Bill Patrick

@wyden.senate.gov @johnlarsonct.bsky.social @ewarren.bsky.social @waysmeanscmte.bsky.social

“. . . if you don’t know where you’re going, any road gets your there.”

The road’s legal and constitutional entrance is through Congress, however. I hope Gen. Caine insists on that. Venezuela was couched as law enforcement. Iran can’t be, and we can’t accept secret reasons for projecting US power.

I think DJT has a 50% likelihood of resigning in ‘27. Midterms over, he got what he wanted (cash & immunity) and he will trade an early exit for a blanket pardon, citing his age and health. Musk demanded Vance for VP to put him into the presidency asap. Vance is worse than DJT, so widen your view GC

Trump’s new tariffs are just as illegal as his old tariffs Numerous media outlets are spreading false information about the law — and Trump is benefiting.

New 15% global tariffs not only break several just made trade agreements, they’re also not legal under Section 122 as claimed. Even the Trump admin started this in August. MAJOR SCOOP and incredible reporting here:

open.substack.com/pub/populari...

The best thing about rightfully demanding refunds is that the battle is no longer between Trump and the constitution. SCOTUS held, despite an attempted Kavanaugh stop. Now the battle is between Trump and the importers who paid illegal taxes. The GOP gets to run on this anti-business policy. 😂

Same way a third of you Canada people like this shit. 🇺🇸

2) There's always an element of plausible deniability that serves to keep the debate about culture war issues and personality flaws instead of about real public policy. And that now very real public policy is very anti-democracy and very pro-plutocracy and very ugly.

1) It's important to see so much Nazi-esque rhetoric listed in one place. Let's keep in mind that yeah, they basically believe what they say, but what they believe is a fluid and reactionary political psychology, not an ideology, that is meant to both feed the base and trigger the libs.

A not secret report from last summer clearly showed that the hate speech "She is for They/Them" political ads funded by Musk's PAC and aired by the NFL, moved voters who watched by 2.7 points for Trump. That was the dark money coup. Gaza cost votes too. Both political risk assessments were wrong.

Opinion | This Is How an Autocrat Goes to War

“Not only has Congress not authorized such a war, but it has barely even debated it. The administration has not bothered to explain, either to Congress or the American people, why it might bomb Iran or what it hopes to achieve…This is how an autocracy goes to war.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/o...

Political participation is complicated. But if your goal is increasing participation, look at Colorado’s 74% overall and 84% of registered Dems voting. Blaming non-voters for outcomes you don’t like is a form of election denialism that helps other anti-democracy efforts.

And it’s not a coincidence that this is Black history month and Hegseth and Trump are ethnocentric thinkers to say the least. Timing plus the vague “loss of confidence” reasoning certainly sends an unnecessarily undermining message to Black soldiers across the armed forces.

And the admin can’t just ignore the courts as they have. Even if Trump keeps tariffs in place, importers will of course stop paying them and work on a claw back, and the battle will then be between the admin and US businesses. Expect short term chaos at customs, but no Con crisis, tG.

Weird one. Another missile destroyer, the Truxton, just got a new CO on 1/9, then on 2/11 was in a major collision with a supply ship. There is also a bs video about the Mason (in Carib) having been rammed by a Venezuelan war ship, a “corvette” that then just “disappeared”.

Rubio in Munich told me this admin is hopelessly guided by juvenile spokespersons pushing fringe, ruinous ideas. Nothing more. Brookings should be burning tires in the streets, or the academic version of that. Burn the hundreds of tons of journals collecting dust, whatever catches fire. 🔥

I do wonder why you don’t castigate your fellow FP analysts more. They seem afraid, with a few exceptions, to effectively call bs on a multitude of bs policy from Venezuela to Cuba to Greenland to Ukraine to NATO to Gaza to trade. Tough job right now, but we need tough experts to take risks.

“Fuck the poor! Fuck the poor!”

That’s how the March for Billionaires kicked off on February 7 in Pacific Heights, one of San Francisco’s wealthiest neighborhoods, near a stretch of mansions known as Billionaires’ Row.

We went to see whether the event was satire or sincere. The answer was… yes.

BREAKING: I read the new version of the “Save America Act” (S. 1383) so u don’t have to. Here’s my summary. Point 1 is new. It requires that all 50 states send their voter rolls to the DHS to run thru DHS’s faulty “SAVE” voter purge program. Points 6 & 7 are new too. Tell ur Senators #NoOnSAVE 1/

The MAHA thing is a big part of the far-right. It’s how people like Alex Jones funded their operations while at the same time using “common sense” (but often false) health claims to create legitimacy for their political claims by association. Kennedy is the perfect HHS secretary for that effort.

Lemme know when you get to Musk and Thiel who control massive and sensitive government contracts, and who openly challenge democracy and openly promote ethnocentrism. Maybe start with them too? Thanks!!

Musk put $10M into this primary supporting Nate Morris, a Vance friend, and Musk leads the donor class for ethnocentric demagoguery. Kentucky’s, perhaps futile, Republican search for legitimacy is the place to watch for cracks in this GOP’s war on the constitution.

Troy’s reporting is clear, thorough, and a concise scholarly look at the details and the big picture political plays at work. Read his whole series asap and save yourself a lot of confusion.

This tracks. We are likely to see a lot of new Massies as the GOP plots a path for R’s in congress to find themselves on the right side of the Epstein-(insert powerful co-conspirator here) criminal enterprise.

Required reading. The victims deserve justice and the paper trail Dave Troy continues to uncover leads to Epstein running a large “controlled burn operation” for both the criminal and civil claims against him and a lot of lawyers are involved. Their greed and apparent misogyny needs accountability.

I don’t think enough people know that the GOP’s “Save America Act” would establish voter purge programs using data systems that experts say are unreliable. These systems reek of DOGE & thus of Elon Musk who is *heavily* promoting the Act. Thread.

“We’re the only country in the world that has mail in ballots”. - Senile Satan

I read the Trump-backed voter suppression bill, the so-called “Save America Act,” so you don’t have to. Here’s my summary. Please tell your Senators to vote NO on this abomination: 202-224-3121. TY. 1/

The “beleaguered minority” belief is, one layer deeper, a purely rhetorical anti-government blind spot that blocks a coherent world view and undermines the very source of social and economic liberty: the US Constitution. It’s compartmentalized and emotional brain rot.

While we hope accountability, legal and political, comes to Epstein pals who considered themselves well above the law and well above the humanity of their victims, we need the social context Troy is establishing in this series to help understand today, what money and technology in politics intends.

If Gates and Summers especially, have any hope of rehabilitating their once respected statuses as powerful, highly intelligent people with universalist values and plans to elevate the common good, they will offer a mea culpa and help the nation recover from this attack they helped to happen.