A clip from The New York Times reads: "But only the entities that officially paid the tariffs are eligible to recover that money. That means that the fuller universe of people affected by Mr. Trump’s policies — including millions of Americans who paid higher prices for the products they bought — are not able to apply for direct relief. The extent to which consumers realize any gain hinges on whether businesses share the proceeds, something that few have publicly committed to do. Some have started to band together in class-action lawsuits in the hopes of receiving a payout."

The average American family paid $1,700 in tariffs last year, according to the bipartisan Congressional Joint Economic Committee. Few will ever see any of that money back. The refunds will go to companies, if doled out at all. What a joke.

The Strange Death of Orbánism Franz Pokorny

Hungarian taxpayers paid American “post-liberal” Rod Dreher $105,000 last year to produce propaganda for Orban’s regime. www.jaccusepaper.co.uk/p/the-strang...

Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want Did the tech industry get high on its own supply?

"The people who tell us that AI will dominate our future and take our jobs are the people who are hoping that will be true. They may be hoping this because it makes them feel important, or because they want to be billionaires, or because they simply do not understand other people."

Gonna spend the next two years spamming every elected Dem about the concept of "damnatio memoriae." Chisel his name off every inscription. Build over the various Trump Towers like they're Nero's Golden House. Remove him from physical memory, not to forget but as a sign of disrespect to the man.

This is exactly right. It’s not a dilemma though. It’s a line in the sand that will at once once collapse what remains of the rule of law and regulatory infrastructure designed to protect the public.

Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

The manifesto makes a straightforward case that government and Silicon Valley power must be fused in order to defend Western values - which are superior to others - with hard rather than soft power. For many, this sounds like techno-fascism.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/palantir-w...

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...

This piece begins with Amity Shlaes' most common and most deceitful trick -- citing the unemployment numbers in 1938, when the country fell into a recession because FDR had been persuaded to *ease off* the New Deal, as proof that the New Deal didn't work.

Pure hackery.

If your big win is WW2 and social security it means your wins are older than the vast majority of grandparents

Pennsylvania's motor-voter system effectively screens non-citizens from voter registration • Pennsylvania Capital-Star The audit also revealed problems with PennDOT’s data security protocols and recommended tighter internal controls.

Pennsylvania's auditor general, a Republican, audited 210,000+ new voter registrations under Gov. Shapiro's new motor voter system to see if noncitizens were registering to vote.

They found one. One.

And that was because a PennDOT staffer erred. It was fixed before the driver left the office.

Man what is wrong with these people?

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":

Bus typo: Help us score the gift of life, DONATE BLOOB

BLOOB FOR THE BLOOB GOD!

"An object that never tires can cover ground much slower than any athletic human can sprint, and significantly slower than the fastest humans can run a mile, so we let it keep going until its speed sounded impressive."

these are immensely self absorbed men who pine for nazi germany and apartheid south africa — stagnant, backwards regimes btw — because they imagine themselves the masters of the universe.

the tech fascists think they are so clever and smart but their entire worldview is just a bunch of stale apologetics for race hatred and fascism

this is just a warmed over david duke speech from 1990

i support whichever candidate will vow to eradicate palantir and its owners

i was just saying to a friend a few days ago that trump's public opinion collapse opens up the field of possibilities in ways that are truly unpredictable. it is one thing for a president to be this popular at the *end* of their turn, but not even two years in?

also this story is a reminder that scalia’s sudden death was really a significant political event

It’s inaccurate to say Mario is brave and Luigi is cowardly

Luigi is afraid of death, so he runs away from danger. Mario is afraid of living, so he runs towards death. Both brothers are cowards in their own way

thanks again joe manchin!

Orbán rode to power on resentment over the economic stagnation that developed under center-left governments. But he leaves office with Hungarians facing falling wages and higher inflation than similar countries are experiencing. Orbán’s sectarianism and intolerance have sparked neither a religious revival nor a fertility bump; Hungary’s population is shrinking and has become more irreligious, even as Orbán has demonized LGBTQ people, “Muslim invaders,” and Jews. Orbánism, in short, did not make Hungarians more rich, Christian, or free—unless you happened to be one of Orbán’s buddies, in which case you may have gotten rich. As most Hungarians felt their economic circumstances worsen, Orbán provided them with relatively powerless targets to hate.

Orban made grand appeals to “Christianity” and “Western Civilization,” but his “illiberal democracy” was just a scam, a way to make him and his buddies rich while subjecting Hungarians to stagnation and robbing them of their freedom. Sound familiar? (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

yeah it is critical that dems win the senate

A tweet from Representative Thomas Massie that reads: I just viewed 2 Top Secret FISA docs. 1) FISA Court opinion that raises serious concerns about FBI implementation of FISA 702. 2) letter by Senator Wyden describing a secret government interpretation of FISA law. The Constitution requires I vote No on FISA 702 reauthorization.

I sent a classified letter to House and Senate colleagues about a secret interpretation of surveillance law that every American should be concerned about.

Representative Massie is right. The Constitution requires EVERY member to vote against a clean reauthorization.

Labor Dept. Investigates Texts Among Secretary’s Family and Staff

“Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s husband exchanged text messages with young female staff members, as did her father.”

Come on, now.

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/u...

i wonder what kind of creature it is

The apartment he points to is owned by Ken Griffin, formerly the richest person in IL. He decamped for FL after successfully spending millions of dollars to defeat a referendum instituting a progressive state income tax.

Hegseth Borrows Violent Prayer from ‘Pulp Fiction’ to Bless Iran War at April Pentagon Worship Service For the second month in a row, Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself “secretary of war,” read a violent prayer — that echoes a scene in the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction — during a worship ser...

what’s funny about this is that tarantino wrote this “ezekiel 25:17“ for the film. it isn‘t actually in the bible. publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/hegseth-bo...

*gives a Molotov cocktail to an arsonist*

I feel like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing