Jon Vander Pol
@americantimes.bsky.social
Documentary Filmmaker // Don’t Mourn ★ Organize (@ExportedFromMI on Twitter)
Imagine if a woman president crashed the economy and started a war with no end in sight, and her biggest, seemingly ONLY concern was building a ballroom and redecorating the White House.
New from me: Some data points for a MAGA melt-down: *Hardcore Trump loyalists declining *Right wing influencers losing viewers *The Heritage Foundation is rife with dissent and incompetence, with conservatives worried about the pipeline of talent 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/is-maga-me...
Is MAGA Melting Down?
Signs and wonders, portents and data points
donmoynihan.substack.com
The White House plan to attract manufacturing businesses with a volatile regulatory environment, new arbitrary taxes (subject to change on a whim), and sending secret police to harass foreign workers has not led to more factory construction in the US. Why didn’t that work? I was told it would work.
Some abolitionists once played up an antislavery version of George Washington to try to end slavery. Now the Trump administration is doing it to deny slavery mattered at all. I wrote about the new exhibit at the President’s House in Philly for @theatlantic.com. www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
Washington, the Useful Abolitionist
In Philadelphia, the Trump administration downplays the importance of slavery to understanding the first president.
theatlantic.com
I’ve lived in Beijing too. They don’t have elections.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w agoNewsmax talking head: "I've lived in Beijing. I can say the elections in Beijing are much better than California and the United States."
Not that anyone outside of the pro knowing stuff and pro democracy coalition cares about any of this but holy shit.
A Must Read and Truly Horrifying Story
The AP has just posted a detailed investigation into the background of...
talkingpointsmemo.com
We’ve opened the strait that was never closed, ceasing a ceasefire for a war that was never a war, stopping Iran from charging tolls because tolls are illegal, all so Trump can charge his *own* tolls because *his* tolls are legal. This will hurt affordability which is a hoax anyway
Catherine Rampell@crampell.bsky.social · 3w agoA 20% charge would work out to about $32 million for a fully-loaded very large crude carrier at current oil prices. That’s far higher than the tolls that have been charged by Iran, which have previously been described as reaching $2 million www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
I buy and resell vintage furniture. I found this in the back of an old dresser. Texas Poll Tax statement from 1963 for 1964. I thought you'd like this @sethcotlar.bsky.social
On the same day that Platner drops out after being accused of rape, a federal judge orders a $5 million judgment be paid to E. Jean Carroll, who a jury concluded was sexually abused by Trump. @lmcgaughy.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/u...
Does a Sex Assault Claim Kill a Political Career? It Depends.
nytimes.com
"47 is now going through...the stages of wartime grief: Denial that America failed; anger, which has led to renewed attacks; and then bargaining, as if the Iranians could somehow be bought off like a gang of recalcitrant construction workers in New York...Depression and acceptance await."
Iran, Not Trump, Is in Control of This War
The cease-fire was always just a Trump fantasy.
theatlantic.com
Maybe the ceasefire was just the friends we made on the way. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...
Trump says ceasefire with Iran is over, calling its leaders ‘scum’
The president declared an end to the truce at a NATO summit in Turkey after the U.S. and Iran exchanged dozens of strikes overnight, raising the prospect of major renewed hostilities.
washingtonpost.com
I'd put the odds of him switching to GOP and running again at at least 60/40 that it happens.
SarahBCalif@sarahbca.bsky.social · 4w agoGraham Platner sounds like a perfect candidate for the Republican Party.
It’s unfortunate that just 154k voters in one of the least populated states in the nation can kick an own goal this bad that has such outsized national implications.
Graham Platner’s history of sexual assault proves he does not belong in the US Senate. He belongs on the Supreme Court. by Susan Collins
You can get schadenfreude pleasure from hating on the ill-advised, weather-compromised, air-toxifying Trump programming tonight, or you can watch the Capitol Fourth program on PBS, which was presciently recorded yesterday on the west front of the Capitol. It’s patriotic and non-Trumpy. 🇺🇸 🎆
As seen throughout his life, JD Vance is a shapeshifting sociopath. Here, he pathetically mimics not just Trump's persecution complex, but also Trump's cadence and inflection when speaking in the 1st person about himself: "JD" ...and when he says, "...and the media didn't care about that." 1/
The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · last mo.Vance: "I'm trying to be non-partisan…Because I'm speaking to all of you...I've got the angel on my shoulder saying, 'JD, don't be partisan. Make this non-partisan.' And then I've got the devil on my shoulder who wants to talk about every time Joe Biden fell up or down the stairs."
While not as newsworthy for the primaries as it will be for the midterms, Jessica Killin won the Democrat nomination for CO-05. El Paso County is on the map to flip from red to blue for first time, and if she pulls it off, she’ll be the first Democrat, woman, and veteran to represent the district.
Montgomery Square, the newest @eji.org Legacy Site, memorializes the Montgomery bus boycott and modern Civil Rights Movement. It is also a warning to all of us. I talked with Bryan Stevenson about memory, erasure, and what history demands for @us.theguardian.com.
New monument turns Rosa Parks’s booking number into warning on US erasure
‘We have come too far to turn around now,’ the monument on Alabama’s Montgomery Square reads
theguardian.com
WSJ What Ellisons gave: -$45M to a Trump-aligned '24 campaign group -Millions to pro-Trump groups after elex -Bought the Free Press and installed Bari Weiss -$ to be corporate sponsor of Freedom 250 What Ellisons got: -$500B Stargate Project -TikTok -Paramount merger www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
How a $45 Million Donation Brought Larry Ellison Deeper Into Trump’s Circle
The billionaire’s private friendship with the president has helped Oracle’s business and his son’s media conglomerate.
wsj.com
History will be very kind to Pelley. Not so much to CBS News.
Some mumbling idiot is slurring on national TV and now I think we all know who the April fool is.