Rob Tracinski

Interesting thread.

American Freakshow: Our Reality TV-Driven Media Is Killing Our Democracy The lurid details of Olivia Nuzzi's transgressions and the popularity of "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" derive from the same culture of voyeurism.

Yesterday @aselrod.bsky.social said all that needs to be said on the Nuzzi nonsense: that we love rubbernecking at a grisly car crash, and that we seek, in reality TV and in social media, to produce ever more grisly car crashes, at our peril www.liberalcurrents.com/american-fre...

After this weekend's racist attacks on the EU, I've written a column about the moral obligation to stop posting on X.

Oh no, wait, I wrote it *two years ago* when it was blatantly obvious what was going on and how it would get much much worse.

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

“I’ll be involved” is another big broken norm.

Watch out for the 2026 Kennedy Peace Prize

Vibecession's not so fun when you're in office!

This is how everyone who uses the r-word sounds to me. Just an immediate signal that you are to be paid no mind.

Trump rages that Henry Cuellar didn’t pay him back for a pardon by switching parties, blasting Cuellar for a “lack of LOYALTY.”

In other words, Trump admits he was trying to use his pardon power to buy Republicans a House seat.

The U.S. citizens getting caught in Trump’s immigration crackdown Latinos describe being detained and assaulted by officers who want to know: “Where were you born?”

Anyone with an internationally adopted kid or gave birth while serving the USG abroad has got to see this and be really nervous about their kid's safety

"Where were you born" can be a very complicated story and doesn't have as much to do with citizenship status as it's implied.

wapo.st/48WU4RW

“Kill all boats no matter where they are going or what they possess” isn’t a strategy, it’s just a killing spree

Honestly, if I was married to Stephen Miller I would also want to die.

Breaking bad was about a guy who had many opportunities for his healthcare to be paid for (his former business partners, jrs accidental money laundering go fund me), but he preferred selling meth because ruining other people's lives feels more manly than accepting gifts.

Becoming a U.S. citizen takes years and involves immigrants acquiring a green card, extensive interviews, background checks, classes and a citizenship test. The naturalization ceremony is the final step to the process, where the oath of allegiance and a citizenship certificate are granted. Immigrants approved to be naturalized went to Faneuil Hall Thursday - known as the country's cradle of liberty - for that long-awaited moment to pledge allegiance to the United States. But instead, as they lined up, some were told by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials that they couldn't proceed due to their countries of origin.

Read this: www.wgbh.org/news/local/2...

Dr. Bill Cassidy’s legacy as a hepatologist, will be that he brought about more liver disease. Put that in his obit.

Grid bottlenecks aren’t a failure of the energy transition — they’re proof it’s working.

Renewables got cheap fast, and now the grid has to catch up. Time to build the wires for the clean energy system we already have.

Heartbreaking. The University of Nebraska will terminate its entire Earth science department.

One of the country's most successful and respected geology & climate programs: gone.

When ideologues & politicians are threatened by the very act of studying climate change, I wonder: who of us is next?

"We recently announced that Netflix will acquire William Shakespeare, including his plays, sonnets, narrative poems and indeed also his biography and everything he ever said. This unites our leading entertainment service with William Shakespeare's iconic stories. 'All the world's a Netflix!'"

No "birthright citizenship" means nobody can prove they are a citizen. If you have any immigrant ancestor and you cannot prove lawful status at that time, even if it was 1830, you citizenship is in doubt.

see the thing about them all being the worst people in the world is that even when one of them gets killed they can't create a proper cult of martyrdom around him because the others get jealous he's getting all the attention.

The number of convicted criminals in immigration detention is about 1.8x what it was when Trump took office.
The number of people with no criminal record whatsoever — who are detained solely for immigration reasons — has shot up **25.5x**

open.substack.com/pub/austinko... (via @austinkocher.com)

He proposed this in response to a criticism of Hegseth’s boat strikes. So I can only presume the hangings will take place without trial.

2024 was a lot of folks who heard Trump make up vicious lies about Haitian immigrants eating cats and agreed with him completely, never once thinking he might lie about them, too. 1/

This is the cost russia has paid to lose more territory than they claimed in the first days of this war, and it’s approaching 4 years.

They are losers.

No one deserves being handed land of a sovereign people for such losses.

2026 Free Entrance Days in the National Parks Come experience the national parks! All National Park Service sites that charge an entrance fee will offer free admission to everyone (other fees, including timed entry or reservation fees, may apply). Mark your calendar for these entrance fee-free dates: February 16: Presidents Day (Washington's Birthday) May 25: Memorial Day June 14: Flag Day/President Trump's birthday July 3–5: Independence Day weekend August 25: 110th Birthday of the National Park Service September 17: Constitution Day October 27: Theodore Roosevelt's birthday November 11: Veterans Day Beginning in 2026, free entrance on these days will be for US citizens and residents only. Nonresidents will pay the regular entrance fee and any applicable nonresident fees.

When I saw the story in passing I thought it was the same dumb bit as the army parade, the fig leaf of using Flag Day because it happens to also be his birthday. But no, Trump's birthday as such is now an official commemoration for NPS free admission days.

www.nps.gov/planyourvisi...

Mockler: It's honestly humiliating that other countries are treating our president like a child, like a baby. It's like if I created a peace prize and I gave it to myself. I'm like, I'm just going to keep this medal on all night. Our president is an actual child

THIS.

THIS, THIS, THIS, THISSY THIS.

Ultimately, the story here isn't Olivia Nuzzi, but the incredibly insular and dysfunctional Beltway Media cult that shapes so much of our political coverage.

A court with a normal-ish conservative majority would have been tolerable. I'm not eager for court packing, impeaching justices, and other such options. But this court sticking around post-Trump is untenable. They've already torched their own legitimacy, the only question is what do we do about it.

A massive problem today is the uneven distribution of shame. Some of us are running dedicated on-site shame servers 24/7 while others have no access to shame at all, even though they desperately need it. What we need to do is put shame in the cloud

It would be a shame if Looney Tunes had the slightest bit of gender nonconforming overtones.