Today on #TheContext, host @alexlovit.bsky.social talks with Arlo Washington—barber, banker, and founder of Arkansas’s first Black-owned financial institution—about how access to capital can empower communities and strengthen democracy from the ground up.

E.P.A. Is Said to Draft a Plan to End Its Ability to Fight Climate Change

"The E.P.A. intends to argue that imposing climate regulations on automakers poses the real harm to human health because it would lead to higher prices and reduced consumer choice, according to the two people familiar with the administration’s plan." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/c...

Trump faces backlash as 69% believe Epstein details concealed -Reuters/Ipsos poll Most Americans think President Donald Trump's administration is hiding information about accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and give it poor marks on the issue after pledging to make public documents in the case, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Accusations of pedophilia have become a persistent theme in American politics. If our opponents are moral monsters, we don't have to consider their ideas. So I've been ignoring the recent Epstein talk. But maybe it will matter more than what I think is important.
www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

The GOP cut taxes for the wealthy when clear majorities want the opposite. Trump's policies on tariffs and interest rates (he will appoint a new Fed chair in 2026) are inflationary, when he's already 30+ points underwater on inflation. Will Americans care more about the culture war than the economy?

Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback.

Wild detail from this article: Trump's shares in Truth Social are nominally worth $2 billion, but the company's revenues are approximately equal to a single McDonald's restaurant.

Good conversation with @brennancenter.org's @seanmorales-doyle.bsky.social. Sean is an expert who can explain the laws undermining voting rights, state by state. But he can also describe how this adds up to the big picture: the US drifting away from the ideal of inclusive democracy.

Step 1: Activists call attention to and protest a cruel immigration detention facility by calling it #AlligatorAuschwitz. Step 2: Republican officials redirect by embracing the name #AlligatorAlcatraz. Step 3: The media starts using GOP version almost exclusively.

Last term's Loper Bright decision empowered the judicial branch at the expense of the executive branch. Yesterday's Trump v. CASA does the reverse. The uniting factor: both require massive expansions of adjudications that would previously have been redundant. Job security for judges, but bad process

this court says that allowing EPA to regulate carbon emissions is a "major question" that demands congressional debate. but allowing the president to, with a flick of the wrist, end a straightforward constitutional right is something that must be allowed to stand?

@princetonupress.bsky.social Macedo & Lee's "In Covid's Wake" should be required reading for laptop liberals. For those of us who pride ourselves on education and intelligence, this book raises an important question: "Wait, did we get the most impactful policy issue of the last decade wrong?"

(From Macedo & Lee, In Covid's Wake) Did not know this. Pretty nuts that a pandemic would decrease medical spending/employment.

Learning US History Is about Hope, Not Shame Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

kettering.org/learning-us-...

How well do you know the history of Juneteenth? @agordonreed.bsky.social breaks it down for you in one minute.

How we remember our nation's history has a huge impact on how we imagine our national identity today. Annette has a lot of smart things to say about that on The Context podcast.

When I spoke with former NJ governor Christy Todd Whitman last year, she credited NJ's system of public campaign funding for its moderating influence on state politics. This article makes me think this system has totally broken down, and that a moderate like Whitman could never win in NJ today.

Federal courts are the most significant check on Trump's power. Large majorities of Americans think that's legitimate. But none of the branches of gov't are particularly popular right now. Any showdown between them will force the public to choose whom they distrust least.

National Parks Are Told to Delete Content That ‘Disparages Americans’

"The Interior Department . . . is asking the park visitors to report any 'negative' information about past or living Americans, according to internal documents." So according to the Trump administration, every American who has ever lived is a saint, and any criticisms of anyone are treasonous?

Reagan Invoked the ‘Welfare Queen.’ The New G.O.P. Target Is a Lazy Gamer. Republicans targeting safety net programs once invoked women they claimed were living lavishly on government funds. Now as they seek to pare back Medicaid, the imagery has changed — but not the argume...

This is interesting. We've updated our cultural stereotype of the lazy, undeserving recipient of government benefits. But the new stereotype kind of contradicts the GOP's recent "brocaster" makeover.

YouTube video by BCTGM Local 351 AFL-CIO, CLC Sly Stone - Organize

Sly Stone died. Here's one for the current moment: "a time to organize."

KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust: Vaccine Safety and Trust | KFF As the Trump administration overhauls government health agencies, partisan trust in these agencies on vaccines has shifted and few express confidence in their ability to carry out key tasks. Most adul...

Now that RFK, Jr. has fired the CDC's entire vaccine advisory panel, it's time to take another look at this poll from last month. Public health agencies have been losing trust for some time. But you know who people trust even less? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Republican Policy Bill Would Add $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says

Where's Ross Perot when we need him? www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/u...

I'm worried we're going to see bans on gender-affirming care for adults in the next few years, at least in a few states. The red state/blue state divide is growing wider, and big chunks of the country are becoming hostile to trans people. Trans rights should be civil rights, anywhere in the country.

Here's a dangerous ruling I didn't see coming: The Eighth Circuit now says that only the executive-branch justice department can legally enforce the Voting Rights Act. So what happens when the White House doesn't take responsibility for protecting voting rights? It's as if the VRA has been repealed.

This is also happening as AI is making it much easier to analyze and correlate large datasets. At a moment when we should be more vigilant than ever about protecting federal data, our country has lowered the guardrails.

It's wild that dark money political contributions are so secret that we don't even know how many billions they add up to. The USA right now is an experiment in whether democracy can exist with the effective absence of any campaign finance regulation whatsoever. (Preliminary findings point to "no.")

@marthasjones.bsky.social literally wrote the book on the history of birthright citizenship. So when she says that the 14th Amendment was always meant to grant citizenship to EVERYONE born in the United States, that should be both historically and legally meaningful.

Two things can both be true: that Biden's diminished capacities while in office are a Watergate-level scandal, and that Trump's overt corruption and illegitimate use of official powers to persecute critics is a worse-than-Watergate scandal.

Tearing things down is easy. Building things is hard.

But when it comes to offering blueprints for a better future, the pro-democracy side is failing massively.

So excited to publish the interview with @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social that I haven't shut up about for weeks. It's worth a listen.

After Trump lied about Mexico paying for the wall, why did anyone believe him about China paying for the tariffs?

When the national debt begins to impinge on the American economy, austerity might be necessary, but the demand to raise taxes on the wealthy will also become overwhelming. The symbiosis of the wealthy and the GOP is not permanently sustainable, and probably backfire for the rich in the long term.

The work requirements for Medicaid access just passed by the House are a perfect example of "administrative burdens." It's a way of cutting Medicaid without admitting that's the goal. The party that wants to reduce regulatory red tape for corporations is introducing new red tape for poor people.