Keith Garcia

What You Should Know About Russ Vought, Trump’s Shadow President Vought is the architect of President Trump’s broader plan to fire civil servants, freeze government programs and dismantle entire agencies. Here are some key things to know about the D.C. insider who ...

Vought holds one of the most powerful jobs in D.C., and he’s used his position to wage a quiet war to change the shape of the entire U.S. government.

Here's what you should know about Trump’s shadow president.

Supreme Court issues emergency order to block full SNAP food aid payments The Supreme Court has granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown.

It’s disgraceful that the administration chose to go to court instead of fulfilling its responsibility to the American people.

I will not stop fighting until every family has the resources they need to put food on the table.

apnews.com/article/snap...

878 billion. Can fund NSF (check math) for 87 years.

Yeah wrap your head around that.

Really looking forward to the Speaker of the House claiming to be unaware of the election results.

i want to repeat this: mamdani and spanberger have run similar campaigns tailored to their respective electorates and it is maddening to watch political journalists attempt to create some broad contrast where none exist

Mamdani wins New York City mayoral race, in a historic victory for progressives Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assemblymember, will make history as the first Muslim and South Asian person — as well as the youngest in over a century — to serve as New York City mayor.

JUST IN: Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assemblymember, will make history as the first Muslim and South Asian person — as well as the youngest in over a century — to serve as New York City mayor.

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YouTube video by ProPublica Russell Vought: The Shadow President

📽️ WATCH: This video on the rise of Russ Vought, Trump's “shadow president,” is based on scores of interviews, thousands of pages of emails and dozens of hours of videos and recordings of private briefings given by Vought, most of which have not been previously reported.

Russell Vought, Trump’s Shadow President From the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russell Vought has drawn the road map for Trump’s second term. Vought has consolidated power to an extent that inside...

NEW: From the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russ Vought has drawn the road map for Trump’s second term.

Vought has consolidated power to an extent that insiders say they feel like “he is the commander in chief.”

@andykroll.bsky.social w/ @newyorker.com

Russell Vought, Trump’s Shadow President From the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russell Vought has drawn the road map for Trump’s second term. Vought has consolidated power to an extent that inside...

Feels like an appropriate day to read @andykroll.bsky.social's profile of the man engineering the push to make Trump into a de facto king:

A university that signs the “compact” is one that acknowledges its own inability to compete and succeed based talent and merit. It would signal insecurity and mediocrity to current and future students and faculty. Say no. Recruit the best people, protect their freedom and support their hard work.

white house has joined bluesky
click here to block all official us government accounts instantly

bsky.app/profile/did:...

The Supreme Court Might Net Republicans 19 Congressional Seats in One Fell Swoop On Wednesday, the justices will take the extraordinary step of rehearing Louisiana v. Callais.

slate.com/news-and-pol...

The US supreme court appears ready to nullify the Voting Rights Act | Moira Donegan Court has repeatedly expanded states’ leeway to make voting laws that would have previously been deemed discriminatory

The US supreme court appears ready to nullify the Voting Rights Act | Moira Donegan

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/10/national-security-presidential-memorandum-nspm-8/

Trump's mechanism to pay the troops during the shutdown is by far the most illegal budgetary action he's taken as POTUS, potentially setting the stage to break everything.

It's also needless because Congress would easily pass a troop pay bill if Johnson were willing to gavel in.

Long thread.

We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy

Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Vought is not interested in “normal” democratic politics: He seeks to “traumatize” civil servants, use the military to suppress protests, and sees Trump as an agent of God’s will. He is convinced to be fighting a noble war to defend his “real America” of white Christian patriarchal rule.

While Vought traces the “leftwing revolution” back a hundred years, to the progressive era, there is no question that the election of Barack Obama was a radicalizing moment for him and many key thinkers on the radical Right - as were the multiracial protests in the summer of 2020.

Vought is singularly focused on bending the entire government machine to Trump’s will. He believes that any check on the power of Donald Trump, who Vought literally describes as a “gift of God,” is illegitimate. There is no line he doesn’t feel justified to cross.

a russ vought special

genuinely think they are feeding him AI videos

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

Horrific reporting from the AP on the Myanmar families watching their kids starve to death from Trump and Musk’s aid cuts apnews.com/article/myan...

Stephen froze like a deer in the headlights and pretended to have connection issues because he unintentionally gave away the game plan.

“Plenary authority is complete, absolute power over a specific area or issue, with no significant limitations."

Show people this clip. This is an insane slip up.

BREAKING: "For all of the reasons" given in Saturday's TRO, Immergut grants plaintiffs' second motion for a TRO.

"Based on the conduct of the defendants, ... in direct contravention" of Saturday's TRO, the second TRO bars relocation or federalization of National Guard from "any state or D.C."

Text card: Listen for dangerous words. Be alert to the use of the words extremism and terrorism. Be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary. #OnTyranny

One of the lessons I discuss in "On Tyranny":
Listen for dangerous words.

And with current/new leadership, they'll bend the knee. If so, I may just have to throw the horns down for my alma mater 😫

A moment that calls for collective action… to reject this transparent attack on academic freedom.

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