Casey Walsh

A Message To All of You This week I’ve been asked by alot of people, in desperation, what to do and if we will be ok.

A Message To All of You
open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...

Really feel like I’m losing my mind: government OBVIOUSLY cannot punish an individual law firm for hiring someone it disfavors! It’s ludicrously unconstitutional and I feel like without a day of law school I could argue the case. And yet the best paid lawyers in the country are folding?

Every single Democrat in Congress should be demanding the resignation of Waltz and Hegseth. Every single one.

This is a massive scandal. There should be a serious price to pay.

AND THERE IS ZERO DOWNSIDE FOR EVEN THE MOST SCAREDY-CAT CONGRESSPERSON.

It's a pressing issue if you're wondering why so many people - including institutional Democrats, even in the Senate - are not acting with enough alarm. The constant turn-it-to-11 approach over the past 40+ years helps explain why American democracy isn't in fighting trim today.

KEEP CALLING. PEEL OFF ALL DEM SENATORS YOU CAN.

☎️: (202) 224-3121

Tell them to vote NO on Cloture and NO on CR. Vote is pushed to after 1:15ish for now. Situation is fluid.

The only public YES votes are Schumer and Fetterman. They need 7-8 total. KEEP CALLING.

Call retiring Senators too!

They are saying they can just put any regulation or policy into effect without ever having to go through the normal procedure. That means no right for the public to see these rules in advance or to comment on them.

That is definitely not permitted.

bsky.app/profile/trad...

131. Five Questions About the Khalil Case The government's arrest and detention of a pro-Palestinian Columbia student (and green card holder) raises difficult questions about both technical immigration statutes and the First Amendment.

I recommend this excellent @stevevladeck.bsky.social piece about the Khalil case. And follow immigration experts such as @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social and @daralind.bsky.social to learn more. 6/end

www.stevevladeck.com/p/131-five-q...

This may be the biggest free speech crisis in living memory. The president now bragging about detaining a lawful permanent resident and smearing him as 'pro Hamas', no outlining any specific crimes he is accused of or charged with. This is what a fascist takeover looks like.

He is so funny. His range is amazing. The first movie I ever saw him in was The Believer, which is quite dark.

Have you ever seen The Nice Guys?

Trump-Musk Scandal at USAID Takes Unnerving Turn With Vile Leaked Memo Can Trump and his top advisers really just act with total impunity? Or is there, just maybe, a price to be paid for starving poor people and un-indicting a corrupt mayor?

Awful: Internal USAID memo instructs employees to refrain from talking to the media about cuts in assistance to the most vulnerable or they may get fired, WaPo reports.

Trumpworld knows this is a big political problem for them. Keep the focus on it.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/1915...

Adams must be removed. The city cannot sustain being governed for nearly a year by a Mayor who is being coerced by Trump admin in order to escape charges.

This corruption poses a real threat to the people of the city. He should have resigned a while ago, but will not. So it’s time for him to go.

This sick urge to make a sporting effort at making sense of the intolerable needs to stop

Brianna Keilar: Do you think that calling Elon Musk a dick is effective messaging?

Congressman Robert Garcia: Well, he is a dick.

He's running our country like one of his casinos, where the lights and the noise keep people from noticing the grime (and the crime) all around them, and where the free buffet and the chance at a big payoff are designed to make people forget that the house always wins.

After Trump’s remarks on Gaza, some in Dearborn, Michigan ‘think we screwed up’ Trump’s plan to “take over” Gaza was met with outrage in Dearborn, Michigan, an Arab American enclave.

So much of how we got here is so many people refusing to acknowledge they were conned. On just about every issue whether it be vexing or clear as day, it’s pretty simple—Trump will make whatever it is worse. You can’t count on much but THAT is a certainty.

www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

System Update by Katie Drummond: Ever since Elon Musk dove headfirst into backing Donald Trump’s presidential bid last year—to the tune of $280 million in contributions—WIRED has been tracking the billionaire’s political exploits and growing sphere of influence within the GOP and the Trump administration more specifically. We’ve been sourcing up, talking to people within and around federal agencies, as well as experts in disciplines including cybersecurity, AI, medicine, and more, about Musk’s potential impact. What would Musk do, we wanted to understand, once Trump took back the White House on January 20? How would our government—and our country —change with Trump at the steering wheel and Musk riding shotgun? Now the world, and WIRED, are finding out. The entire WIRED newsroom, from editors and reporters to fact-checkers and photo editors, has been working relentlessly to unearth new information about what exactly Elon Musk and his allies are doing across federal agencies, and to what end. What is changing, how, and what are the consequences? Amid the findings of our reporting, one overarching fact has become extremely clear: Musk is now in the driver’s seat, and he is implementing sweeping, shocking, and largely unchecked changes across the entirety of our country’s federal apparatus. So what do we know so far? WIRED has in recent days revealed that Elon Musk has taken over swaths of government infrastructure, from installing his lackeys in senior positions within governmental HR to leading the charge on a chaotic “deferred resignation program”—one that closely echoes a similar Musk initiative at Twitter—that could see millions of federal workers leave their posts. Musk has been instrumental in attempting to dismantle USAID, with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutting off funding for lifesaving work before the State Department put the majority of USAID personnel on administrative leave.

Every day, we’ve revealed new details on who, exactly, Musk has installed inside federal agencies —they include at least six young men, aged 19 to 24, with little or no government experience. We’ve also documented what those and other Musk acolytes are doing, from conducting “sneak attack” meetings to discuss civil servants’ code and projects to accessing the federal systems that handle Social Security payments and tax returns to announcing plans to transform a key federal tech agency into the AI-fueled equivalent of a “startup software company.” Of course, we’re also keeping close tabs on likely agency heads and members of Trump’s cabinet. His pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, repeatedly claimed at a Senate hearing that he’d never promoted QAnon’s theory. We tracked all the times he did. And though RFK Jr. said he’d support vaccines if he became Health and Human Services Secretary, we outlined his long history of anti-vax positions. We’re not done. Our reporters are getting hundreds of new tips every day and are publishing their latest reporting on WIRED.com at a breakneck pace. To say this moment is unpredictable would be an understatement, but trust me—we’ll continue to do our jobs with utmost vigor, and we’ll work to bring you the most authoritative, trustworthy coverage of tech’s all-out invasion of the American government. We’ve gained tens of thousands of new subscribers in the past few days. If you’d like to join them, you can support us here. P.S. We’ll be hosting a webinar with the editors and writers leading this coverage next Thursday, February 13, at 1pm ET. It’s exclusively for subscribers; if you become one today, you will receive an invitation prior to the event.

Update from WIRED head @katie-drummond.bsky.social.

We're hosting a webinar for subscribers w/ our reporters and editors next Thursday, Feb 13 @ 1pm ET.

Thank you!

this appears to be based entirely on subscriptions for Politico Pro that many govt agencies pay for. but it doesn't matter, this is now fact for roughly half the country for eternity and will be used to do whatever they want.

CONNOLLY: The gentlelady has used a phrase that is considered a slur in the LGBTQ community

NANCY MACE: Tranny tranny tranny, I don't really care, you want penises in women's bathrooms

The real scam: making you fear the “the other” while the rich rob you blind. I wish every American understood this.

I just came off the floor after speaking for an hour. I refuse to let Republicans confirm Russ Vought the easy way, so we're holding the floor through the night for 30 straight hours.

Vought has shown he'll ignore the law & constitution. I'll be voting NO tomorrow.

Please pay attention: these executive orders are not absolute. Keep paying attention and raising a stink. As always, you can find your reps here: reps.fyi. But also consider calling any other institution you're affiliated with that's doing things you disagree with.

This is a war between a fascistic cult and a conventional political party. That is, not a fair fight. And much of the media is not providing this necessary context.

After declaring that all Palestinians should be removed from Gaza and that the US should take "ownership" of the strip, Trump issues an executive order ending US funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The cover to my new Better Call Saul book

It is finally pub day for SAUL GOODMAN V. JIMMY MCGILL: THE COMPLETE CRITICAL COMPANION TO BETTER CALL SAUL, so I hope you’ll indulge me on a quick thread. It’s now available wherever books are sold, and you can find online ordering links here: www.abramsbooks.com/product/saul...

CNN should say that Malliotakis is not allowed back on air until she issues some statement acknowledging the truth. Hold them to account.

Calling all former feds. Your Senators and members of Congress need to hear from you.

Congressman @beyer.house.gov will be going to USAID today with colleagues to shine a light on what is happening there, I think others will join us. Figuring out details now and will share but flagging now for press and public in the area