bretwask.bsky.social

I'm serious: Shouldn't the judge demand to know if the "state secret" they are claiming to invoke was discussed on Signal?

A YES on cloture is a YES for the bill.

Do not let anyone play games with you.

If the US had continued to support Ukraine, we may have been months away from the end of the war. The Russians would not have been able to continue to fight for much longer. They were making almost no progress, taking huge casualties.

Russia’s airlines face growing crisis as sanctions strangle aircraft maintenance Between Dec. 1 and Jan. 20, Russian aircraft experienced 11 engine failures—more than double the number from the previous two months, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

⚡️Russia’s airlines face growing crisis as sanctions strangle aircraft maintenance.

Between Dec. 1 and Jan. 20, Russian aircraft experienced 11 engine failures—more than double the number from the previous two months, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Tbh, what we are seeing with Trump and Putin is closer to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939.

Trump’s closing message is a full blown hate campaign against black and brown people. Historians will look back in astonishment that this terrifying reality wasn’t the subject of wall to wall coverage and commentary in weeks leading up to this election. He’s not hiding anything.

Sly As a Fox FCC boss Brendan Carr has curiously spared one major media organization from his wrath: Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation.

FCC boss Brendan Carr is on a tear targeting media orgs. But he has spared Rupert Murdoch's Fox, choosing not to revive a petition against the network.

"He is a puppet for the Sun King of Mar-a-Lago," former Murdoch lieutenant turned critic Preston Padden told me. www.status.news/p/brendan-ca...

From a colleague who worked for for USAID until he was abruptly fired last week. As he says, courts take time. If you shatter things with a hammer it doesn’t matter if the courts eventually rule in your favor. You destroy lives—of government workers and of millions of poor people around the world.

9. I understand from our Office Manager, however, that as of Sunday, February 2, no funds have been deposited to our bank account. We have checked our accounts multiple times a day since January 29, but no funds have been transmitted. We have received no information or explanation from the Administration for Community Living about the interruption in funds. 10. In short: we have received no federal funds since the OMB Freeze Memo was issued. Our Center had enough money to meet payroll on Friday, January 31, and to cover outstanding bills. But we did not have enough money on hand to cover another two-week pay period at full staffing. 11. Thus, on Friday, January 31, the Board of Directors voted to lay off three of our five employees and drastically reduce services to our customers. This presented a dire situation for our customers, who have immediate needs. 12. For example, on Monday, February 3, we are scheduled to take an 86-year-old woman to dialysis treatments (which we do for her every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). Our agency is her only way to get to these life-sustaining appointments.

NEW: The board president of a small WV nonprofit says they haven't received their HHS funding since the Trump/Musk budget freeze. They had to lay off 3 of 5 employees on Friday. An 86-yr-old woman is counting on them to take her dialysis tomorrow. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Find someone who loves you as much as Russian state media loves Tulsi Gabbard.

A guy with his mind fried by ketamine and a 24/7/365 diet of Nazi shitposts is inside the federal government’s general payments system canceling whatever he personally decides looks like fraud while taking legal advice from his own busted AI chatbot, that’s the status report?

The new acting Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy — State’s top public diplomacy official:

1) not only denies the Uyghur genocide but appears to applaud it

2) says the US should sell out Taiwan to China for concessions in Antarctica (???)

I think Americans, blessed with relatively stable government for a long time, assume there is someone, some adult, who will step in and make things right before the President does anything REALLY bad.

There’s not.

The guy from The Apprentice, who hired a Fox weekend host to run the Pentagon and a cast member from the Real World to run the FAA (the two agencies associated with the incident) says the real cause of a deadly plain crash is DEI.

It is a mistake to think of this as a lawsuit; it is a solicitation of a bribe, of protection money.

The people now in charge of the Office of Personnel Management apparently don’t know how to scrub PDF metadata, and have exposed the original authors of the guidance they’re publishing. Two, Noah Peters and James Sherk, have links to the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025.

Memorandum from the Acting Deputy Attorney General Subject: Interim Policy Changes Regarding Charging, Sentencing, And Immigration Enforcement Page 3 The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) and the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) program shall establish national initiatives to provide focused resources and attention to immigration-related prosecutions at the federal, state, and local levels. OCDETF and PSN will focus on facilitating access by U.S. Attorney's Offices to existing structures in which the Justice Department participates, such as Joint Task Force Vulcan, which targets MS-13 and will be expanded to target TdA, and Joint Task Force Alpha, which targets human trafficking. The regional OCDETF Strike Forces shall prioritize the investigation and prosecution of immigration offenses, including by requiring OCDETF-funded AUSAs to devote significant time and attention to the investigation and prosecution of these crimes. The new OCDETF and PSN national initiatives shall also prioritize enhanced statistical tracking of these efforts. Pending implementation of the Homeland Security Task Forces announced by President Trump on January 20, 2025, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces are directed to coordinate with DHS, as well as state and local members, to assist in the execution of President Trump's immigration-related initiatives. The FBI, DEA, ATF, USMS, and BOP shall review their files for identifying information and/or biometric data relating to non-citizens located illegally in the United States. All such information and data shall be disclosed to DHS, for the sole purpose of facilitating appropriate removals, enforcement actions, and immigration-related investigations and prosecutions, unless the agency possessing the information and data determines that a particular disclosure would compromise a significant law enforcement investigation and the U.S.

How the HECK is it not a nationwide scandal that Trump told federal law enforcement to divert resources away from drug trafficking and terrorism cases to instead prioritize prosecuting undocumented immigrants for living here?

They screamed about fentanyl and then did this!

Trump administration fires DOJ officials who worked on criminal investigations of the president The Justice Department employees had been involved in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation that led to Trump's classified documents and Jan. 6 cases.

Monday Night Massacre. www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

Hit home today that Elon’s zooming in to a rally of the German hard right to tell them to stop feeling bad about the past and embrace German glory was right before Holocaust Remembrance day.

Trump Disbands Cybersecurity Board Investigating Massive Chinese Phone System Hack For all the hype and warnings about how TikTok is clearly a “national security threat” from China, the Trump administration has effectively kneecapped the investigation into one of the most serious…

👀 "For all the hype and warnings about how TikTok is clearly a “national security threat” from China, the Trump admin" just "kneecapped the investigation into one of the most serious cybersecurity breaches in US history — a genuine, proven threat to national security. " @mmasnick.bsky.social

ICE raids establishment in Newark, detains undocumented residents Newark Mayor Ras Baraka confirmed in a statement that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a local establishment in the city.

Trump begins his raids in Newark, NJ and ICE detains not only undocumented immigrants but a US military vet 🤦🏼‍♀️

Jan 6 was investigated and largely prosecuted as domestic terrorism. The pardons should be reported and spoken of accordingly. An endorsement of terrorism. Trump sprung his terrorist network - including, by extension, himself.

Notably Tarrio and Rhodes both had terrorism enhancements to their sentences. (Tarrio was sentenced by a Trump-appointed judge.)

AOC: I don’t care what Elon Musk is doing behind the presidential seal, but in this country we hate Nazis. Kind of like a foundational defining thing. Two of the foundational things about American history is that we beat the confederates and we beat the Nazis.

Elon Musk Is an ‘Evil Person,’ Steve Bannon Says The comments highlighted rifts within the U.S. right wing and between two men who have been influential advisers to President-elect Donald J. Trump.

The clash between those who want oligarchy to get to fascism and those who want fascism to get to oligarchy.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/u...

My understanding is that 90 day delay can only be used if a sale is being finalized. ByteDance hasn't even tried to sell it because Xi won't permit them to.