Excerpt from Strongmen book by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

"The appeal of these leaders for many rests on their having the power to get away with things that ordinary men cannot, whether in the bedroom or in politics."
-- @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social , "Strongmen: Mussolini to the present"

Finally came across video of an arrest at a #NoKings event yesterday. 🙄

The whole thing as a vanity exercise to demonstrate a show of force before the No Kings events.

DOD had said that firing bombs over a highway was safe; state officials disagreed and shut down the highway, used by about 80K people daily. Turns out the state officials were right.

Trump, 79, Posts Menacing Video Threatening a Never-Ending Presidency MAGA followers couldn’t get enough of the idea of a never-ending Trump presidency.

President Donald Trump has hinted that he might have something even more permanent than a third term in mind.

Vermont Legislator Resigns Over Racist Texts in Republican Group Chat The G.O.P. officials who participated in a group text chat have faced calls to step down. State Senator Samuel Douglass was the group’s only elected member.

Samuel Douglass, a Vermont Republican legislator who faced bipartisan condemnation after participating in a long-running group chat that routinely used racist and antisemitic language, said on Friday that he would resign. He was one of a dozen young Republicans who had participated in the texts.

Trump’s attempt to gut special education office has some conservative parents on edge The president called the layoffs a part of cuts to “Democrat programs,” but children across the nation would be impacted.

Every once in a while during the 2024 campaign, I'd meet parents of disabled kids who were part of Moms for Liberty or people who taught autistic kids. @slooterman.bsky.social writes how they are afraid right now as Trump targets special education staff.
19thnews.org/2025/10/spec...

Florida’s surgeon general’s anti-vax beliefs are only the tip of a very deeply weird iceberg.

Joseph Ladapo’s guiding voice? His wife, who believes she can talk to “Archangel Michael, Mary Magdalene, and many other beings of light.”

seems that RFK is clearing the path for his CDC to do tuskegee syphillis experiments as a matter of course. in other news, RFK is a genuine monster who relishes in the pain and suffering of those he feels he has control or dominion over

Heavy Staten Island vibe.

A young reporter discovers a mysterious trove of data that exposes a global surveillance empire. In a major investigation, a young reporter uncovers a powerful technology used to spy on thousands of people across the world.

SURVEILLANCE SECRETS: @lighthousereports.com uncovered a vast surveillance empire whose untraceable tech has been used to target people in more than 100 countries, including the US.

It has operated under the radar for decades. Until now.

Nederlandse diensten delen minder informatie met de VS: ‘Soms vertellen we dingen niet meer’ Het aantal dreigingen dat op Nederland afkomt is groot, zien de hoofden van de AIVD en de MIVD elke dag: niet alleen Russische agressie, maar ook de opmars van China als digitale macht en binnenlands ...

Dutch intelligence suspends sharing arrangements with the US after concluding that high level intel was routinely being shared by the White House with their friends in the Kremlin. www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/n...

DOOCY: What do you think about a Russia to Alaska tunnel?

SEN. JIM BANKS: Maybe it's something that's possible. I don't know. I'll defer to President Trump. I'm sure there's a reason he's raising that prospect. He's several steps ahead.

Trump on the government shutdown: "We're cutting Democrat programs that we didn't want. They made one mistake, they didn't realize that gives me the right to cut programs that Republicans didn't want—giveaways, welfare programs—and we're doing that and cutting them permanently."

Rubio promised to betray U.S. informants to get Trump’s El Salvador prison deal To secure U.S. access to President Nayib Bukele’s notorious CECOT prison, Rubio agreed to turn over several MS-13 leaders central to a long-running Justice Department investigation.

This story is extraordinary even by 2025 standards. Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, made a deal with Bukele and agreed to renege on informant agreements in a years-long DOJ investigation into MS-13, totally undercutting credibility of such agreements.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

With alt text.

Executive summary: the US killed at least 3 Colombian fishermen who’d put up a distress flag. In Colombian waters

Sharing this 102 year old WW2 Vet who is fighting fascism a second time.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. DAVID JOSE HUERTA, Defendant. No. 2:25-MJ-03504-DUTY MOTION TO DISMISS COMPLAINT AGAINST DEFENDANT PURSUANT TO FEDERAL RULE OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE 48(a) The Acting United States Attorney for the Central District of California hereby requests leave of the Court to dismiss the complaint against defendant DAVID JOSE HUERTA without prejudice pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a).

Four months after assaulting, then arresting SEIU CA President David Huerta at a protest, DOJ is moving to dismiss.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Every Republican on the Sunday shows should be forced to watch the Air Feces One video and then be asked, “Is the President sane?”

Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping shit on America

Sara Whitmer • • • 1h • 8 I'm sure many of you have heard by now that earlier this week, IU k*lled the print edition of its student paper, the IDS. The issue that was supposed to print this week contained criticism of the Whitten regime and IUs further slide into scist control, and they couldn't allow that to happen during Homecoming, when all the rich alumni are in town. Enter Purdue! The Purdue student paper, The Exponent, owns its own presses. Yesterday, in an act of tremendous solidarity with their biggest rival school, they printed the forbidden issue of the IDS. They then drove it to Bloomington overnight and stocked all of the IDS boxes on campus, just in time for Homecoming. Solidarity is what makes us stronger, and solidarity will be what ultimately allows us to triumph, if we can ever truly get it together. I hope everyone has a fun, safe day if they're going out today, and I hope we can think about what acts of solidarity we can begin taking to really make this movement MOVE - beyond a permitted expression of upset into more active resistance. 75 12 comments

Purdue to the rescue of IU student newspaper, whose institution was attempting censorship. Details in alt!

The numbers I am seeing, and the breadth of people and places with basically no arrests and so forth, seem to me an unqualified political loss for them. It is a show of strength rather than the fight itself, but you can’t downplay it.

I could kinda buy any other President pretending they’re shrugging off 7 million people hitting the streets to convey they hate him, but not the guy still beefing with Rosie O’Donnell.

I’ve seen just one counter-protester at No Kings San Diego. He’s got a Trump 2024 flag and this guy has been following him around for probably an hour playing Benny Hill and circus music.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson bearing false witness against millions of his fellow American neighbors seems a tad, I don't know, unchristian.

Seven million patriots celebrated the real America today.

This group of #NoKings protesters in Old Town Alexandria ripped the GOP for calling the rallies anti-American: “They think they’re the only patriotic ones”

DC. No Kings!