C. J. Digby Higgins

Trump Suggests $2,000 Payouts to Americans as He Defends Tariffs President praises benefits of the levies after Supreme Court appears skeptical of his justification for many of them.

While we're waiting to hear the terms of a shitty deal, this needs to be said. Whatever reason Trump is claiming there'll be a $2K tariff dividend (remember the $5K DOGE dividend), there'll be no such thing.

Right now Trump is staring at a $200B tariff payback hole.

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Schumer (NY) 202 224-6542

Booker (NJ) 202 224-3224

King (ME) 202 224-5344

Hassan (NH) 202 224-3324

Durbin (IL) 202 224-2152

Ossoff (GA) 202 224-3521

Shaheen (NH) 202 224-2841

Gillibrand (NY) 202 224-4451

Masto (NV) 202 224-3542

Warner (VA) 202 224-2023

Dems backed Trump into a corner where he’s advocating for starving Americans and hemorrhaging support. If they vote to let him off the hook in exchange for nothing it’s a cataclysmic failure. I know people are in pain but insulating Republicans from political consequences is not the answer.

Auchincloss Is a no

Call the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and they will connect you with your senator's office.

If you're represented by one of the squishier centrists, be sure to make a call. Now.

Yup. It turns out massively destabilizing trade in and out of the country is bad for people importing to build factories in order to export stuff.

Also, they’ve pretty much killed CHIPS and Science, the largest domestic manufacturing bill in recent history.

Immergut has questions about California component.

Mentions that original TRO re: Oregon national guard appealed to 9th Circuit. What's the consequence if I grant this TRO, she asks.

Kennedy says he'll want Jane Riley to address for California.

The echinacea quilt process continues. Here are pictures with the pieces spread out on the floor when I was matching flower heads to block backs and one of the blocks with flower head and petals coming together. The colors make me happy!

In Texas The Water Rises: A Reckoning By now, the South should know better.

“We’ve buried our dead and rebuilt our churches and claimed it as character, but the truth is darker than folklore and more damning than scripture: we keep suffering, in part, because we keep electing people who think government help is a sin.”

Fuerza responds to scenes where alleged ICE enforcement is reported. If officers are indeed with ICE, they hit record and spread the word. They also speak directly with those being detained.

They are part of a growing scrappy network of volunteers protecting neighbors from ICE. bit.ly/4lgke5N

Conserving our environment is an American value. From hikers to hunters we want to keep our public lands public! Thats why the unprecedented sell-off of millions of acres of public lands needs to be removed from the Senate Budget Bill.

Nature is non partisan! 🇺🇸

Pass it on!

Anna Maria echinacea quilt progress! Working on this quilt top is color therapy. I’m a little nervous about assembly, but I have a long way to go before I get to that step.

This should be a huge story

In a reversal, the Trump administration restores funding for women's health study The unexpected elimination of funding for the decades-long research project focused on women's health shocked scientists. They were heartened by the quick restoration of support.

these fuckers being able to destroy everything is not a foregone conclusion

Trump tells TIME that when he said he would end the war in Ukraine on Day One, he was saying that "figuratively."

"I said that as an exaggeration."

"People know that when I said that, it was in jest."

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan arrested by federal authorities at Courthouse Brady McCarron, spokesman for U.S. Marshals Service in Washington, D.C., confirmed Dugan was arrested at about 8 a.m. at the Milwaukee County Courthouse and is in federal custody.

Kash Patel has now deleted that tweet, but the arrest of the judge in her courthouse has been independently confirmed by local journalists. www.jsonline.com/story/news/b...

F.B.I. Arrests Wisconsin Judge, Patel Says Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested on suspicion that she “intentionally misdirected federal agents away from” an immigrant being pursued by the authorities, the F.B.I. director said.

They’re arresting judges.

Usually when a regime does this, they are trying to scare the country into preemptive obedience.

It is very important in these moments to resist to urge to hide and, instead, adopt a posture of “fuck you, make me.”

This is especially true for those within institutions.

Ok so yeah, this has quickly become the #1 misunderstanding about the canceled grants

the grants are not “subsidies” or “entitlements” to Harvard or Princeton or whatever

they aren’t going into universities’ endowments

they are competitive contracts won by these universities to do research

This is the completely foreseeable consequence of being a credulous nation that makes medical decision based on politics/capitalism instead of science.

My story breaking this news exclusively was 7K+ words and had almost all of this in it, and more:
www.npr.org/2025/04/15/n...

@hcrichardson.bsky.social and Senator King lighting all the lamps in the Old North Church.

A thoughtful and constructive conversation for the current moment, very much worth your time.

bsky.app/profile/noni...

Maybe Senator Van Hollen should be President, since Trump says he's not really involved with the situation, doesn't really know what's going on, and can't do anything. Who needs such a flaccid executive?

Just a reminder that Trump/DOJ continuing to let Abrego Garcia sit in CECOT is *a crime*. Deprivation of rights under color of law is a crime. Was it an "error" at first? Maybe. But once they were aware of the error, and ordered by a judge to return him, and then refusing, it's willful 1/

🚨URGENT—Despite the Supreme Court declaring that it would be illegal to deport people under the Alien Enemies Act without giving them a meaningful chance to seek judicial review, the Trump admin is reportedly about to send a group of Venezuelans detained in Texas to El Salvador in a matter of hours!

We Are Not the Same: A Firsthand Account of Hatred in Georgia’s 14th My experience at Marjorie Taylor Greene's "town hall"

This “town hall” (read: MTG rally, she wouldn’t interact with her constituents) took place about two miles from my house. My husband and a neighbor friend of ours attended. This fellow MTG constituent sums up what a lot of us are thinking.

Wow. Then why was he freed with no charges and given permission to stay in the country in 2019? Man, whoever was president then sure owes us an explanation for letting this monster out in our streets.

The image is a screenshot of a post on X by a user named Chicano Marine (@elchicanomarine ), with Mexican and U.S. flag emojis. The post reads: "Ahh… WE have hit the disappearing Union leaders phase of authoritarianism." Below this, there is an image with the text: "ICE detains farmworker union leader Lelo Juarez Zeferino." The image shows a person in a denim shirt against a background split between blue and yellow colors.

Our immigration policies should not be wielded as union busting, political cudgels. Or as ways to suppress freedom of speech or assembly.

I read this again recently and appreciated it even more.

I received a heartbreaking email today: A paper in a special issue I’m editing is being retracted because one of its authors is afraid of losing their job and their legal status in the U.S. if they publish a scientific study on evolution. Yes, on evolution, nature's engine of diversity.

When you look at the list of institutions they want to defund: libraries, museums, the Smithsonian, public schools, PBS, NPR, archives, you can clearly see that the real threat to an authoritarian regime is an informed and educated public