John Adams
@libertariandiary.com
Lawyer • Blogger • Bleeding-Heart Libertarian • Cat Guy • Web: https://libertariandiary.com & https://freewhitewater.com • Alum: Penn, William & Mary, Cornell Law • Never Trump Before Never Trump
We can definitely make fun of the condescending dumdums who spent two years going "oh so you think there will be midterm elections that's cute" AND acknowledge there was a multipronged attempt to interfere with the election foiled by hard work, litigation and the overwhelming nature of the vote.
“GARCIA’S BELIEF THAT DHS-related issues should be near the top of the new Congress’s accountability agenda is one he shares with other members of his party.“ #Accountability #ICE #DHS
Dems Have Their Finger on the Impeachment Trigger
The incoming congressional majority is preparing to investigate ICE abuses—and wants consequences for the responsible officials.
open.substack.com
it's worth noting that Democrats won literally every district on the southern border lol immigration continues to only be a problem for people who don't actually live near many immigrants
“How does it feel being a loser, Mr President?” ~~ Question of the year.
No one should be surprised — this is the ineluctable direction of authoritarian populism: ever more extreme until it meets its ruin. #AuthoritarianPopulism #MAGA #Miller
For Stephen Miller, Election Defeat Is No Reason to Back Down on Immigration Crackdown (Gift Article)
The president’s new chief of staff has already demonstrated his intention to forge ahead with an agenda that many voters rejected.
nytimes.com
The word got thrown around but the reality is pre-Trump US was, by any objective standard, a fairly low-corruption country. Not zero, of course, but pretty low and aggressively prosecuted. And then came full-blown unvarnished kleptocracy, the real deal, and people can actually tell the difference.
Adam Bonica@adambonica.bsky.social · 2d agoMore voters called government corruption crucial to their vote than any other issue, including the cost of living.
With Miller we see Trumps entirely predictable response, trying to force feed the country what it just spit up.
The point is not that Stephen Miller will have any more power or influence as formal Chief of Staff; it's that his elevation sends an unambiguous message to Democrats that conciliation ain't happening—sparing them from what otherwise could've devolved into a messy split over how to approach 2027–29.
This short tempered little fascist troll is going to make the White House staff miserable for the next two years.
The Right’s Election Meltdown Is Just Getting Started... #MAGA #ByeFelicia
The Right’s Election Meltdown Is Just Getting Started
Everyone with a podcast is feeling terrible, and they’re ready to fight about it!
open.substack.com
"Democrats had won at least 124 House districts of the 171 with Cheesecake Factories in them. With some calls left to make, the current results have them representing a total of 159 Cheesecake Factories in the next Congress..." #Democrats #Congress #CheesecakeFactory
Dems Put Up Saddam Numbers in Cheesecake Factory Districts
Obama made a joke. Republicans made a fuss. Voters made it a rout.
open.substack.com
"[P]rediction markets were less accurate than two election forecasts scored by The Times: Silver Bulletin and FiftyPlusOne. Those election forecasts tended to produce more reliable odds that better reflected the realities in the race, even months before results were known."
How Accurate Were Kalshi and Polymarket at Picking Midterm Winners? (Gift Article)
The midterm elections were a referendum on the predictive power of election forecasts.
nytimes.com
Erickson's career over the past 11 years has been defined by his wholehearted approval of Trumpism writ large when it's winning and doing things that he likes, and then dropping these half-hearted screeds to credulous centrists when it's losing. He's made his choices and should be tarred with them.
The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3d agoIn @nytopinion.nytimes.com “Voters want normal people in charge, and they took their wrath out on otherwise normal Republicans who refused to push back against the lunacy, corruption and incompetence within the GOP,” Erick Erickson writes in a guest essay.
This is from @froomkin.bsky.social. "What’s missing from every story about Tuesday’s anti-Trump rout."
Platforming *Erickson* as a normie Republican to lament how the GOP was taken over by weirdos? After Renee Nicole Good was killed, Erickson tweeted "An AWFUL (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal) is dead.... Progressive whites are turning violent. ICE agents have the right to defend themselves."
The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3d agoIn @nytopinion.nytimes.com “Voters want normal people in charge, and they took their wrath out on otherwise normal Republicans who refused to push back against the lunacy, corruption and incompetence within the GOP,” Erick Erickson writes in a guest essay.
ProPublica has been tracking the detention of U.S. citizens. So far, we’ve tallied 519 cases and counting:
More Than 500 U.S. Citizens Have Been Detained, Including Handcuffed or Held at Gunpoint, in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown — ProPublica
The government doesn’t track how often immigration officers detain U.S. citizens. So ProPublica did. We’ve found more than 500 Americans who were held against their will during this Trump administrati...
projects.propublica.org
Cengiz Yar@cengizyar.com · 3d agoErik Zepeda, a 20-year-old US citizen with disabilities that affect his physical reflexes and verbal communication, was walking to school "the same way I do every day” when ICE agents tackled him, pinned him to the ground, and detained him. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
More bad news for Trump: LIV Golf, the failed Saudi-backed golf entity that frequented Trump golf clubs, will liquidate and wind down after a restructuring deal to restart the league fell through. This from 2025: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/u...
Trump Family’s Cash Registers Ring as Financial Meltdown Plays Out (Gift Article)
The party was on at a Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournament at the president’s Doral resort in Florida and a fund-raiser at Mar-a-Lago, even as markets tumbled.
nytimes.com
"It’s not “payback.” It’s accountability. It’s enforcing the law. But when we move past rhetoric to what we are actually doing: we are preserving our system by enforcing its rules." #RuleOfLaw
Accountability, Government and Freedom
I’ve seen a few comments over the last couple days to the...
talkingpointsmemo.com
It’s such a basic thing people tend to forget it, but Vance had about a year and a half in office before becoming the VP pick, and was not an impressive campaigner before that. He seems to have bad political instincts, but he also has almost no experience in politics. He’s more or less just a guy.
jamelle@jamellebouie.net · 3d agowas just chatting with a friend about this but it is really stunning to look back at the way vance carried himself in the last weeks of the campaign. just abysmal political judgment — abysmal political judgment that carried over to that bizarre statement he released yesterday.
Hegseth fired three-star Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore without cause in August 2025. Then she launched a Democratic congressional campaign in a red district, running in part on a message that condemned Hegseth. Then she won. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
Last year, Pete Hegseth fired Nancy Lacore. This year, she was elected to Congress.
After having been purged without cause, the retired three-star Navy admiral ran a Democratic campaign in a red district — and won.
ms.now
If the Iran war were the monocausal or dominant factor driving the GOP wipeout, I don’t think Trump’s approval trajectory would look this linear or continuous.
All this talk of "getting even" or payback or whatever. It's not "getting even". It's enforcing the law. Say that. Correct that. Don't fall into that trap. There's absolutely no reason to.
Voters in a Maryland have defeated Chuck Jenkins, a notorious five-term sheriff and Trump ally who boasts of having helped deport 2,000 people. New by me in @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/voters-oust-...
Voters Oust Notorious Pro-ICE Sheriff in Maryland - Bolts
Immigrants in Frederick County have long lived in fear of Sheriff Chuck Jenkins and his tactics. The incoming sheriff vows to monitor ICE activity.
boltsmag.org
Katherine Clark: "There is one image that has stuck with me. It's the video of the memorial to Alex Pretti and Renee Good. It is covered with 'I Voted' stickers. Hundreds and hundreds of people went to that memorial. Each one placed by an American who cast their ballot in the ultimate act of hope."
As Republicans and Democrats were making their final pitch to voters on the eve of Election Day, President Donald Trump opted to forgo the campaign trail and instead focused on his renovations at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Trump spends the day before midterm Election Day promoting his Reflecting Pool makeover
As Republicans and Democrats were making their final pitch to voters on Election Day eve, President Donald Trump instead was speaking far away from most of the people his party is trying to persuade.
bit.ly
