Sean’s Thumbs

Careful … the ex-founder of anti-fascism’s girlfriend is being questioned as we speak.

Now that they’ve located the ex-founder of anti-fascism’s girlfriend I suppose the clock is ticking.

So why not spend some of that precious time learning how we got here - along with clues on how to build a better timeline - by reading this magnificent essay by author and historian Teri Kanefield?

Image of text spoken at a protest on the US Capitol steps by Epstein survivors where victim Jess Michaels said: “For 27 years, I thought I was the only one that Jeffrey Epstein raped. I believed I was alone, and I was kept silent by the shame that was inside me and by the fear outside in the world,” she said. “But I wasn't the only one. None of us were. And what once kept us silent now fuels that fire and the power of our voices. We are not the footnotes in some infamous predator’s tabloid article. We are the experts and the subjects of this story. We are the proof that fear did not break us. And we don't just speak for ourselves, but for every survivor whose story is still unspoken…. This is what power looks like. Survivors united, voices joined, refusing to be dismissed. Know this: justice and accountability are not favors from the powerful. They are obligations, decades overdue. This moment began with Epstein's crimes, but it's going to be remembered for survivors demanding justice, demanding truth, demanding accountability, and we will not stop until survivor voices shape justice, transform culture, and define the future. We are no longer whispers. We are one powerful voice, too loud to ignore, and we will never be silenced again.”

Powerful words from Epstein survivor Jess Michaels ⬇️:

More on this and Trumpworld’s latest chicanery as reported by historian and author @hcrichardson.bsky.social at the link.

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

August 21, 2025 Yesterday, Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives approved a new map redrawing congressional districts to switch five seats from Democratic control to Republican.

“The president of the United States is openly admitting that his party cannot win a free and fair election.”

More from @hcrichardson.bsky.social ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

August 20, 2025 President Donald J.

“Republicans have taken away the liberty, and now the voice, of a Black woman elected by voters to represent them in … government. This is a crisis far bigger than Texas.”

@hcrichardson.bsky.social also discusses DC’s militarization & 47’s Smithsonian diatribe ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

August 11, 2025 President Donald J.

“Making people fear the government is key to the rise of an authoritarian.”

Historian, Author and Professor @hcrichardson.bsky.social w/more ⬇️:

Support Independent Journalism & share your sources of factual reporting 🏳️‍🌈 ✊🏾 🏳️‍⚧️

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

July 23, 2025 This morning, President Donald J.

“It does not seem likely the Epstein story is going away anytime soon.”

@hcrichardson.bsky.social w/more ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

Photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump together, smiling.

“Things seem a little unstable at the White House.”

Can’t imagine why 🤔

@hcrichardson.bsky.social w/more ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

July 17, 2025 Five years ago tonight, Georgia Representative John Lewis passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 80.

“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, say something! Do something! Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.” ~Former activist & 16-time Georgia Rep John Lewis

@hcrichardson.bsky.social w/more on Rep Lewis & “Good Trouble Day” ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

Thank you for speaking up, this is a win! After growing bipartisan pressure, the Trump administration has agreed to release $1.3 billion in previously frozen federal funding for after-school programs across the country.

July 16, 2025 After years of covering Donald J.

“Today, Trump called chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell a ‘terrible Fed chair’ and added: ‘I was surprised he was appointed.’

Trump was the president who appointed him.“

@hcrichardson.bsky.social w/more on Trump’s struggles ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

July 15, 2025 Without any explanation, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court yesterday granted a stay on a lower court’s order that the Trump administration could not gut the Department of Education while th...

“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.” ~Justice Sonia Sotomayor

This and much more from @hcrichardson.bsky.social ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

July 14, 2025 Trump appointees insist they have a “mandate” to drive undocumented immigrants out of the U.S.

“… [It] appears the American people simply want to fix a sixty-year-old mistake in the nation’s immigration laws.”

@hcrichardson.bsky.social on how the US really feels about immigration, bringing *all* the receipts via recent polling and historical context ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

July 13, 2025 This weekend saw the development of an extraordinary rift in MAGA world.

Not for nothing, but:

“For the first time ever, Trump got ratioed on his own platform, meaning that there were more comments on his post than likes or shares, showing disapproval of his message.”

@hcrichardson.bsky.social on the emergent Epstein/Maga rift ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

Why Bats Shouldn’t Exist: The Limits of Knowledge, the Pitfalls of Prediction, and the Triumph of the Possible Over the Probable Prediction is the sharpest tool the human animal has devised — the chisel with which we sculpted survival out of chance, the fulcrum by which we lifted civilization out of survival. Among the…

Politics break. Bats shouldn’t exist.

Hunh.

@themarginalian.org.web.brid.gy

www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/11/b...

An image of text that reads: “ On July 5, the day after the Texas floods hit, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) received 3,027 calls from survivors and answered 3,018 of them, about 99.7%, according to Maxine Joselow of the New York Times. But that day, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not renew the contracts for four call center companies that answered those calls. The staff at the centers were fired. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or about 35.8%. On Monday, July 7, FEMA received 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, around 15.9%. In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said: “When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase. Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.” Marcy Wheeler of EmptyWheel notes that one reason Noem has been cutting so ferociously at FEMA is because she has run through the money Congress allocated for HHS with her single-minded focus on immigration.”

There it is in three paragraphs. Factual reporting —> BS spin —> More factual reporting. It gets better from there ⬇️:

Excerpted from @hcrichardson.bsky.social’s July 12 newsletter (viewable at the link).

Support independent journalism, now more than ever!

🏳️‍🌈 ✊🏾 🏳️‍⚧️

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

"Are You Still Talking about Jeffrey Epstein?" - emptywheel More than perhaps any moment of his ten year career, Trump just lost his cool -- about a Jeffrey Epstein question -- because he is helpless to dictate the focus of attention.

“I can think of no moment in his ten year political career where Trump so obviously lost his cool because he was helpless to direct attention where he wanted it.

And it’s likely to only keep Epstein at the center of attention.”

@emptywheel.bsky.social ⬇️:

www.emptywheel.net/2025/07/08/a...

A call to action for airline workers to stop ICE’s “deportation machine” NOW is the time to tell your airline: ICE flights are unsafe and inhumane, and if you contract with them, I will refuse to fly.

“NOW is the time to tell your airline: ICE flights are unsafe and inhumane, and if you contract with them, I will refuse to fly.”

Call to action and recommended read from journalist/former flight attendant @gbrockell.bsky.social’s Hard-G History ⬇️:

hardghistory.ghost.io/a-call-to-ac...

Undaunted in calling out the worst Supreme Court in modern times KBJ won’t allow accept its pretense of impartiality

“This is not jurisprudence; it’s blocking and tackling for a dictatorial executive.”

About time the dreaded “D” word reared its head in US reporting. This Supreme Court enabled 47’s putsch, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson isn’t having it.

@contrariannews.org ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/contrari...

Are We Thinking Too Much About Politics? It's worth asking.

“Well-informed concern and vigilance that lead to action? Good. Relentless doomscrolling and freakouts that induce catatonia? Bad.”

And

“It’s hard to mount an effective resistance if your hair’s on fire 24/7.”

Sagacious words from @borowitzreport.bsky.social ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/borowitz...

July 10, 2025 Just a week ago, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed the nearly 1,000-page budget reconciliation bill President Donald Trump demanded, and at the signing ceremony for the bill the next ...

“Noem didn’t sign off on the deployment of FEMA teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding started.”

That laissez-faire lack of urgency from Noem just screams “let them eat cake.”

More on the week’s events from @hcrichardson.bsky.social ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

July 9, 2025 On July 9, 1868, Americans changed the U.S.

“The principles behind the 14th Amendment were behind the 1870 creation of the Department of Justice, whose first job was to bring down the Ku Klux Klan terrorists in the South.”

Appears they missed a few.

Latest from the excellent @hcrichardson.bsky.social ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

YouTube video by Gyan Guru CRYING GLACIER (2024)

⬆️ is the trailer. There is a link to the official website there as well, but the film is blocked off as private. The actual 14 min film is located here ⬇️:

youtu.be/fNcOscaQsd4?...

The Sounds of a Dying Glacier Might Make You Cry A new documentary and track showcase the tragic sounds of a dying, "crying" glacier in the Swiss Alps as it rapidly shrinks.

“… This project documented something as beautiful as it is melancholic: the sounds of a glacier, a stand-in for our planet, as it gasps for a life that is slipping away.”

Listen here ⬇️:

futurism.com/dying-glacie...

Seeing Language as a Tool of Authoritarianism - emptywheel When you speak on social media, are you saying or are you doing?

Excellent dive into a world where right wingers ALL repeat & repost the same Foxy talking points in solidarity, and progressives consistently eat their own.

@emptywheel.bsky.social asks, “When you speak on social media, are you saying or are you doing?”

More ⬇️:

www.emptywheel.net/2025/07/06/s...

July 5, 2025 Yesterday afternoon, President Donald J.

“[DJT & Co] will step up using ICE and DOJ enforcements…to harass Democrats [and] citizen critics, and subvert future elections if they can.” ~Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol.

47 now has an *overfunded* Gestapo. @hcrichardson.bsky.social w/more ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

Concentration Camp Labor Cannot Become Normal

“The creation of a network of concentration camps is … politics … designed to draw businesses into a fascist order by normalizing dehumanization.”

America. 2025. Has concentration camps. Act accordingly.

Professor @timothysnyder.bsky.social w/more ⬇️:

🏳️‍🌈 ✊🏾 🏳️‍⚧️

open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

July 3, 2025 And on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed...

“America was founded on the radical idea that all men are created equal.” ~HCR

“Now we are engaged in a great … war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived … can long endure.” ~Abraham Lincoln, 1863

More from @hcrichardson.bsky.social ⬇️:

🏳️‍🌈 ✊🏾 🏳️‍⚧️

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

July 1, 2025 Just after noon today, the Senate passed its version of the budget reconciliation bill.

“Once a new system of detention facilities & ICE agents is established and the idea that a Republican president can legitimately attack his political opponents is accepted, a police state will be in place.”

⬆️ must not happen. @hcrichardson.bsky.social explains ⬇️:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

June 30, 2025 "This is the most deeply immoral piece of legislation I have ever voted on in my entire time in Congress,” said Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT).

“… [T]he welfare and the soundness of a Nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it.” ~FDR, 1932

Today, it’s all about that Big, Bad, Blight of a bill. @hcrichardson.bsky.social reports:

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...