"When people ask 'What are the Democrats in the House doing?' I kind of sit there and think, that's like asking what the passengers on the F Train are doing about how fast the train is going."
-- Lawrence O'Donnell
(a man who understands how much power the minority party in the House wields)

Honestly I think if the Dems could somehow win a mask ban for federal agents, I think it would be a huge start. The impunity these dipshits feel being masked up is palpable.

ICE is still terrorizing Minnesota kids: "Two vehicles parked while running on Wilson and Coolidge. They watched a middle school / high school kid get on the bus. After several other observers came out and started following, they circled around the neighborhood several times until finally leaving."

Fuck there went my whole day of mild sanity

Trump tried to break the Twin Cities but we stood strong, and now *they* are backing down. Makes me feel proud to live here.

I keep thinking about those “why do libs keep wandering into danger? are they stupid??” posts because I think they are so revealing

I absolutely think that race has something to do with this.. but if the display of solidarity in Minneapolis after George Floyd tells us anything:

_video_ is the differentiator here.

Trump officials say they are filling the jobs by hiring experienced law-enforcement officers from other federal agencies or state and local police departments. Many of the new hires are anxious about their career prospects at ICE once the burst of onetime funding runs out, officials at ICE and DHS told me, especially if Democrats take control of Congress. One ICE official I spoke with told me that some of the new hires, especially rehired retirees, are having second thoughts. Hundreds of the returning officers have been ordered to Minnesota, two officials said, where the administration is conducting the largest-ever DHS crackdown. Some officers have been so cold and miserable that they’ve already quit, and ICE officials have held calls to figure out how to deal with the sudden resignations. Returning officers who have come back from retirement are finding themselves in unfamiliar roles. They spent much of their careers trying to conduct low-key “targeted enforcement” operations in which they planned arrests in advance and sought to take suspects into custody in the safest and least dramatic way possible. Now they’re out in the streets wearing masks, with protesters yelling at them and video cameras rolling. ICE has changed, and the job isn’t the same.

Morale among new hires at ICE doesn't seem high. Some of the former LEOs are apparently concerned about being fired if/when OBBBA funding is cut, and returning ICE officers are apparently deeply unhappy at what they've been asked to do, since it has little relationship to their previous jobs.

They engaged him it's clear as day we have eyes you frightened bitch Mr I'm too scared of the subway Mr my wife fucked Puck from Real World and I got his sloppy seconds

From @brianstelter.bsky.social about the shrinking of the Washington Post.

I know all the reasons we can't have it. I will say it anyway. Pressure campaign on Bezos to create an endowment with his wealth, sell the Post to a nonprofit board, and step away completely. Do one great thing and leave.

The Roy Cohn lessons that has spread from Trump to all other MAGA politicians. We need to understand this to counteract what is going on. They are a mafia run organization.

Walz: What side do you want to be on? The side of an all powerful federal government that can kill, injure, menace and kidnap its citizens off the streets or on the side of a nurse at the V.A. who died bearing witness to such government

We need medics wearing red vests and crosses with observers.

FYI: Dems in the senate can't defund ICE. ICE is funded by the Big Ugly Bill. Shutting down DHS on this vote wouldn't touch ICE, but it would shut down FEMA, TSA, Coast Guard, etc. Shutting down ICE requires taking back Congress in the midterms. Dismantling DHS requires the White House in 2028.

Watching this in particular. The effort to take witnesses to Whipple, as well as the police refusing to leave the scene, are key.

I appreciate your frank honesty

JD Vance is about to get on camera and worship Satan with an offering of lies.

So are there any good services that 1) won’t watch me and 2) I can transfer my emails to without tons of hassle and drama? Not sarcasm or anything. I want to get away from google.

People need to call out the lack of training because while is pretty clear to a lot of us that these agents are thugs, some people are going to give them some benefit of the doubt if they believe they’re professionals. They’re not. That should scare people.

No but it definitely ain’t helping. Believing that these are trained professionals gives them some benefit of the doubt in some people’s minds. It’s a pillar of their continued support and people need to be disabused of the notion that these guys are anything but thugs.

liberals who are unfamiliar with fox dont understand the way in which the network molds the pov of its viewers. its not just cnn with some occasional conservative takes thrown in. its a daily narrative of how the left is fucking you over and how brave conservatives are fighting for you. DAILY.

a big problem here is the way every scrap of a claim about Democrats supposedly selling out gets hyped and inflated, and then even when it turns out to be untrue people remember it as having happened, or as having almost happened. Builds bad mental models.

we are truly in our Bad Sentence To Read Era

I watched it, that actually makes it much worse. He never should have been in front of the SUV. We are trained do not get in front of a vehicle like that, there’s only bad outcomes. Also, his video clearly shows she was not surreptitiously reaching for any objects within the vehicles drivers compartment, so the only defense for the agent would be that she was trying to run him over, which clearly isn’t the case, as emphasized by the fact that his legs were out of the way. The video also shows the SUV was moving so slowly that even in icy conditions he should’ve just moved out of the way. In the department of justice we are prohibited from using deadly force purely to prevent escape. Bad shoot all around

A former federal agent after watching the New York Times breakdown of the ICE shooting:

A gentle reminder that poorly (if at all) sourced assertions that Democrats are about to do something only Rahm Emanuel would like are one of the quickest ways to drive engagement on social media and you should probably treat them with at least some measure of skepticism

I think Dem strategists and comms/data folks need to recognize that we are in a period of discontinuity. What's happening now is not like what's come before. It's all new. And we need to stay close to the data that's in front of us, not bring old fights into the ones we now find ourselves in.

Are people unable to watch this now bc it's been tagged as graphic media? Because this is newsworthy and important and that seems like a problem to me.

also yesterday bsky.app/profile/msen...

Big fan of the low key eugenics at the end. Or is that high key. Whatever.

I am annoyed by the persistence of 'resist libs are tired of resisting Trump' line.

No Kings put record-breaking numbers of people into the streets, specials/off-years are at D+10 or more.

I don't think the resist libs are tired. I think some writers are tired of writing about resist libs.