Republicans hate everything we were told was good about this country, and they’re willing to kill anyone who tries to make it true.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · yesterday

Sen. Jim Banks refers to American citizens as "the babies of invaders" and compares them to Nazi spies and terrorists

To the extent there are problems with The System, they’re largely (1) poor people suffer, (2) women suffer, and (3) people of color suffer. These are all things RFK likes about The System. To give him credit for “shaking things up” is to out yourself as either a eugenicist or a dumbfuck. Or both.

PMC Vanguardist@tylerboschert.bsky.social · 2d ago

You actually don't have to do the "well, you know, I disagree with MAHA but they're right that there are real problems with The System" thing. That's a concession you absolutely do not have to make.

i cannot get over how funny the moderation tag on this is

USSR Pictures@ussrpictures.bsky.social · 2d ago

"Prudery is the enemy of art" - Soviet poster, 1980s

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

Whitehouse: "Today I think is a sad and embarrassing day for this committee as it looks like on a party-line vote we are going to advance out of this committee probably the most discreditable person ever to seek the office of attorney general. Let's start with the Epstein files ... "

MAGA/MAHA: imaginary quarantine camps would have been an assault on civil liberties! Also MAGA/MAHA: let's kidnap adults & kids, tear-gas & zip tie kids, torture them all in concentration camps, & also separate Black kids from their families & "reparent" them in camps (www.npr.org/2026/04/29/n...)!

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · yesterday

And meanwhile the actual current HHS secretary is openly promoting sending children to work camps in lieu of mental health treatment but sure, imaginary quarantine camps that never happened are the real threat

Yes. We do not study the past with a view to feelgood vibes. Sometimes we encounter events and people that do that, but it is not the *purpose* of serious or just basically honest study.

Armchair Classicist (Ryan Schaller)@armchairclassicist.bsky.social · yesterday

Truth. #History

It's time for the media to call out * Trump's inability to manage a war. * The damage he has done to the structures that could help him. * The military's role in placating his nonsense. * More generally, the folly of running the government by one person's ignorant whim.

Nicholas Grossman@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 3d ago

I can’t believe we’re doing another cycle of pretending to have a deal with Iran. This is so stupid.

Yes. As I argue in this piece, MAGA has revealed their position to be that full ethnic cleansing is the priority *over and above* the economy. Jack Posobiec says it almost directly: "put deportations first." As in, put deportations *before* economic concerns.

Jonathan W. Gray@elmcitytree.blacksky.app · yesterday

A point economists & wannabe capitalists still miss: racism trumps making money in the USA. As this and many other nonsensical but deadly polices demonstrate.

And we've known about the IRGC money laundering since 2017. www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Donald Trump’s Worst Deal

The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

newyorker.com

Mrs. Betty Bowers@mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 4d ago

When it comes to Trump’s money laundering, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Trump Soho laundered Russian mob money. Trump Panama laundered drug cartel money. Trump Azerbaijan laundered Iranian Revolutionary Guard money. Florida real estate was used to launder Russian oligarch money.

Scouring social media, are they? Well, scour this: I believe that ICE are a bunch of lawless bastards whose actions are helping destroy the fabric of this country. The agency should be abolished and the perpetrators should be prosecuted. Clear enough?

Tom Joscelyn@tomjoscelyn.bsky.social · 2d ago

“In recent months, ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the public internet—from Facebook to Instagram to X—for speech that could endanger the agency’s mission.” Speech. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

I wish more people knew about this. It explains so much.

It’s bad these obviously farcical arrangements are treated with more rhetorical weight than constitutional amendments.

Marty Lederman@martylederman.bsky.social · 2d ago

The @nytimes inexplicably continues to assert that "the Justice Department ... gave [Trump] the audit protection as part of a deal to end the lawsuit." Nope. It wasn't included in the "deal." It's a unilateral--and blatantly unlawful--decree by the Acting AG. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/b...

I have long argued that one of the more consequential failures of the Framers was their expectation that shame would be a major constraint on behavior.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 2d ago

bring back shame www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Everywhere should be a hostile place for Republicans. They should not be able to find a friend anywhere. They should lose all their professional and familial relationships. They should be blocked from signing up to social media platforms, clubs, and yard sales. They should be ejected from fairs.

Trump endorsed both Ashley Moody and James Uthmeier in advance of the August 18 primary yesterday. Both are implicated in the suspected theft of $10M in Medicaid payments to use for political purposes--basically what Trump is trying to frame Tim Walz for. www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/f...

Bluesky certainly has its share of real flaws, but the thermonuclear block—as just the way it works—is a genuinely meaningful improvement.

A.R. Moxon@juliusgoat.bsky.social · 2d ago

The best thing about this place is all of you (well, most of you), but the 2nd best thing is that if you come on here and you're a bullying dick you'll just get quickly sealed into a box and sunk to the bottom of Bluesky hell, muttering to yourself and leaving the rest of us alone.

A huge issue for the populist right in adopting Christianity so heavily as a identity marker against Muslims, is that the core theology of Christianity very explicitly rejects their ideas.

@lastpositivist.bsky.social · 3d ago

From a historical perspective it's a genuinely strange state of affairs that the Church of England turns out to be too woke for much of the modern right. But really it just feels like: having a consistent moral code that demands taking Lessers and Outgroup seriously is impossible for populist right.

The whole midterm message could be a picture of Ken Paxton with the caption “he wants to look at your daughters genitals” and it’s a dem landslide

Matthew Sheffield@matthew.flux.community · 2d ago

The message "they want to inspect your daughter's genitals" would be astoundingly effective. Which is also why conservative Democrats who want to cave won't say it. In general, they would rather lose and be comfortable than win and have to push hard.

The racists are the ones breaking the economy , not immigrants. newrepublic.com/article/2138...

MAGA Erupts at Trump DHS Chief—and Accidentally Exposes Big MAGA Scam

Markwayne Mullin just said the unsayable: that immigration can sometimes help the economy and the country. Now MAGA wants his head.

newrepublic.com

"I don't understand why you, a fantasy writer, don't appreciate the value of making bargains with the fae."

John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 2d ago

Every now and then someone takes a run at me along the lines of "I don't understand why you, a scifi writer, don't appreciate 'AI'," and I'm all, motherfucker, it's *because* I'm a science fiction writer I have the positions I have, how many times do we have to fucking yell "torment nexus," my dude

I'm just going to keep screaming this until I'm hoarse, but until Trump the norm -- for 50 years -- was that sitting presidents had their taxes audited by the IRS and released to the public to show they were clean. But Trump refused repeatedly, and sued when his return was leaked, and now ... this

Kyle Griffin@kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 2d ago

FLAG: Trump gets to keep tax immunity for himself, his sons, and the Trump Organization under the new 'deal' struck by Todd Blanche. The new order also reaffirms that Trump won't have to pay any taxes he might have owed the IRS.

just in time for the markets to open! it's a Sunday miracle!

Probably not the most corrupt thing Trump has done, but very possibly the most brazenly, undisguisedly corrupt thing he’s done.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2d ago

$DJT

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Melissa Jo Peltier@melissjpeltier.bsky.social · 2d ago

www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-ple... “Submit your killing ideas to the Pentagon. The winning strategy will get an all-expense paid trip to Palm Beach.”

the truth is corruption and evil are so universal that neither Trump nor Elon will need much explanation for future gens but the one that we will never be able to answer is how we allowed a freak vampiring his own kids to chase youth to be a celebrity instead of a man in an iron mask in a hole

And a gentle reminder that warcrimes—ie “no mercy” and “no quarter” remain explicitly stated policy of USA war on Iran. bsky.app/profile/nucl...

🇵🇸Martin “Doomsday” Pfeiffer🖖🏳️‍🌈@nuclearanthro.bsky.social · 5mo ago

worth considering how unrepudiated war crime(s) of SecDef declaring “no quarter” wrt Iran— under which USA bombing of a children’s school is prima facie just part of USA war policy —contributes to Euro & other partner & ally disinclination to work w/USA militarily re: Iran/Hormuz

The US military is very, very good at 3-4 things, and none of them is going to bring Iran to the kind of surrender Trump wants. That it has come to crowdsourcing ideas from the military shows what a devastating strategic failure this war already is, not to mention the effect on morale.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2d ago

PENTAGON: Anyone got any ideas? @cnn.com www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/p...

This is a good timestamp to mark the question that will decide our democracy: Hey, does it matter that a world-historical con man, unchecked by morals, campaign finance law, or law enforcement, dumps up to half a billion dollars into a race where his party should suffer a historic wave of defeats?

Democrats are pulling away in the generic ballot. So Elon’s trying to buy another election. | LOLGOP Studios

July 29, 2026 was the day reality rebooted. Right up until Axios reported that Elon Musk was reopening America PAC for the midterms, we were

patreon.com

G Elliott Morris@gelliottmorris.com · 3d ago

Dems strongly favored to take the House in our new election forecast. Senate just better than a tossup: Iowa: 41% Dem Texas: 48 Alaska: 51 Ohio: 53 Maine: 68 Michigan: 69 North Carolina: 84 Georgia: 94 www.gelliottmorris.com/p/democrats-...

It’s important to understand that when 1.2 million Americans are dying from a disease, any government action is excessive and tyrannical, but if a dozen trans women want to play soccer no government action can go far enough