David Atkins

@davidoatkins.bsky.social

Contributor @washingtonmonthly.com. Bylines @theprospect & elsewhere. Elected DNC Member from CA. Progressive reformist. Dad of two. I run a qualitative research firm.

Here are things that happened at the DNC today: 1) Resolution calling to abolish ICE unanimously adopted 2) Brand-new early state calendar that reflects the full diversity of the Democratic base 3) Rejection of insider efforts to ban RCV from being used in presidential primaries Great results here

Crypto might be where elite impunity meets elite decadence completely. There is no point to crypto except crime. You can't buy gas with it. No one takes their wages in it. Yet elites, and not just Trump, act like it's legitimate money.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · yesterday

Trump family crypto earnings: $1.4 billion $TRUMP meme coin: -98% $MELANIA meme coin: -99% “Perhaps the most blatant example of corruption in the history of American politics.” — Bilello

Of all the corrupt things Trump has done, this is in the top 3 most disgusting and crooked -- wiping out law enforcement's ability to track the money launderers who are helping the worst criminals (Trump and his friends included, no doubt) hide their ill-gotten wealth.

Trump’s Gift to the Money Launderers

Treasury isn’t merely shutting down an anti-corruption database. It’s deleting the data so future investigators can’t use it.

thebulwark.com

“Treasury announced this week that it … will also destroy all the data it has already collected, so that no future presidential administration or local police department can use it, either.” Hm — seems very legal, very cool. Totes up-and-up.

Dan Gillmor@dangillmor.bsky.social · 2d ago

Of all the corrupt things Trump has done, this is in the top 3 most disgusting and crooked -- wiping out law enforcement's ability to track the money launderers who are helping the worst criminals (Trump and his friends included, no doubt) hide their ill-gotten wealth.

Must be great to work on an aircraft carrier right now. You get to hang out next to Iran without fresh food for months on end and meanwhile they're going to have to gut the whole ship to make the launch catapults work on steam like in the olden days because the president is scared of magnets

Sex trafficking investigations stalled and prosecutions declined in the past six months because of staffing shortages, funding cuts and immigration enforcement, according to Reuters interviews with 25 former prosecutors, current agents and victims' advocates. Read the special report reut.rs/4fWSJ1k

Bild

Why would Trump remove federal reporting requirements this week mandated in a law authored by Marco Rubio in 2020 to identify domestic and international sex traffickers, money launderers and terrorists, and will Rubio comment on it?

Bild

When is the last a Republican was even asked to defend spending? The surest sign the GOP controls the media narrative is how predictably the debt becomes an issue only when there’s a Democrat in the White House.

Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act. Trump vetoed it. Congress overrode his veto on a bipartisan vote. So Trump has decided to simply not enforce the law. I do not understand the role of Congress anymore. I guess they just make suggestions?

Treasury Scales Back Scrutiny of U.S. Shell Companies (Gift Article)

The Trump administration will not enforce reporting requirements of the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act, which was intended to crack down on money laundering.

nytimes.com

The biggest problems with Woke 1.0 never even affected conservatives at all. Warped versions of standpoint theory at worst hobbled and petrified progressive orgs and NGOs that crumbled to uselessness with internal strife. Ironically, conservatives were most advantaged by it.

setting everything aside i don't think this is a major setback at all lmao? a squeaker in wisconsin is pretty fucking good. ideally everyone involved with the campaign learns from this and comes back stronger next time. abdul lost to whitmer by 20 points in 2018!

The Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin is a really great example of why America needs to switch to ranked-choice voting in primaries. As of now it looks like the winner of the race will prevail with <40% of the vote! No good reason not to switch ahead of 2028.

yep. we saw this as well with the late shift to Biden in the 2020 prez. A lot of Dem voters wait late for an electability/polling signal against the GOP candidate. That said, it may simply be that Hong's polling stuck and Crowley consolidated well.

Micah@rincewind.run · 4d ago

primary polling is extremely hard but I think the one thing I am taking out of the polling misses in the El-Sayed and Hong races is that “this person is likely to lose the general election” messaging does still work on a significant element of the Dem electorate

With everyone obsessing over a handful of DSA candidates, the broader trend that might be getting missed across the country is that lots of Dem primary voters seem to have decided it is time for a new generation of younger nominees in lots of places.