Sean Martin McDonald

My kid’s school PTO is helping to raise money to buy grocery store gift cards for school families in need, as SNAP is about to run out of money.

If you are inclined, please consider giving what you can, here or to your local food bank

www.zeffy.com/en-US/donati...

Purge in ICE leadership means things will get worse: more aggressive and indiscriminate military operations in American cities

This is true - and! We must also rebuild how to follow with compromise and care. Our limits are what create the space for others to lead - and that means we have to find ways to lead, to defer, and to earn the trust of adjacent, aligned leadership.

Honestly, I wish the Times' political desk had taken this advice.

We are all Emma Thompson.

“.. In the first half of this year, the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million ..

“.. more than 90% .. came from Trump crypto ventures, including sales of World Liberty tokens.”

@reuters.com $WLFI
www.reuters.com/investigatio...

How Big Tech uses NDAs to hide AI data center details from Americans Big Tech companies use secrecy agreements with local governments to keep communities from knowing who is building in their backyards.

"An NBC News review of over 30 data center proposals across 14 states found that in a majority of cases, local officials signed NDAs and worked with what appeared to be shell companies that can conceal visibility into the project developers."

i once again would like to express some alarm and concern at the sheer pace of Nazi-related news updates

Sounds a lot like what @katmabu.bsky.social is doing, making mutual aid a key component of her campaign www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/kat...

Exactly this: youtu.be/3KPHwnLuYHI?...

1) "The govt is inventing exigencies that do not exist to justify its actions."

2) "The govt is perpetrating extreme violence against peaceful and innocent American civilians in order to provoke a reaction ... [to use] as an after-the-fact justification for the violence it has already used."

The Free Press: Is extra-judicial killing without due process bad? Turns out its complicated.

It gets crazier. Source in Maryland Gov Wes Moore's admin tells me they informed Trump officials that the ailing counties were in Appalachia, and the Trump people were surprised to hear this!

(Supports @jamellebouie.net's point about MAGA's Balkanized vision of US)

newrepublic.com/article/2022...

This video from Portland is a metaphor for what is going on in America. ICE trying so hard to get Americans to cross a line and if they don't, dragging them across the line and violently attacking.

#digitalpolitik

#digitalpolitik

Chatbots Are Pushing Sanctioned Russian Propaganda ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are serving users propaganda from Russian-backed media when asked about the invasion of Ukraine, new research finds.

When asked about Russia’s war in Ukraine, ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, DeepSeek, and xAI’s Grok all regularly cite Russian propaganda
www.wired.com/story/chatbo...

AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All I talked to the scholars who literally wrote the book on tech bubbles—and applied their test.

"AI may not simply be 'a bubble,' or even an enormous bubble. It may be the ultimate bubble. What you might cook up in a lab if your aim was to engineer the Platonic ideal of a tech bubble. One bubble to burst them all." - @bcmerchant.bsky.social

Feels increasingly like a government of people who don’t want to do the thing that is the core of the prestige job they worked very hard to get.

Photos: White House East Wing Demolished For Trump’s Ballroom The privately funded ballroom will be approximately 90,000 square feet, much larger than the White House itself.

Thinking a lot recently about the outrage over Lizzo playing James Madison's flute

Trump says he’s increasing tariffs on Canada by 10% after Ontario’s Reagan ad | CNN Business President Donald Trump said Saturday he is increasing the tariff on Canada by 10% over current levels, further escalating trade tensions over what he called a “fake” ad that featured parts of an anti-...

An embarrassingly obvious point, but...

This. Is. Illegal.

If anything like the rule of law were in force, Trump couldn't arbitrarily increase a tariff because he is annoyed.

In important and increasing ways, the rule of law in the US no longer exists.
www.cnn.com/2025/10/25/b...

Absolute immunity from criminal law is non-existent under American law. Even SCOTUS's decision in Trump v US limits presidential immunity to "official acts." States have prosecuted federal officials for violations of state law for over 200 years. 1/

When I worked in Congress (briefly), the term that kept coming to mind was sycophantic narcissism.

I haven’t seen anyone talk about how Jane Doe - an Epstein survivor - just sued the Bank of New York Mellon for funding Epstein and failing to file a Suspicious Activity Report. A Mellon heir is the one who gave $130M to pay the troops. Seems bribey to me.

He’s designing the ballroom with AI isn’t he www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

So preposterously unconstitutional, but also: active duty military payroll is more than $3b **per week.** This is a pittance of that. It has nothing to do with helping out the troops- they want to establish the precedent that Trump can bypass Congress and fund the government with anonymous bribes.

I don’t need to explain why it’s wildly unacceptable for the military to be illegally privately financed by the president’s wealthy allies, right?

"We argue that high-quality collective outcomes are
endangered not only by self-interested individual defectors, but by ‘cartels’ of mutually satisfied mediocrities."

diegogambetta.org/wp-content/u...

h/t @beijingpalmer.bsky.social

Timeline: Reconstruction of east wing Addition of Briefing Room Bill Clinton Scandal Muslim Brotherhood visits

Cocaine Discovered Trans Day of Visibility North and South flagpole Rose Garden renovations

These are screenshots from the ACTUAL WHITE HOUSE PAGE on the timeline of the East Wing. You may not believe what you re seeing. Go and check for yourself. This...I don't even know what to say about this.