Hey remember when the media and gop freaked out when bill clinton spoke to the attorney general for five seconds?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4h ago

Newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche is speaking at a Trump rally to endorse Bruce Blakeman

Lot will be said about the tragic Arday situation, but ultimately this is Cambridge’s fault, not for compelling his resignation but for promoting him and thrusting him into the limelight without doing its own due diligence into his academic and personal background

So it’s not enough for the U.S. military to openly and publicly murder fishermen, now the intelligence services are covertly murdering fishermen, too? And of course the right-wing governments of LatAm are all too happy to have the U.S. summarily execute their citizens

Adam Isacson@adamisacson.com · yesterday

The main theories about these mysterious attacks on Ecuador fishing boats were (a) DOD's denials have been false, (b) "another agency" was involved, or (c) it was a private mercenary group. This Washington Post scoop points to "(b)"—though if so, it was disastrously sloppy work:

I mean, this reads like she’s just a certain kind of Silicon Valley grifter who craves to call themself a “founder” more than anything else in the world and never does anything of value, which are a dime a dozen

Sky Marchini@sky.skymarchini.net · 19h ago

lol www.wsj.com/tech/ai/clau...

It is just a bit surreal that every other day there’s a story like “guy who took concrete steps towards a coup to end American democracy acquitted” and then separately one like “guy who raised his voice slightly as private detention contractor maced him gets six years”

Lauren Ashley Davis@laurenmeidasa.bsky.social · 9h ago

BREAKING 🚨 🚨 🚨 The yearslong case against six Nevada Republicans who were accused of submitting a bogus certificate that falsely declared Donald Trump the winner of the state’s 2020 presidential election has been dismissed, a judge ruled Thursday. www.nbcnews.com/politics/ele...

One more immediate thought on this: these types of tactics don’t have to “work” in the classic sense for them to be effective. Even if the DOJ/DHS get no indictments and find nothing to hook further official action on, this generates paranoia, fear, and disillusionment in the groups targeted

Felipe De La Hoz@felipedlh.bsky.social · yesterday

I know there’s numbness to the authoritarian drumbeat but this is rubicon-crossing. DOJ subpoenaed years of records from some of the largest unions in the country, infiltrated protest groups & tried to engineer a takedown of the institutional left in MN/nationwide. It is making COINTELPRO look tame

Less than a week into his presidency this clown — who got rich defending famous drug traffickers in Miami — is inviting the U.S. to do military strikes in Colombia to “combat drug trafficking” (as defined by him and his ultra-right, reactionary global pals)

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · yesterday

New right-wing Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has asked the Trump administration to bring its deadly military campaign against drug trafficking groups to his country, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.

I know there’s numbness to the authoritarian drumbeat but this is rubicon-crossing. DOJ subpoenaed years of records from some of the largest unions in the country, infiltrated protest groups & tried to engineer a takedown of the institutional left in MN/nationwide. It is making COINTELPRO look tame

U.S. Investigated Left-Leaning Groups During Minnesota Immigration Crackdown

The government conducted expansive surveillance, infiltrated group chats and obtained financial records of organizations never accused of crimes.

nytimes.com

In @flaminghydra.com, I try to dissect the pathology of the millennial memelord strongman, seen now in the form of new Colombian President De La Espriella. Five years ago, I wrote that El Salvador's Bukele was a template, and I was right. TLDR: it's a distillation of our gambling/grift culture

Rise of the Memelords

In the spring of 2021, I wrote a piece in the Washington Post titled “El Salvador’s leader is updating the autocrat playbook for the TikTok generation.” It was about Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele,...

flaminghydra.com

This is another one of those things that seems hopelessly arcane and is hard to explain to a lay person but could have huge deleterious impact on people trying to actually follow pathways to status

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · yesterday

The post-purge Board of Immigration Appeals, in its effort to take a wrecking ball to every precedent that might allow an immigrant to receive a benefit, effectively ends "advance parole," a pathway for some DACA recipients and others to get green cards without risking a decade of banishment abroad.

Now that this story has reignited Hat Discourse, I feel compelled to say that you can absolutely make a hat work for you, as long as you a) generally go for a wider brim, and b) have enough visual interest in the rest of the outfit to not have the hat really stand out

Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 2d ago

I talked to this person years ago about a job writing about the ultra wealthy and he told me I was a bad fit because I was obviously going to make jokes about them. I remember this, to be honest, because the hat was present then too www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/b...

ALSO TODAY: @felipedlh.bsky.social on an emerging breed of global reactionaries. “This familiar alt-right macho caricature now has a significant political pedigree and a proven ability to short-circuit voters’ disbelief.” flaminghydra.com/rise-of-the-...

Rise of the Memelords

In the spring of 2021, I wrote a piece in the Washington Post titled “El Salvador’s leader is updating the autocrat playbook for the TikTok generation.” It was about Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele,...

flaminghydra.com

Hochul, Mamdani, James, and a series of other officials are holding a rare joint press conference where they are announcing additional legal services for children in removal proceedings for whom the administration has pulled these services

Beyond everything else these guys both look like casting decisions Verhoeven himself would veto for being too repugnant and ham-fisted

Jason Wilson@jasonaw.bsky.social · 2d ago

new from me www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

For @newrepublic.com I wrote about ICE's recent campaign of airport arrests, and the intentional vagueness about who is or isn't potentially subject to detention as part of the administration's broader narrative campaign of fear, intended to drive immigrants from public life

ICE’s Airport Crackdowns Are Designed to Spread Fear

The agency is snatching and grabbing travelers without any regard for their immigration status—and with no effort to be transparent about what they’re up to.

newrepublic.com

This is a very worrying story. Ecuadorian fishermen are being attacked and killed, and the perpetrators seem to be either the U.S. military engaged in clandestine operations or an American mercenary company working for Bukele or another Central American country.

Christiaan Triebert@trbrtc.bsky.social · 2d ago

Read full story on @nytimes.com, with Maria Abi-Habib, @rileymellen.bsky.social, José María León Cabrera, @erschm.bsky.social and Gabriel Labrador: www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/w...

finally reading the Atlantic piece on “Woke 1” and it’s interesting how even in their attempt to list the movement’s sins they struggle to identify anything significant

I feel like there’s something I must be missing with the drumbeat of stories like these. I understand that maybe students can no longer derive broad themes and abstract concepts from a few pages, but is this really saying they cannot understand the plain text of a single sentence? That can’t be true

On the public calendar for tomorrow: Mayor Mamdani, Gov. Hochul, and AG James are having a joint press conference on “standing up to federal ICE overreach” 👀

I think it’s very corrosive to society that we see these scenes routinely and absolutely no one expects there to be any consequences. Accountability seems almost laughable, in part because the feds won’t do it and the states are too afraid

Aaron Fritschner@fritschner.bsky.social · 3d ago

Video of an ICE agent pulling a gun on a wife and mother, who is a US citizen born and raised in the area, near Bailey's Crossroads in Northern Virginia yesterday. Chillingly, they claimed she “almost ran them over” until she told them she had video proving that was a lie.

So these people have just entirely given up on even the vague pretense of not being dystopian fiction shock troops, huh? Also actual lol at the company being called “Compliant Technologies.” Our reality is so fucking contrived, man

AP Exclusive: ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks that are intended to gain compliance from combative individuals.

apnews.com

We have to separate a couple things out here, though. I’d be happy to view ads; I’m not happy to have sites immediately try to set a dozen cookies and launch trackers and have ad spyware track me around the internet. If it was just the former, it’s a clear cut argument. The latter complicates things

mtsw@mtsw.bsky.social · 4d ago

everyone — consumers, publishers, writers — would wind up better off if web browser ad-blockers didn't exist and the rationalizations for using one are mostly clever justifications for what's just selfish behavior with obvious negative social consequences.

I’m surprised by how little attention this case has gotten. Even I didn’t really register it for a while. This entire family of three permanent residents were summarily detained without even the option of bond, all as collective punishment for one one of them being the son of an Iranian official

Jack Mirkinson@jackmirkinson.bsky.social · 3d ago

Today in @thenation.com: a harrowing piece written from inside the Dilley ICE detention center by Maryam Tahmasebi, a green card holder who's been locked up along with her husband and son for months despite none of them committing any crime. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Trying this shot in the dark again: Does anyone know anyone who has received residency through registry (8 USC § 1259) and is (and this is important) still alive?

He’s not one of the big flashy ones but if Dems flip the House the Bove impeachment inquiry should be a day 1 order of business

patrick mcneil (he/him)@patrickryne.bsky.social · 4d ago

I'm sorry, what do you mean TODD BLANCHE WAS SWORN IN BY EMIL BOVE?

A defining image of the end of the American century

FactPost@factpostnews.bsky.social · 4d ago

Trump appears to be passed out asleep while RFK Jr rambles about vaccines in the Oval Office

If I wanted to really be honest with my students about career advice, I'd tell 'em to spend a couple years inhabiting left spaces and then make a big show of walking away and a lucrative career telling centrist reactionaries what they want to hear about those spaces

Sam@samd.bsky.social · 4d ago

the Atlantic is so cooked man. why is Jeffrey Goldberg retweeting the tradcath freak who was collecting $$ from the Orban government

New from me: He had the money, bio and Trump endorsement needed to win in a Republican primary. His opponent even dropped out! But Amir Hassan could not beat Tom Smith. His loss reflects the depth of anti-Muslim bigotry in the GOP. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-candidat...

A candidate who quit the race still beat Trump's pick in a GOP primary — because of his name

A real life audit study!

donmoynihan.substack.com

Do we think there’s some cognizable standing to sue over Trump’s plan to charge for quicker access to his posts? Surely there’s some kind of precedent about public access to presidential communications?

For the fifth time, the Trump administration has agreed to pay an energy firm a huge sum of money to abandon planned wind energy projects

Trump Administration to Pay German Firm $1.2 Billion to Cancel Wind Leases

It was the fifth such deal struck by the administration to get companies to drop offshore wind projects.

nytimes.com