even popular acts, when they violate the law or Constitution. Congrats on making it through 3rd grade social studies.
Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social

The people who (wrongly) insist Social Security is a scam are trying to turn it into one.
Kevin M. Kruse

Tina Louise has spent the last 30 years as a reading tutor for New York City school kids — none of whom recognize the GILLIGAN'S ISLAND star as anything more than "Ms. Tina".


Will McKinley

Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative). This isn't partisan opposition to Trump—it's the judiciary functioning as intended by cutting across partisan lines to uphold the Constitution.
Adam Bonica

If cartels are "terrorists" and fentanyl is a "WMD," then those terms have no meaning. Also, Trump is probably going to invade two of our allies soon.
Radley Balko

Would like to report some gang tattoos:


Rebecca Solnit

This bit from the White House press secretary has been sticking in my craw (sorry, I had old southern grandmothers) all day. "to maybe save themselves from being in one of these fun videos." Fun videos = 2025 version of lynching postcards.
Ansley Erickson

Four top officers at Tesla have sold over $100 million in shares since early February. They’re cashing out because they see the writing on the wall. Tesla stock is gonna tank after earnings.
Art Candee

It’s only been a day and we have six credible family reports from Reuters and Washington Post that missing men were not in a gang
Jacqueline Sweet @jsweetli.bsky.social

Gang member, terrorist, communist: these are things you call people when you want people to accept the violation of a person’s constitutional and human rights. Trump and company decide first what they want to do to someone or a group of people and then later pick the smear.
onekade

The fact that the corporate legacy media is even having this event shows how little they understand the moment we are in and how little they intend to fight back. Support fearlessly independent media.
Marc Elias

People need to be crystal clear about something: The requirement that the government ANSWER to a court on the legal basis for detaining someone is literally the core liberty right (habeas corpus). If the government says they don’t have to do that bc “national security,” YOU can be disappeared.
Asha Rangappa

“One had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.” –Ida B. Wells
John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social

A great deal of trouble we face now is that those in power assume everyone working for the public good has to be part of a grift because *they literally cannot conceive of a public good*. They are broken, deranged people, almost to a one. I'm struggling with the response to this.
John Rogers

One of the best photos I have seen in response to “why don’t you wear a suit”:


Adam Parkhomenko

Hi, I'm the guy who used to oversee the federal government's agency IT telecommunications contracts. [Integrating Starlink into the White House complex] is extremely bad. There is absolutely no need for this. Not only is it a huge security exposure, but the simplest explanation for this is that it is meant to be a security exposure.
Waldo Jaquith

israel is committing genocide against palestine and the foundation of the united states is being torn apart to punish the people who think this is bad.
Marisa Kabas

Our Secretary of Defense almost certainly has more threatening/extremist tattoos and has more credibly been accused of sexual assault than almost all of the people being sent to El Salvador. No exaggeration.
KatherineHawkins

I'm still low key freaked out from a meeting this morning where someone tried to be reassuring and said "we will all survive this," referring to federal changes. No, we actually all won't. And neither will our government. It feels like C0vid denialism writ even larger. This evening my state rep, speaking at a neighborhood meeting, said that a third of MN's spending is from federal $$. Half of that is for Medicaid. I live in a solid DFL district. She said for anyone w/ friends or relatives w/ GOP state reps to ask them to call to make it clear how MNs are affected.
Heidi @laflaneuse.bsky.social

Funny how overuse of the term "fascist" supposedly makes its power infinitesimal but overuse of the term "socialist" makes the term even more radioactive. I wonder what the difference between the two cases is...
Hank G @neqone.bsky.social

What is the best and worst movie tagline and poster ever made? Sit down, everyone, we already have a winner:


Robert Moffitt @justplainbob.bsky.social

A US-born citizen was walking near Chicago in January. ICE snatched him off the street, handcuffed him, threw into a van. His wallet, which contained his ID, was confiscated. He was detained for 10 hours before being released without a record of what occurred.
Aura Bogado

If the Supreme Court ultimately agrees with what the gov't is arguing today, that the President has broad Article II powers that would permit it to deport people & there can be no judicial review, then literally no one is safe.
Joyce White Vance

Understand that this El Salvador gulag deportation was done partly in order to make the fascist video that the president now transmits, with his fascist message. The cameras are all set up in advance.
Timothy Snyder

They've disappeared the 54th Massachusetts, which was the first Black regiment fielded in the Union army. But the same people actively campaign to keep US military bases named after confederate traitors. The people behind this are simply not Americans.
Phineas

If climate change is a religion and scientists are its high priests… where’s our tax exemption and housing allowance?
Katharine Hayhoe

Unless you wear a red hat:


Ron Filipkowski

When you read these stories, always remember Elon Musk called his own immigration status a "gray area" when he came to the U.S. as a student. Musk dropped out of school and started doing things his student visa didn't permit.
Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social

I think often of the Texas women in a tv panel going, "I don't have a problem if they come here legally" who, when told "entering to seek asylum IS legal", went, "well, then it shouldn't be." Because racism and xenophobia was always the point, the "but legally" the fig leaf for hatred.
azteclady

I think people are mistaken when they say the chuds are "mistakenly" destroying real research in an attempt to target Marxist cultural anthropologists or whatever. Republicans are trying to destroy **universities** because they sustain communities where Democratic voters live.
Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social

If health studies that follow people for decades get halted, you can't just start them up again in four years. All the work and data will be lost. Imagine everything we wouldn't know if the Framingham Heart Study had been cut halfway through.
Mignon Fogarty @grammargirl.bsky.social

It’s really grim how quickly they dropped the Guantanamo stuff when El Salvador presented itself as a willing and eager accomplice, able to both be more heinous at greater scale, and a more effective option for evading American law and courts.
Andy Craig

Do you think, if Joe Biden was like “we’re going to cause a recession but after that we’ll have a golden age,” that the Washington Post would say “oh he’s just not explaining his plan very well”?


Will Stancil

Folks should take a look at JD Vance’s Twitter timeline and then think about how the national press has covered him vs. how they covered VP Harris. Racial and gender bias are a heckuva drug for some in the political press.
David Darmofal

The distance between a legal resident who's not a citizen being deported without due process and a citizen being deported without due process is a hell of a lot shorter than many folks seem to believe, and when it does happen to a citizen, just remember it started here and who was quiet in response.
Charlotte Clymer

What you are all missing is that the binding ruling was issued from the bench in the morning  - long before the deportation flight ever took off from the US. The judge explicitly held that the ruling from the bench was binding, and compliance must start at that point and not await the written order.
Optimistic Justice Warrior @rozoruminations.bsky.social

A Great Paradox of Our Times: Institutional DEI was/is mostly performative, lacking substance and even sincere intent. Backlash against DEI is substantive and driven by real racism, sexism, and bigotry
PL Thomas EdD

I hate the way that man posts random inflammatory shit at all times of day and night. It reminds me of how an abusive partner will wake you up or prevent you from sleeping with demands to “talk” or accusatory arguments out of nowhere.
Leah McElrath

If you let the executive deport people to a foreign gulag just by pronouncing the word “terrorism,” then expect to be called a “terrorist” soon yourself.
Timothy Snyder

God, that was hard to bear. Students told a physics town hall that grad schools have rescinded admission. NSF proposals are censored for words like “bias,” even when the meaning is technical. Physics curricula are being banned by school districts for encouraging girls.
George Musser

America hasn’t felt this upside down since I was a child in an internment camp:


George Takei

These are (among) the stories that need to be told, by the people who are experiencing them, in ways that their families and communities can understand.  If the sound is these attacks on science is silence… then clawing back what we’ve lost will be even harder, possibly impossible.
Kate Starbird

Legal residents. Tourists. No crimes. No warrants. No attorneys. No due process. Indefinite detention. Torture. Deportation. Forced labor. No hope. That’s the world as it is under this fascist administration. It will only get worse. We are less than two months in. It can happen to anyone next.
Conrad Lange Zbikowski

I dunno man, if the White House can point to people from Latin America and say "gang member," and point to people from the Arab world and say "terrorist" or "antisemite," and those designations lead directly to detention or worse, I think we have to acknowledge we're in a pretty bad place.
Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social

You may not recognize it at first, but life in this country will never be the same if people stop coming from abroad because they are not guaranteed protection under the law.
Ryan Enos

The easiest political ad ever is that the richest man in the world is killing the poorest people in the world just so he can get richer. If you can't inspire a movement with that, get the fuck out of the game.
The Rude Pundit

Imagine having enough money to SAVE the lives of millions of humans and instead using it to buy your way into the government so you can cut funding and instead kill millions of people.
James Introcaso

Tesla protest in Tucson AZ and all I can think is "holy shit, look at that fucking stroad!".


American Fietser

Car infrastructure is a barrier to civic engagement.
Sarah Goodyear

Streets get this wide because they are built to accommodate volumes 20 years in the future, assuming an annual traffic growth rate of ~2% (sometimes more or less, depending on the preferences of the jurisdiction). This is pseudoscience, pure and simple, but it has real-world consequences.
Warren Wells, AICP

Think about how no one under 30 knows what pensions are, it's a totally alien concept. The GOP goal is to make all government services as alien and unfamiliar. Imagine in a decade, trying to explain to a 20 year old what social security, libraries, grad school, the EPA, OSHA, mass vaccination, ADA.
Pookleblinky


John Cusack

I am ethnically Eastern European and I do not believe that the same playbook that works with men who sit on tree stumps getting blackout drunk at 9 am is going to work with men whose existence falls apart when the wifi goes down or when they can't park directly in front of the store. Been coming around to the idea that the ultimate safety valve against Trumpist authoritarianism is going to be White Americans' pathological inability to endure material privation. Republicans think their constituents are like Russians or Hungarians instead of the softest people in human history.
Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social

Genuinely believe federal judges should be issuing arrest warrants for the president right now.
A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social

Politics hasn't been this simple in a long time: do you think it's good for one man to exercise unchecked, arbitrary power or not. Those are the two available ideologies right now
I am no longer kidding @internethippo.bsky.social

If Watergate happened today, it would just be Saturday and forgotten the next week.
David Ho

Trump spent $61 billion to bail out farmers during his first term. These funds were not appropriated by Congress but drawn from the CCC, a Depression-era mechanism allowing the USDA to borrow from the Treasury.
Hoodlum @nothoodlum.bsky.social

I love how everyone has figured out that Tesla is not a startup unicorn, isn’t an AI company, isn’t a technology stock. They are a plain old car company with mostly aging models that are eclipsed by their competitors, with the aura of Nazi support for any of their buyers. #TeslaTakedown
Exploramental

While the Russian Useful Idiot in the White House is busy claiming bullshit wartime authority to further his efforts destructing Democracy, just a reminder that everything he has said is a lie & everything that he says going forward will be a lie.  As for his enablers, screw them.
Fred Guttenberg

“If empathy is a sin, sin boldly.”


Willow @salixwrosette.bsky.social

I haven't heard anything yet from either the VFW or the American Legion about the cuts to the VA and all the veterans unjustly fired from the other federal agencies. Either you represent veterans or you are just another bar. Have you forgotten how to fight?
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob.bsky.social

Continuously proving the earth is round & water is wet makes a society go absolutely nowhere fast.
SailorLife @sailorjourno.bsky.social

watching how quickly all this is happening and thinking back to the senate saying they can't act without permission from the parliamentarian
Ken Klippenstein

One reason this government can so easily frame protesters as terrorists is that others—including some at universities—have already laid the groundwork. When we treat students engaged in constitutionally protected speech like criminals, we make it easier for authoritarian governments to do the same.
Hakeem Jefferson

I grew up understanding that midlife crises were buying a porsche and having an affair  not burning down the fucking country because your kid wants to be called they
Atrios @eschatonblog.com

Trump was always a terrible person, but the experience of being president and then losing the election turned him *purely* evil. There's no angle, no point of leverage, no touchstone in reality.
Adam Kotsko

AP Exclusive: Trump administration workforce cuts at the federal agencies that oversee the nation's dams are jeopardizing their ability to provide reliable electricity, provide water for irrigation and control flooding, workers and dam-safety experts warn.
Martha Bellisle

Exquisite Roman cobalt blue glass cup signed by master glassmaker ‘Ennion’. AD 30-70. Ennion was the first glassmaker to ‘brand’ his work by incorporating his name into the mould’s design. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Adria. Photo by Leonardo.disimon:


Alison Fisk

Sincerely baffled that the Senate thinks that shutting down all peaceful routes to defend the US government and support our autonomy as citizens will end well. Like what are they imagining will happen when they can’t be reached and they’re stripping money for food and clean water?
Kaitlin Is Just Getting Started @gothamgirlblue.com

Several Minnesota Republican Senators have authored a bill to declare "trump derangement syndrome" as a mental illness. I know this isn't a serious bill... But the idea that Republicans would declare those in opposition to a particular leader as a "mentally ill," sounds a lot like something leaders in a banana republic would have done.
@maryfpoppins.bsky.social

Still can’t get over Elon constantly worrying that he’s going to be assassinated, showing up to public events with a bulletproof vest while … carrying his toddler son on his shoulders.
Kevin M. Kruse

Someone really needs to point out to Bret Stephens types that burning down the entire university to get to the ethnic studies department is unlikely to work, because lots of people who would otherwise throw them to the wolves now see themselves as de facto on the same side as them.
If you make opposition to things like land acknowledgements explicitly tied to a fucking neo segregationist political project, you will get more, not less of them, because lots of people who otherwise find them irritating or stupid will be negatively polarized. A really sort of funny thing is this is the *exact same critique* that people like Bret Stephens make about left wing activists all the time, that their extreme behavior is alienating moderates. Sometime they’re even right! But they can’t look in a mirror here.
William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social

Calling someone racist is treated as a character slur rather than a description of behavior. And that’s part of why we’re here. Because at this point you can’t even point out racist behavior without being attacked or having someone retreat. So it’s used by abusers and grifters to shut down convos. And this is why they wanna shut down DEI because DEI would have quantified and started ( only started) making certain things that depended on illegibility .. legible.
Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon @blackamazon.bsky.social

Didn’t Mark Andreesen get his big break developing Mosiac at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois? Good thing for him no one was sneering about federal funding for universities when he needed it
Kevin M. Kruse

Whoever is doing this in the UK deserves an award:


Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social

One of my favorite facts about the Underground Railroad is that Allan Pinkerton, whose name today is synonymous with union busting, helped runaway slaves reach Canada. He also gave material aid to John Brown and offered his detectives as spies for the Union. People are complicated, yo.
The Alternate Historian

There’s a lot of great stuff coming out about “abundance” and meanwhile the titans of the tech industry have embraced bizarro world degrowtherism, blocking housing in their backyards, destroying basic science research, and fearmongering about vaccines. Marc Andreessen said “it’s time to build” but the tech-right political/economic agenda is very clearly a fundamentally destructive project rather than a constructive one, and that’s being reflected in the economy
James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social

Trump and Musk are basically trying to deskill America:
1) kill all white-collar jobs and replace them with AI
2) kill universities
3) use tariffs to turn the U.S. into an economic island manufacturing, oil and ag hub
4) empty the cities
5) push men into manual labor and women back into the kitchen
David Atkins @davidoatkins.bsky.social

they look at russia — a stagnant backwater — with envy
jamelle @jamellebouie.net