Also for god’s sake if you’re going to be a poll sniffer at least take note that Trump’s atrocities have succeeded in shifting the electorate in a massively more pro-immigrant direction.

Or at least be fully weird about it and put Doctor Doom’s backstory in a post-credits scene on a new remaster of Eraserhead.

I am of the quaint opinion that if you have new footage that is necessary to understand the story of your new movie, you should put that footage… in your new movie.

Jinx

Unless it comes from the Briberie region of France, it’s just a sparkling Gratuity. You know, the sort Harlan Crow dispenses.

Happily Congress is not bound by SCOTUS’ understanding of “bribery” on which nothing qualifies unless you’re caught on video accepting a giant sack covered in dollar signs while hollering “THANK YOU FOR THIS CORRUPT QUID PRO QUO, I AM CURRENTLY DOING A CRIME”

While the Constitution says that the President can be impeached for various "high crimes and misdemeanors", it did explicitly state two specific crimes that are grounds for impeachment, and one of them is "Bribery." The remedy for this scenario was anticipated and does exist. So that being said...

It’s not media cluelessness – it’s cowardice and complicity But there’s another word starting with “C” that describes some journalists: courage.

Journalists might've once had the excuse that the didn’t realize how bad MAGA extremism would be. But they can't plead cluelessness now. What’s left are cowardice, complicity and courage. Pick one.
My Stop the Presses newsletter.

Also, of course, drug trafficking is not a crime punishable by summary execution even if you disingenuously try to rebrand it as "narcoterrorism."

We have to prosecute them.

Again: young people might not realize that this kind of repugnant racism was unacceptable to express publicly, *not that long ago*.

Could the government just send consumers a flat rebate check for the average markup? Sure. But the companies that actually paid the illegal tariffs would still have their own valid legal claim. So in that scenario the government ends up paying the refund twice over.

I mean, it's hard to see how refunds to the consumer would even be logistically feasible in most cases. "I'd like a rebate on the markup on a meal I ate six months ago attributable to tariffs on several of the ingredients..."

From Res Publica to the United States of Trump This president's vulgar self-glorification is revolting to a self-governing people and must not stand

A deep dive on the history of our Roman-inspired republican symbolism and why Trump's desecrations of it are worse than merely being cringe-inducing.

If I'm recalling correctly, this facially absurd figure comes from a study that tested like a dozen malnourished and traumatized refugee children, then extrapolated the result to the entire country. It gets repeated purely because it panders to racist preconceptions.

I mean, yes, "allegedly" and so on, but I have a lot of trouble imagining The Atlantic got a *dozen* FBI/DOJ sources on the record for a story that is not, at least in the broad brushstrokes, largely substantively correct, even in the vipers' nest of the Trump administration.

We Could Do Worse Than Kash Patel Being a Drunken Buffoon If the FBI director’s alleged intoxication prevents him from carrying out Trump’s agenda, that might not be such a bad thing.

There is no question that Kash Patel is a buffoon. The only factual uncertainty is whether he is an often-soused buffoon or a largely sober one.
https://bit.ly/41JVLhy

That said, I'm not particularly upset they didn't adapt Born Again, which turns Karen Page into a heroin-addicted porn star, because Frank Miller.

I look forward to The Atlantic obtaining Patel’s bar tabs via discovery.

Makes sense. Whenever he goes globetrotting to get drunk, American taxpayers pay per planes.

Sure, but it’s also the name of probably the single most famous Daredevil story in the comics, and fans might be a little surprised to see it has almost nothing to do with that story.

Enjoying Daredevil: Born Again, but it’s a little weird that they’ve clearly chosen to very loosely adapt the Devil’s Reign story arc, but named it after Frank Miller’s Born Again, with which it has little in common beyond being a Kingpin story.

221. Chief Justice Roberts and the Clean Power Plan Remarkable reporting from the New York Times provides a peek behind the curtain of the February 2016 rulings that ushered in the modern emergency docket. And what it reveals is pretty discouraging.

"In the first major case in which the Court granted emergency relief as a means of shaping nationwide policy, it turns out that the justice who led the charge was the one who was doing quite a bit more than calling balls and strikes."

Me on Saturday's @nytimes.com scoop in today's "One First":

Lèse-majesté in Thailand - Wikipedia

Note that Thailand in particular has a draconian lèse-majesté law that makes it a criminal offense to insult the monarchy. In 2024 an activist got *50 years* for Facebook posts. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8...

About certain things. Though Socrates had his own problems with the local government, as you may recall.

Just to point out the obvious: This could genuinely be dangerous to many people. Not just the applicants, but their friends and families, who may have thought a private social account was a safe place to criticize their own government or talk about being gay, say.

This is part of a broader push the Trump admin began in term one (that Biden didn't roll back in any way). First each visa applicant had to disclose your social media handles. Now under Trump 2, the U.S. government demands that you make your social media accounts public so they can scan 'em.

I think even Trump, with his dodgy understanding of the basic structure of the government he runs, does not want Dem committee chairs with subpoena powers.

Power without accountability: The Palantir manifesto The problems with our tech philosopher kings

New, from me: Take the Palantir manifesto seriously, if not literally.
It reveals that our tech philosopher kings want public money, but without public accountability. This creates a dilemma for governments unaligned with its techno-fascist vision. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/palantir-w...

First, let's note that the Trump library saga combines the worse of his imperial presidency all in one: his use of lawsuits to extort private entities for tribute; his garishly awful decorative and architectural taste; and his Nero-scale megalomania.

newrepublic.com/article/2092...