Charlotte Canning

‘He has trouble completing a thought’: bizarre public appearances again cast doubt on Trump’s mental acuity Joe Biden was hounded for his age-related gaffes, but Trump’s increasingly strange behavior has largely been ignored

Guardian reporter is not waiting around for a book deal but reporting it now: Dementia Don is falling apart — can’t even babble straight. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

How the George Floyd Protests Changed America, for Better and Worse

you can read the full review here. the reviewer clocks the exact same thing i have, which is that williams is shallow, facile and unwilling to attribute agency to the political right, impairing his analysis to the point of it being useless www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b...

I would love to read a historical analysis of how the modern public health shift toward “personal responsibility” (smoking, seat belts, diet) fused with alternative wellness culture to produce the truly insidious moral framework in which illness is construed as *always* an individual failure

He might want to reread the Texas Constitution….

DOGE Wasted Tens of Billions While Chainsawing the Government in the Name of 'Efficiency': Senate Report | Common Dreams Elon Musk's DOGE wasted more than $21 billion in just six months. Other studies have found that in the longterm it may cost the government more than it saved, while resulting in millions of deaths.

Musk’s DOGE burned $21 billion in six months. Fourteen billion paid to workers not working. Six billion more in severance. IRS cuts may cost up to $2.4 trillion. USAID slashed, food and meds spoiled. One million dead already. Trump calls it savings. The math calls it a crime.

Investors keen on takeovers as universities turn to private funds Co-branded campuses and partial mergers expected to become more common in face of higher borrowing costs

'More universities could look to private investment to cope with their growing money problems, but it could be too late for non-elite institutions, financial experts have said.'

Research from 2022 that every Democrat apologist should chew on:
“We do not find any evidence that accommodative strategies reduce radical right support. If anything, our results suggest that they lead to more voters defecting to the radical right.“

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🐾 Here in Texas, we believe every pup should have a say in who leads the pack—because voters pick leaders, not the other way around.

Don’t let the 1%’s lap dogs redraw the map to muzzle our voices. Let’s fetch a democracy that works for all of us. 🐶🗳️ #FairMaps

Oh you want to read this entire piece.

“The Texas Constitution (Art. III, Sec. 10) explicitly allows members to break quorum. Only a court can determine if an elected official has ‘vacated’ office, and only through a quo warranto action (a lawsuit that challenges someone’s right to hold office).”

It is an absolute necessity that Democrats redistrict this way. Every state legislator Democrat who gives up the slightest bit of "fairness" on redistricting is inexcusably assisting the Republican party's assault on democracy.

Niemöller was asked by his concentration camp cellmate why he had ever supported Hitler and the Nazis. Reportedly, this is what he had to say for himself:

A functioning govt would make this illegal not least because it's likely to push more people into driving increasing death rates since driving is so much riskier than flying

Opinion | This Attack on a Federal Judge Is Preposterous

From @ngertner.bsky.social & me in @nytimes.com: "Ms. Bondi wrote that Judge Boasberg’s comments 'have undermined the integrity of the judiciary . . . .' No. The way to look at this is the inverse: Her Justice Department is attempting to undermine the integrity of the judiciary and the rule of law."

illinois gov. JB pritzker responds to ken paxton's threat to arrest TX democrats who fled the state: "they're here in illinois. we're going to do everything we can to protect every single one of them."

The word gaslighting gets thrown around a lot these days, but I gotta say that the neo-Nazi party claiming to be so concerned about antisemitism that they have to destroy American higher education is a profoundly weird experience.

“On June 15, 1992, [Dan] Quayle altered 12-year-old student William Figueroa's correct spelling of "potato" to "potatoe" at the Muñoz Rivera Elementary School spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey. He was the subject of widespread ridicule for his error.” — @wikipedia.org

Headline from Harvard Crimson: "Harvard President Garber Tells Faculty He Is Not Considering a $500 Million Deal With Trump."

Text of story: Harvard prez Garber says report of a deal "was apparently leaked to the press by White House officials." NYT ran with it as a story.

Important details from this story:

1) Yet another news-break by student journalists (this time @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social) www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

2) Harvard saying "see you in court," not "let's make a deal."

3) Per Garber, WH/MAGA leaked news of a "deal." NYT then ran with it.

I don't say this lightly: The New York Times should fire the reporter and editor who chose to present a leak from the white house as if it was a leak from Harvard.

Don't print lies in the newspaper

Texas House Democrats offer a brief response to Gov. Greg Abbott's threat of arrest and expulsion: "Come and take it."

A Fight Over a West Point Job Reveals Two Visions of America Under Trump

On the one hand, a patriot with decades of experience defending America. On the other hand, a conspiracy theorist who hates Americans and American institutions. Presented here as "two visions of America under Trump"

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

Trump Went to War With the Ivies. Community Colleges Are Being Hit.

“Like their four-year counterparts, community colleges are grappling with disappearing federal grants, shuttered D.E.I. offices, eliminated programs… many of the grants that fund financial aid for low-income students and the staff that support them have been eliminated or threatened”

This is the start of what I hope is a long fight against what the fascists in Texas are doing. (I live in one of the districts that is getting carved up and potentially absorbed by a district in Midland, 300 miles away from where I live, with *so* much in common with Austin.)

1/Kevin Hassett had long ago discredited himself as a scholar by parroting claims about the economy he knew to be false. Even so, parroting the lie about rigged statistics, is a new low. The academy should ostracize him the same way a fabricator of research should be ostracized.

According to Harvard, reports of an impending $500 million payment to the Trump administration are fake news from the White House. That would fit with the type of maximum pressure campaign that they are trying to run.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

If the Epstein/Maxwell news & this update have you in a dark place—with memories or fears or PTSD—pls know that I may not know what you experienced, but I see you & I believe you.

RAINN Natl Sexual Assault Hotline
*24/7 Support
*800-656-HOPE (4673)
*text HOPE to 64673
*online chat/WhatsApp chat⬇️

Accessible Voting is Under Attack 35 Years After the ADA | ACLU From restrictive legislation to inaccessible polling places, barriers persist that undermine the rights of voters with disabilities.

For 35 years, the Americans with Disabilities Act has been a critical tool to protect voters with disabilities.

Our job now is to ensure we fight to fulfill its full promises over the next 35 years and beyond.

The Stephen Miller plan for America is to make the nation dramatically poorer in the aggregate in order to shift which types of people are the wealthiest and most influential.

The idea is to make America a gigantic Alabama.

Idaho lost over a third of OB-GYNs since enacting abortion laws A new peer-reviewed study shows Idaho lost a net 35% of its obstetrician-gynecologist physicians between the implementation of Idaho’s numerous strict abortion bans in 2022 and December of 2024.

“Idaho is digging a physician workforce hole that will take years, if not decades, to fill,” said Susie Keller, CEO of the Idaho Medical Association.

No, Harvard is not considering paying $500 million in regime blackmail attempt, its president says
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Based on this study, Texas is on track to lose $388,453,912 in 2025-26.