Offbeat sales pitch but okay.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago

Trump: "Look at the blue cities. What do they have in common? They're all dirty. They're filthy dirty. Their streets are dirty. Their streets smell. Their storefronts are broken. Their trees are all gross. Everything about the place is dirty. It's really all of them."

This. Plus "don't make enough money" is absolute bullshit. We have literally mountains of data on the value of college degrees. There is no such thing as a major or college degree that is not "worth it" financially. It's right-wing bullsh*t & should be treated as such. bsky.app/profile/coop...

Brooke Harrington@ebharrington.bsky.social · 2d ago

"don't make enough money" is a fig leaf All those degree programs--social work, art, etc.--have disproportionately female student bodies. This is designed to make it harder for women to attend college--college education being a key factor in women's autonomy from men & left-leaning voting pattern.

"don't make enough money" is a fig leaf All those degree programs--social work, art, etc.--have disproportionately female student bodies. This is designed to make it harder for women to attend college--college education being a key factor in women's autonomy from men & left-leaning voting pattern.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

🚨💩 The Trump/Kennedy diarrhea claims first two casualties. "Two people in Michigan have died in connection with the multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak, Michigan health officials said Monday, marking the first known deaths linked to the foodborne illness."

Cyclospora outbreak causes first two deaths

Weeks into the national crisis that's sickened thousands of people, federal authorities still don't know for certain where it's coming from or why.

axios.com

Being a strong advocate of institutional neutrality and also advocating for using political ideology as a key criterion for hiring are not logically consistent positions.

Liam Knox@liamknox.bsky.social · 2d ago

Scoop: The Trump administration is sending a letter to college presidents asking them to pledge a series of policy changes by the end of the year. Unlike last year's Compact, this effort was devised with input from higher ed leaders. Free link to my exclusive: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

🚨Don't fall for it. Todd Blanche didn't rewrite Trump's controversial IRS deal. He released a late-night DOJ memo designed to help secure the votes for his confirmation. We read the fine print. Here's what it actually says. 👇

Todd Blanche's Midnight Confirmation Gambit Doesn't Actually Rewrite Trump's Deal

And the "concerned" senators and much of the media are falling for it.

meidasnews.com

Thief: Gimme your wallet so I can take all your money. John Cornyn: No, that would be wrong. Thief: What if I tell you I’ll give you back any cash I find in the wallet in a few weeks? Cornyn: Sounds good to me. <hands over wallet> Media: Tough, Independent Sen. Cornyn Stands Up to Thieving Ring

I'm just going to keep screaming this until I'm hoarse, but until Trump the norm -- for 50 years -- was that sitting presidents had their taxes audited by the IRS and released to the public to show they were clean. But Trump refused repeatedly, and sued when his return was leaked, and now ... this

Kyle Griffin@kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 2d ago

FLAG: Trump gets to keep tax immunity for himself, his sons, and the Trump Organization under the new 'deal' struck by Todd Blanche. The new order also reaffirms that Trump won't have to pay any taxes he might have owed the IRS.

NEW: Capital One closed hundreds of Trump accounts for money laundering. We wouldn’t have known if Trump hadn’t sued. Now he’s got tax immunity. My latest: www.muellershewrote.com/p/new-capita...

NEW: Capital One Closed Hundreds of Trump Bank Accounts for Anti-Money Laundering Reasons

"A bottled water company, a winery, a golf course, a construction payroll firm, and a real estate brokerage, and hundreds of other businesses" were debanked. Trump claims it was for political reasons.

muellershewrote.com

Imagine a bank closing the accounts of the sitting president and the reason listed is money laundering. Just imagine the appropriate level of political scandal that something like that should cause. Now imagine the leading newspaper of the country, @nytimes.com, not writing a word about it

Allison Gill@muellershewrote.com · 2d ago

NEW: Capital One closed hundreds of Trump accounts for money laundering. We wouldn’t have known if Trump hadn’t sued. Now he’s got tax immunity. My latest: www.muellershewrote.com/p/new-capita...

Another example of the lunacy of thinking discrimination against a marginalized group won't affect you if you're not part of that group bsky.app/profile/gbbr...

Gillian Branstetter@gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 2d ago

An initiative on the ballot in Washington state in November would require all athletes seeking to play girl's sports from kindergarten to high school to undergo "genetic screening, a testosterone-levels test, or an examination of their reproductive anatomy" before they can play

Every vote to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general is a vote to continue the coverup of the Epstein Files.

3. Meanwhile, a group representing 250 family members of 9/11 victims has condemned the effort to ban Mamdani. The Post dismisses them as a “far-left group… trying to silence 9/11 families.” 🤔

1. Last week, we revealed that the New York Post published a fake cover story claiming "thousands" of 9/11 families were trying to ban Mamdani from the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero. Instead of admitting its error, the Post quietly edited the article, adding even less credible info.

This is why you hear so much forever now about how Zohran Mamdani’s election Means Everything for American Politics, while, e.g., Susan Crawford’s landslide win in Wisconsin disappears from the news forever a week later.

ryan cooper@ryanlcooper.com · 2d ago

more than 8 percent of all American newspaper journalists work in Manhattan, up from 2 percent in 2005 www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

oh yeah the broader newspaper industry is turbo fucked. down ~80 percent since 1990

@rst.bsky.social · 2d ago

This is one where it might also be useful to see absolutely numbers. It is sadly likely that a lot of this is due to a drop in newspaper staffing elsewhere.

more than 8 percent of all American newspaper journalists work in Manhattan, up from 2 percent in 2005 www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Population of CA: 2023 - 38.9 million 2024 - 39.5 million 2025 - 39.5 million 2026 - 39.5 million bsky.app/profile/atru...

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago

Hassett: "One of the metrics of shelter costs that I find most interesting is that they're going down pretty rapidly in places like California because everybody is leaving. Even though there are high prices in California, it puts downward pressure on inflation because everybody is leaving the state"

The US military is very, very good at 3-4 things, and none of them is going to bring Iran to the kind of surrender Trump wants. That it has come to crowdsourcing ideas from the military shows what a devastating strategic failure this war already is, not to mention the effect on morale.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2d ago

PENTAGON: Anyone got any ideas? @cnn.com www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/p...

Really been amazing throughout the process how “should the attorney general be a former personal attorney to the president who has overseen a bunch of failed political prosecutions” just does not matter at all to the entire GOP caucus.

Matthew Gertz@mattgertz.bsky.social · 2d ago

You’d have to be a fool and/or desperate to get to yes to accept this, so it’ll probably be enough to get him confirmed. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/u...

Time to add another formerly respected institution to the garbage pile, this time @aau.edu, which just worked with the Trump admin to endorse resegregation in high education, embedding MAGA fraudsters as faculty, and banning student expression. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Still amazing that the official government policy is universities can't do DEI except for hiring professors whose politics better align with the regime in power.

Max Kennerly@maxkennerly.bsky.social · 2d ago

Time to add another formerly respected institution to the garbage pile, this time @aau.edu, which just worked with the Trump admin to endorse resegregation in high education, embedding MAGA fraudsters as faculty, and banning student expression. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The tricky part for a future Dem Admin is going to be finding a way to divest the US govt from these companies without tanking their stock price & hurting them over the long term. What Trump is doing is a fundamental tenet of communism while he distracts by claiming Dems are.

Here’s my issue with Cornyn He knows the deal is wrong And yet Blanche making the deal in the first place isn’t disqualifying Because he doesn’t care if Blanche is incompetent or corrupt. Cornyn just wants to pretend he cares about corruption. Even though he obviously doesn’t

Yonette Joseph@sugarcane99.bsky.social · 2d ago

Todd Blanche took a crucial step toward confirmation as attorney general late Sunday, after Sen. John Cornyn said he had reached a deal with the Justice Department to rein in a controversial settlement agreement Trump reached with the IRS this year. www.politico.com/news/2026/08...

America votes in more than 10,000 different election jurisdictions, each with different rules set by state and sometimes local governments. That structure makes the nation's elections extraordinarily complicated — and also safe from widespread fraud. https://to.pbs.org/3T4duz3

Here's what makes American elections so complicated and secure

One of the strongest security features of U.S. elections is the fact that they aren’t conducted at the federal level.

to.pbs.org

You likely already know, but this was a story capturing more of the depravity and violence of the Tate Brothers: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/w...

Lauren Southern, Former Right-Wing Commentator, Says Andrew Tate Assaulted Her (Published 2025)

Ms. Southern’s account of a 2018 encounter, made in a self-published memoir, adds to the allegations against Mr. Tate, the online influencer. “She is lying through her teeth,” Mr. Tate’s lawyer said.

nytimes.com

"Still, Andrew seemed bored. “I miss human trafficking,” he tweeted." www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse

How the defining figure of the manosphere built a fortune—and became a political force—by systematically exploiting women.

newyorker.com

This got me to finally read the entire New Yorker article on the Tates and... yeah. I don't see how what they're doing is any different than what everyone has accused Jeffrey Epstein of doing. Except they're *more public* about admitting to what they're doing AND getting young men to join in.

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 4d ago

However horrible you think the Tate brothers are, I promise, it's worse than that. It's insane that Dems aren't making a bigger deal of the GOP embracing these grotesque monsters.

Shouldn’t be shocked at any lie RFK Jr tells, but he whined to Dana Bash that businesses were shut down during the pandemic “with no just compensation.” There was an almost trillion dollar PPP loan program, and his organization got millions from it, none of it paid back, to make payroll.

John Cornyn, the cheapest of dates. (He appears to be fine with Blanche killing an audit that reportedly was set to cost Trump $100 million.) www.politico.com/news/2026/08...