GS: “Sen. Warner said you can’t argue drug trafficking charges demand invasion in one case while issuing a pardon in another…”🤔

@marcorubio: “Maduro was indicted.”

GS: “Hernandez was CONVICTED.”

RUBIO: “I wasn't involved in the pardon… I've got other things going on.” 🤷🏽‍♂️

You were saying?

How does a legit press corp help anyway when everything any member of this admin says is a lie? I suppose there is value in at least asking the questions, but then the lies just get transcribed…

Im seeing discussions about consultations with congress, authorizations of force etc. I have to say this transcends any of what I would call sub constitutional technicalities. The president has gone to war with a foreign power and, it seems, kidnapped a foreign head of state on the basis of nothing.

Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change. I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress.

TN07 is a story about gerrymandering: the GOP cracked Nashville into 3 districts when it redrew the 2022 map, destroying the Dem seat there.

Fast-forward: a section of Nashville, which just 5 years ago had a Dem representative, is now voting Dem by huge margins but it's been designed to not matter.

😳 “as many lives lost as WW1”

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

With the tragic assassination of a Minnesota Democratic leader, I’m going to underline this point again.

Trump Is Suddenly Bleeding Independents. A Brutal New Poll Shows Why. Immigration was his best issue in the polls. But now he’s sinking on it. Maybe Americans care about the rule of law after all.

@slotkin.senate.gov people loathe Trump’s attacks on DEI—which helps women, POC, the disabled, LGBTQIA people—& universities, science, medicine, working class, poor, immigrants, education, the economy, rule of law. Focus on that +GOP corruption & retribution; drop the shameful GOP line about “woke”

You could swap out Hegseth’s name for Trump, Vance, Bondi, Noem, Rubio, …everyone in this vile administration. These corrupt actors don’t do anything for “the good of the country,” and won’t resign. You can’t appeal to the patriotism of people who have none; fascists don’t leave power voluntarily.

Trump Live Updates: Deportations, Harvard Feud and Ukraine Peace Talks Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented. A group of migrants had been scheduled to be flown out of the country, according to people familiar with the matter.

www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04... Thomas and Alito for the win again: always standing strong in support of injustice.

Trump's Individual Claims about Immigrant Targets Are False-But So Is the Larger Premise - emptywheel Thus far, the campaign to fight back against Trump's authoritarian immigration crackdown has focused on individual stories, with some success. But it has yet to account for the fact that his crackdown...

www.emptywheel.net/2025/04/18/t... Excellent must-read. So far no court has suggested or found that the invocation of a national emergency was fraudulent and thus should be enjoined. Not sure any court would go there or can. But they should.

Must-read, incredibly chilling piece by @jennamclaughlin.bsky.social about DOGE’s actions. It beggars belief that R-controlled Congress is allowing rampant security breaches compromising Americans’ privacy, apparent violations of records-keeping and privacy laws, and Musk’s conflicts of interest.

The freight guys have really started freaking out over the past 48-72 hours:

Thoughtful piece by @joshtpm.bsky.social. While I agree that Leo and the Federalist Society purveyors of the fraudulent “unitary executive” theory are the architects of Trump’s “legal” lawlessness, “originalism”, their sham theory used to pretextually to justify whatever they want, has a huge role.

Certainly seems to create a presumption that the firings were illegally based on race and gender. No reasons given means not even a pretextual rationale is on offer, which won’t help the govt’s case if these people sue, which I hope they do.

"If starting the biggest trade war since the Great Depression based on a law that doesn't even mention tariffs is not an unconstitutional usurpation of legislative power, I don't know what is," said GMU/Scalia lawprof Ilya Somin.

Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez. American citizen, detained by ICE in Leon County Florida. His mother brought his birth certificate and SS card. Judge told her, “Sorry, he has an ICE hold, despite not having probably cause for his arrest”

This is it folks. State sponsored kidnapping.

Share this please

Opinion by conservative judge in Fourth Circuit appeals case saying that the Trump admin's position "should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear."

Probably you had to be around in Reagan era to know what a conservative icon J. Harvie Wilkinson III has been. Reagan himself appointed JHW to current position, as Fourth Circuit appeals judge, when JHW was in his 30s.

With clarity similar to Judge Luttig's or Liz Cheney's, JHW brings the heat:

There is no basis to mandamus her. She grounds every piece of the order in the clear language of the SCt ‘s order. Not that that will stop them, but they won’t get a stay pending resolution of a bogus mandamus filing.

DOGE has reportedly gained access to sensitive NLRB data — including info on union activity, workplace complaints, and names of organizers.

Coincidentally, the NLRB has multiple lawsuits against SpaceX and Tesla.

The conflicts of interest just keep getting more blatant.

@joycewhitevance.bsky.social’s piece is dead-on. If I were Judge Xinis, I’d order the govt to list every step it could take to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return that it has not yet, to explain why not, and to disclose who decided not to & when. And I’d remind DOJ attys of their duty of candor.

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Marco Rubio killed these people.

Republicans are stealing a North Carolina judicial race. They won't stop there. It's January 6 without the insurrection.

GOP court decision overturning Democratic victory in North Carolina Supreme Court race is 5 alarm fire for democracy. It’s January 6 without the insurrection. Make no mistake, if GOP succeeds in stealing election in NC, they’ll use that playbook everywhere www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

It is pathological how insecure in their masculinity guys like Watters are. They really don’t get how pathetic and weak they come across when they say this nonsense.

The pain he says is “necessary” is to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. If both groups were taxed at higher rates and paid them, these cuts would not be “necessary.”

And cuts are different than the tariffs, whose purpose is to make the global economy subject to Trump’s whims.

It’s terrible Trump’s blatant usurpation of the tariff power into a protection racket stabilized the markets. This will help ensure endless jockeying by govts, industries, and businesses to curry favor with him which is exactly the tyranny he wants.

Good response. If the SCt condones this monstrousness we really are 1930s Germany. This is absolute lawlessness and tyranny.

Shame on @cnn.com for not featuring Senator Cory Booker’s historic, record-breaking, inspirational call-to-action filibuster in its “Five Things” this morning.

‘One of the darkest days’: NIH purges agency leadership amid mass layoffs In shock move, four institute directors at the US biomedical agency are removed from their posts.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...