The uber wealthy used to build libraries, parks and museums to gain favor with the public, now they buy elections.

More Perfect Union@moreperfectunion.bsky.social · last wk.

Billionaires have already poured $433 million into the 2026 midterm elections—and 80% of it is going to Republicans.

cases like this have caused public outrage in other countries like Ireland that led to huge protests and changed laws; the majority of Americans don't seem to care.

ProPublica@propublica.org · last mo.

Tierra Walker knew that abortion was illegal in Texas, but she thought that hospitals could make an exception for patients like her, whose health was clearly on the line. At 20 weeks pregnant, she died of preeclampsia. (Published January)

No place does bizarro working-class cosplay quite as dramatically as the American West, where you can spot moneyed new arrivals for their expensive cowboy hats, boots and big trucks, and their leaning into yeehaw-isms, while everyone else just ... kind of normal.

Sharon 🪳🌹@sharonk.bsky.social · last mo.

i genuinely do find it fascinating how being authentically "working class" in America now has nothing to do with like, your actual relationship to ownership or your wage relation/bracket, but entirely about what you consume or look like

Organizers now say they've got more than enough signatures to qualify this initiative that could upend Citizens United for the November ballot in Montana 👀

The Nation Magazine@thenation.com · 3mo ago

A grassroots effort in Montana aims to make Citizens United irrelevant by cutting corporate money out of elections. @kemc.bsky.social on the Montana Plan. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Anyone looking to understand corporate influence in American politics, this figure from @axios.com should be a wake-up-call as AI has dwarfed even oil and gas (though there are obviously connections there). To learn more about AI and the midterms, see this piece: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/t...

Someone commission me to write a piece about how the red state/blue state-ification of American discourse has doomed us superficial, bad thinking about just about everything.

If you contextualize the mass expansion of data centers in spite of widespread public opposition as the latest, largest assault in an ongoing class war waged mostly from the top, things do make a bit more sense.

A grassroots effort in Montana aims to make Citizens United irrelevant by cutting corporate money out of elections. @kemc.bsky.social on the Montana Plan. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

How the Montana Plan Could Make “Citizens United” Irrelevant

A transpartisan initiative to return power to the people.

thenation.com

How the Montana Plan Could Make Citizens United Irrelevant By Kathleen McLaughlin A transpartisan initiative to return power to the people. @kemc.bsky.social

The Nation Magazine@thenation.com · 3mo ago

As campaign costs soar, reformers say democracy won’t work unless money stops dominating politics. @kemc.bsky.social on the Montana Plan. www.thenation.com/article/poli... #mtpol

I wrote something last year about the repurposing of America's local newspaper buildings into new things and what it says about communities, but someone could write a very interesting book rooted in that shift in what's valued.

Read my piece on Montana's (very long) fight against money controlling politics and why it matters.

The Nation Magazine@thenation.com · 3mo ago

As campaign costs soar, reformers say democracy won’t work unless money stops dominating politics. @kemc.bsky.social on the Montana Plan. www.thenation.com/article/poli... #mtpol

Starting to believe that a certain percentage of the American commentariat class are operating in a state of AI-induced psychosis.

The longest-running family owned Chinese restaurant in America shut down yesterday. Survived 115 years, two world wars and the Great Depression but couldn't withstand whatever it is we're doing right now.

I genuinely don’t think America can fix itself without an honest reckoning on class and inequity, but I also see no evidence that’s going to happen.

I think people are allowed to draw conclusions about the American people based on their decision to put this man in office bsky.app/profile/pear...

George Pearkes@peark.es · 4mo ago

Gibberish closely related to war crimes

There was a village in rural China back in the mid-2010s where the local government had grown so corrupt that a couple of old ladies started their own competing official government, stamping documents and making decisions, and I think of them often.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility. I know trans people and I know fascists who are making life difficult for trans people. The trans people are pretty cool and I'm glad I know them. The fascists can go fall down a deep dark hole.

Unpopular opinion but perhaps we need to send coastal urban writers and journalists down to the countryside for a certain amount of time before they are allowed to write about it.

I wrote about a great new book by Megan Kate Nelson, out today, that blows apart the myths of the American West by telling the stories of real, interesting lives substack.com/home/post/p-...

The Westerners

A new book reveals a more complex and fascinating story of the American West

substack.com

The Lindy West book is grating not because of her relationships but because she demands grace and acceptance from everyone, but gives none to any of the people she encounters on a cross-country road trip. It's the opposite of what a road trip memoir should do, especially in our current moment.

I think there are a lot of Americans who don't realize that, in regards to purchasing power and no matter what their age or job, they will never make more money then they made in 2024—unless something radically changes.

Kathleen McLaughlin@kemc.bsky.social · 5mo ago

As our economic divide widens, the plasma economy is reaching its tentacles into the middle class (I'm quoted in this one) www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/b...

As our economic divide widens, the plasma economy is reaching its tentacles into the middle class (I'm quoted in this one) www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/b...

The Middle-Class Suburbanites Who Sell Their Blood Plasma to Get By

nytimes.com

My local airport is having a food drive to support TSA employees who aren't getting paid for their work because the government is still shut down, in case anyone needs further evidence that the USA has lost its way entirely.

A million years ago, when the private prison industry was just gaining a footing, I wrote some stories about the perception of corruption with one company in Texas (they had a county judge on their board), and just that was enough for the company to lose its contracts. Whew.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 5mo ago

WHOA. Lewandowski is accused of demanding fees from a private prison company to steer them ICE contracts, at a time when he was widely known to be running DHS on Kristi Noem's behalf, then punishing them when they didn't pay up. Congress should conduct a full and bipartisan investigation into this.

Regarding Montana politics and a US Senator unnecessarily involving himself in breaking a retired Marine's arm over a peaceful protest, don't forget, we also have a second-term governor who assaulted a reporter for asking a question.

Please recommend to me the best books about the Balkans. Nonfiction or fiction, whatever you like!

Updates at both our jobs today have me thinking, "Man, neither of us is even eligible to sell plasma." But anyway, the U.S. economy is FINE, clearly.

As the laid off Middle East News Editor, I concur. Management eliminated the positions of every single staff correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East.

NERV IRB Coordinator@professormusgrave.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I have to say the Post chose a hell of a moment to lay off all their foreign correspondents

Please take a moment to think about what this illegal and unjustified war on Iran mean to the basic moral fabric of our nation. newrepublic.com/article/2071...

Who’s Deciding Where the Bombs Drop in Iran? Maybe Not Even Humans.

Behind last week’s scrum between the Trump administration and Anthropic lies a deeper question of how warfare is conducted—and whether accountability even exists anymore.

newrepublic.com

Saving the people of Iran from being massacred by their government in the streets by massacring elementary schoolgirls from the air.