Paul Matzko

Mike Johnson leaning into his Paul von Hindenburg role.

These people are evil. Never stop saying so. Don’t be intimidated into shutting up.

ICE says I cause assaults on ICE by reciting facts about ICE’s recent shooting but refuses to link to the thread. Only posting a picture. ICE lies and ICE hides. You can read the facts for yourselves

That's the definition of fascism from Robert Paxton, one of the preeminent historians of the subject, from his book ANATOMY OF FASCISM which came out more than two decades ago.

NEW: Rachel Maddow drops unseen bodycam footage of feds coordinating the arrest of Newark Mayor Baraka.

I REPEAT: the feds ordered his arrest even though he wasn’t breaking any laws.

Federal agent: “We are arresting the mayor right now per the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.”

"..., stripping it down to a dutiful trudge from forefather through forefather that eventually arrives at the front steps of the First Baptist (or Methodist or Presbyterian) Church down the street."

The Liturgy of American Charisma - Christianity Today Historian Molly Worthen studies dynamic leaders, eager followers, and their shared efforts to “consecrate a new reality.”

My review of Molly Worthen's "Spellbound" is up on Christianity Today.

"She offers a compelling corrective to the blander species of religious history produced for a churchly audience, which has a habit of sanitizing the past...

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

It was a flawed argument in 2019 that has aged like spoiled milk. Imagine Brendan Carr having any of the enhanced power that Glaser proposes!

If a government tells you that you can’t call it authoritarian, it’s authoritarian.

This Isn’t the First Time the FCC Has Weaponized Its Regulatory Power How progressives devised the public interest and news distortion standards to chill free speech.

Brendan Carr is rooting around in the FCC's shed looking for old, progressive regulations that he can weaponize against Trump's critics. My latest:

thedispatch.com/article/fcc-...

This Isn’t the First Time the FCC Has Weaponized Its Regulatory Power How progressives devised the public interest and news distortion standards to chill free speech.

I have a new write-up in the Dispatch that speaks specifically to the regulations that Carr is currently weaponizing. thedispatch.com/article/fcc-...

The Fairness Doctrine Was Terrible for Broadcasting and It Would Be Terrible for the Internet Government regulation of internet content providers will be ineffective, highly-intrusive, and will create significant unintended consequences.

Again and again over decades, partisan federal office holders have used the FCC's public interest doctrine to push their critics' and opponents' speech off the airwaves. In this 2019 piece, @paulmatzko.bsky.social has the goods on the long and ugly history that led up to Carr's campaign.

so the president just tweeted out an offense worse than watergate, we all realize that right?

Elected lawmakers aren't just there to carry out bureaucratic technocratic procedures. They are your agents, to stand between you and the force of the state, empowered with the people's "she speaks for us." This is what representative democracy is for, at its best in the face of its worst failures.

As I wrote before the election in October last year:

Act Now to Prevent Trump From Weaponizing the FCC Against Political Opponents If reelected, Trump will be even more dangerous because previous presidents have left a bad precedent of regulatory abuses that he'll turbocharge

I told you this would happen. Brendan Carr told us this would happen. It wasn't a question of whether but when the Trump administration would abuse the FCC's various constitutionally-tenuous powers to advance its naked self-interest.

They are literally canceling culture

Anyway, now we know what the FCC thinks is in the public interest:

Fox host advocating for executing homeless people? Yes

ABC comic suggesting Trumpers are using a death cynically? No

On the toboggan of authoritarian consolidation in the U.S., we've just whizzed past the "regime pressure forces major broadcast figure off the air" marker.

They search. Find nothing. STOP DOING SEARCHES. JUST BLOW THEM UP FROM NOW ON.

under this language charlie kirk would not have been allowed to speak on clemson’s campus

Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink. The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours. Detained by US immigration authorities for eight days, the workers and their families expressed shock, describing human rights violations and absurdities they could not have imagined as ordinary Koreans living in 2025.

korean reporting is nightmarish on the conditions Korean workers were contained in

Lots of (deserved) animus for the MAGA candidate who sicced ICE on the Hyundai plant, but bear in mind that a union guy gave her the tip.

Unions maximize benefits for union members, even when that means collaborating with fascists and when it comes at the expense of the general welfare.

Trump's mass deportations are all but indistinguishable from human trafficking.

"Very expensive mall cops."

Other than the CEOs and billionaires who poured massive capital resources into years of risky pharmaceutical research that produced an mRNA miracle, I suppose.

There's the old saying, "You could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich." The problem for Pam Bondi was that the Subway-chucking vigilante picked turkey instead.

To be fair, the Founders would’ve been horrified at the prospect of a citizenry so lacking in civic virtue that it would reward open insurrectionists while punishing those few who put country ahead of party.

One correction: Miller (and Vought) is the circumventer; Trump is the lackey.

It’s right out of medieval palace intrigue. A cabal of courtiers manipulate the weak-minded king into bankrupting the kingdom, fomenting wars, and crushing bourgeois resistance.