Just before the October 18 No Kings events this Saturday, it's halfway through the month. This has been a month of federal violation of many laws — in U.S. cities and in international waters. Everything from tear gas and pepper balls shot at heads, to extra-judicial killings of people in boats. More children in zip ties, teenagers with boots on their necks, and Black citizens detained inside drugstores.
The government has been shut down for almost the entire month, and the Speaker of the House has given its members a paid vacation so he doesn't have to swear in its newest member, whose signature will result in release of the Epstein files. Oh, and there's a cease fire in Gaza. Let's see if it holds.
As the half-month ended, the state of Louisiana and the Trump regime were arguing in front of the Supreme Court to kill the last part of the Voting Rights Act, one day after Politico reported on the vile racist, sexist, antisemitic, homophobic texts of "young" Republicans, many of whom hold (or held) responsible positions as Republican staffers.
Everything below the line is in reverse chronological order — except some of the images, which I move up or down for better visual balance — and is quoted from the attributed account.
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Pentagon reporters exited the building in unison Wednesday [10/15] after turning in their badges, having refused to sign the Defense Department's press policy. Nancy Youssef called it a "sad day for those who support a free press":
Scott Nover
the president using the office to punish americans that didnt vote for him should really be one of the biggest scandals in americas history
Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social
Trump is in no small part the result of failing to staff up the IRS and send it after white-collar crime, so of course now that he has a second presidency he's planning to use it as a weapon against his political enemies.
Kelsey Atherton
The fact that not only is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is still increasing, but the *rate of CO2 increasing* in the atmosphere is still increasing is true nightmare stuff.
Peter Brannen
Between the vice president's misbehaving "young boys" and the news media's "underage women", I'm starting to think nobody actually knows what a child is?
Hell Ray-ser @sireviscerate.myatproto.social
BREAKING: The Trump administration is doubling its Argentina bailout to $40 billion.
More Perfect Union
so the thing about who framed roger rabbit (1988) is that it's about how corporations conspired to eradicate L.A. streetcars, buy up marginalized neighbourhoods and obliterate it all for freeways and suburbs
Jordyn Marcellus
On some level, it's genuinely hilarious that Republicans have gone from making these nuanced arguments about how wokeism stifles free thought, or how racially disparate outcomes aren't indicative of racism, etc.... to just straight up defending weird dudes who say "I love Hitler."
Radley Balko
Los Angeles County declared a state of emergency because of the ICE raids. I’ll say that again, LOS ANGELES COUNTY DECLARED A STATE OF EMERGENCY BECAUSE OF ACTIONS BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Canna Biskate
Axios: "The most expensive political ad campaign of the year is being run by the Department of Homeland Security." DHS has spent "at least $51 million this year on ads thanking President Trump for securing the border, according to AdImpact."
Aman Batheja
Destroying the Voting Rights Act has been the life's work of John Roberts
economymedicine.bsky.social
The Louisiana argument [in the VRA case] is essentially that you CAN use race to be racist but you CAN'T use race to ameliorate racism.
ElieNYC
“the constitution forbids race conscious remedies” would be news to the people who wrote the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments
jamelle @jamellebouie.net
Justice Sotomayor: sure all the precedents support you (you being the lawyer defending the VRA)- but the argument on the other side is that none of that matters. Respond?
Leah Litman
We live in a racist country and have racists who sit on the Supreme Court, making racist decisions that impact 350 million people for decades. First they abolish the New Deal; then they abolish the Great Society — just so White men can stay in power:
Josh Sternberg
Now, Dems hold 7 of 33 US house seats (21%) across AL, LA, MS, SC and TN. Dems won 37% of 2024 presidential vote in those states. Now Supreme Court may allow those states to eliminate >all< Dem seats by undermining the VRA. Our democracy being chipped away, bit by bit.
Yonah Freemark
Aside from losing many Democratic seats, Black representation in Congress will probably drop from around 14% of seats (nationally representative) to maybe 7 or 8% (not representative)?
Maya Sen
The case is submitted. My prediction is that Section 2 is overturned, 6-3 Kav majority, saying that the Section 2 still *exists* but isn't allowed to do anything.
ElieNYC
The Supreme Court’s majority right wing indicated in oral arguments that they think racism is over on the same day that the vice president defended the “I love Hitler” guy, and that the NYT reported that the current administration plans to accept only white, English-speaking refugees.
Radley Balko
Hard realization that the 2021 “pack the fucking court” people were understating the problem
Goth Brooks @wehrmanm.bsky.social
“the only way people would be in the streets protesting fascism is if they were being paid” lmao I see we’re taking telling on yourself to a whole new level
Nicole Tersigni @nicsigni.bsky.social
Topics Mike Johnson thinks are serious:
- Super Bowl halftime entertainer
- getting a Nobel Prize for Trump
- terrifying naked bike riders
Topics he thinks are not serious:
- Epstein Files
- domestic violence
- being able to keep the govt open
- the neutering of Congress
Kevin M. Kruse
On this day in 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which forbade racial discrimination in access to public accommodations and facilities.
Equal Justice Initiative
I laughed way too hard at this:
BrooklynDad_Defiant! @mmpadellan.bsky.social
There are 23 metro systems in the world with more than 1 billion annual riders. China has 12 of those, including the top 4, and 8/12 have opened since 2004. No other country has more than one such system. More than 250 million annual riders? China has 28/65 systems, and 23 have opened since 2003.
Tom Richardson Ph.D. @cascadetommy.bsky.social
It has been clear for years that a key difference between past instances of book-banning and the present censorship cataclysm is that the banning happening now targets not only books, but librarianship as a profession and libraries as an institution.
Andrew Karre
I’m at a loss for words, and it’s not because I’m surprised; rather, I’m in near despair at the sheer level of coarseness and vulgarity to which large swathes of our polity have sunk. There is an entire portion of our population with absolutely no urge to decency, and it’s heartbreaking:
Michael Feinberg
JD Vance can dismiss the Young Republicans as a college group chat. But let's be clear: the group chat includes a State Senator, a Trump Admin official, and multiple Republican staffers — and some of the worst comments came from folks associated with Mike Johnson, Elise Stefanik, and Mike Lawler.
Santiago Mayer
Whether it's young Democrats expressing their support for DEI or young Republicans saying "I love Hitler,' both sides have expressed controversial opinions.
NY Times Pitchbot
Every time a Democrat gets caught on tape saying like “Some Trump voters are racist” we have a national scandal and JD Vance demands an entirely new kind of apology and meanwhile every Republican group chat is like “Good morning fellow SS members. Who’s ready to respect Hitler today?”
karl rove knausgård @uhactually.bsky.social
This is the result of a lot of people pretending racism is one of the greatest taboos in our culture while failing to address racism substantively. People are appalled by the idea of being called racist while being totally committed to upholding racism throughout society.
Jack Tripper @chadstanton.blacksky.app
The Master Race, ladies and gentlemen.
Frank Conniff
the admin that imprisoned and tried to deport a student over a pro-Palestinian op-ed, calling it anti-semitism, calls outrage over "I love Hitler" texts by young Republicans "pearl-clutching"
Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social
The GOP has shat the bed completely on attracting talented young people, and makes do with the severely personality-disordered and the just plain evil.
Zoomer Antimillenarian @surcomplicated.bsky.social
I can’t help but think today about how many young people were savaged on social media, branded as anti-semites and abandoned by their schools for daring to call for a ceasefire. I remember saying that it was the first time I can remember that calling for ceasefire was regarded as a hostile demand.
Sherrilyn Ifill
When college kids publicly say "Israel's war on Gaza is bad" that is full-blown anti-Semitism that requires the federal government to crack down on all colleges. When Young Republicans in their 20s and 30s privately praise Hitler and "joke" about the Holocaust, well, that's just freedom baby.
Kevin M. Kruse
Vance reacts to the Young Republicans chat leak:
Eli Valley
1.) One of those "kids" is a state senator in Vermont. (They’re not kids)
2.) kids are bigots is a weird stance
3.) going full boys will be boys about the „I love Hitler“ chat is quite a choice
Annika Brockschmidt @ardenthistorian.bsky.social
What we can see clearly now is the social construction of whiteness and maleness is an ongoing process that allows adults to be “children” and open hate speech as “kids being kids” in stark contrast to the way that Republicans deem children who are minorities as adults or “enemy combatants”
Karl (sad trombone noise enthusiast) @brainnotonyet.bsky.social
Sadists. Truly sick people. ICE is thoroughly un-American. Don't you want to know — as I do — how many of these armed, masked, warrantless, insignia-less, nameless, essentially untrained Big Government goons are Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and other J6 runoff?
Seth Abramson
I am being asked to tell my department which pieces of lab equipment should be supported with backup power because they expect rolling blackouts and brownouts in 2026 due to increased energy demands from AI. In case you're wondering how my day is going.
Kate Clancy
Donald Trump is giving $20 billion of taxpayer money to Argentina – to help his political ally stay in power and bail out Wall Street hedge funds – while Americans at home can't afford health care or groceries.
Elizabeth Warren @warren.senate.gov
Wow — new AI-made articles online are already outnumbering human-generated content.
Steve Rattner
Democrats need to accept that Trump will indict his political enemies. But if Democrats respond by later indicting the DOJ officials who illegally carried out Trump's indictments, that will be end of our Republic.
NY Times Pitchbot
"We're saving God from Colin Kaepernik" is a pretty good distillation of Republican thought
Irenic Bro
Has anyone pointed out — on the Tom Homan $50,000 thing — that legit payments in business are not made in cash? Especially for amounts like that? Since it sounds like tax evasion 101. Gonna send him a 1099 for that, eh?
@pattho.bsky.social
An American citizen should NEVER have to review "Rules of Engagement" just to leave their own home.
@kauffy.us
"Decarbonisation will be too disruptive, we shouldn't bother"
"Climate activists are too disruptive, they should be locked up"
Meanwhile...
Dr Charlie Gardner
Hard to conceptualize that over 1 million Americans have died from car violence since 2000. Car dependency is why so many are in debt, miserable and unhealthy.
Bryan @bryanformhals.com
The Regime's goal is to grind everyone down. Plain and simple. Our goal is to refuse this by taking turns to fight where and how we can. When one group needs to bow out, then another group needs to step in and so on. We don't all have to do everything. We can all do something though. Stay in the fight.
Prisonculture
I just heard someone use "phallus" for "fallacious" and am now crabby, itchy and exhausted. Well, more than usual.
rudetuesday
Firstconsul
Not reading fiction IS very unfortunate. It is. Because if you've ever talked to someone who ONLY digests self help, capital-chasing, men-do-dis-women-do-dat shit, you know exactly why their brains are mush.
Hated Dad. @n9l5.bsky.social
Most "classics" are boring as fuck to a modern reader in no small part because the context of the story is not understood by them and so many of the allusions and "inside jokes" known to then-contemporary readers have been lost in time and in translation
John Scalzi
chat, is it good when the secret state police are brutalizing priests and threatening to shoot EMTs?
Tom Tomorrow
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD! The University of Texas-Austin is beginning a process to eliminate the Black Studies, Latino Studies, and Gender Studies departments in the College of Liberal Arts. This is a grave threat to the educational liberty of students, faculty, staff, and the people of Texas.
Deborah McDowell @dem8z.bsky.social
“Win every election” is not a viable strategy for preventing authoritarianism
Jake Grumbach
I don't understand why U.S. reporters so regularly seem to let politicians get away with 'I haven't seen that' about stuff a) they obviously know and b) is directly relevant to their job. Did they sign some kind of agreement never to ask a follow-up question?
BeijingPalmer
The hostage release is a reminder of how bad the Dems are at politics. Not only did Biden refuse to force this deal on Netanyahu and thereby help Harris win, but most people aren’t even aware that Biden got way more Israeli hostages (over 100) released with his 2023 ceasefire than Trump did with his.
Mehdi Hasan
Another good time to remind people that “tear gas” is a term of copaganda that police, the military, and its manufacturers use to obscure that it is a dangerous chemical weapon internationally banned for use even in warfare.
alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social
I know it’s the most obvious thing in the world but it’s really sad that so many people have absolutely no desires or dreams in life except to accumulate money and our entire world is becoming a fucking pit because of it
Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social
Nicole Chvastek
In 1511 my Taíno ancestors were taught that you rise 3 days after death as Jesus did, and while occupied by Spanish colonizers, they caught and drowned one. They watched his body for 3 days and when he did not rise they rebelled knowing they were lied to. Happy Indigenous People's day.
Eeeric Booran @deveric.net
Users of the Columbus "man of his times" excuse tend to be quite unhappy about the Muslim conquest of Spain—at least, they’ll happily use moral language in condemnation of Muslims killing Christians in Spain well before Columbus. Maybe basic moral norms take alternate generations off. Governing is hard work.
Adanedhel @danielwaweru.bsky.social
Did you know that at about 1/3 of all stranger homicides in the U.S. are perpetrated by police?
alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social
Americans: “No kings!”
Republicans: “How un-American.”
Patrick Chovanec
lol “find your own instead of stealing” in defense of columbus day:
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com
I find it genuinely remarkable that Republicans are spending so much time talking about No Kings. Five million people showed up to the last No Kings protests, and the media essentially completely ignored it. Now the GOP is guaranteeing widespread coverage.
W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social
Autonomous and electric vehicle promoters consistently delude themselves into thinking their mild facelift on the status quo is some kind of revolution. Meanwhile, e-bikes outsell e-cars and one single city bike share program is lapping all the Autonomous Vehicles on earth. Steady as she goes.
Matthew Lewis @mateosfo.bsky.social
Yep when Trump says he loves coal miners he means the guys who own mines — as always the little guy was good for conning out of a vote and after that the mass grave.
Philip Gourevitch
given how we went from a panic about there being too many people in China to now a panic about there not being enough people in China, do our experts have a Red Riding Hood style number of Chinese people which would be just right?
En Buen Ora
A federal holiday honoring an immigrant who came to this country on a boat and actually did commit crimes
Chris Steller
Cartoon by @billbramhall.bsky.social:
Jon Cooper
We know who’s anti-American and it’s the people in this government who are destroying the Constitution every day.
@pattho.bsky.social
it is mind-boggling to try and figure out how most white americans think the immigration system works
ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com
If any child in your life has an IEP or 504 plan: Trump fired (we think) all of the employees in the office at the US Department of Education that disburses special education funds from the federal government that school districts use to pay for those plans.
Matthew Cortland
The high-profile success of Olivia Nuzzi and Bari Weiss sends such an awful, awful signal to, and about, female journalists. So many sharp, careful, dedicated journalists out there and *this* is what the establishment rewards? This is the incentive structure? It's so gross.
David Roberts @volts.wtf
Ending slavery increased GDP by 9.1% as slavery reduced the welfare of the enslaved substantially, while only generating minuscule welfare gains to slave owners. Fascinating topic that once again highlights how coercive instructions are economically detrimental!
David Schindler
Argentina edition of Libertarian bible:
Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social
Epstein files giving House Republicans over two months paid vacation and counting.
Ron Filipkowski
In the first month of direct state aid for Missouri’s voucher scheme, 98% of funds went to religious schools.
Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social
What kind of cop is ok with a criminal mayor [Adams] but will quit over a social democrat mayor [Mamdami]? Ya, I know the answer too.
Brent Toderian
Melania is selling a Christmas ornaments for $75. When does the Trump family say "we have enough money?"
Diane Ravitch
Police straight up go on strike to increase crime so that Democrats are punished in elections
Aidan @aidanjersey.bsky.social
A friend ran the Chicago marathon today and said he couldn’t count the number of FUCK ICE signs along the way.
laura olin
The debate:
Lilly @mothcub.bsky.social
We have to listen to Peter Thiel's unhinged ranting and treat it seriously because he has enough money to bribe every elected official in the government and not even impact his lifestyle. He’s effectively a vizier, a ruling advisor, because his private wealth demands access and power in our political system.
Kaitlin Is Just Getting Started @gothamgirlblue.com
Every time someone makes me read something Peter Thiel said, it’s like “Scrooge McDuck is Jesus Christ and Huey, Dewey, and Louie are Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel and Daisy is Mary Magdalene and that’s why women voting has lowered American sperm count.”
Pope Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social
a key thing about russ vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society
jamelle @jamellebouie.net
The nation’s largest private prison company is asking the Supreme Court to give federal contractors blanket immunity from lawsuits — including human trafficking claims. If they win, private contractors could operate with even less accountability than they do now.
Jon Cooper
The ability to "be natural" in front of, let alone toward, a camera lens is a freakish artificial skill and the demand for it almost certainly has left scammers and sociopaths overrepresented in political leadership; probably not great that we've now organized everyday society around it too
Tom Scocca
Asked by Kristen Welker on Meet the Press this morning whether the White House was seriously considering invoking the Insurrection Act, Vice President Vance said, "The president is looking at all his options."
George Conway
we need to abolish this shit:
onion person @junlper.beer
If you think its a coincidence that they are pushing BS autism causes while the Department of Education empties its special education division and ICE had an autistic child in detention without any of their family knowing, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. This is a purposeful attack on our most vulnerable.
Michael E. Carter @deckofcarterhist.bsky.social
Attacks on the federal workforce are also attacks on Black workers, who are overrepresented in the public sector. Black unemployment is 7.5%. I'm reminded of Coates' observation that Black Americans regularly experience conditions that would be considered a crisis if whites faced them.
Victor Ray
The idea of merging A.I. slop with the likeness of Martin Luther King Jr. is off-putting and offensive. We don’t need a large language model trained on Reddit threads putting words in his mouth.
Qagggy!
It's cool how when you try to search for the solution to a computer problem now you can pick from an AI summary, several out-of-date videos by a guy with a shitty mic, or some forum posts on the publisher's site dealing with an obsolete version of the software
Ian Boudreau
NEW: Biofuels globally emit more than the fossil fuels they replace, our latest study shows. The first-of-a-kind study looks at global biofuels production today and the potential impacts of government biofuel targets.
T&E @transportenvironment.org
sevedge
IMHO, LLMs will be an economic negative for years. They'll do a worse job than humans, but will still replace humans because they're cheaper for employers, but really they're costlier, it's just that lots of costs get externalized to society by our horrible energy/tax policies. Lose-lose-lose.
Max Kennerly
"If you believe, as Larry Ellison does, that Americans will be better off when they are subjected to 'supervision at all times,' then buying microvideo platforms, enterprise software, streaming services, cable networks, gaming developers, and internet publishers is just buying supervision capacity."
Matt Seybold
Being president is a pretty unique job. I feel like a man who doesn't know when he had that job is probably not qualified to continue in that job.
Tom Tomorrow
really striking the degree to which not a single person working in the trump administration appears to be interested in serving the american people
jamelle @jamellebouie.net
Republicans feel empowered by their leader's autocratic coup against the Constitution to pursue their most cartoonishly evil agenda items, like literally making it easier to kill seals and whales
Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social
“The National Guard’s mostly quiet walks through D.C., are expected to cost a little more than $200 million, and that’s the figure just for the D.C. National Guard, not for the 8 states that have sent troops. Those likely more than double that cost.”
Matthew FitzSimmons
I only voted for him because he said immigrants were eating pets and poisoning the blood of our country…how was I supposed to know he’d act like a dictator?
Rep. Steven Woodrow @woodrowforco.bsky.social
Peter Norton
A decade after the Paris Agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions are barely rising, up just 0.3% a year since 2015, compared with 1.7% before.
Ada Palmer
Six out of eight of the largest mass-movement protests in US history have happened since 2017. You wouldn't know this from most media reporting, and you sure AF wouldn't know this from the way either major party has reacted.
ineptitudinous.bsky.social
Turns out protest alone was never what changed things, it was protest *plus media coverage of protests*, which prompted officials to respond to protests, which increased public awareness of protests, etc. If the protest happens and corporate media simply ignores it ... it's inert.
David Roberts @volts.wtf
I really feel that Trader Joe's is one of the few places that correctly sizes their parking lots, and it's just a shock to most people that it isn't 4x oversized
Mike Hicks @mulad.bsky.social
Deep dive into the surge in US pedestrian deaths: "It’s not that more pedestrians are getting hit by vehicles; it’s that the ones that are getting hit are more likely to die."... "[That] seems like fairly strong evidence for the theory that the rise in large SUVs is behind the uptick in ped deaths."
David Zipper
The US dollar is having its worst year in decades (FINANCIAL TIMES):
Leah McElrath
Per CDC source: At internal leadership meeting this afternoon, it was shared that 1,257 people were RIF'd at CDC. Number may not be final. Apparently, chief of staff was unaware that RIFs were going to occur so not clear who is making decisions.
Catherine Rampell
From the people that repeatedly shoot at the Emmitt Till Memorial Marker comes Brent Jones, who was arrested for pissing in the reflecting pool and destroying the eternal flame at Martin Luther King's burial site
Thad Ochocinco, Active Listener
Trump went for a Covid shot and then set the CDC on fire. If that ain’t that asshole in a nutshell.
Sam Youngman
anyone else notice that the west took a turn for the worse once the concept of signaling one’s own social virtue became derogatory, almost as if cynically deriding all displays of charity and good will is indicative of a deeply cynical and nihilistic society capable of collaborating in genocide
utopia deferred
Roberts is presiding over, and driving, a stunning collapse in faith in the U.S. Supreme Court, not just among the public, but among federal judges. What a failure. The Titanic captain of chief justices.
Matthew Stiegler
That Anonymous Coward
A small government is a government whose only job is to hurt people
Deep Learning State Machine @collapsedsquid.bsky.social
It’s objectively funny that Peter Thiel thinks Greta Thunberg is the antichrist.
Tina-Desiree Berg
The levels of delusion among the powerful defy explanation
Diane Galloway @adgwatches.bsky.social
I feel it’s like the autoimmune diseases developed by animals born and raised in a sterile lab environment with nothing for the body to even calibrate itself against. Being a billionaire exempts you from almost all real suffering and you never receive reality checks from those around you.
Kait @thryse.com
Every A.I. CEO is like “We invented a robot that can fuck your wife so you have more free time to mow the lawn!”
Adam Mallinger @bitterscriptreader.bsky.social
I think my least favorite thing about this era of history is that technology and obscene wealth have synthesized in such a way that the haunted pathologies of rich men spread across the global until they warp reality itself. We are to some extent living inside Trump and Elon’s brains.
Nick @slothropsmap.bsky.social
slowhed @slowhed-comics.bsky.social
The fact that Ross Douthat is employed by the New York Times, the most important "liberal" media institution in the country and that Chris Rufo is one of their favorite sources, should probably illustrate the problem.
Nathan Goldwag
“Stabilizing Argentina is ‘America First’.”
Carl Quintanilla
Antarctica may have passed a climate tipping point of no return, scientists are warning, with mounting evidence that a sudden slump in sea ice formation since 2016 is linked to human-induced ocean warming.
New Scientist
Republican election operative buying a major voting machine company. What could possibly go wrong?
Ken Caldeira
just saying: it's possible that "I'm gonna dramatically constrict my state capacity while plotting dramatic imperial expansion, and expanding my set of internal enemies while alienating most of my foreign allies" is the beginning of a world-historical masterstroke. but also possible that it isn't
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò [posted 8 months ago]
The purpose of a system is what it does. There are no physical reasons we cannot have a balance-seeking, nature-honoring, human development seeking system. There are physical reasons why accelerating of energy and material throughput cannot be sustained.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social
The shallowness of MAGA world: From cabinet secretaries to state legislators, many women in today’s GOP have one thing in common: they got their start in public life by winning beauty pageants.
ahatcher54.bsky.social
MAGA and its agenda are *wildly* unpopular, and media are hugely out of touch for not saying so. Politicians who tap into this reality will thrive, and media outlets that reflect this truth will earn enormous audiences.
Anil Dash
I wonder how many ICE dudes read Anne Frank’s diary in high school and thought, “I’d have gotten her sooner.”
Schooley
Side by side of Voldemort and Stephen Miller. Only difference is Voldemort is about a foot taller:
50501: The People’s Movement
All I want in life is to persuade everyone, when encountering politics & culture, to ask, "why are we talking about this?" I mean that very literally: anything you encounter on your screens reflects a choice. Someone covered that, talked about that, rather than the many other things out there. Why?
David Roberts @volts.wtf
This is also the appropriate response to the simpletons who say, I just want the news, without political bias. Even if someone were able to cover a student protest in completely unbiased language, they chose to cover a student protest instead of covering, say, lack of funding for health services.
Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn
The MSM does not interview community organizers. It's part of why they miss so much of what happens at the local level.
Prisonculture
A single mother in Marshall, Minnesota making $40,000 will pay an EXTRA $140 every single month to get health insurance for herself and her two kids if we don’t get a shutdown deal.
Tina Smith @smith.senate.gov
I long for a world where an accountable MPD would arrest anyone running around in camo with guns.
Getting Gophery
Noem claims Portland hid their war zone from her.
Ron Filipkowski
Seen in Maywood, Illinois:
unraveled @unraveledpress.com
What if you had to take your drivers test at least every 10 years? A lot changes over time. Including knowledge/memory of the road rules, driver skills and ability, and the size and deadliness of vehicles.
Brent Toderian
A few minutes ago in the House:
- Speaker Mike Johnson officially cancels votes next week, extending the House recess through a fourth week
- House Republicans block Democrats from passing a bill to pay the troops during the shutdown, ensuring they will miss paychecks next week
Aaron Fritschner
EISMAN: Tesla’s earnings “are down 60% from 2022 through 2025. And the stock is slightly higher. “.. it’s a cult.”
Carl Quintanilla
“We should replace Bad Bunny with Lee Greenwood” is an also a perfect summation of the “deal” they’ve offered universities.
Jack Tripper @chadstanton.blacksky.app
It is kinda fun that everyday the Chicago Pope is like mailing personal letters to JD Vance that say "if you continue down this path you will not see the light of heaven"
perfect knight
@scoopsstp.bsky.social
Our kids are ready to ride, it’s the adults that aren’t ready for them:
Tom Flood
"we cant uninvent ai" no we cant but we couldnt uninvent nfts either and nobody gives a fuck about them anymore
@shiningknightx.bsky.social
It’s extraordinary that Biden’s main weaknesses were inflation and cognitive decline and now America has inflation and cognitive decline as well as tariffs, authoritarianism, blatant corruption, etc
Dorian Lynskey
Trump will just have to keep murdering fishermen until you stupid jerks give him the peace prize
Kevin M. Kruse
the administration is laser-focused on making sure Americans don't get clean energy, so Saudi Arabia (Trump's paymaster) has someone to sell their oil to in 10 years when the rest of the world has moved on to solar+batteries
mtsw
For some reason, people seem to have difficulty bringing ... analytical distance to politics. To take one very obvious recent example: all the sudden, everyone was talking about trans girls in high school sports. I'd venture to guess that 99% of the people involved had never in their lives given that particular subject a thought. Yet suddenly everyone was talking about it, being pressed to have an opinion on it. Why? Were there suddenly, in reality, lots more trans girls playing HS sports? No. Did high school sports take on some new significance? No. And yet I saw virtually *no one* ask that question. Everyone, from normies to seasoned political commentators, was just like "oh I guess I have to have an opinion on this now." Why? Who said so? That issue sure seems carefully and deliberately chosen to activate a certain set of reactions, doesn't it? Seems designed to take even people with generally tolerant, egalitarian instincts & push them in the direction of judgment and exclusion. Sure seems carefully chosen, doesn't it! Chosen by who? Why? To what purpose?
David Roberts @volts.wtf
Michele/Meidas Fan @michelemanziano.bsky.social
Trump, a vocal war crimes enthusiast for more than a decade, is mad he didn’t get the nobel so his aides are gonna spend all day humiliating themselves in competition over who can kiss his ass better
Adam Serwer
BBC decided to cancel a podcast on heat pumps deeming the topic "controversial" because it presented that the technology could contribute to net zero reducing carbon emmissions. In 2025 an anti-science posture is not only valid, but required in any debate to be considered "balanced"
Saint Vice @savic.bsky.social
The guy who keeps invading cities and bombing foreigners whenever he feels like it and keeps dangling invasion of Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela didn’t win the Nobel peace prize this year
Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social
You know what fascism looks like? Attorney General Letitia James getting criminally indicted on literal trumped-up charges by the criminal who she fought to hold accountable for the actual crimes he committed and is now using the full power of the US govt to seek vengeance.
Ricky Davila
Over 40% of corn grown in Indiana is used to make ethanol that cars burn. One acre of corn yields about 16,500 vehicle-miles per year of ethanol, which sounds high until you realize that one acre of solar yields about 2,700,000 vehicle-miles per year: 16,000% more driving for a given plot of land.
@kevinjkircher.com
An arch here, some more gold embellishments there, one big banner of Dear Leader... and boom. It sure says something that it only takes a few small tweaks to turn the design of our capital city into the instantly recognizable seat of a fascist government:
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social
Here's the TOTAL budgets of some other agencies that are being cut so the Admin can send $20B your tax dollars to their ideological friends:
- EPA (clean air and water): $9.1B
- NOAA (weather forecasts, warn if hurricane coming): $6.8B
- DOE EERE (energy efficiency & renewable energy): $3.4B
Costa Samaras
There's been a person in a Jeep parked idling in front of my house since I got home 30 minutes ago, despite the current weather being literally basically perfect outside (68 °F). I will still never believe people who claim gas is too expensive while people regularly do this.
Pedaling Professor
BlackRock is seeking to buy Aligned Data Centers, a data center construction company. It’s also going to buy AES, one of the major power providers for Big Tech data centers. While these data centers drive up your electricity costs, wealthy financiers are going to make a killing.
Robert Reich
Kristi Noem, while governor of South Dakota, supplemented her roughly $130,000 salary by secretly accepting $80,000 donated to a political nonprofit she was affiliated with, records show. She never disclosed this income on federal ethics forms. (Published in June.)
ProPublica
Oh:
Parker Molloy
As ProPublica reported, "at least three of Trump’s Cabinet members call multiple homes their primary residences on mortgages." No indictments for them, because this is how a fascist regime works. "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
Max Kennerly
E-bikes are already displacing more emissions than electric cars. Imagine the positive cascade of effects if more governments offered purchase incentives for e-bikes.
BikeBike In Calgary
Literally 20 years of the entire budget of Saint Paul shipped off to bail out some Memeified Right Wing maniac half a world away.
Tom Basgen, Mr. Saint Paul
Stephen Miller is murdering Venezuelans and Colombians in cold blood bc he believes it helps his propaganda campaign to paint Latinos as dangerous.
emptywheel
It is pretty galling that the Supreme Court spent four years telling Biden "you can't do that without Congress" then allowed Trump to seize a once-unthinkable amount of power from Congress within nine months and concentrate law-making authority almost entirely in the executive branch.
Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social
The Attorney General of New York has been indicted on two federal counts: prosecuting Donald Trump while black, and prosecuting Donald Trump while female.
Patrick Chovanec
It really can't be said enough: the goal of the "anti-woke" movement was always to destroy social norms against bigotry. And it worked. And there's a whole lot of purportedly "left" thinkers and commentators who helped it — indeed, it couldn't have been done without them. They should feel bad.
David Roberts @volts.wtf
An amazing miniature portrait of the Roman empress Agrippina Minor (15-59 AD), made from chalcedony. Agrippina was the mother of Nero, and married to her uncle, emperor Claudius. It was rumoured that she poisoned her husband with a dish of mushrooms. Photo by me. On display at British Museum:
Nina Willburger @drnwillburger.bsky.social
Why does everyone imagine that what creative people want (and I use that term broadly to include most "skilled" intellectual labor) is to replace their creative process with a machine?
Paddleboat Galactica @early-adopter.bsky.social
because uncreative people don't want to be creative. They don't want to make a film, they don't want to write a book, they don't want to make art. They want to just be a filmmaker, an author, an artist. Art is a means to an end, not the end in itself for them.
Mira @mirasair.myatproto.social
Why is every admin spox a high school cheerleader?
jayseph b @jbckwthjr.bsky.social
I feel like a broken record, but I have to keep saying it over and over again: a farmer bailout won’t do much of anything because the market is gone. There will be no incentive to plant next year. The bailout will help payoff farmer debt to the banks. That’s all.
Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social
Trump is going to come after you either way, so you might as well act with integrity
Quinta Jurecic
There are more stores in Portland per capita than anywhere in the US. There are whole clusters of artisanal yarn stores, and I legit have no idea how they stay in business. There's a vegan strip club. Last time I was there, I wandered into a D&D RPG-themed craft brewery in the middle of nowhere.
Bill Lindeke
No clearer indication of the right’s moral rot than the swift evolution from angrily denying any association with buffoonish bigots like like Posobiec and Fuentes, to “there’s no harm in having a conversation,” to openly praising and promoting them.
Radley Balko
NEW PAPER: We all know the 2022 energy price shock fueled the cost of living crisis. It also caused a profit bonanza for the very rich. We show the US reaped the largest profits ($377bn) of any country. 50% went to the richest 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%.
Gregor Semieniuk
September climate warming stripes. It's as if something has changed:
Climatologist49
Am I the only one who thinks one day Kash Patel will go out for a jog without his ID or security detail and get roughed up and detained by ICE for being too "foreign looking?"
Robert Moffitt @justplainbob.bsky.social
It's tempting to treat "the American right is a death cult" as rhetorical hyperbole, but when you look at e.g. their enthusiasm for executing people who are *clearly* innocent, no actually these people really do just worship and revel in death and murder
Great Depression @bluespacecanary.bsky.social
We would like to thank Kristi Noem for bringing cameras with her everywhere and collecting evidence for her future trial at The Hague.
The Lincoln Project
I don't think most people understand what we're facing. Not really.
Prisonculture
Former USAID official here. The current Administration has done zero impact analysis to estimate the effects of its obliteration of USAID on deaths around the world. It just keeps saying "no one has died" as a mesmeric incantation.
Michael Clemens @mclem.org
The whole world watched Britain pretending to believe the UN aid agency was a terrorist organisation, then we all watched as UNRWA was replaced by criminals firing machine guns at starving people trying to get bags of flour, while press and politicians pretended not to understand what was happening.
flyingrodent
honestly it's constantly jarring to me that I, as a child, knew several WWI veterans, including my great-grandfather. Soon WW2 will seem just as vanished in time.
BeijingPalmer
The CBS takeover by Larry Ellison and Bari Weiss is the most foreboding move in a while, and I’m not saying that lightly. It will have an effect on the 2026 elections: CBS will now lie to people and normies will believe it.
Eric Blair @protecttruth.bsky.social
Any trans person who begins their transition today is exhibiting more courage than most people will in their entire lives.
Ashley Lynch
Thugs:
Pat Bagley @bagleycartoons.bsky.social
We could save taxpayers a lot of money and heartache if we could just deport Miller instead...
BOOdle @boidle.bsky.social
It's all "logistics are gay" until your paycheck is late or rations are low:
Academician Prokhor Zakharov @shake1n1bake.bsky.social
The same people who insisted devout Catholic Joe Biden was leading a “war on Christianity” are now cheering Trump on as his armed goons assault clergymen.
Kevin M. Kruse
It's pretty disgusting scotus is even discussing whether or not it's ok to abuse and torture people who are vulnerable and they are looking at it as a "free speech" issue
Turning a Phrase
It’s not “partisan” to defend science, evidence, and objective reality. It’s partisan to attack science, evidence, and objective reality, to benefit your political “team.” That’s true with climate science, with vaccinology, and with evidence-based city-building, all of which are being attacked.
Brent Toderian
Everything they are doing and saying right now is very obviously meant to clear the way for mass repressive violence. Fact checking is not going to do shit. Talking about kitchen table issues is not going to do shit. We need open, unapologetic defiance and conflict. We need, in a word, virtue signaling -- we need to be signaling to one another, and to ordinary Americans, that this *is* fucked up and everyone *should* fight back. People need something to rally around and they're getting nothing.
David Roberts @volts.wtf
Supreme Court: of course states can regulate, and restrict access to, medical procedures if there’s a compelling public interest
Colorado: (bans conversion therapy for minors)
Supreme Court: no not like that, we only meant abortion
Sky Marchini
Who keeps asking Trump about invoking the Insurrection Act? (This feels like an operation to create a narrative in support of doing so, and I can’t help but wonder if the questions are planted.)
Leah McElrath
Thanks, New Yorker:
Mrs. Betty Bowers
You can be the safest, most attentive driver in the world and still pose a massive risk to other road users. That’s because cars and car dependency are inherently dangerous. This doesn’t mean you’re a bad person if you drive, but I do think that drivers should acknowledge their role in this system.
Gravel Influencer
American taxpayers are paying people to post Bible verses on a US government account.
Ron Filipkowski
Someone should start asking why we’re hearing and seeing Stephen Miller so much all of a sudden.
Sherrilyn Ifill
this is so hard to remember online, which is wild because the ratio is still in favor of non assholes - but 2 out of 100 would still be orders of magnitude more assholes online than in person, which is a difference difficult for our brains not to pick up on
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs and employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate because long lunch breaks and labor protections
Ada Palmer
This is true for students too. Yes there are many factors impacting student reading, but working 30+ hours a week to be able to afford college is definitely one of them.
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social
F all the comedians playing Saudi Arabia forever. No different than the musicians playing Sun City in South Africa in the ‘80s.
Robert Simonson
I think it's starting to be forgotten that joining the National Guard was originally a commitment to to serve in unforeseen emergencies, almost always natural disasters. You might get called up every second or third hurricane season. The second Gulf War changed all that and now... now, what is this?
Bearcat Catbear
eventually politicians need to start advocating for criminal and civil penalties for people involved in fabricating stories to get citizens incarcerated. or, put another way: a society that would like to keep functioning has to discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
BREAKING: Photo of the violent insurrectionists causing politicians to fear for their lives:
Tom the Dancing Bug, by Ruben Bolling
Days after Virginia seceded from the Union, Robert E. Lee left the U.S. Army to defend slavery. A traitor and enslaver, Lee believed his state would be better without Black people. The Trump Administration reinstated his name on a military base.
Equal Justice Initiative
How much smaller the federal workforce is now vs. a year ago:
Ed Dept 42%
OPM 33%
HUD 31%
Treasury 29%
Defense (civilian jobs) 22%
Small Biz Admin 21%
Energy 20%
Interior 15%
HHS 14%
SSA 11%
EPA 10%
Conrad Hackett
I was told not to teach a class on the intellectual histories of Zionism and Anti-Zionism next year - not because they doubted I could teach it fairly, but because it would attract too many politicians scrutinizing the syllabus. A society where that is a valid fear is no longer fully democratic.
Joel S.
The "Elon Playbook":
1. Be born a rich white guy.
2. Project unjustified confidence.
3. Get astronomically lucky (again - see #1).
4. Lie pretty much constantly.
5. Once you have enough money, ignore the law and dare governments to enforce it.
6. Announce that you're a Nazi, and then deny it.
Annoyed Diplomat
“By 2028, an average family in the region will be paying around $70 a month extra on their electricity bills because of forecasted data center growth.” I'm once again asking why ratepayers are subsidizing AI titans?
Nick Cunningham
Well done to all the brilliant local councillors who have lowered the
speed limits their roads to 20mph - often in the face of much hostility.
There is now irrefutable evidence to show your bold decisions are
saving lives. Thank you!
Will Norman
Unacceptable to put the costs of the AI boom on the backs of families struggling to pay their bills. It’s a crisis.
Costa Samaras
Claim: 10 cars rammed ICE
Truth: No cars rammed ICE
Claim: She boxed ICE in
Truth: ICE boxed her in
Claim: She shot a rifle at ICE
Truth: She did not have a rifle
Claim: ICE returned fire
Truth: Only ICE fired
Claim: She drove herself to the hospital
Truth: Paramedics found her
Gillian Brockell
There is a carbon price, it's just that the polluters aren't the one to pay it.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social
Dealing with various levels of bureaucracy is exhausting. That was my entire morning. It’s fine, but good lord there should be a better way. (This would involve hiring more government workers whose job is to actually serve the public rather than run around in masks.)
@saralovesyou.bsky.social
The GOP has done nothing on healthcare in the 21st century other than stop Dems from improving it. Literally nothing.
David Roberts @volts.wtf
zach @extrafabulous.bsky.social
If we're gonna go after [the Des Moines schools superintendent], maybe we should take a second look at Elon Musk. Just saying.
Brian Broadus @cvilletgr.bsky.social
Benjamin Franklin was an escaped indentured servant.
joellien.bsky.social
Megyn Kelly’s children are named Yates, Yardley and Thatcher. Which sounds like a law firm made up of dead white British men and one woman.
@pattho.bsky.social
Kind of feels like feds occupying our city for a month, killing one person and shooting another while attacking neighborhoods with chemical weapons and kidnapping hundreds of people already counts as a civil war whether the Guard arrives or not, but what do we know?
unraveled @unraveledpress.com
It’s funny how the news covers crashes in the morning in regards to how they impact traffic, but we don’t hear anything about the people impacted in the crashes.
Alex @mplsalex.bsky.social
Fun coda to the story, Bari Weiss is now head of CBS news and Radley Balko was fired from the WaPo mostly because he was such a good actual journalist on his beat
Lord Businessman II
"Let's take the politics out of this" is a common argument from Conservatives but whoever uses it, they're always saying "let's all agree with me."
Nick Barlow @nickbwalking.bsky.social
The land of the brave:
Dr Mir @shabana.bsky.social
Truly the wildest shit is happening as we approach rapid collapse with Trump ready to circumvent court orders to deluge US cities in troops for the “crime” of disagreeing with him — and normies are hardly aware of it
Kaitlin Is Just Getting Started @gothamgirlblue.com
The media trots out the "deplorable" comment from a decade ago to castigate the left. Once a week now Trump implies that the military should destroy democrats, and it is just how things are.
Victor Ray
Elon Musk and Stephen Miller both tweeted against judges today. A South Carolina judge's house burned down and almost killed her family.
Wajahat Ali
Over the weekend, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller repeatedly attacked judges, calling them part of an "organized terrorist attack" on the US government... On Saturday, the home of a judge who ruled against Trump, went up in flames
David Gilbert
Sending troops from Texas to forcefully occupy and suppress cities in Illinois and Oregon IN OPPOSITION TO THOSE STATES' GOVERNORS is literally a civil war and it's cooking my brain that Democrats are simply pretending it isn't happening
Brandon Friedman
John Roberts’ Constitution: The federal government protecting people’s right to vote or giving them health care violates the sacred principle of state sovereignty but if the deranged POTUS and his bloodthirsty advisers want to use the military to invade other states for being too liberal that’s fine
Adam Serwer
Not again… I’m getting stronger…
I'm Uni :3 @unicouniuni3.bsky.social
people who want you to believe they can predict events a century out but can't predict Donald Trump fucking up.
BeijingPalmer
Who started this idea that men are broken? It seems they’re just angry about the people they used to be able to boss around not letting them do that anymore.
maryhear.bsky.social
Cities with a higher violent crime rate than Chicago:
Houston
Dallas
Lubbock
Amarillo
San Antonio
Corpus Christi
Nathaniel William Horadam @horadam.bsky.social
Palm Beach (home of mar a lago) has a violent crime rate ~8x higher than Chicago.
Deadly Fixed Object @katherineogawa.bsky.social
there was a lot of "the military won't obey illegal orders, don't underestimate its professionalism." since then 1) multiple cities are going under occupation and we have not seen any suggestion of resistance 2) we haven't heard a whisper about trump ordering them to murder random fishermen
short exact sarah @scgriffith.bsky.social
It goes without saying, of course, that if things were reversed, and Illinois troops were being sent into Texas by a Democratic president, Greg Abbott would be absolutely losing his shit.
Bryan Edward Stone @bestonetx.bsky.social
A WILD ONE: A man broke his leg during an arrest by ICE at a car wash south of L.A. ICE has held him under 24/7 guard at a hospital, registering him under a pseudonym, for *37 days* without telling him why. A judge has ordered his immediate release.
Kyle Cheney
Pretty clear Stephen Miller, Noem, Hegseth and Trump are trying to provoke a Civil War at this point. What's interesting is they want to do it now, because even though they're unpopular, they seem to believe this is the most popular they'll be ever again. We can't let them win.
Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social
Look. Invading our own country is about as straightforward a case as you can have for impeachment. The GOP abandoning the Constitution is kind of the only story there is and it gets no coverage.
Grudgie the Whale
Jon Cooper
Okay let me see if I have this right: OpenAI is running commercials featuring questions that you used to be able to answer via a simple web search, only now this doesn’t work because the web search results are now filled with useless OpenAI slop?
Jon Marthaler
A government small enough to drown in a bathtub and yet large enough to invade Chicago. Schrödinger’s government
highly scatological @raisingonebrow.bsky.social
The world’s conscience (22 years old) has been imprisoned as a terrorist for bringing food to the starving. Not a religious statement, but: We are all going to pay a price for our world’s present barbarities.
Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social
One of the things I took away from the 60s and Richard Nixon, first mentioned by Hunter Thompson, but I believe to be true, is the fact that we believed, at time, that all our protesting, marching and sign waving was futile and pointless when in fact, it drove Richard Nixon to alcohol fueled madness
Frank Vehafric
Miller’s apparent elevation to shadow president and his seeming intent to declare an end to the constitutional order would, in any other administration, be treated as a executive branch meltdown that was immensely embarrassing for the president and requiring Miller’s immediate removal
Will Stancil
The guy is so unpopular he couldn't get elected as a dog catcher, yet the entire United States seems unable to do anything about this.
Julian Lalor @swizzlesister64.bsky.social
The media, which was *obsessed* with Joe Biden's age, doesn't seem to give up a damn about the nutty shadow president.
relentlessyapp.bsky.social
Weaponized gratitude is a key tool in the abuser's toolkit. The goal is to convince the victim that they owe the abuser so much, they should feel guilty for wanting to complain.
Jess Calarco
The complementary tactic to requiring someone to be “grateful” is “see what you made me do?” They often are used together.
The Homesick Montanan
Every day I log on and just see endless videos of ICE agents breaking state, federal, and international laws.
Katelyn Burns
The thing I respect about Greta Thunberg is that she understands most people in the Western world don’t give a shit about atrocities until someone white is affected. So she’s doing what needs to be done to keep up the pressure. If more white folks followed that example, we’d all be fine.
Shintaro Melodrama @roiskinda.cool
Truth:
leftylady.bsky.social
I don't know where this revisionism has come from about the suffragettes - people saying "if the suffragettes were around today, they'd be considered terrorists." The suffragettes were arrested and tortured, sexually assaulted and beaten by the state. They *were* considered terrorists!
sianushka.bsky.social
You have to admit it’s hilarious that literally 6 mos ago Argentina was the country MAGA was saying was gonna dunk on all the neolibs and show them how to run a proper economy and now they’re literally begging for (and getting!) a handout from American taxpayers. Clown ideology.
Travis @coloradotravis.bsky.social
One of the greatest revelations of maturity has been realizing just how much most Black people love each other AND the whole of humanity. Growing up, I thought it was just my family, but it's much greater. It's life sustaining. Black love is both miracle and mystery. Without it, we couldn't live.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.blacksky.app
Charlie kirk gets killed by a white man, HBCUs get bomb threats. White man shoots up a white church, people talk negatively about the Black Panthers. People get mad about alleged latin american drug cartels, a predominately Black apartment complex gets raided at 2 am. I'm seeing a trend
Phoenix Calida
This is a remarkable statistic: 18.7 million out of the 24.3 million Obamacare enrollees are in states won by President Trump in 2024.
Larry Levitt
It’s odd Vance is trolling [Joy Reid] on gratitude because I’ve noted before his complete lack of gratitude to anyone who helps him.
Extended family takes him in… he writes book about what losers they are.
Mentored at Yale? Take it down.
Ohio makes him senator? Suckers
Mary Joy
The Oseberg Ship (c. 820 AD), unearthed in 1904 near Tønsberg, Norway, is one of the most magnificent archaeological discoveries of the Viking Age:
Benitho Talerand @benithologie214.bsky.social
Conservatives believe that black wealth or status is never earned; it's granted by white America. Successful black people must therefore act as if they are grateful. They must not upset their white benefactors by talking about racism. That's the "deal" Shapiro thinks Obama broke.
Doug McCrae
We have allowed sociopaths and psychopaths to create a society in which only they can thrive.
The Scales @shakethescales.bsky.social
Food causes 22-34% of climate change. But it only gets 4% of the media coverage. Why? Neglect. Misunderstanding. And a hell of a lot of greenwashing.
Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social
Nobody *needs* to drive. What people need is to get around. A century of bad urban policy has led to the two being synonymous.
Warren Wells
I guess the good news is that there's still at least one person at Treasury who thought the idea of a Trump dollar coin was so gross that they leaked it.
Patrick Chovanec
I get beside myself angry when I think about how a presidential candidate repeatedly fucking said he’d be a dictator and the press response was ha ha that rascal I’m sure he probably doesn’t mean it
Sam Youngman
Even Trump's grandchildren are using public property to run little grifts
southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social
Looks like a fascist lice comb:
Leah McElrath
My favorite armchair comment is Americans don‘t understand authoritarianism, because so many of you don’t count Black people as Americans. Learn the history or shut up.
Justin Zimmerman @jztidecat.bsky.social
Right now, the unemployment rate is 4.3%, but for Black women it's a staggering 6.7%. Over 320,000 Black women have lost their jobs from the federal government to the private sector. This systematic targeting of Black women is intentional. It's devastating for our communities, economy, and our country.
Rep. Summer Lee
America is currently a giant experiment to see how long we can keep stuffing a year's worth of news and outrage into every single day before everyone's heads explode
Tom Tomorrow
One thing that comes through awfully clearly in these ICE videos is how many of these goons gravitated toward the job because being able to assault people with impunity is a big thrill for them.
Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social
This might be be showing my liberal media bias some, but I have never thought it would be appropriate for the president to treat Chicago like it’s a scene from a lower tier Steven seagal movie
Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social
“Fuck them kids.” –MAGA Jesus
Radley Balko
Obviously, [the Russ Vought/grim reaper video] is loser shit, but I think AI has really cemented itself as the visual language of fascism. It's anti-human, flattened, uninteresting, and cheap. It's like looking at a Potemkin Village and thinking that's the same as architecture.
Matt Ghoulberg
Q: You just said this is an unenviable choice, this is an unfortunate consequences. But the president posted a video likening Vought to the grim reaper. So which is it?
LEAVITT: Look, the president likes to have a little fun every now and then and I think both things can be true
Aaron Rupar
The MAGA complaint with Biden is that he used an autopen to sign things, which makes sense because the *only* part of the job that Trump apparently can still handle is scrawling his stupid Sharpie signature across government documents
Kevin M. Kruse
I think what’s most frustrating right now for Black and Indigenous people is waiting for the bulk of white folks to catch up. At some point the “this isn’t who we are” and “I didn’t have this on my bingo card” has to end and y’all will catch up, right? RIGHT? WE NEED YOU TO CATCH UP.
Imani Gandy Corn @angryblacklady.blacksky.app
> 83% of US favor Medicaid (KFF 2025)
> 62% of US favor gov't ensuring healthcare for all (Gallup 2024)
> 54% of US disapprove of RFK Jr (Quinnipiac 2025)
> 44% of US struggle to afford healthcare (KFF 2025)
This is how the US Department of Homeland Security is recruiting now:
Michael Clemens @mclem.org
The Republican fight over healthcare is misleading. It's not a partisan political issue.
Stand Up for Science!
'To put it bluntly, a path to zero emissions that relies on electrifying individual cars is not only the most resource-intensive route to zero emissions, but also the slowest route to that urgent goal. 1 model Y battery requires as much lithium as 160 e-bikes
Mike Eliason @holz-bau.bsky.social
Making america great again by declaring open warfare on its cities is certainly ... an approach. Oh, and by totally shitting on its foundational document, let's not forget that one.
Tom Tomorrow
I didn't know until we buried my mother, so probably most people here don't know: Jewish cemeteries strongly recommend that you get insurance for the headstone. Because the cemeteries are so often desecrated, the gravestones smashed.
Naomi Alderman
Arkansas police pulled over an Indian GrubHub driver who is married to a U.S. citizen. They found a bottle of Opium-brand perfume, arrested him for narcotics possession, and turned him over to ICE, where he was held for 30 days. He has now been stripped of his immigration status.
Radley Balko
In cities, street space is a really scarce (and under-valued) commodity. Increasing vehicle size costs everyone. And vehicle weight determines your impact on the wear-and-tear of cities. So public policy [like parking fees by vehicle weight] is really just common sense.
Brent Toderian
CBS just dumped Stephen Colbert who was making $15M per. They could've had Colbert on for 10 more years for what they paid Bari Weiss.
Coach Finstock
“.. no modern American president has positioned his family to make so much money while in the White House. Already, since the early days of his reelection campaign, he’s more than doubled his net worth to about $5.4 billion.”
Carl Quintanilla
Very possibly no political official in history has made so much corrupt money at a pace like this. Mobutu and Marcos looted a greater share of their countries’ wealth over decades but in absolute terms and in speed, Trump shamelessly puts them to shame.
Jacob T. Levy
It’s so fucking funny that we’re still getting five NYT op-eds a week calling for the left to tone down their rhetoric
Michael Hobbes
Six months from now: As the numbers of administration political foes in mass detention centers swell, local communities are watching closely. Can their infrastructure handle the strain on services?
sarahclearly @sarahmnoel.bsky.social
If y'all want to see something truly dystopian (and who doesn't these days) take a look at the Departmen of Homeland Security posts on their Facebook page. The vibe is so weird as to be almost indescribable. I can only imagine that Nazi propaganda was a lot like what DHS is currently posting.
Atticus Finch (of Georgia) @atticus59914029.bsky.social
A lot of tech bros who were upset about pronouns want to confer them on their computers now that they’re dating
Kevin M. Kruse
Tech bros are literally socially constructing gender out of sand and metal after a decade of tut-tutting about women being adult human females ONLY
Tom Pepinsky
“...His conclusion is very stark: not just that an economy already at stall speed will fall into recession as both the data-center and wealth effects plateau, but that they’ll reverse, just as in the dot-com bubble did ..”
Carl Quintanilla
The Gen. Mattis statement I see people posting today is from 2020. Which only goes to show how Americans chose to ignore some very clear warnings.
Patrick Chovanec
This is so indefensibly insane: Speaker Johnson is refusing to seat Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva because she'll be the 218th vote to release the Epstein files. Johnson swore in Rep Walkinshaw (VA) within 24 hours. Johnson is abandoning his job to instead protect a convicted child sex predator.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.
The story of 2024 is this: Trump had a plan to destroy American government called Project 2025, which had, literally, not a typo, a 4% approval rating. He lied constantly and said he wouldn't do it. Then he entered office and immediately implemented AN EVEN MORE EXTREME VERSION OF IT.
Will Stancil
As if irony isn’t already dead, the Hatch Act violation on the DOJ website, which blames Democrats for the shutdown, appears on the page advising DOJ employees they are subject to the Hatch Act.
Joyce White Vance
You may have heard my arguments against the Electoral College before. Here’s a new one the Founders never anticipated: If the President is elected by popular vote, he probably wouldn’t selectively punish entire states for voting against him.
Peter Sagal
Alt Weeklies with large, avid readerships are dying and then a right wing advocate for child marriage will start a new website with absolutely no traffic and then sell it for $1 billion
Wes Burdine
The path between here and a just and livable future is not a smooth curve of managed transition any more (if it ever was). It's white water, surprises, confusion, advance, retreat, learning, messing up, grieving, celebrating, experimenting, truth telling, pausing in the beauty. It's stumbling along unsure. It's not being validated, not being resourced. It's making it up. It's triage. It's trusting the earth and each other and it's life finding a way.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin
start telling your friends and family now that CBS is no longer reliable, because I'm still explaining how Newsweek was hollowed out by Republican ghouls and that deal was like a decade ago
Karl Bode
Just because I’m a member of the Oregon Trail generation doesn’t mean I wanted everyone to die of Oregon Trail diseases
Sydette @blackamazon.bsky.social
"The people in charge of the US military explicitly — not secretly, *explictly* — support war crimes and war criminals" is one of those things that's kind of hard to believe even when you write it out and stare at it with that familiar sense of dull ache.
David Roberts @volts.wtf
I know these guys are all dumber than a sack of hammers, but it is fascinating to see the military decide “logistics are gay” in real time:
Chicken Puppet
Oh. Oh no. No, no, no. This isn’t grabbing the third rail, it’s sticking your tongue on the third rail while dressed up as Reddy Kilowatt and playing “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. Do not mess with the commissary.
Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher.com
I just laughed so hard I think I pulled something. You will absolutely lose the military vote if you fuck with the commissary. This is not hyperbole. This is what happens when you put people in charge who didn't come from the communities they make decisions about. These people are so out of touch.
Jacquelyn Gill
Having won over the brass by calling them fat and gay, the next step is to win the hearts and minds of the grunts by taking away their cheap treats
Ghostin this Hell @hoovybaby.bsky.social
Stephen Miller shifted Homeland Security officers that would normally work against drug & human trafficking and terrorism to stopping pro-Palestinian students lawfully in the US & deporting them. An anti-free speech "Tiger Team."
Kraig Peck
The ultimate problem with the "working class" umbrella is that it has become equated with "ignorance" and "culturally insular," which is frankly an insult to the swaths of laborers who are educated, open-minded, generous, and understand the real barriers to class mobility aren't ability or virtue.
Craig Tyhurst @thewilytouchstone.bsky.social
i'll make you a deal: i will tearfully restrain myself from bringing up "surplus value" at all so long as you present a definition of working class that does not rule in car dealership owners on vibes
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
A nation of 340 million people, and they honestly think everyone will just go along with this. The rest of the world already thinks Americans have main character syndrome. I'd also suggest that collectively, America is a sleeping giant that has never, ever been fully awakened... Stay woke.
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.blacksky.app
everything on here sucks today; here's some beans i grew. aren't they the most beautiful?? 
It’s Ruby @ruby613.bsky.social
The main reason climate policy has failed is that it's opposed by an international coalition of fossil fuel incumbents, authoritarian governments, & oligarch-owned media. That's it. It's the people who killed it who are responsible for killing it! Not the people who supported it! FFS.
David Roberts @volts.wtf
scientists and environmentalists simply didn't use the exact right combination of magic words to take down a ruthless multi-trillion-dollar global industry that's been buying governments and lying for half a century
Mark Shore
It genuinely distresses me how eager people on our side are to believe shitty things *about themselves* that they hear from people who fucking hate them and everything they stand for.
David Roberts @volts.wtf
Welcome to our new and improved doctor’s office! If you’ll just scan this QR code, access our poorly designed website and repeatedly enter the information we already have on file as the site crashes, we’ll be with you in twice the time it used to take.
Kevin M. Kruse
Do any of these people realize that if you make people have residency in order to receive emergency services, that you're going to end up with a lot of dead tourists?
Dante Atkins
Everyone needs to internalize that the law is Calvinball right now, and if you do not Calvinball you are going to lose
Gwen Snyder
Here's a cartoon I hadn't seen. Thanks to Doug Muder at the Weekly Sift, and cartoonist Nick Anderson:
@pattho.bsky.social
If there was a poll about the shutdown that was like "60% of voters blame Democrats" we'd get wall to wall news "analysis" saying the Democrats must immediately capitulate or face electoral ruin, but when we have the opposite (like we do now) the media doubles down on efforts to blame Democrats
mtsw
What I know from being Black my whole life, and poor for the majority of it, is that politely ignoring a root issue to attend to one closer to the surface is like robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s a band-aid on a gaping wound, and it will not hold your flesh together for long. The US needs stitches.
Ashley C. Ford @smashfizzle.bsky.social
California and New York paying taxes to this federal government in 2025 is tantamount to England and France paying taxes to Germany in 1940. The money is going to be used *against* you.
Mrs. Betty Bowers
“I’m 87 years old. I’ve seen war, repression, protest, and backlash. I’ve been celebrated, and I’ve been branded an enemy of the state,” Jane Fonda said in a statement on Wednesday. “But I can tell you this: this is the most frightening moment of my life.”
Celeste Headlee
Love hearing an NPR reporter repeat Vought's line about "unconstitutional DEI principles" with nary a query about what the fuck that actually means. At some point we need journalists to make this administration explain some of these batshit utterances.
Gravel Influencer
Open ai is literally destroying as much as it can of society with the hope that its disruption is seen as a “natural” phase of its existence and that we accept the danger it poses so the company can keep selling vaporware and myths in place of actual technology. This technology must be destroyed
Karl (sad trombone noise enthusiast) @brainnotonyet.bsky.social
If you want energy, clean air, food, healthcare or justice government isn't working for you anymore. But if you want to deport your neighbor who has more melanin than you do, they're doubling down. And God forbid we have a measles outbreak, an E coli food scare or a cyber attack on the homeland.
Sean Casten
Wear bright clothing:
Tom Flood
BREAKING: sources say NARA has forced out Dr. Todd Arrington, the federal director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, after he declined to allow the Trump administration to remove a sword from the library for a gift to King Charles
Tony Clark @anthonyclark.bsky.social
“People should take responsibility for their words” brought to you by people who categorically refuse to take any responsibility whatsoever for their actions.
SuperNynny
personally I would have preferred to live in a society *not* collapsing into authoritarian chaos.
Tom Tomorrow
We've had fuckups in the White House before, but never a president who seemed so deliberately intent on being a fuckup. It's been said before, but if these people were actual agents of an enemy power seeking to divide, dismantle and destroy the USA they wouldn't be doing anything different.
Kevin M. Kruse
It does feel increasingly like the winning play for Democrats in all upcoming elections will be to promise to end secret police kidnappings and crack down hard on the government corruption that is rampant and undisguised in the current administration. There are a hundred other crimes and inhumane actions this admin is committing, but as a quick 'n easy slogan, "I will end these criminals who are bankrupting our country and violently kidnapping our neighbors" is hard to beat.
Sam Bergman @violanorth.bsky.social
hotel montana (1886), entrance, main street, anaconda, montana, 2004:
old roadside pics
Your occasional reminder that Russ Vought, who is claiming the right to fire civil servants for whatever reason he sees it, once refused to quit a political appointment position even after Trump had lost.
Don Moynihan
The man was in office for four years and he never put forward even the outlines of an alternative to Obamacare. So I really don't want to hear about how his business genius is going to magically solve everything one day.
Patrick Chovanec
i feel like im going crazy because housing prices are crushing me and every day i wake up and see the political convo being "is cantaloupe is woke?" "did TGIF change its logo?" "are we renaming new mexico to new america?"
derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social
A lot of people outside the military don't realize that the whole "no beards" thing is directed primarily at the many African-Americans who are allowed not to shave because of a common skin condition.
Patrick Chovanec
It's kind of wild that crypto scammers became *the single biggest source of political donations* in the last US election and barely anyone even noticed. These dipshits basically own both parties now and are getting whatever they want and there's been zero (0) public deliberation or debate about it.
David Roberts @volts.wtf
accurate. this is why it's useless to engage in the violence/nonviolence debate. fascists will always frame any effective resistance as violent regardless of what tactics it uses. all that matters is what works. based on history, usually it's collective non-cooperation:
Evan Greer
The entire Trump Administration is like a circus where the animals are abused, the acrobats can't figure out how the high-wire and trapeze work, and the clowns are not at all funny. But we're not allowed to leave the tent.
Peter Gleick
Medicare, as of today, will no longer cover telehealth visits. I can’t imagine a bigger slap in the face to our patients.
Monica Maalouf, MD
Man, I'm sorry, but reading all these AI generated essays from students, it just sucks all the joy out of everything. It's exhausting, makes you into a weird paranoid cop, grinds you down, wastes your time, makes you feel like shit about everything. Fuck this shit technology and all its enablers.
Colin Dickey
President Pritzker is going to get record ratings when he takes a wrecking ball to that ballroom on prime time TV.
Radley Balko
ICE Is Buying a Tool to Track Hundreds of Millions of Phones, Without Warrants. Trump is quietly building a surveillance state, and almost no one is paying attention.
Jon Cooper
Hegseth said yesterday he wants to ban any symbols of “superficial individual expression” by people serving in the military. Of course, he was probably talking about dangerous things like rainbows:
Ron Filipkowski
Everything Donald Trump has done since he's been in office has been to weaken the United States of America. Intentionally.
Jack Hopkins-The Original @therealjackhopkins.bsky.social
i don't understand conservative toughness, which involves being scared shitless of everything but also talking about how tough you are
Adam Serwer
They’re not going to pay for the New York City subway because it forbids discrimination in contracting
Doug Saunders
Good morning with good news: India's fossil fuel generation is having a very bad year in 2025! Its fossil fuel generation has lost as much as 5 points of market share in 2025 on a monthly basis, compared to the same month in 2024. Why? Surging wind, solar, hydro & nuclear production.
John Hanger @jrfhanger.bsky.social
I really like the phrase "Kavanaugh stop." It's not a Terry stop, because a Terry stop is short and based on reasonable suspicion of a crime. A Kavanaugh stop, by contrast, is when masked goons kidnap a person for speaking Spanish.
Cait @caitesq.bsky.social
I’d like one newspaper to try out the headline “Republicans fail to attract Democratic votes they need to end shutdown” as a little treat.
southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social
it's just a t-shirt, but honestly, I need the reminder. the back says
"it will take all of us," and maybe that's what I need the reminder of:
amityf
People think professors are taking down a rich intellectual sinecure but they’re mostly terrorizing committed public servants who make $58,000 a year after 15 years of experience at a school that has to budget creatively so students can access textbooks.
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social
Trump's FCC yesterday voted to kill a program that provided free Wi-Fi to rural school kids at no cost to taxpayers, falsely claiming the program was "illegal" and was being used to "censor Conservative ideology."
Karl Bode
The idea of potentially having to work until you die in order to make ends meet — coupled with the reality that very few entities will even employ people in their 60s, 70s and beyond — is incredibly DAUNTING and scary
Nina Metz
There is very little precedent for the executive branch attempting to force states and localities to change their policies *after they've received the federal funds.* Imagine if the Biden administration tried to restrict funding to Alabama because it restricted abortion access. It never happened.
Yonah Freemark
No matter what the president does my parents go ‘well he must have a reason for it we can’t understand’ it must be awesome to never have to think about anything
pencilforge.bsky.social
Despite DOGE's promise that canceling contracts and terminating leases would help reverse the trend of the government spending more money than it brings in, the most recent Treasury data shows an *increase* in expenditures by hundreds of billions of dollars more than the year before.
stephen fowler
Hello October:
Ilena Gilbert-Mays
In 2021, after two years of high profile Extinction Rebellion actions, the environment was briefly the number one concern for people in the UK. Today it is well down the list. Social movements are powerful because, amongst other things, they force issues into the public consciousness
Dr Charlie Gardner
Impressive how one political party can control the White House, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, but not bear responsibility for whether the federal government functions. Neat trick.
Nicholas Grossman
pete hegseth, who you will recall has been accused of domestic abuse and sexual assault, has announced a new policy by which you cannot file anonymous complaints of mistreatment. sex criminal solidarity.
jamelle @jamellebouie.net
I'm a historian. Sewage systems have saved more lives than any medical intervention. Vaccines are second and antibiotics third. Prior to the 1880s, the urban annual death rate was ~25%; it dropped to ~0.5% in under a generation. Support your sewage system. Dispose of bodies responsibly.
Ken Burnside
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
BlueSky, October 2025, Part 1
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