Chase Madar

My cousin’s friend said it was actually $14 _trillion_

Texas Democrats Demand Release of ‘Political Prisoner’ Leqaa Kordia, Compare ICE Facility to ‘Internment Camps’ State Rep. Salman Bhojani said the 33-year-old is living in inhumane conditions and has been running “a high fever for several days.”

Why is a Columbia University protester still in a detention center in Texas? Texas Democrats are accusing the president of holding Leqaa Kordia as a "political prisoner." thebarbedwire.com/2026/01/30/t...

Iran and the New Geopolitical Moment A coalition of states is seeking to avert a U.S. attack, and Israel is in the forefront of their mind.

Compelling piece which argues that the events of 2020 to 2023 saw a shift away from US thinking that MENA's stability relied on a balance of power between the KSA and IRI towards an overt underwriting of Israeli regional domination, which in turn has compelled other states to unite against this.

A deluge of work on regime change after the 2003 invasion of Iraq yielded strong (and rare) agreement in IR: it doesn't work & has terrible consequences. @profdownes.bsky.social's book Catastrophic Success lays it out, but it's right there in the title. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

A study for a concertina structure on isometric graph paper.

Welcome to the Jade Helm Presidency Conservatives once panicked about a supposed federal plot to invade their communities and quash dissent. Now they’re cheering it.

Trump has finally delivered the Jade Helm presidency the far right warned of in 2015: a techno-authoritarian assault on the White House’s enemies. Only now instead of raising an alarm over a hoax, they’re cheering the real thing.

theintercept.com/2026/02/02/t...

The greatest success of the "constitutional sheriff" movement has been to mainstream the idea that you "can't legislate" sheriffs. Just gotta wait until that election!
www.sheriffs.org/sites/defaul...

This is difficult for US progs to digest; we have a anti-racist consensus, it’s definitional and a binding agent. But U.S. progs and mods struggle to understand that nationalism can be bigoted, lethally nasty or even something that is not wholly identical to racism and racial identity

I see a lot of negative reactions to this post but it correctly highlights that the nationalism is louder and stronger than the racism in the ICE/CBP siege of Minneapolis, Maine, L.A. and in Trumpism more generally

Early last year I approached Rep Gimenez with an offer to work together to protect immigrants in his district & mine. He rudely told me he had his own strategy & walked off.

Apparently his strategy was to do nothing for over a year to actually stop this.

Miami deserves better.

Schumer will not be the Democratic candidate for the senate seat he now holds in 2028

Stomach-turning that our opposition party Senate leader visibly cares more about funding the Israeli military than about cutting funding for ICE/CBP

Nancy Mace Is Not Okay “Something’s broken. The motherboard’s fried. We’re short-circuiting somewhere.”

kind of striking how many main characters in Trump II are obviously and severely disturbed nymag.com/intelligence...

True of some people, but I think not all. Honestly I would have had to think of one mentally ill family member less, not more, had he been getting adequate care in a humane and well-budgeted institution rather than homeless

Big Pharma’s Get-Out-of-U.S.-Tax-Free Card While many industries excel at not paying U.S. corporate taxes, the pharmaceutical industry takes the cake – despite $400 billion in prescription drug sales in 2022, Big Pharma claimed to have close…

Today, Patrick Driessen (@pdriessentax.bsky.social) explains how Big Pharma uses the threat of relocation to secure outrageous tax breaks.

The result: Big Pharma booked $400 billion in U.S. drug sales in 2022, yet reported close to zero taxable income.

small foot, round body with tapering neck and slightly flaring mouth; pair of handles extend from mouth to center of body; sides of mouth opposite handles slightly pointed; 4 large organic designs on body

Amphora https://collections.artsmia.org/art/9400/

World's Best and Worst Places to Be Mentally Ill We have discharged our mentally ill from hospitals, but neglected them so badly in the community that many wind up in prison dungeons or dumped on the streets.

Yes, I remember that op-ed and feel bad for the family. There are humane alternatives to miserable large-scale forced institutionalization but
they require vision, political commitment and budget www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/savi...

Yes, it’s the duty of government to actually build and maintain mental institutions that aren’t abuse-ridden hellscapes, funded by progressive taxation. Too much fake-smart, know-nothing defeatism about this (and other projects) in the U.S.

Eager to learn about how center-left parties and governments address this in other rich liberal countries, something @jonwalkerpdx.bsky.social has posted about

I don’t have a quick answer. How and where the threshold for “risk of harm to self and others” is defined is contingent and moveable

This Member of Congress finally got access to the Minneapolis detention center and her report is genuinely appalling. Please watch and share.

Socialism, which sees beyond individualism to the social, just as advertised, ought to be able to overcome the antisocial libertarianism that pollutes our public life across the political spectrum

Opinion | Why Is My Son Being Left to Die on the Streets?

We need well-funded quality mental institutions and legal authority to commit people to them. Achieving this goes against the libertarianism of both Right (anti-tax jihadists) and Libs (“Belligerent schizoids in the parks & subways are the essence of a free society”) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/o...

Amazing the apocalyptic language that even urbane, liberal pols like Pelosi use to describe their commitment to subsidizing the Israeli military from Americans’ weekly paychecks

“In a wayyyyyy…”

But it does speak to the deep suspicion that many liberal professionals, those who are doing well in the status quo, have of vigorous social-democratic governance, that actually wields state power to change things. That will always be “in a sense, like Trump” to these philosophers

This is how the NYTimes triangulates its own brand and authority; always grim to see reporters under 50 internalizing this ethic to build their own cred and diligently extruding vacuous takes like this

I expect the NYTimes will keep publishing valuable reporting about the city. But their “general assessments” in unsigned editorials and thumbsucker musings will continue to be irrelevant and even embarrassing. Here a Dem mayor endowed with executive function is, for that reason, likened to Trump

High chance the WSJ scoop about a whistleblower complaint against her is a targeted leak from an administration neocon wanting to discredit Gabbard as she’s not ideologically pro-Israel or lusty for a Havana regime change. Instead, her only real principle is pleasing Daddy; that’s also terrible