BlueSky April 2025, Part 2

And now the second half of April 2025 in reverse chronological order, which means it starts with April 30 and goes backward to about April 15. Here's the first half of the month.

Yesterday, I left off in the midst of Trump's illegal renditioning of people to El Salvador and kidnapping student visa-holders. The financial implosion from Trump's tariffs continued. The Trump administration began dismantling AmeriCorps and took on Harvard (and other universities), and it finally got some push back on that. Elon Musk's bizarre need to breed a crew of sons with surrogates he recruits online was exposed further. Public opinion on Trump's actions became increasingly negative, sometimes reaching levels as low as the bubonic plague.

As usual, I have 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.

___

RFK Jr. is a disgusting liar. This is psychotic. He claimed today that "during the Biden administration, HHS became a collaborator in child trafficking, and for sex, and for slavery"—and that there are "300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration." This is complete bullshit.
Adam Keiper

Why are fewer women using AI than men? Because if I wanted someone to confidently make up answers to my questions I would simply ask a man
Laura Jedeed

I could be wrong about this but I really think most Americans do not want to be forced to “do their own research” about food and drug and product safety and would rather that the government agencies that have been sorting that all out for them for decades not be obliterated in the name of “efficiency.


Katie Mack @astrokatie.com

“And I’m like, what do you mean, you ‘do your own research’? You running a double-blind study in your living room, dawg?” –A guy walking ahead of me with his friends on a NYC sidewalk in 2021, also my favorite overheard dialogue of the entire pandemic
Emily St. John Mandel

Howard Lutnick: "It's time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. This is the new model where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life and your kids work here and your grandkids work here. We let the auto plants go overseas."
Aaron Rupar

This is the future Lutnick has planned for you and your kids. For his kids? Well, Lutnick appointed his sons Brandon and Kyle, ages 27 and 28, CEOs of the investment firm he led, overseeing 14,000 employees. I’m sure he did an extensive search and they were the most qualified.
Sherrilyn Ifill

I just want one reporter, ONE, to say “there’s a lot more evidence that you are a rapist than Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.”
Jon Cryer @mrjoncryer.bsky.social

I am sick and god damn tired of everybody pretending that generative AI is the next big thing. The media is complicit in accepting fantastical nonsense - both in the numbers put out by OpenAI and the silly jobs created by Anthropic - and it has to stop. Large Language Models and their associated businesses are a $50 billion industry masquerading as a trillion-dollar panacea for a tech industry that’s lost the plot. The tech and business media must change their ways, or risk repeating these cycles forever. Generative AI is a remarkable con — a just-good-enough simulacrum of human expression to get it past the gatekeepers in finance and the media, knowing that neither will apply a second gear of critical thinking beyond "huh guess we're doing AI now." It's a disgrace. It's blatantly obvious that generative AI is a bubble. The returns and products just aren't there, and yet the media compliantly prints whatever OpenAI wants, even when it's insane things such as "they'll make $3bn from an agent product that barely exists in 2025."
Ed Zitron

"Your health records will be on the block chain."
"Everyone will live in the Metaverse."
"All art will be NFTs."
"Generative AI will replace the need for humans."
We need to reckon with the reality that the tech industry no longer creates things that anyone wants.
Ashley Lynch

Considering there are still dupes out there going, "he just wants to prevent chronic disease!" I feel the need to point out that RFK Jr. has been working on these issues for decades and has not bothered to learn the most elementary facts about how vaccines or the government work.
Michael Hobbes

Cartoon with caption by my buddy @jackhauen.bsky.social:


Gabrielle Drolet

We made a deliberate choice as a nation, until now, not to have a police state. We siloed off federal data and put in place laws, regulations, policies and internal norms to prevent the federal government from putting together everything it knows about you into one place. Trump is ending all that.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

The speed with which Congress not having the power of the purse, law and the Constitution be damned, has been normalized by the press is the most terrifying thing to me.
Dan Murphy @bungdan.bsky.social

They will try to distract us from things that are horrible with things that are ridiculous.
Bethany Albertson @albertsonb2.bsky.social

My question is whether Judge Hannah Dugan will still be allowed to hear cases while the case against her plays out. Because if she gets suspended, that becomes a pretty convenient way for Trump to purge the entire judicial system of anyone who doesn't show fealty.
Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social

We got our answer. Dugan is suspended.
Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social

Using uniformed military as political backdrops causes the public to consider them political forces, a dangerous thing in a free society.
Kori Schake

gretchen whitmer completely misreading the moment and tanking her presidential hopes in the span of a few weeks caught me a bit off guard. never followed her too closely but it seemed that she was normal and even savvy. if you’re a Dem doing “anti-woke” posturing you’re an idiot, but at least there’s a logic to it. if you’re *speaking at Trump rallies* I really don’t know what to say
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

It's fun to remember how Republicans insisted Biden wasn't running his own White House and then hear Trump assert in an interview: "I'm not the one making this decision."
Kevin M. Kruse

#BuffaloNYProtest:


Country Over Party @crazyheart007.bsky.social

whining out loud during a televised interview that the reporter should let you lie because they owe you for the interview is pretty wild
Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social

Harriet Tubman [supposedly revered today] would have been dragged on social media based on how people are. Accused of supporting *violence* due to her close friendship with John Brown and her history of de-arresting enslaved people. Accused of being a religious *zealot* Accused of being a grifter because she was ALWAYS fundraising... LOL.. the list is long.
Prisonculture

There's tons of evidence that Trump genuinely thinks that F-35s are literally invisible.
Michael Paulauski @mike10010100.bsky.social

And that asylum seekers came from insane asylums.
Radley Balko

Car supremacy is kind of a fascinating tic of conservative ideology to me: They can only conceive of liberty within the structures of the status quo. Driving in a dense city is *theoretical* freedom but in practice it’s oppression. Meaningful freedom is walking, biking and regular public transit.
Michael Hobbes

Also see: healthcare. Private healthcare is *theoretically* more free in that there are more options (for the wealthy), but *functionally* worse for more people. It's slight of hand.
Atalanta @atalantadoll.bsky.social

Dems bend over backwards to appease farmers and what do they get out of it? They are a small minority of people who are generally the most reactionary right wingers in the country. They back plans like Trump's tariffs with the knowledge that they will get a gov handout to mitigate their suffering.
The Alternate Historian

The U.S. Secretary of Transportation hates the greatest public transit system in the United States.  That explains a lot.
davidrlurie

As usual every US economic graph is just another way of telling you when Reagan was elected.


Phineas

Clay Jackson, a Texas lawyer, provided basic legal advice to an immigrant family fearing deportation. Then, two officers visited him at his home, accusing him of "obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation." Then, after speaking publicly, he was fired from his job at a Fortune 500 company
Judd Legum

The entire legal community is being threatened into de facto abolishing the US system of legal representation
Jake Grumbach

Economists now saying the average—AVERAGE—annual hit American households will face because of Trump’s trade war will be $5,000!!
Clara Jeffery

I see the already historically unpopular president is exploring how to get the military involved in “assisting” local law enforcement just a few weeks before the real shortages caused by his inept economic policy start hitting. Probably nothing to worry about.
Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social

The price of racism? Was your freedom. Was it worth it?
Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon @blackamazon.bsky.social

Just about everyone in Trump’s circle is profoundly evil and corrupt, and yet Stephen Miller somehow always manages to make the rest of them look like amateurs.
Brent Toderian

A small harbinger of spring:


Olivia When

Fully on board with dems running for office promising to reinstate fired federal employees and jail this administration’s various criminals, but let’s go ahead and add “we will seize by eminent domain any national parkland sold to developers”
Dennis B. Hooper

randomly watching a documentary about led zeppelin and TIL: jimmy page and john paul jones were session musicians for the shirley bassey goldfinger theme.
Tom Tomorrow

Streets are not “closed” when they’re free of cars; they’re car free. They’re safer. They’re full of people. They aren’t “closed.” Language matters.
@fulllanefemme.bsky.social

Preparing for severe weather events and for public health crises have a great deal in common. Both are largely lose-lose propositions from a PR perspective. Which is a huge fucking problem! Prepare and avoid? You're accused of over-reacting. Fail to prepare and disaster? Why didn't you do more?!
Tinman contra la caste @bcmfietser.bsky.social

Wherever there’s a Black woman with an opinion, there’s a white man with a beard waiting to tell her she’s wrong.
Ally Henny

Now that his polling is underwater on every issue across the board I’m looking forward to seeing what the fallback position is for the Sensible Centrists whose argument was, “You shouldn’t oppose him on this, he’s got public opinion on his side!” (My money is on “OK, oppose him, but Not Like That.”)
Tim Carvell

Trump is cancelling the Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment. I don't want to hear one word about "cancel culture" from the right wing ever again.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

Billionaires ramped up support for Trump in 2024 and are now watching their fortunes plummet (-7.4% already). Not surprising for a GOP admin—it's history repeating itself. The billionaires who attended Trump's inauguration are faring even worse—they are down a combined $194B YTD, a 17.5% haircut:


Adam Bonica

We talk a lot about social media radicalizing the population but it's been far more efficient at radicalizing public figures. Humans are not designed for the amount of feedback being a public figure on social media provides. Whether it's praise or criticism, receiving an avalanche of nonstop attention is profoundly corrosive to your brain.
Michael Hobbes

It's why social media has, if anything, had a profoundly anti-social effect on society. It only works if everyone is a 'reasonable person.' Sadly, that isn't the case; add in commercial and other nefarious interests, and the resulting cocktail is most likely psychological poison.
Equiton Press

there are some days where i have more people mad at me online than my ancestors would have had mad at them in their entire lives. there is functionally no difference between this and being cursed by a witch
@cait.bsky.social

Serious question: What is the non-sociopathic policy argument for eliminating FEMA?
David Roberts @volts.wtf

It’s so funny that conservatives and billionaires have convinced themselves  their ideas are unfairly discriminated against—even though almost all media in the US is corporate owned. Meanwhile, Marxism is so genuinely absent from US discourse that most Americans can’t even define it.
Max Berger

I will never not be bitter over the fact that Minneapolis had a massive street car system in the first half of the 1900s that ultimately got shut down in the 1950s.
Audrey, friend of eggbug @audreydog.online

Eternally ashamed of my gender and my generation:


David Roberts @volts.wtf

ICE is now asserting it's a federal crime for bystanders to request that masked people in plain clothes show identification as they're handcuffing folks and stuffing them into unmarked vans.
Jèf Uphoff

Another frame constricting our imagination is the belief that if one names a problem one must also have a solution to propose. This incentivizes ignoring problems or falling back on cliches.
Jeff Sharlet
 
You can’t say criminals don’t deserve due process when due process is the thing that decides if they're criminals. Otherwise you're just kidnapping people you don't like.
God @godpod.bsky.social

NEW: Trump on Wednesday quietly pardoned Paul Walczak, a healthcare executive sentenced just 2 weeks ago for tax crimes. His mother and sister had played a role in an unrelated  scheme to publicize Ashley Biden’s stolen diary ahead of the 2020 election.
Ken Vogel

Let’s start with the basics:


George Takei

Vance's Easter visit to Rome clogged its streets with a 40-vehicle entourage. He also demanded the Coliseum be closed so he and his family could tour it alone. Tourists who properly booked slots in advance got screwed. He's apparently the first to make that demand. Then he didn't bother to show up.
Radley Balko

It's not just Vance – the sense of unearned entitlement is a defining feature of this administration. People who know their careers are built on a grift respond by self-righteously demanding deference and respect. "Did you even say thank you?"
Don Moynihan

Since Trump told us that we have millions of dangerous criminals here, it's really pathetic that he's wasting taxpayer dollars deporting a 2 year old.
Dean Baker

It is not lost on me that a man who attended the funeral of Pope Francis also deported a child with metastatic cancer, innocent people to a gulag, and feels not one shred of  remorse about either.
Anthea Butler

Reminder that words matter. You can’t “deport” a US citizen. You might be kidnapping, disappearing, exiling, expelling, illegally removing, etc., but you’re not “deporting” a US citizen.
Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social

Steel yourself for the “that toddler with cancer was no angel” takes that are coming
Costa Samaras

Aside – Has anyone asked him a question in the last two months that doesn't start with a preliminary "HUHH?!?" before he can actually answer the question?
The Wet Tank Tops

Mendocino Coast rhododendrons on a beautiful drizzly Friday evening:


Megan P @megawatts.bsky.social

According to three members of Congress, Rumeysa Ozturk has been repeatedly denied access to her lawyer, refused asthma medication despite attacks, forced to endure extreme temperatures, and denied religious accommodations. Her ‘crime’? An oped in a school newspaper.
Nathan Kalman-Lamb

The Trump administration is literally kidnapping and torturing people.
Judd Taylor

Under German law, if a person is determined to have worked at a death camp, that individual can be charged as an accessory to murder for every single person ever killed in that camp during their time there. A 94 year old man was convicted in 2016 for 170,000 murders. Just something to think about.
Alice @nolas-socks.bsky.social

Two things are true. This is the country we have always lived in. This is what it has always been like for millions of people. It's nevertheless worse now.
Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social

Donald Trump turned due process into a four-year circus and then as President decided others weren’t worthy of it.
altNOAA

Shanghai-to-Beijing high-speed rail, 50 trips a day, takes 4 hours and 15 minutes, and runs roughly the same distance as NYC to Chicago or Seattle to San Francisco or Atlanta to Houston. Construction began in 2008 and was completed by 2011. (Can you imagine?)
Bill Lindeke

"waste, fraud and abuse" is one of the great pieces of propaganda in the last 25 years. It's astonishing how the mainstream media just repeats it over and over again with absolutely no seeming awareness that it's just propaganda used to attack the social safety net.
Bryan @bryanformhals.com

PhD Timeline:


Randall Munroe @xkcd.com

Texas bookstores erupt over a new censorship bill that would allow a parent to sue them if their child reads a book with a sex scene or LGBTQ+ characters. So-called "harmful to minors" laws are being introduced across the country to force censorship of libraries, schools, bookstores and websites.
Mike Stabile

New NYT/Siena Poll:
—Trump's approval rating is 42% vs. 54% disapprove
—59% of voters think Trump's 2nd term in office is "scary"
—54% say Trump is "exceeding the powers available to him"
—Trump has negative approval in all policy areas

SIENA POLL
Yonah Freemark

It’s pretty hilarious how unless your baby is clad head to toe in pink and purple (and no other colors) everyone just assumes it’s a boy
Ned Resnikoff

I've ended up on cradle catholic tiktok and the overwhelming vibe is : evangelical converts are in it for the aesthetics. Exact quote: i get it it's beautiful churches very aesthetically pleasing,  you know, coming from people worshiping in shopping malls
Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com

i feel like trumpcoin, and the fact that we never talk about it, is pretty emblematic of the way the press refuses to grapple with trump. it exists in order to pay him bribes. it expressly gives you political access. it does not pretend to have a licit motive. it was a one-day scandal.
rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social
 
Let's say Harris won last year and Vance was holding 10k-20k person rallies where he railed against left-wing "oligarchy." Would the common wisdom be that this was crazy and a waste of time? Or would we be seeing NYT op-eds and A1s about what "oligarchy" is and why the GOP base was on fire about it?
Dave Weigel

When someone is that bad at their ostensible goal, it's good to think about how their stated goal might not really be their goal. DOGE has never been about "saving money." It has been about preventing government from working.
Jonathan Cohn

It's only in a broken unhappy nation that you have to think about the president many times a day. On top of everything else, narcissists are just...exhausting
Bill McKibben

The fertility rate has been declining in the US for over a decade, and we’re currently below the ‘replacement rate’. But Americans are still having more babies than the Europeans and Chinese:


Steve Rattner

Federal agents did not have a warrant when they arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who had been an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, according to court documents.
The Washington Post

Maddow: 88% of the country says no, no, he cannot defy a supreme court ruling. Only 9% say yes he can. And you know, it's not the same thing. But I should mention that 9% is also the proportion of Americans who told yougov this week that they have a favorable view of the black plague
Acyn

How can someone who deliberately posted classified material on Signal — including to family members and a journalist — lecture people about leaks? Plus they are career professionals whereas he’s a career clown. He has lost any vestige of moral authority or integrity that he may have had.
Dr Keith Wilson

BREAKING: The Interior Department just used a fake “energy emergency” to greenlight gas and mining projects on public lands. It’s a lie. There is no energy emergency. This is a giveaway to big oil.
Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com

Today Trump ordered DOJ to investigate ActBlue, which is payment processing platform for basically every progressive organization in the US. Trump is ordering DOJ to disrupt the opposition party. Yesterday Trump personally got $10s of millions in cash from untraceable foreigners in new crypto scheme
David Rothschild @davmicrot.bsky.social

People sometimes ask "what are the crimes" and let me tell y'all, as a lawyer, that intentionally copying, altering, destroying, or disrupting government computer systems is super-duper illegal if you don't have a spotless paper trail authorizing it, which none of these DOGE people do.
Max Kennerly

my endorsement for any democratic presidential candidate who promises to send the entire DOGE team to prison
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

For Easter, a Roman metal brooch in the shape of a rabbit (or hare), with traces of its original enamel decoration still adding a splash of colour. Animal-themed jewelry was popular in the Roman world, especially brooches:


Dr Jo Ball @drjeball.bsky.social

Americans (likely voters, to be precise) support impeachment by 52% in our most recent survey. This includes 55% of independents. And the plot thickens when you look at how they responded to other questions...
Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus.bsky.social

People keep voting for sociopaths because what they want from government is impossible and only liars would promise it to them
bdonnelly

Well, no surprise here: A new study from the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI) found that women are 2X as likely to die during pregnancy in states with abortion bans. Twice as likely. Meanwhile, maternal mortality in pro-choice states fell 21%.
Jessica Valenti

It’s almost like putting politicians in charge of women’s healthcare was…bad actually?
Aubrey Hirsch

Maybe before we start talking about whether AI systems deserve "human rights" we do a better job of guaranteeing those rights to, well, all humans.
Peter Gleick

make america healthy again is all about eating more fast food and making lists of queer and autistic people but does not include cheaper or free healthcare which is interesting
onion person @junlper.beer

biggest divide in american politics is not between left or right. its between people who believe adulthood requires self-discipline and those who do not
@aelkus.bsky.social

As we build more pedestrian spaces, I am begging American DOTs to learn Row of Bollard Technology™. Stop making excuses. Figure out how to install and maintain it. Don't wait for someone to be killed or injured:


Qagggy!

I'd say more precisely that we have people going all in on the idea that self-discipline is about having what it takes to dunk your head in a bowl of ice water every morning rather than having what it takes to treat someone different from you like a human being.
Osita Nwanevu

Gandhi listed the sins as:
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Religion without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.
Paul Lee @paulytheism.bsky.social

I discuss this with students by pointing out the enduring gender gap in crime, which doesn’t (for some reason) lead us to deny due process to *men* on the grounds they’re an extra-dangerous group. As it shouldn’t! But in our quest to identify and incapacitate problem groups, it’s never them.
Roco Foucault

When Fox smears Abrego Garcia as MS-13 while citing a murder committed by a different migrant, they're only making the case for giving him due process stronger. The whole point of due process is to determine who is guilty of such crimes and who isn't!
Greg Sargent

U.S. could face millions of measles cases over the next 25 years if vaccination rates drop 10 percent, according to new research.
Kins @kinsleyayay.bsky.social

Trump’s 100 day job approval polling is worse than any other president in the last 50 years by a minimum -10. It’s incredible that Republicans and business leaders continue to fall all over themselves to appease such a historically incompetent and epically unpopular leader.
feminist next door @emrazz.bsky.social

Number of elected Republicans standing up for the fundamental principle of due process for all:  0.0.
The Massachusetts Spy

‘Bee-eautiful’ gold pendant from Bronze Age Malia, Crete. Usually said to represent a pair of bees placing a drop of honey into a honeycomb. A delightful piece of Minoan jewellery inspired by nature 3,800 years ago! Heraklion Archaeological Museum:


Alison Fisk

Toxicologist here! Eliminating dyes will improve the health of zero Americans. Current synthetic food dyes are not causing health problems, and are often times used because they are actually safer than natural food dyes. Reminder that guns are the #1 cause of death of children but we are going to ban food dyes.
Ryan Marino, MD

Guns are the #1 cause of childhood death in the United States; cars are #2; and we have increasing evidence that air pollution in childhood might be a major source of early death (and dementia) in adulthood. The Trump admin is cancelling and attacking the best efforts to limit each of those
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field

"they are going to end cancer research and kill its top scientists" is the kind of thing that would get you laughed out of the writer's room on saturday morning cartoons and it is literally what's happening
Micah @rincewind.run

No transphobe has ever been able to explain to me why a man would pretend to be a woman in order to abuse and harass women in women-only spaces when cis men abuse and harasses us in the street, in our workplaces, in our homes and literally everywhere else without consequence
Charlotte @charlottor.bsky.social

my plan to get people to start having more kids? make climate change worse. abolish the department of education. also milk is poison
Ahhhhh @nerdjpg.com

Any measure to “persuade” young women to get married and get pregnant that isn’t “because it makes them happy” is a measure to coerce, entrap, and control. It’s rape culture, and it’s dehumanizing as fuck.
feminist next door @emrazz.bsky.social

Our goldenseal plant is finally old enough to flower! And not all of them even flower:


splodinvark

A thought for all the city council members making decisions on bike lanes and parking: If after saying, "I'm all for safety" your next word is, "but" — consider that you may not be "all for safety."
Warren Wells, AICP

Still wrapping my head around a President with 34 felony convictions snatching people off the street if they have a speeding ticket on their record.
Schooley

It's like people in this administration read Leviathan and thought government should also make life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
David Ho

"While anyone can repost an article, researching and writing is hard work that requires time and money. Before you deride 'mainstream media,' note that it is *no longer the mainstream.* It is derision that is mainstream and easy, and actual journalism that is edgy and difficulty." –Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny
Jeff Sharlet

i think it is bad that among the most influential people in government are the monomaniacal adherents of a millenarian tech cult
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

Really need journalists to push back on bullshit [like Homan saying Abrego Garcia] "got more due process than Laken Riley got." When they say this, just ask them point blank: "Are you saying that because one Latino man committed a murder, another Latino man deserves a life sentence? Do you think all Latino men interchangeable?"
Radley Balko

If Laken Riley had been murdered by an abusive boyfriend, which happens about 3 times every day, MAGAs wouldn’t even know her name.
Bob-Parker54

Or in a mass shooting. Or from a complicated pregnancy.
kristibjork.bsky.social

“Experts estimate that drones of all types now contribute to about 70% to 80% of military casualties on both sides.”
Bill Lindeke

White folks commit most of the crimes in the USA. Just to be safe, maybe we should round up white folks and send them off to prisons in foreign countries without a hearing. If u think this is absurd, it's no different than doing the same to folks with brown skin, tattoos, or who speak Spanish.
The March Hare @therealmarchhare.bsky.social

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength":


Alex Steffen

So basically our core biomedical agenda has gone from cancer and heart disease research with major investments in alzheimers/dementia research to jacking up the sperm count of teenage males and a new wild goose for the 'hidden causes' of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social

Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase **you just made up**.
Greg Jenner

The Trump admin is demanding universities institute anti-mask laws for student protesters, holding the schools’ funding as a ransom, while sending secret police in balaclavas to disappear immigrants
Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social

Trump placidly presiding over the largest measles outbreak in 25 years, with no end in sight.
Rachel Maddow

In the late 19th century and before widespread pasteurization, many children under the age of five died of TB from the milk of infected cows. In the 1930s when Iowa mandated tubercular testing of cows, farmers staged riots to prevent scientists entering farms, in some cases prompting martial law
@scoopsstp.bsky.social

I'm listening to argument in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the conservative Christian attack on books with LGBTQ characters in elementary schools, and it is impossible to overstate how contemptuous Sam Alito is of the idea of treating LGBTQ people with respect. He is a rank homophobe. Nancy Mace in a robe.
Jay Willis

As part of the GOP effort to heat up the world beyond survivability, the US Commerce Department has announced plans to impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports of solar panels from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

Goal: Crush universities
Need a policy tool: Civil Rights Act Title VI gives tools to stop funding to universities if they violate someone's civil rights.
Need a violation to allege: Use the Jews!
Using us as a wedge to attack free speech & inquiry does not protect us.
Aaron Sojourner

And it doesn’t even work this way! Title VI only allows revoking the funds of the discriminatory program being federally funded, not the entire institution. And it requires due process
before funds can be halted: a charge, presenting evidence, opportunity to defend and appeal, etc.
David Brody
 
Two headlines in the New York Times today:


StrictlyChristo

If I see another article about birth rates that refuses to grapple with the way having children systematically disadvantages women I swear to god. There is no mystery. Stop pretending there is. We’ve got to do away with credulity for nonsense.
Deva Woodly @devawo.bsky.social

Of the people who have ever lived to age 65, 2/3 are alive today! We've added many years to our lives, not enough life to those years! Some cities are great: Barcelona. Olders go out, are AND feel SAFE. Laugh. Walk. Bike. Chat. Play. Are ALIVE! Cities should make it easier to live Older, Healthier, Happier.
Gil Penalosa

The conservative movement has turned against reality on every scientific issue of our time, from gun violence to climate change to epidemiology. If campuses are ideologically homogenous, it's not because academia has ostracized conservatives. It's because conservatives have ostracized academia. When Republicans take power do they expand "viewpoint diversity"? No. They purge scientists, delete data and promote their own mediocre minds. If you support Trump you are signaling membership in a movement that *hates* science, science is not obligated to pretend otherwise.
Michael Hobbes

This is deranged. Jan. 6 defendants were repped by one of the best public defender offices in the U.S. They were more likely to be released pretrial & got comparatively light sentences. SCOTUS threw out a bunch of convictions, which almost never happens. They got gold-plated due process!


Radley Balko

The MAGA rage won’t be confined to foreigners. A regime that so aggressively curtails and ignores fundamental rights for one group today will not hesitate to violate and suspend them for others tomorrow. It’s never far from “illegal aliens” and “alien enemies” to “the enemy within.”
Thomas Zimmer

Vance didn't convert to Roman Catholicism, he converted to the American Protestant idea of Roman Catholicism. Viewed through that lens he kind of makes sense
Jer @jerandom.bsky.social

Trump and Musk kill Americorps. Why waste money helping people?
Diane Ravitch

These are the things my mom texts me:


Miranda Yaver

When troops get killed because of Hegseth, no one will know since they will bury the story.
Carmela @carmelacruz.bsky.social

I think the only thing more pathetic than being a fascist is being a fascist nepo baby of another fascist
Kate Barrett @thewaether.bsky.social

Touching grass is not enough I need to get stuck in a hollow log
lukelukeluke

Alito releasing an opinion on Easter showing that if he had his druthers he would happily allow the regime to imprison and rendition political undesirables to foreign prisons is exactly the kind of Christian I believe him to be.
Haydon @haydonmp.bsky.social

Will always bother me that Christianity took a holiday celebrating joyous sex and common fecundity and made it into a holiday about a torturous death and esoteric metaphysics. An interesting and creative conversion but a loss in many ways too.
Leah McElrath

I am tired of people acting like Vice-President Kamala Harris didn’t have targeted, pragmatic policies to address just about every damn thing people seem to be mad about.
Eric Lee @ericleeacts.bsky.social

They are very concerned:


Rob @stpaulbikescum.bsky.social

If Jesus had focused more on kitchen table issues and less on unpopular outcasts like lepers and prostitutes, he might have won more support from white working-class Judeans.
New York Times Pitchbot

“When somebody gets pushed onto a subway track in New York City, that is national news,” Litman says. But “on any day there are people who are injured or killed in road rage incidents, and that is local news.”
Will Jones

Some people who never had a real problem in their lives got annoyed by some college kids and decided they must embark on a campaign to save civilization. Now masked men armed to the teeth are going to raid churches on Easter. Congrats guys! Amazing fucking work you did there.
The Alternate Historian

I really have a huge problem with the use of “DEI rollback” because it implies that DEI has made significant impact and there’s any kind of argument to suggest imbalance. But all we have is hurt white feelings and delusion.
Frankie Huang @ourobororoboruo.bsky.social

April 19, 1775 (1 a.m.): Capt. John Parker of the Lexington militia receives word that the British regulars are marching toward the town on their way to Concord. The 46-year-old farmer, mechanic and veteran of the French and Indian War quickly assembles about 130 fighters on the town green. Parker, 46 is "a stout, large framed man of medium height," with a long face—and ailing from tuberculosis that will leave him dead in a matter of months.
250 Years Ago News

WSJ: No confidence. Worst April since the Great Depression:


Howard French @hofrench.bsky.social

Meeting with the victim of one crime to rationalize keeping a man accused of no crime in prison is an evil thing to do.
Patrick Chovanec

Dystopia is the AARP advising older Americans about how to live in a police state
Don Moynihan

I am old enough to remember when a movie character said "PAPERS PLEASE" it was a universally understood signifier of an evil regime
Tom Tomorrow

What if Elon is the first autistic person RFK has ever actually met and that’s why he assumes we don’t pay taxes or go on dates
@gonebabygone.bsky.social

If you’re changing the definition of human rights, it means you plan on violating people’s human rights:


Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social

The government isn't doing universities a favor by channeling federal funding through them. It's using a private entity to realize public goals, to accomplish things that benefit the entire nation. You'd think conservatives who call for privatization all the time would grasp that.
Kevin M. Kruse

Ok so yeah, this has quickly become the #1 misunderstanding about the canceled grants. the grants are not “subsidies” or “entitlements” to Harvard or Princeton or whatever. they aren’t going into universities’ endowments. they are competitive contracts won by these universities to do research
Maya Sen

I, for one, think the median congressional Democrat should be to the left of David Brooks.
Seth Masket @smotus.bsky.social

Reminder that Americans can sign up for Canadian food recall alerts at the website below. We have pretty rigorous standards and share a lot of the same food as the US, so it’s a good back up option for when the FDA decides not to disclose (or for if trump cuts their funding)
Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social

Shark Tank ranks among the most tone-deaf TV Shows on the air right now. People pitching billionaires for small amounts of funding for things mostly made in China.
quick13

Thirsty Iris:


Rick Smith @rick8437.bsky.social

A personal pet peeve: Politicians and car owners who talk about “cyclists” as though they’re a distinct human species. In reality, urban cyclists are just regular folks who decided to travel by bike. Many, many more people will make that decision if a city provides high-quality infrastructure.
David Zipper

“Constitutional crisis” is really not an adequate term to describe an aggressive effort to undo every government achievement of the past century
Seth Masket @smotus.bsky.social

The CFPB is one of those things where like, virtually every single person in the United States would support its existence if they were told the truth about what it is/does. Or used to do, I guess.
Sam Biddle

The remarkable resilience being shown by some of our judges and courts just shines a spotlight on the cowardly silence of the legislative branch.
Peter Gleick

I really would like people to not focus on 2026, but to realize that the way things are going in America, there won't be elections in 2026, or 2028.
Anthea Butler

oh there aren’t any true fascists
well but there are so few fascists
well but they aren’t ALL fascists
how can you say “fascist” about millions of people
ok they do talk fascist but they can’t act fascist
ok maybe they can but I’m sure they won’t
you saying “fascist” made them be fascist
A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social

What the Republicans are doing is PROPAGANDA, not messaging.
Mary Annaïse Heglar

Republicans talking about cities with racist disdain doesn’t spawn any media think pieces but if anyone from a city questions the motives of a rural voter, get them to a fainting couch.
Dave Zaffrann

Bob Dylan on the bus:


Chris Steller

At every turn they're removing all the safeguards -- *all* of them. Disease, cybersecurity, financial and banking protections, housing, disability, inequity, social security, environmental, alliances with other nations, all of this and everything else. A willful and cruel dismantling of government.
Chuck Wendig

“People call [the antiscience movement] ‘misinformation’ or ‘the infodemic’ as tho it’s just random junk out there on the Internet or social media, and it’s not— it’s organized, it’s well-financed, and it’s politically motivated.” —Dr. Peter Hotez
Brent Toderian

Growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp, Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, saw his best friend killed by an Israeli soldier. Rather than calling for vengeance, since immigrating to the U.S., he has delivered 100+ lectures extolling empathy as key to a resolution in the Middle East. He is a practicing Buddhist, he said.
Jennie Coughlin

JK Rowling, like Musk, demonstrates why the ultra-wealthy cannot be allowed to be so: because they use their wealth to buy the world they want to live in
Abby IRL @popeguilty.bsky.social

“The human being is not an enemy. The enemy is fear, segregation and ignorance.” The words of Mohsen Mahdawi, arrested at his citizenship interview.  The values he expresses are what the USA was supposed to be about, pre-Trump.
Karrie Jacobs @karrieurbanist.bsky.social

People love to talk about how renewable energy will leave coal miners (and thus Appalachia) behind, ignoring the ways they’re already being left behind by the same people who oppose green energy. The “regulatory state” is vital for mine workers and their families.
Emily M

yes, we should build on federal land, but the best way to do that is by building on top of VA parking lots, post offices, and other federal land in already-built up areas rather than just going deeper into exurban sprawl. here’s the VA parking lot in the Bronx just a short walk from the subway:


Sam @samd.bsky.social

At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if we got an executive order announcing a “purge”
Mary Annaïse Heglar

it's hard to find a motivation for DOGE other than 'hatred of the good.' these are bad people fundamentally envious or un-understanding of the idea that you might work or give for others, and attempting to punish it.
BeijingPalmer

imagine how fox would cover it if the biggest obama donor led a baby-making cult
Oliver Willis

Elon using the social media platform he owns to DM random women with the promises of financial rewards to have his children so he can create a compound filled with women in Texas is the sort of thing that sounds like it should be a QAnon conspiracy instead of being a real story from WSJ.
James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social

As I’ve been saying for years, Trump’s pronouns are me/me/me/me/me/me/me.  Everything is always about him.  He has no consideration or empathy for anyone else, and no principles or values other than what’s best for him.
George Conway

If they’re arguing that Harvard hasn’t done enough “in the public interest” to deserve tax exempt status, wait until they get a look at evangelical megachurches!
Kevin M. Kruse

nothing says Make America Healthy Again like stopping the data collection of drug side effects
Rachel Cohen

Remember when only a few Republicans were actively working for Russia? I miss those days.
Gary Bunker @andysocial.com

how the white house press corps hasn't lit up karoline leavitt is beyond me. they're going to replace you with brett swastika of the keto-rahowa podcast at the drop of a hat anyway, you might as well earn it instead of taking it like little worms, writhing in the most prestigious career filth
muscular baby jeb lund @mobute.bsky.social

I went to the Tate Modern yesterday. In the Rothko room with all the Serious Art Connoisseurs there was a ~5 year old kid who walked up to each painting, pointed at it and shouted 'RECTANGLE' at each one in turn, then left the room:


Jon Walmsley @arghzombies.com

In 90 years of social security, we have never had a check bounce or be late, but they want you to believe the system is broken.
Bennie Thompson

It works. The government here largely works. Because we are so spoiled by how well it works, we are letting a fool convince us it is broken.
Tressie McMillan Cottom

Now there's a memorable stat! "Colleges and universities are among America’s most competitive international exporters. In dollar terms, last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined."
Jesse D. Jenkins

When American citizens have to worry about returning to their own country from travel abroad, you ain’t living in a free republic.
Tea Pain @teapainusa.bsky.social

The ridiculous part of Trump's boneheaded effort to reindustrialize America is that without unions, manufacturing jobs are not good jobs
Dean Baker

What have Republicans done for the rest us? Defunded our schools and roads and hospitals and post offices and social safety nets…and for what? To send tax cuts to billionaires. Wake up, friends. They hate us. They laugh at us. The loathe us.
Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social

Someone learned a lesson:


Oregon @oregonthedm.bsky.social

It is time for Democrats to go on the attack, and take away tax-exempt status for every church that unabashedly campaigned for Trump. Take off the gloves, start to destroy the opposing institutions that fund the fascist movement.
Anil Dash

The President of Harvard (student body of 21,278 in 2023) was made to resign over a plagiarism accusation that made front page news. The arrest and indictment of Pastor Robert Morris of Gateway Dallas Church (weekly attendance 25,805 in 2023) for sexually assaulting a 12 year old did not.
Queerhawk @alwaysadorecats.bsky.social

Basic Netflix—$100/year
Spotify Premium—$150/year
Xbox Game Pass—$180/year
NOAA—$21/year for the average US taxpayer
Elizabeth Smith @eeeeelizzzzz.bsky.social

The way Bukele was treated in the oval vs. Zelenskyy is all you need to know.
Karly Kingsley

Defamation law applies to press secretaries too, yes?
Erin Maye Quade

They all laughed as they spoke of an untried man, tortured in a cell with no way out, no hope of justice. From the comfort of a gilded room, wrapped in luxury and power, they laughed. These are not men. These are monsters.
Miss Cami


Chris Hauck

Good news moment: the fruit and nut trees I planted in the last major global meltdown ('20) are starting to bear in time for the 2025 global meltdown
Sarah Taber

The year is 2025. Your right to control your own body has been replaced by incredible breakthroughs in female space tourism.
L O L G O P

I am once again begging people to realize that the law is words on paper and is not self executing. "That's illegal" is not and has never been synonymous with "that's impossible" or "that can't be done." "That's illegal" means "you might get in trouble for that depending on who you are.
Sheryl Weikal (The Leftist Lawyer)

It's genuinely hard to express to sort of normal not politically plugged in non-lawyers *how* lawless the Trump administration is, and I think that's some part of the problem. You sound like you're hyperventilating, but it's just a flat description of what is going on.
Raffi Melkonian @rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social

Remember that Trump’s own undocumented workers — oh yeah, his businesses have hired and exploited the same folks he’s demonized for political gain — paid more in taxes than he did
Gabe Ortíz @tusk81.bsky.social

The right: take over universities, rewrite curriculum, force everyone to study christofascist ideology.
The left: STEM STEM STEM (but only the stuff you can apply we actually don’t care about abstract math lol that’s practically poetry)
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

Don't forget business
Dr. Cara Berg Powers @clbergpowers.bsky.social

I will go to my grave believing that the undergraduate business degree is the most one of the most damaging things to happen to higher education.
John Halloran @profhalloran.bsky.social

Once widespread, smoking is now uncommon in Great Britain:


Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev

"These guys are so clearly guilty of terrorism we couldn't run the risk of basic due process." Sure, sure.
Kevin M. Kruse

This administration is one step away from conducting drone strikes on people in the US.
David Ho

Some stats from 100 days in on congestion pricing:
- Complaints about car-honking are down 70%
- The Holland Tunnel has 65% fewer delays at rush hour;  time to get thru it is down 48%
- 6 million fewer cars
- Half as many traffic-related injuries
- 1.5 million more visitors to BIDs year over year
Amanda Litman

scammers are using LLMs to take up all the slots in community college courses in San Diego as part of a financial aid scam. Hard to see a way this doesn't eventually kill remote learning for these colleges. Huge deadweight loss generated by LLMs.
mtsw

“We are going to deport Italians with tattoos of tribal symbols or a family member’s name on suspicion of ties to The Mafia” would be just as credible, which is to say not at all
Hayes Brown

Trump ordered his DOJ to investigate 2 innocent people who criticized him. That is impeachable.
He has kidnapped people from American Soil with no due process. That is impeachable.
He is defying courts. That is impeachable.
There is nothing about this administration that is constitutional.
Common Sense Matters

I'm gonna need all the blue states to stop focusing on whether or not Canada still likes YOU because YOU are a good one and start fucking recognizing this *entire* country is going off a cliff. No, Canada does not like any of us! AS THEY SHOULD NOT! leave them alone, we got our own shit to focus on!
Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com


Bill Garrison

Harvard is very rich and they aren't the only institution pushing back against trump. Michigan State has been pushing back a lot but they aren't "fancy" so they get less attention.
Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com

DOGE is a criminal conspiracy to defraud the people of the United States
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

I will say this - EVERYONE with power seems to be desperately hoping that unpopularity does the work that consequences need to do
Andrew Tobolowsky @andytobo.bsky.social

Trump pretends to love coal but his administration has been systematically attacking coal miners by slashing health programs, killing regulations, and closing mine safety offices. Meanwhile, one in 20 Appalachian coal miners has the most severe form of black lung
Kim Kelly

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.
Sam Halpert

I gotta say, “women are going to space” sounds a lot nicer than “the ultra rich are taking hyper-polluting joyrides to space while the planet descends into climate chaos”
Emily Atkin @emorwee.bsky.social

Legal permanent resident of the U.S., showing up to apply for citizenship, with no allegations of criminal activity, is arrested and detained by masked police. This is fascism, and that is not a word I use lightly.
Seth Masket @smotus.bsky.social

What do these corporations have in common?
Netflix
Ford
Tesla
T-Mobile
Duke Energy
DISH Network
Metlife
Dominion Energy
United States Steel
In recent years, they all paid their execs more than they paid in taxes. This is what a corporate-rigged system looks like.
Robert Reich

Pretty striking that Trump and Republicans are prepared to destroy our university system, ostensibly in the name of combatting antisemitism, but when there is a blatant act of antisemitism, threatening the life of a Jewish governor, Trump can't bring himself to say a word.
Dean Baker

🚀🚀


Jon Cooper

““Many people don’t realize how high the American quality of life is because...of regulations.This affects airplane safety, baby formula safety, the safety of meat, vegetables and packaged foods, the water that you drink, how you get to work safely and whether you’re safe in your workplace.”
PM2.5 Kills ~9 Million People Worldwide Annually @tkovach.bsky.social

The simple lesson is – however bad you think it will get, you are wrong. Why? Because you are a normal human and they are criminally insane, deranged psychopaths.
Andy Fraser

Someone once said NextDoor is the social network for dogs if they could type. It’s always “what’s that noise?” and “who’s that stranger?” which is exactly what I imagine my dogs would text other neighborhood dogs.
Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social

We've reached the point in our descent into fascism where the Jewish governor's house getting firebombed on Passover by a guy trying to bash his head in with a sledgehammer is overshadowed by the story of the President saying he wants to build foreign gulags for US citizens.
Max Berger

I demand viewpoint diversity in the nation's police forces. From now on, every city has to hire 40% liberals.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

We traded Europe for a guy that builds concentration camps for profit:


Ron Filipkowski