Amanda Lefer

I need y'all to understand what the NYT, Dem donors, and centrists are doing here. They're pushing the narrative that trans people went too far and we deserve what is happening to us.

It's pure victim blaming and it's not done yet, there's a Confessore piece in the works with the same framing.

Group photo of Sesame Street workers holding their firsts high with graphics showing the logo of their new union and the winning vote tally, 55-19

Sesame Street is officially UNION! Workers at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, have voted 55-19 to join @opeiulocal153.bsky.social

Huge congrats to @sesameworkersunion.bsky.social! “We can officially say that today, May 15th, is brought to you by the letter U!”

every single person who shows up to interfere with ICE operations in person is doing more and putting themselves at more risk than any elected member of congress worried about upsetting their colleagues in the fascist party.

USDA withdraws a plan to limit salmonella levels in raw poultry The Agriculture Department says it is withdrawing a plan to limit salmonella bacteria in poultry products.

"The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden Administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat."

www.seattletimes.com/business/usd...

Finally, I can’t think of a more obvious moonshot project to spur advanced manufacturing in America generally than making it our goal to have Waymos or robo-Teslas — or any other brand of self-driving taxis that we can make — operating in every city in America. Because if you look under the hood of any Waymo, it is made up of chips, batteries, sensors and other components that also go into every part of the 21st-century industrial ecosystem — including robots, drones and flying cars — all infused with artificial intelligence.

OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. TRAINS! WE NEED TRAINS NOT JETSONS-ASS ROBOT-CAR DEATH MACHINES

NYT: One estimate finds that DOGE’s “firings, re-hirings, lost productivity and paid leave of thousands of workers” will actually COST taxpayers “upward of $135 billion this fiscal year.”

@nytimes.com 🤡
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/u...

Sounds like it’s a mistake to leave public goods in the hands of billionaires who can decide at any moment they’re bored and don’t want to support them anymore bsky.app/profile/clar...

Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.

They're going after the accreditation of universities and threatening to revoke the ability of accreditors if they don't crack down on DEI and LGBTQ people in academia.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

DOGE targeting black workers specifically it seems

This is functionally what the Cass Review was in the UK and lots of people in prestige media swallowed it whole while accusing trans people ourselves of "politicizing science" by pointing that out

Immigrant women describe 'hell on earth' in ICE detention No shower for days, cameras trained on the toilet, women crammed into cells 'like sardines,' among the allegations.

3 dead so far at Krome ICE detention center in Florida. Max capacity was 500, they have over 4,000 and not enough water and food. Reports say they get 1 cup of water per day.

These are already death camps.

eu.usatoday.com/story/news/n...

english.elpais.com/usa/2025-04-...

Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters Four Gaza protesters in Germany are set for deportations despite objections from an immigration official that none were convicted of crimes.

Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters - my latest @theintercept.com
theintercept.com/2025/03/31/g...

Trump is basically pressing all the “do not touch” buttons simultaneously: mass layoffs, increasing prices, undermining consumer and international confidence. Not sure what else he could be doing to trigger a recession, let alone longer term US decline

“politically motivated” lmao these guys just wilt the second they experience actual standards

As Doctors Predicted, RFK Jr.'s Bogus Vitamin A Claims Are Making Some Measles Patients More Sick A Texas children's hospital is now treating children for vitamin A toxicity after RFK Jr. touted the vitamin as a measles treatment.

“A Texas children's hospital is now treating children for vitamin A toxicity after RFK Jr. touted the vitamin as a measles treatment.”

www.huffpost.com/entry/rfk-jr...

AI models miss disease in Black and female patients Analysis of chest x-rays underscores need for monitoring artificial intelligence tools for bias, experts say

I mean… Yeah. Yeah they do. For entirely known and warned-about reasons. Yes.
www.science.org/content/arti...

The median voter is unlikely to be shipped to an El Salvadoran torture prison so I don't see how this issue plays well for Democrats.

by Matt Yglesias

The minute the New Deal started conservatives were like “it’s only a matter of a few years before we go full communism” and yet, somehow, we never got within earshot of full communism. Meanwhile, all it took was electing one Black president and within a few years we’ve got Nazi salutes at CPAC.

AOC: Fox News and the right-wing would have you believe that these American values are something out of The Communist Manifesto. But let me tell you Fox News, I don’t believe in healthcare, labor, and human rights because I’m a Marxist.. I believe it because I was a waitress.

American civil society is full of abject cowards, that is the issue. The government is a mafia state but it is winning because most American elite institutions are devoid of anything resembling integrity and are folding rather than stand on principles that were little more than marketing.

‘No Way’ to Please Everyone: Columbia’s President Confronts Trump’s Ultimatum With Trump intent on making an example of Columbia, Armstrong is at the center of a fight over the future of higher education.

‘No Way to Please Everyone’ Says Only University Where Students Are Regularly Kidnapped

X post by Timothy Snyder (@TimothyD ...), posted 6 hours ago. The post reads, "The people Attorney General Bondi is calling 'terrorists' have had no trial and no chance to defend them. We do not know they are. Ignoring the Constitution does not make us safe. It puts us all in peril."

I know this first hand. When I was a child, my entire community was branded as spies and sabateurs, justifying our internment inside barbed wire camps for years without due process, trial or charge.

Trump, Rubio, Musk and the his DOGE employees, Luke Farritor and Gavin Kliger, collectively chose to kill these people.

Through orders, indifference, and through pushing buttons that meant that some of the most vulnerable people in the world would have their lives sniffed out.

Men are shifting right because Republicans are making their lives worse and telling them to blame women and immigrants.

Democrats should be pointing out this *extremely obvious* dynamic, not trying to peddle a lighter version of the same narrative.

It’s impossible to state how spineless, ineffectual, and dumb Schumer is as leader. Just reprehensible. AOC should announce she’s primarying him right now and she’d have enough donations by tomorrow for the rest of her career.

First, a shutdown would give Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk permission to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now. Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have wide-ranging authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff members with no promise they would ever be rehired. The decisions about what is essential would, in practice, be largely up to the executive branch, with few left at agencies to check it. Mr. Musk has reportedly said that he wants a shutdown and may already be planning how to use one to his advantage.

(b) If a sequestration is ordered by the President under section 254 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, the spending, expenditure, or operating plan required by this section shall reflect such sequestration. (c) The departments and agencies to which this section applies are as follows: (1) The Department of Agriculture. (2) The Department of Commerce, including the United States Patent and Trademark Office. (3) The Department of Defense, other than for amounts made available in section 1101(a)(3) and title IV of this division. (4) The Department of Education. (5) The Department of Energy. (6) The Department of Health and Human Services. (7) The Department of Homeland Security. (8) The Department of Housing and Urban Development. (9) The Department of the Interior. (10) The Department of Justice. (11) The Department of Labor. (12) The Department of State and United States Agency for International Development. (13) The Department of Transportation. (14) The Department of the Treasury. (15) The Department of Veterans Affairs. (16) The National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (17) The National Science Foundation. (18) The Judiciary. (19) With respect to amounts made available under the heading “Executive Office of the President and Funds Appropriated to the President”, agencies funded under such heading.

(20) The Federal Communications Commission. (21) The General Services Administration. (22) The Office of Personnel Management. (23) The National Archives and Records Administration. (24) The Securities and Exchange Commission. (25) The Small Business Administration. (26) The Environmental Protection Agency. (27) The Indian Health Service. (28) The Smithsonian Institution. (29) The Social Security Administration. (30) The Corporation for National and Community Service. (31) The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (32) The Food and Drug Administration. (33) The Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (34) The United States International Development Finance Corporation. (35) The Architect of the Capitol.

Schumer told the NYTimes what he would do before telling Dem voters.

It also seems Schumer hasn't read the bill he's voting for, which authorizes the very thing he says he's avoiding "if a sequestration is ordered by the President."

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/o...

www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...

AOC on senate Dems caving and backing the CR: “A wide sense of betrayal.”

The CR passed in the House will provide a blank check for Trump and Musk to continue their savage war against working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor in order to lay the groundwork for massive tax breaks for billionaires.

This is a bill I cannot support.

Chuck Schumer selling us all out will be the last straw for a lot of people. And they need to be organized into organizations and into a project that will outlive the Democratic Party.

Letter to Columbia admin from Trump admin listing demands for them to continue a financial relationship with the govt

Letter to Columbia admin from Trump admin listing demands for them to continue a financial relationship with the govt

NEW letter to Columbia from Trump admin lists demands for “continued financial relationship” with the US government”:

—Suspend or expel students for Hamilton Hall protest
—“Time, place, and manner rules”
—Mask ban
—Address “anti-Zionist” discrimination
—Reform admissions
—MORE