Bryan Nichmann

On a daily basis, I marvel at how many people in putative positions of power are willing to help obliterate American democracy. The US has faced a series of very easy moral tests in the past decade and it’s staggering how often people in once-respected positions have failed.

The administration is removing phone support for Soc Security recipients. Making it more difficult for seniors to get their checks. It’s a back door way to cut SS benefits. Horrific.

If you know anyone who is impacted, please help them get online to get their benefits approved

Many people (me) have been saying that a radical expansion of California's UCs and CSUs would be good for democracy

"Trumpism is the Cultural Revolution for men" appears to be completely spot on

Just read this graf. Share it with people you know who don’t pay attention to politics or news.

Grab Your Kit: Breaking Beijing is Expanding A Call for Submissions and Guest Authors

So I tried this last year and it didn’t take off, but since a particular defense policy website is imploding I’d like to once again point out that Breaking Beijing takes submissions and guess authors:

open.substack.com/pub/breaking...

It's equal parts nauseating and funny to see these guys talking about "strength" and "courage" and "standing up" while engaging in the kind of pathetic, servile, "yes-my-baron" ritual groveling rarely seen by men not wearing literal gimp suits.

It's why I'm making moves towards leaving here!

Right but "trying" can still look like "the Dem nominee gets investigated by the FBI the whole campaign long"

"I didn't want to invade Canada until they got upset about us threatening to invade them" is going to be a widespread opinion.

the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president

GAME. OVER.

this is an immediate global depression button if they touch it, you cannot simply decide not to honor some treasuries without the total collapse of the financial system

I’d like to think even they aren’t that stupid, but…

i think it is worth pointing out that nothing, to the average americans, is happening. musk's little termites are boring in the walls but they haven't even gotten particularly far

"the high cost of free parking" is a book that legit rewired my brain. RIP to a great scholar

the only people who benefit from this are child predators and i'd like dem officials to say so into a microphone

let me put this plainly: if NCMEC is shut down, then Donald Trump has effectively legalized child pornography

for those unfamiliar BAP's thing is jerking off to ancient greek statues and lynching you for being gay if you point this out

If you feel overwhelmed by the news lately, that’s by design.

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/u...

As we’ve seen this all unfold, the take that has been floating around in my head is “I’m voting for trump because most of all in government, I want competence”

you obviously want to propagandize the losses, but then people get a completely insane idea about how dangerous resistance is even in a consolidated authoritarian state.

the media has now more or less uniformly adopted the theory that the president is allowed to violate the law and constitution however much he wants to so long as he says he is going to do it in advance

One weakness of the modern media is that there's no room for journalists to make value judgements. It's pure postmodernism. As long as you maintain you're in the right there's nothing they can do.

For a while people apologized when they did wrong but eventually people caught on.

I feel like Covid was the last gasp of the functional US public health system, they swiftly used the powers and state capacity to limit the damage and fast-track a lifesaving vaccine, but they had to inflict so much social pain that it ensured the public would never again tolerate such measures.

Yeah the plan was like "split FAA from DOT" and setting up long term privatization not "immediately try and push out all ATCs while planes are crashing and falling out of the sky"

This. The Administration's conduct up to now, plus the sorts of people that currently surround the President (e.g., Vought), should move your prior probability on the likelihood of the Insurrection Act being invoked at some point to greater than 50%

hey question, is this bad?

I honestly believe our most powerful position in a toxic time that feeds on cynicism, apathy,& despair is to genuinely care and act for a better world.

Cynicism is our enemy. We should check it, incl. on the left. It’s not intellectually superior. It’s the virus they’re trying to infect us with. NO

they hate the rule of law and want to go to the state where republican judges ensure it no longer exists

List of CDC information that appears to have been taken down so far:
1. CDC Atlas
2. CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System
3. HRSA Target
4. Language removed for LGBT work
5. CDC Social Vulnerability Index