C Marcella Metzger

We spent a year investigating billionaires for @washingtonpost.com.

We found: the wealthiest 100 Americans gave $1.1 billion to influence the 2024 elections — 140x more than they did in 2000. And almost all of that giving boosted Republicans.

washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

Remember Jamal Khashoggi.

Hey Pam Bondi. This is John Mitchell. Gird your loins because you actually work for the people and not the president and you will eventually find out what that means.

Nellie Bly waves her hat in a photo taken not long after her return to the U.S. after her trip around the world. Image credit: Corbis.

#ResistanceRoots

Today in history, 1889: Journalist Nellie Bly sets off on a trip around the world alone, attempting to beat the “record” set in Jules Verne’s fictional book, “Around the World in 80 Days.” She ultimately completed the journey in just 72 days, six hours and 11 minutes. /1

Preservationists sue Trump over plans to paint Eisenhower building The complaint alleges Trump’s plan would ‘permanently alter one of the most architecturally significant and historic structures in the Nation’s Capital’

Preservationists concerned by President Trump’s public musings about painting the 137-year-old Eisenhower Executive Office Building completely white sued him to halt the work.

Nuzzi, like TCW, exists as a kind of simulacrum of the midcentury public intellectual. Not even ripping off the writers of that era, but imitating a sort of half-remembered, half-invented idea of what those writers were sort of like and what their general vibe was.

If they win, Democrats will have to use their newfound authority to rethink, even dismantle, agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They may need to walk back the Bush-era decision to consolidate those agencies and others under a single department, given the wild abuses perpetrated under this administration and its predecessors. It will need to give serious thought to major political and social reform, including D.C. statehood, a federal ban on partisan gerrymandering, a new voting rights act and federal protections for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, including the rights of gender and sexual minorities. Democrats will also need to embrace the legislature’s constitutional authority to structure the executive branch and the judiciary, up to and including Supreme Court reform. If they win next year, Democrats will need to treat the next Congress not as a return to the status quo ante but as the beginning of a new era in which the principal task is to roll back the president’s effort to create and consolidate a personalist dictatorship. They’ll need to fortify the American political system against future attempts to play dictator and lay out a project of genuine democratic renewal. None of this is possible without a willingness to use power rather than just hold it. What we’ve seen this week is that there are still too many Democrats whose instinct is to retreat to normalcy rather than face the conflict at hand.

Jamelle was cooking.

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/o...

🤬🤬

Good statement from the US conference of Catholic Bishops

OK, this about confirms it that little boys were on the menu too.

Increase in productivity since 1979: 87%

Increase in hourly pay since 1979: 32%

Just so happens that ~25% of workers were unionized in 1979. Today? 10%.

As unions declined, the super-rich have taken a larger share of wealth generated by labor. We must build back union power.

Personally I don't think it's OK to say "I'm not interested in politics, I just want to live my life", because it means you're asking others to hold the line against people who would destroy you.

Reminder that Starbucks’ CEO made 6,666x more than the company's median employee in 2024.

This was the widest CEO-to-Worker pay gap in the entire S&P 500.

And we're supposed to believe Starbucks can't afford to bargain a fair contract with its unionized workers?

I never knew that my emails, filled to the brim with complete sentences and a coherent narrative, were such a work of art. I'm bout to start printing these out and hanging them on the walls.

👇👇

Priorities.

He’s Acting Pretty Damn Guilty Trump usually acts like a guy with something to hide. But his Epstein behavior is on another level.

"Trump seems to believe there are more damaging revelations to come. He wouldn’t have cranked up the pressure yesterday if he thought the stuff we’d already seen was the worst of it. Whatever the high-water mark of this scandal is, we likely haven’t hit it yet."
www.thebulwark.com/p/hes-acting...

“We were trying to bomb a boat in the Caribbean, but it misfired and hit the room in DOJ where all the Epstein files are.”

81 years ago, FDR proposed a second Bill of Rights to guarantee every American the right to employment, healthcare, education, housing, and a living income. His words are as relevant now as they were then. Watch.

Tech Billionaire Mocks Pope Leo’s AI Warning — and Reveals Silicon Valley’s Original Sin A billionaire tech guru openly mocked Leo's call for moral AI — and quickly backtracked after backlash. It’s a telling collision of Silicon Valley hubris with a pope they cannot buy, bully, or ignore.

A tech billionaire mocked Pope Leo XIV’s call for ethical AI.

The post was deleted — but not before exposing Silicon Valley’s deeper discomfort: a pope they can’t buy or bully.

It also revealed something older: the Valley’s original sin — the desire to be God.

I assume Schumer knows this is the end of his political career?

Absolutely correct

It’s almost as if…our political system is not equipped to deal with a far right authoritarian party

💯. It wasn't about just the ACA subsides—it was about those and … everything else.

Hard to see @schumer.senate.gov being able to stay in leadership after this or in the senate, he was not the man for this moment

The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person.

The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person.

People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives.

And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.

Flying at 8000 feet today News Captain says flying at 8000 feet (!) Newark to Savannah today instead of 34000 because of air traffic control restrictions. Everyone has to say seated including flight attendants. Never in my 40 years in flying has this happened … wondering what the view will be 😀

Things are fine.

Sounds like the squishes in the senate caucus are ready to pull the plug with no ACA changes. This is real. If you want to register your opinion you shld call yr senator in the next hour. They not only want to reopen w/nothing. They want cover from their colleagues who still want to hold out.

Thank you for making me laugh

The good news is that Trump is very unpopular and his actions are wildly unpopular but the bad news is that a lot of craven people were willing to go along with a lot of really bad stuff that will and has hurt a lot of people. Also a lot of billionaires proved themselves to be huge cowards.