Brian White

Gallego voted to confirm 10 of Trump’s Cabinet nominees out of the 22 Cabinet positions. Nearly half. And as recently as the past month, voted to confirm Keith Bass as Assistant Secretary of Defense. Bass had previously been fired by the CIA in 2021 for incompetence. Gallego doesn’t walk the talk.

I suspect we’ll soon be hearing more about the “It would be way too messy and inconvenient for the government to return illegally taken taxes” doctrine.

When Power Puts Its Face on the Wall The portrait is the warning. It always has been.

When a leader puts his face on government buildings, history tells us exactly where it leads. New Resistance Manual post on Trump's DOJ banner, how it is a page from the authoritarian playbook, and some things you can do about it.

A four-panel black-and-white and color collage of historical photographs. Top left: A man on a ladder affixes a large portrait of Adolf Hitler to the exterior wall of a building, while people above display a Nazi swastika flag. Top right: A giant portrait of Benito Mussolini dominates the facade of an Italian government building, flanked by two large banners reading ‘SI’ (Yes). Bottom left: Two oversized portraits — of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin — hang from scaffolding on the exterior of a grand Soviet-era government building. Bottom right: A color photograph of Mao Zedong’s iconic portrait mounted above the gate at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, with a formation of uniformed Chinese soldiers marching in the foreground.

The portrait is the warning. It always has been.

A large vertical banner featuring a darkly lit, dramatic portrait of U.S. President Donald Trump hangs between the neoclassical columns of the U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. The banner includes the Department of Justice seal and the text ‘Make America Great Again.’ A worker on a blue boom lift is installing the banner. An American flag is visible to the left. The words ‘Department of Justice’ are engraved on the building’s stone facade at lower right.

A four-panel black-and-white and color collage of historical photographs. Top left: A man on a ladder affixes a large portrait of Adolf Hitler to the exterior wall of a building, while people above display a Nazi swastika flag. Top right: A giant portrait of Benito Mussolini dominates the facade of an Italian government building, flanked by two large banners reading ‘SI’ (Yes). Bottom left: Two oversized portraits — of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin — hang from scaffolding on the exterior of a grand Soviet-era government building. Bottom right: A color photograph of Mao Zedong’s iconic portrait mounted above the gate at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, with a formation of uniformed Chinese soldiers marching in the foreground.

The portrait is the warning. It always has been. We just keep needing to be reminded.

Worth noting: the workers in India reported to be tracking Amazon Go purchases were mostly data labelers — annotating visual scenes to train the computer vision models behind cashierless checkout. It's a critical (and often invisible) part of how visual AI actually gets built.

Given the fact that they are clearly taking illegal orders, and openly engaged in what can be viewed as war crimes in the Caribbean, it appears a lot of them have already passed that loyalty test with flying colors.

A person with short brown hair stands facing a window, photographed from behind. They are wearing a white Cleveland Browns football jersey with the large number “2” on the back and orange-and-brown striped sleeves. The name “COUCH” at the top is crossed out, and beneath it a long column of quarterback surnames is handwritten and crossed out one by one, extending down the back of the jersey, suggesting a humorous reference to the Browns’ long succession of starting quarterbacks. The person rests one hand on their hip and the other against the window frame, wearing black pants and standing indoors near a glass door or window.

😐

And the military leadership, up and down the chain, are clearly willing to take and execute illegal orders. Everyone should be thinking about the clear danger of a complicit military, as Trump moves on his desire to deploy troops against domestic targets.

Your State-by-State Guide to Every State Supreme Court - Bolts Bolts breaks down the structure, selection procedures, and functions of each state’s highest court.

State supreme courts are a battlefield for pressing issues, from abortion rights to ballot access. But do you know how your court works?

Our guide breaks down the structure and procedures of every single state’s highest court.

X.com post by Florida GOP congressman Randy Fine, posted on February 15, 2026: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”

Sitting GOP representative in Florida. Donald Trump: "Randy Fine has my Complete and Total Endorsement.

This is the Republican Party. If you have an R after your name, this is what you stand for.

Said with all the fire and ferocity of Susan Collins. The fact that he occasionally pops out of Martha’s Vineyard to do these podcasts and paid appearances at closed door events isn’t leadership. He has platform and voice that could be meaningful. Lead, or just go away, man. FFS.

This is what ICE does every day. Hunt little kids who are here legally. They get sent to a place called the “baby jail” in Texas. Very little of it ends up on video like this. But it’s routine. And disgusting.

The Kids Trump Sent to ICE’s Dilley Detention Center ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of...

Read this. Every word. Trump, his people and his supporters are sadistic monsters. They are putting children in concentration camps, and gleeful about the pain and suffering they are inflicting. They find joy in hurting kids. It’s obscene. This has to end.

Speak up. Keep protesting. Don’t relent.

“we've been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting”

This should send a chill down the spine of every person who believes in democracy.

Trump tells soldiers to vote GOP in campaign-style rally at Fort Bragg Army policy prohibits partisan displays, and most service members refrained from cheering.

We once believed the US military would refuse unlawful orders and stay outside partisan politics. That certainty is fading. Extrajudicial killings, threats to allies, talk of using troops in U.S. cities, suing ex-military who urge current members to follow the law – makes the unthinkable thinkable.

Zahilay's first executive order bars ICE from King County-owned properties In his first executive order since becoming King County executive in November, Girmay Zahilay has barred immigration authorities from conducting enforcement activities in non-public areas of county-ow...

This is why local elections matter more than ever. It’s really the last bulwark protecting us from a corrupt federal government.

Get involved in your community. Support local news organizations. Follow @taniel.bsky.social and @boltsmag.org and other outlets that are focusing on local news.

Sadists. The entire Trump administration.

Black-and-white political cartoon by Pia Guerra. A caricature of Donald Trump wearing a suit and a crown sits with arms crossed on a small seat mounted above a large cylindrical tank, like a dunk tank, looking aloof. Below him, three suited officials stand on the grass in conversation, appearing thoughtful or concerned. A baseball lies on the ground in front of them, implying the seat above could be knocked into the tank, but they would rather discuss the strategy. Minimal background, simple line-drawing style, with the illustration credit visible in the corner.

Spot on – by cartoonist Pia Guerra

Exclusive: White House uses USAID funds for budget director Vought's security, documents show The White House budget office is using millions of dollars from the former U.S. foreign aid agency to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump's budget chief and an archit...

At risk of piling on to what some may consider conspiracy thinking, I would also offer the seeming uptick in expanded security for key people in the Trump orbit. In addition to other cabinet members and top advisors moving onto military bases, we have this.

Sort of a doom prep vibe happening.

12/ So yeah, blanket AI pessimism doesn't hold up to scrutiny. But uncritical enthusiasm isn't great either. This technology is remarkable, and deserves our best thinking, our clearest ethics, and our willingness to learn as we go.

I think that's the conversation we should really focus on having.

11/ The future shouldn't be viewed as "AI vs humans." We should look at it as how humans will use these increasingly capable AI tools. The question is whether we're thoughtful and deliberate about how we build and deploy them, or whether we move so fast we create problems we didn't anticipate.

10/ I think we need to hold two ideas at once: be genuinely excited about what this technology can do AND be rigorous about building safeguards, studying effects, staying humble about unknowns. Those aren't contradictory positions.

9/ That autonomy creates new possibilities but also new risks. A medical triage system, a financial algorithm, a network routing protocol during a crisis, simple personal shopping or bill paying. These could make consequential decisions in real-time. The stakes of getting it wrong aren't abstract.

8/ Where I feel things are getting really interesting (and uncertain) is the rise of agentic AI. We're shifting from tools that respond to specific requests to systems that can pursue goals somewhat autonomously, making decisions without constant human oversight.

7/ The job displacement concerns are real, and they echo historical patterns when major technologies arrived. The difference? Previous waves unfolded over years or decades. We're moving faster now, which means less time to adapt and less room for gradual responses.

6/ Here's my view: this technology is here, and it's not going away. The question isn't whether to accept AI. It's how we use it responsibly. It's a powerful tool that can serve noble purposes, from advancing medicine to solving complex scientific problems, to improving individual productivity.

5/ That's understandable, but it's not a basis for dismissing the entire field. It is important to acknowledge that there ARE thoughtful critics raising real concerns. Job displacement, training data, who controls these systems... these questions matter.

4/ That said, I think a lot of negative takes may come from limited exposure. People see bad examples on social media, or try a general-purpose LLM for something it wasn't built for. Some folks genuinely don't know how to get useful results.

3/ This is a distinction without a meaningful difference. It's all AI, it's all using similar underlying techniques, and the semantic games don't change the substance.