Maybe the children will only have two dolls

No Country for Old Muppets

reminds of that old bible story of how people were hungry and jesus conjured himself a security detail bsky.app/profile/carl...

[not listening at all] You've given me a lot to think about

Again, in actual democracies, ministers resign all the time, under threat of a no confidence vote in the parliament. We have a system where legislative confirmation totally fails ex ante to screen out wildly unqualified people, & ex post accountability depends on a toothless extraordinary measure.

“The Constitution does not permit the government to arrest thousands of individuals and then disregard their constitutional rights because it would be too challenging to honor those rights.“

Opinion | How A.I. Companies Are Preying on College Students

I've said it before, but the first school that promotes itself as "AI-free" is going to corner the market on folks committed to learning. (gift link)

Today’s CBO report says US consumers pay 95% of tariffs. 🤡

@brendanvduke.bsky.social
www.cbo.gov/system/files...

Farmer bankruptcies: 2017 - 2025 (not exactly benign)

Hundreds of millions spent on human misery

Minnesota girl, 10, released from ICE custody after a month in detention Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano and her mother released from Texas facility to head back to Minnesota to reunite with her father

Elizabeth, a 10-year-old Minnesota girl, spent a month detained at the ICE facility in Dilley, TX before her release last night w/ her mom.

Dilley now has a measles outbreak and hundreds of other kids remain detained. Elizabeth has flu-like symptoms and her mom has hives, a school official told me

From 1982-2018, the Republican National Committee was barred from "ballot security measures" because of their record of using state actors to intimidate minority voters.
(H/t @rickhasen.bsky.social)
www.npr.org/2018/01/09/5...

DHS doesn’t even bother trying to lie well. The man whose skull was shattered told the hospital he’d been struck by ICE officers, an ICE officer told hospital staff the guy “got his sh*t rocked,” then when it became clear how badly he was injured, they claimed he deliberately ran into a wall.

graph tracking democratic backsliding is occuring more quickly in the US than elsewhere.

New from me: It is not just that the US is experiencing democratic backsliding. Authoritarianism has emerged more quickly than in other benchmark countries.

This graph from John Burn-Murdoch sums it up. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/autocracy-...

When Fox calls the election for Biden (2020) and another network is waiting in the wings to serve up all the fictions your viewers want!

An extraordinary document. Read it.

“Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. … ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”

Screenshot of TruthSocial post by President Trump complaining that Mayor Frey won't enforce federal immigration law, and calling it a "very serious violation of the Law."

In Printz v. United States, #SCOTUS held that the Constitution bars the federal government from forcing or otherwise compelling local or state governments to enforce federal law.

The liberal squish who wrote the majority opinion in that case? Justice Antonin Scalia:

tile.loc.gov/storage-serv...

We are losing scientists from the government at an unprecedented rate - some were fired, but many more were forced out through trauma and fear. www.science.org/content/arti...

This sure seems more like the tyranny the Constitution is supposed to protect against than forgiving student loans.

Hey can someone subtract 7 from 220 and add it to 207, I’m not real good at math.

🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!

ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.

This 1943 U.S. Army film warned about fascism in America

Remember when business spent billions of dollars over decades to undermine Democrats because they threatened to impose the most minor regulations?

A long-term effect of Trump is obviously to strengthen China, while weakening the international commitment to democracy. Even pro-democratic countries will align with a stable authoritarian regime rather than one that is threatening to attack them.

Can I pitch them on Nebraska? We have a sick zoo, Strategic Air Command, agriculture and we’re good at basketball now! Probably a lot cheaper than California too

What rewatching ‘The Wire’ taught me about nostalgia for a lost America The best show to understand the Trump era turns out to be the best show of the pre-Trump era

Gift link

Still the best at showing the country for what it is/was but they should have kept going.

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Unprecedented presidency-ending corruption for anyone from Truman to Obama.

Jesus.

www.startribune.com/ice-raids-mi...

Somewhere along the way our political coverage became so obsessed with "neutrality" that calling a monstrous policy the monstrosity that it is became a bigger no-no than the monstrous policy itself. Pointing out the cartoon villain levels of racism is more verboten than the racism itself.