In 1940, Michael Foot co-wrote "Guilty Men," a famous broadside against Chamberlain & co. over appeasement. In 1982, when pressed by some Labour MPs angry at his support for the Falklands war, he shot back "I know a fascist when I see one."

Republicans Against Trumpism@rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social · 14h ago

Remnick: So we shouldn't send weapons to Ukraine? DSA co-chair Megan Romer: No! Remnick: So, just allow Russia to overrun Ukraine entirely? Romer: We should be sending huge teams of diplomats. We should figure out how to negotiate.w

America wasn't supposed to have two parties forever @leedrutman.bsky.social traces how Progressive-era "reforms" accidentally locked the two-party system in place.

Fixing America's Negative Polarization With Proportional Representation: A Conversation With Lee Drutman

Presidentialism plus single-member districts is a bad combination that incentivizes leaders to consolidate power by fueling division.

theunpopulist.net

The system barely held on Jan. 6, but it hasn’t held since. And the next time MAGA Republicans lose a national election, they’re in a much better position to successfully pull off the coup that only narrowly failed after the 2020 election. (new @ms.now column)

Opinion | Jan. 6 officially ended with this judge’s dismissal — proving the system did not hold

Anthony L. Fisher: The institutions that held the line on Jan. 6 are all now led by election-denying Trump loyalists.

ms.now

Sanders is being dishonest with this insistence the party has some power to ban super PACs from spending in Dem primaries and they're just refusing to use it. They don't! They can't stop people from buying ads. No such power exists. He's bashing them for not fulfilling a literally impossible demand.

Andrew Levesque@andrewlevesque.bsky.social · yesterday

www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-... Sen. Bernie Sanders is calling on leaders of the Democratic party to end super PAC participation in primaries, saying in a letter shared exclusively with "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" that the fundraising organizations lead to a "corrupt system."

how much caffeine can a human take

NEW: One year in, Trump's troop deployment in D.C. is ongoing, unending, pointless — and very bad. The "America 250" flags are a particularly empty emblem on the uniforms of troops deployed on the streets of the nation's capital. Tonight, at Law Dork:

One year in, Trump's troop deployment in D.C. is ongoing, unending, pointless — and very bad

The "America 250" flags are a particularly empty emblem on the uniforms of troops deployed on the streets of the nation's capital. And for paid subscribers: Closing my tabs.

lawdork.com

Electoral Count Reform Act does address this scenario, it's one of the main things it had in mind. The short version is a court-ordered certificate of ascertainment supersedes any spurious one or refusal from the governor. The court can order somebody else to do it, too, and then that one's valid.

Adam Keiper@adamkeiper.com · yesterday

NEW: The Wisconsin governor's race may be much more important than you have in mind... www.thebulwark.com/p/what-happe...

Alex's book is great. Even if you're not especially interested in Truman or nuclear weapons, he does a magnificent job of going back to the original sources and genuinely revising the historical narrative in a way that's compelling and persuasive. It's a genuinely fun intellectual project.

Alex Wellerstein@wellerstein.bsky.social · 2d ago

Rather, I want to just focus on one thing that I expand upon at some length in my STILL PRETTY NEW book about Truman and the atomic bomb. (Which you should read, I think!) Namely, Nagasaki and Truman. alexwellerstein.com/writing/book...

Better things are possible.

There is a subtler bigotry. It's not like "Abdul El-Sayed" isn't obviously Arab/Muslim. "Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed" triggers stronger xenophobia because it suggests an unassimilated immigrant. It exoticizes him with a name an American typically wouldn't opt to go by in daily life (as he does not)

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago

RAJU: Why use El-Sayed's full name in attack ads? Are you trying to say, 'Hint hint, he's Muslim'? TIM SCOTT: Not at all RAJU: But why not just use the name he goes by? TIM SCOTT: Listen, I go by Timothy Eugene. I get called that all the time.

What Truman did do, the next day (August 10), as I have written about, is issue the order to STOP dropping atomic bombs on Japan. That is the most "proactive" thing he did regarding the atomic bomb in WWII. thebulletin.org/2025/08/trum...

Truman never ordered the use of the atomic bombs—but he did order atomic bombings to be stopped

On the 80th anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, President Truman deserves credit for the first use of the atomic bomb in war. But he also deserves some credit for the fact that atomi...

thebulletin.org

I have seen repeated many times, including in scholarly literature, the idea that a) the Nagasaki attack was ordered strategically because the Japanese government had not responded to Hiroshima, and b) that Truman "ordered" the dropping of a second atomic bomb. Neither of these are true.

I have written at some length about Nagasaki in the past. It has long taken a back seat in the narratives about the atomic bomb compared to Hiroshima. It deserves at least as much attention — it has its own distinct implications for the atomic bombing narrative. www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-...

What About Nagasaki?

The attack that ended the nuclear summer of 1945.

newyorker.com

Excluding one case of double-bunked incumbents, 159 House Dems have been through their primaries to date and 5 lost (there are 11 states still to vote). That's a renomination rate of 96.9%. The post-WWII average for House is 98.3%. This is what gets much ballyhooed as a "bloodbath" in our system.

60-36 is on the outer margin of what I'd call a "serious" primary challenge. To be sure that's not a great result for an incumbent, but it's also not an in-serious-danger kind of race.

Bayliss Wagner@baylisswagner.bsky.social · 2d ago

NEW: Representative Ed Case, a moderate of Hawaii, beat Jarrett Keohokalole, a younger progressive, in Saturday’s Democratic primary. Case is among the few older, centrist, pro-Israel Dems who have hung onto their seats after serious primary challenges. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/u...

Looking forward to Denmark closing the Baltic Sea to Americans after a failed putsch in Greenland

The worst offense they've shown Fauci committed was being thoughtless about keeping his personal diary on a government computer.

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 2d ago

The entire allegation about Fauci lying to the public is based on a private diary entry from *January 2020* politifact.com/article/2026...

The Democratic "establishment" is such a nebulous and disorganized thing they very often aren't even on the same page with each other. Consider how many contested primaries have senators, not just Sanders but other totally mainstream liberals, endorsing different opposing candidates.

Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 3d ago

we do this thing when there's an inter-party argument where the centrist side is The Democratic Party & the progressive side is some secret 3rd party that only exists in our heads

There's that re: denigration of legislation, and could also note what he's done just on SCOTUS. But more generally: we'll be living in the shadow of Trump and dealing with all the aftershocks and repairing the damage (or at least trying to) for decades to come. To claim otherwise is facially absurd.

Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 3d ago

also, describing a lack of legislative capacity as a point against authoritarian consolidation misses the point: the defining feature of Trump’s second term is consolidation of power in the *executive* - the lack of legislative authorization makes him more authoritarian, not less

Of course it's as simple and dumb as that. But it's even dumber that the controversy is over merely *attending.* Ever since the first one in 2002, no politicians (nor clergy for that matter) speak at the WTC ceremony. They just silently sit there and watch, because it's deliberately not about them.

Anjali Dayal@anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 3d ago

the argument against Mamdani attending the 9/11 anniversary, as far as I can tell, is literally just that he’s Muslim, and reposting it is just reporting rank racism

This is so humiliating I thought ringwiss had spliced together the clips or was using an old one. But no, Thune really did put Lee in the chair to make him preside over this after he'd tweeted about objecting. You don't ever got to hand it to Thune, but on this one I'll give him just a smidgen.

ringwiss@ringwiss.bsky.social · 3d ago

Well, I’ll let you hear it from the presiding officer…

We deliberately bought a model a few years older so I could have goddamned physical controls for the A/C and not have to operate it through a touchscreen menu while driving.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2d ago

“‘I don’t want any of that,’ said the computer scientist living in St. Louis, who sees the [car] technology as a pile of problems waiting to happen.”

Those darned progressives hijacking RFRA, a law sponsored by Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy and signed into law by Bill Clinton to overturn a Supreme Court ruling written by Antonin Scalia.

Micah Schwartzman@micahschwartzman.bsky.social · 3d ago

This piece revives Josh Blackman’s “tentative thoughts” that liberal Jews are lying about their religious beliefs in claiming free exercise exemptions from abortion bans. He says these claims “also give progressives a way to accuse conservatives of hypocrisy.” /1

renaissance painter: hey man i finished your commission for an icon of saint sebastian, its real fuckin sexy just like you asked catholic bishop: yes, this IS just as i asked. Gloria in Excelsis Deo

It's not just a flippant Nazi comparison. It is substantively true that Trumpism is Schmittian to its core. Trump himself is the pure lizard-brain id version of it even if he'd never recognize the name, and outside of him, a great many of them proudly admit the inspiration.

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

Just causally referencing Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt, as if it's unremarkable conventional wisdom, the typical basis of a political worldview. And very positive about right-wing populism. And (elsewhere, not in this column) pines for an American Orban. But, you know, not sure where he stands. 9/x

There is genuinely nothing he could do under which they wouldn't say this. Anything short of a literal totalitarian dictatorship means it was all overblown, and if it did get there they'd make excuses for that, too. Meanwhile back in reality, we're well past Orban and easily approaching Erdogan.

Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 3d ago

This line from Ross Douthat’s final NYT column is something you see all the time from the soft-MAGA right. Sure, Trump’s *most* alarmist critics weren’t correct, but that’s basically true of every president. Trump’s *median* critic did in fact predict his presidency pretty accurately.

Bracketing the WNBA trolling, man's running for Senate from Minnesota and yet his NBA career ended because he has a debilitating fear of flying? Does he plan to drive 17 hours each way back and forth to DC?

New York Post @nypost.com · 3d ago

Ex-NBA player, GOP Senate hopeful Royce White to declare for WNBA Draft as transgender

It’s not just the “experts” who say this. The trump admin has their secret collection of intel and data shared at the White House, pentagon, elsewhere that our sources tell @premthakker.bsky.social and me that says this The trump WH knows their murder spree isn’t “working.” They’re doing it anyway

Asawin Suebsaeng@swin24.bsky.social · 4w ago

zeteo.com/p/trumps-ill...

I've been radicalized on the ethics of justices as public figures: they shouldn't be. No interviews, speeches, book deals, nothing. Say what you have to say in written opinions or from the bench and then hold your peace. Otherwise you can be seen but not heard until you retire. That's the deal.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 3d ago

Justice Alito, in Friendly WSJ Interview Where He Says He’s in for Another Term, Comments on His Use of “Colorblind Constitution” in Allen v. Milligan Order electionlawblog.org/2026/justice...

The depressing thing about this isn't that he's doing it as a craven political calculation or in spite of how he has nothing left to lose. It's that even a Republican who voted to convict Trump after Jan 6 still has such a warped perspective that Blanche can seem a normal, acceptable conservative.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4d ago

Cassidy: "I will vote for Mr Blanche. I will be criticized for this vote. What's new?"