Democat

Opinion | Democrats shouldn’t bail out Trump as the shutdown drags on The best time for the opposition to take a stand, rather than settle for untrustworthy promises, is right now.

Trump's acting criminally authoritarian but hasn't consolidated power. Fascist overreach makes him even more unpopular.

I badly wish we weren't in this situation. But we are. So as bad as short-term pain will be, it'll get more people to pay attention, which might be our only chance to stop them.

a joker says come on come on i want you to do it ALT: a joker says come on come on i want you to do it

Come on Noem, come on Miller, do it. Send your masked thugs to the Super Bowl because you hate that Puerto Ricans are Americans. Come on, violently lash out against an incredibly popular American musician and his many fans during the country's biggest sporting event. Do it. You know you want to.

This is very good. I urge reading the whole thing. And I hope Dems do this.

People going "America was always fascist" or "it's been like this since the 1980s" or making related claims don't seem to realize it, but they're telling everyone that nothing different is happening, nothing worse than usual, so if you weren't up in arms about eg 2013, you shouldn't be now either.

ICE admits that up to 50% of arrests in its Chicago raids are "collateral.” These aren't statistics. They are parents taken from their children, neighbors taken from our communities. When does a "collateral" U.S. citizen child's trauma matter? This isn't law enforcement; it's a campaign of terror.

The fact they jumped straight to AI actors modeled after women when, if I’m not mistaken, male actors are a higher labor cost kind of says it all doesn’t it,

The regime's desire for authoritarianism is bottomless, but their capacity is not. Not even close.

They rely on bluster and memes to make up the difference. The threat is real, but less powerful than they say.

Freedom-loving Americans outnumber them by a lot. Communities can resist. Like this one:

I implore my legislators, @whitehouse.senate.gov, @reed.senate.gov, and @amo.house.gov, to read this and share it with their caucus.

There is no actual democracy in the world where minority parties, controlling <exactly none> of the legislative or executive institutions of the government, are expected to save the governing majority from itself. Only in America, where Murc's Law Trumps everything else.

This is the way

Opinion | Democrats shouldn’t bail out Trump as the shutdown drags on The best time for the opposition to take a stand, rather than settle for untrustworthy promises, is right now.

“Don’t buy the canard that this is retaliation for Democratic intransigence, or that shutdowns grant the executive branch vast new powers. Vought has advocated this sort of illegal rescission for years, including as the lead author of Project 2025.”

If U.S. states have any degree of sovereignty, if there’s any states’ rights at all, it is the right not to be invaded by the armed forces of another U.S. state.

Much of the public thinks Trump is running things and therefore blame/credit him for what happens, even more than with typical presidents.

He constantly insists he can do anything easily, while media treats "Trump Says" as top news and EOs as law.

Of course most Americans put all this on him.

2/2

Trump Press Sec Seethes as Fresh Polls Show Him Losing Shutdown Badly As Karoline Leavitt loses her temper under tough questioning about the government shutdown, a writer who closely tracks MAGA explains how all this reveals deepening cracks in Trump’s coalition.

Why isn't the public blaming Dems for the shutdown like the White House wants?

In this interesting convo, @amandamarcotte.bsky.social and @gregsargent.bsky.social propose it's because Dems are known as the party that wants govt to work and people like healthcare. Yes and. Another reason is...

1/2

New York Times pie-chart of responses to "has Trump's second term posed a greater or lesser threat to the rule of law than you expected?" that's "based on our survey of 50 legal experts" showing most answer more or much more than expected. From: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/magazine/legal-experts-trump-justice-department.html

The biggest takeaway from this chart is that most people the New York Times treats as legal experts were wrong about Trump Term 2 because they were too complacent, and rather than question that broader complacency and talk to people who got it right, NYT will continue treating them as go-to experts.

Not All Lawyers, but I have noticed that a certain type of (often quite successful) lawyer is incapable of imagining politics outside the boundaries set by the system in which they’ve excelled. I’m not surprised they’re surprised.

Old joke about an economist stuck in a well who isn't worried since they have a solution: "assume there's a ladder." Except it's the world's largest economy going "assume there's a digital genie in a couple of years and we control it."

Opinion | Democrats shouldn’t bail out Trump as the shutdown drags on The best time for the opposition to take a stand, rather than settle for untrustworthy promises, is right now.

"The Trump WH is abusing power and hurting people but faces resistance from a deeply ingrained liberal and democratic US culture," says @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social. Small wins "counteract Trump’s intimidation, making him seem smaller."

Yep, shrinking Trump is the key
www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean under what legal authority? The White House never stated one, but it leaked.

Apparently the answer is a lawyer wrote down something that amounts to drugs are weapons so the president can kill whoever he says is moving drugs, without evidence or review.

Drugs are not weapons of war. They are drugs.

The president’s word on who is or is not a drug dealer is not trustworthy. He and his administration have been caught lying about that multiple times.

Even if blowing up random boats were legal under the laws of armed combat, it’d be stupid strategy.

The court order blocking Trump from sending National Guard into Portland is great, in that this ruling emphasizes facts.

The Trump administration has claimed vast new powers, not by changing laws per se, but by making up new definitions for words, such as "invasion," then lying that law applies.

These two things are of a piece, even if the motivations and details differ.

Trump’s justification for his authoritarian crackdown is an America that doesn’t exist.

@lizzieohreally.bsky.social

The GOP theory of the shutdown is if they hurt America even more than they're already doing the Democrats will rescue Republicans from themselves.

My suggestion to Democrats is to not do that.
(My suggestion to Republicans is to follow the Constitution and stop hurting the country. But they won't.)

Faced with a post-truth ideological movement, media orgs have only two options:

1) Regularly distort reality to please the post-truth movement, and lose the trust of truth-based news consumers

2) Try to regain trust from the reality-based audience whose trust you lost while fruitlessly chasing 1

I keep waiting for the powers that be in media to grasp the concept of bad faith, realize how often "restore trust in news" and similar statements mean "stop doing journalism, lie more in ways I like," come from people ideologically committed to destroying trust in news, and can never be satisfied.

The Trump regime’s desire for authoritarian domination is bottomless, but its capacity is very much not.

See also: people who say we must "restore trust in higher ed"

Iran-Contra is extremely illuminating as a disanalogy. Iran-Contra was an attempt to do an end-run around Congress' prohibition on funding the Contras. Today, the Trump admin would just fund the Contras and dare anyone to try to enforce the law. bsky.app/profile/whst...

Why assume CBS under the Ellisons aims to make money, rather than sees financial losses as an acceptable price to advance political goals, like the Washington Post under Bezos or RT?

Never before has the United States had an Attorney General and FBI Director who openly serve the president personally as he works to break laws rather than enforcing laws for the country, Constitution, and American people.

I don’t know if any previous one even said “the president’s agenda.” Ever.