Michael Hawthorne

Another amazing Wilco night at the @saltshedchicago.bsky.social

Good morning. Trump is protecting Epstein files. The confederacy lost and they were traitors, mRNA vaccines are the future, cops shouldn’t wear masks, Trump cut taxes for the rich and ripped benefits from the poor.

Have a weekend

Both Democracy Docket and the Washington Post have new stories today about the fight over Texas redistricting. DD is focusing on the GOP weaponizing government. WaPo thinks it is Democrats who are taking a "risk gambit" to fight back.

Support independent, pro-democracy media. hubs.ly/Q03jcjqP0

Flattery, Lobbyists and a Business Deal: Crypto’s Richest Man Campaigns for a Pardon

NEW: Trump’s team appears to be considering pardoning Binance founder CZ.

He pleaded guilty in 2023 to money laundering violations that allowed terrorist groups to move $.

Since then, Binance has done a $2B deal that benefited Trump’s crypto firm.

A pardon could allow more deals +access to the US

Recommended

Unprecedented Big Money Surge for Super PAC Tied to Trump Million-dollar donors fuel a nearly $200 million war chest to support a president who can’t run again.

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court predicted that super PACs wouldn’t lead to real or perceived corruption. But a record-breaking run for Trump’s super PAC casts doubt on that idea.
bit.ly/4olWjE6

A $1B shakedown of UCLA. Columbia and Harvard weren't the end; they were the beginning.

The CEO of a a multi-trillion dollar company went to the White House, openly handed the US president a gift made of gold, and his company got a special exemption to tariffs the president has illegally imposed.

Also, the Founders took bribery so seriously the Constitution bans it 3 separate times.

Farm workers are hard at work weeding this Central Coast lettuce field. They share: Our hands hurt from the repetitive motion of doing this work 8 hours a day. And our feet get tired from walking the long fields all day. But it's honest work and helps feed America. #WeFeedYou

Can The Rise In Solar Power Balance Out Clean Energy Cuts? Solar power adoption has been rising fast. Amid recent federal efforts to limit clean energy, will it make a dent in our climate impact?

A massive amount of solar power is being brought online around the world and in the US, even as the Trump administration makes cuts to clean energy.

Will it be enough to slow climate change? ☀️

I think that one reason very-online people are more freaked out by Trump Administration appointees is that they are familiar to us as reply guys — just sheer bullshit spewers, ignorant know-it-alls.

Why you might not know that 2024 was America's safest year since the 1960s An overwhelming majority of Americans, 64 percent, believe that crime increased across the country in 2024, according to a Gallup survey conducted late last year.

1. This week, the FBI released its comprehensive crime report for 2024, which revealed that both VIOLENT CRIME and PROPERTY CRIME reached their LOWEST LEVELS SINCE THE 1960s

This a massive story. But you might not have heard about it, even if you follow the news closely.

Here's why.

WATCH: “SENATOR BLACKBURN, SHOULD THE EPSTEIN FILES BE RELEASED TO THE PUBLIC?”

@marshablackburn , who wants to be our governor, ducks Q’s about files she once pretended to care about for 2 full minutes as her stooges physically block the questioner.

( 🎥 From Corrine Cliford)

Today in Chicago History: The White Sox wear shorts on ‘the coolest day of the summer’ Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 8, according to the Tribune’s archives.

Today might be one of the more interesting in Chicago history, according to @chicagotribune.com's archives:
-White Sox wore shorts! 🩳
-Cubs attempted to play 1st night game at Wrigley! 🌃
-Dave Matthews Band's bus incident! 💩
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/08/08/c...

Man In Charge Of U.S. Armed Forces: I'm Proud Of Those Who Killed 100,000 Members Of The U.S. Armed Forces

Imagine a German saying they're proud of the Nazi part of their history.

As public support for Trump’s mass deportation agenda weans, conservative outlets worked overtime to help “border czar” Tom Homan do damage control. This meant downplaying human rights concerns at “Alligator Alcatraz and creating false narratives about migrant crime - all with no pushback. 🧵(1/7)

CPD Data Shows Steep Drop in Shootings, Homicides in Neighborhoods Where ShotSpotter Was Removed: Analysis Police beats that had ShotSpotter sensors saw an approximately 17.8% decrease in violent crime and a 37.5% decrease in homicides during the first six months of 2025, as compared with the first six mon...

NEW: Nearly a year after Chicago officials turned off the city's gunshot detection system, a new analysis of Chicago crime data shows a steep drop in violent crime & homicides in the 12 South and West side neighborhoods that had ShotSpotter sensors. @wttw.bsky.social

ICE is hiring! US immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking for highly motivated, morally indifferent individuals to join our team. Open positions include: Senior Goon Racism Enforcement Office Unmarked Van Driver (Part-Time) Experience with children a plus usajobs.gov

From this month's edition of The Onion.

"Please no sudden moves."

7M Americans are living with Alzheimer's. Expected to be 13M by 20250.

Raskin: "What we have is the Trump Justice Department organizing itself not around the interests of the survivors -- the people who were victimized by Maxwell and Epstein -- but rather organizing itself around protecting the perpetrators."

Opinion | The Death of the Fourth American Republic

“The Supreme Court’s war on the Voting Rights Act precedes Trump but it is simpatico with his aims. . . Both work to undermine the basis for the more politically equal era of American democracy [1965 to 2025] and clear the path to an American autocracy.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/o...

GOP's new anti-fluoride politics is basically Make America England Again

This chart.

Damn.

And I've heard not a peep from the GOP lawmakers who went to all those ribbon cutting ceremonies at the factories.

www.canarymedia.com/articles/cle...

(chart by @danmccarthy.bsky.social)

the thing i don't get about this is that sure, you're some groyper who thinks the posters look cool. but, like, you must know that the nazis lost, and they didn't just lose, they lost to the people they *deemed inferior*: a polyglot nation of shopkeepers on one front & russian peasants on the other

Opinion | The Lost Promise of Reconstruction (Published 2019)

"As time went on, outright racism became increasingly evident in the court’s decisions. The process was gradual and never total, but the fate of the three amendments offers an object lesson in what can happen to constitutional rights at the hands of an unsympathetic, conservative Supreme Court."

Ignoring scientists’ pleas, RFK Jr. slashes investments in mRNA vaccines Remember when Donald Trump celebrated mRNA-based vaccines as a “modern-day miracle”? That was before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got to work.

That an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is behaving like an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is painfully predictable.

But the fact remains that 52 Senate Republicans were given an opportunity to protect Americans from RFK Jr. — and they failed spectacularly.

this work saved millions of lives in 2021, won the Nobel Prize in 2023, and is cancelled in 2025