Sam Halpert

X post of a video in which reza pahlavi says he has accepted the role of Iran’s transitional leader.

I have accepted the role as the United States’ transitional leader.

For a long time, and until not so long ago, Congress understood that they had the same duty to meaningfully consider the voices of constituents that they imposed on federal agencies when they wrote the APA.

We can't work on restoring that kind of govt unless we remember this idea ourselves.

Your original claim was, "Voting is quite literally the only time your voice is heard and counted and actionable."

This is simply not true. For example, ppl just delayed Trump's new "ballroom" by flooding a govt agency with comments--comments they are req'd by law to read. bsky.app/profile/ones...

I'm not trying to pick an argument. I'm just observing that focusing solely on voting accepts a frame that's been wrongfully imposed upon us. IMO it's important to understand that we are owed a greater voice in govt. If we don't move in awareness of that, we expect too little of our representatives.

When I say sporadically, I mean that a person’s ability to weigh in is limited to the moment they cast that ballot. They can’t be heard on a day that isn’t Election Day

I didn’t mean to suggest that you were saying people should only vote once, or occasionally. I mean that voting itself is limiting

I’m not trying to condescend. When I say a single ballot, I mean that every issue a person could conceivably weigh in about at a given level of government is condensed into a single choice (representation by person A, B, or C).

U.S. Likely Hit Girls’ School Attached to Iranian Military Compound Military investigation hasn’t definitively concluded that American forces caused what appears to be deadliest strike of war

These children are dead because the U.S. president launched an illegal war on a whim.

www.wsj.com/world/middle...

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Reducing our participation in government to petty electoralism—a right for *only* eligible voters (not all constituents or even all citizens) to weigh in on government with a single ballot sporadically—is a historic crime. Absorb that injustice and act to change it. bsky.app/profile/samh...

It’s impt to realize that while OP may be describing the system as it currently exists, the system they describe is a violation of our rights.

You have a *right* to be heard by your government, to “petition for redress of grievances.” It’s in the 1st Amendment. Congress honored it for over 100 yrs.

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Abolitionists also pulled off a massive social shift while holding almost no levers of power

Of course Platner knew what his Nazi symbol was. It changed his life. His tattoos were reviewed when he asked to return active duty; a trained officer looked for violations. The sleeve tattoos were OK. The Totenkopf was not. Platner chose to keep it. Somewhere in DoD, it’s all written down. 5/

Highlights in **’s 17 See **Mark Curriden, State Court Chiefs Flex New Muscle, Nat'l L.J., Oct. 17, 1994, at A1 (describing condemnation of Reno Rule by state chief judges).** 18 See In re Doe, 801 F. Supp. 478, 487 (D.N.M. 1992) (refusing to exempt federal prosecutors from state ethical rules in part because of danger that Department's position could also apply to all other federal agencies with investigative authority. For an example of an agency claiming authority to regulate the ethical conduct of attorneys appearing before it, see In re Carter, Exchange Act Release No. 597, Admin. Proc. File No. 3-5464 [1981 Transfer Binder] Fed. Sec. L. Rep. (CCH) I 82,847, at 84,146-47 (Feb. 28, 1981) (asserting that SEC can regulate securities lawyers). 19 One enraged commentator exclaimed that Department attorneys should start selling used cars since they would find the ethical standards of that profession more to their liking. See Letter from David L. Novell, Attorney, Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Mark Terison, Esq., Senior Attorney, Legal Counsel 1 (Aug. 2, 1993) (on file with the New York University Law Review). 20 See **Rubin, supra note 15, at 4 (outlining protests following promulgation of Reno Rule, including new threats of "increased enforcement by state courts against federal prosecutors in their states of admission as a reaction to this rule");** see also Curriden, supra note 17, at A1, A26 (describing reaction of Conference of State Chief Justices to Reno Rule as ""mad as hell and just not going to take it anymore" (quoting Supreme Court of Minnesota Chief Justice A.M. Keith)). **Ohio Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer explained that state judges have "*drawn [their first] line in the sand' and threaten to discipline federal prosecutors who breach these rules.** LId.

15 See, e.g., Jeffrey Kanige, Ex Parte Interviews: Bright Lines, Big Debate, NJ. L.J., June 13, 1994, at 5, 5 (presenting contention of defense attorneys that "unfettered ability of prosecutors" to contact their clients and extract potentially incriminating statements is "blatant violation" of client's right to counsel); see also **Maria B. Rubin, The Thornburgh Memo, Now the Reno Rule: A Case of Ethics, N.Y. L.J., Sept. 23, 1994, at 1, 4.** Rubin, chairman of the New York State Bar Association's Committee on Professional Ethics, ex-

Great q. I don’t have access to the resources I’d need to really dig in, but it seems like the last time this issue came up (in the dispute that ultimately led Congress to amend 28 USC s530B), state judiciaries flexed their power outside the frame of a lawsuit. www.nyulawreview.org/wp-content/u...

NEW: Federal judges have spent months ordering ICE to give detainees a chance for release in bond hearings.

Now, they're worried that the bond hearings themselves — conducted by Executive Branch immigration judges — are a farce.

www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

Demand hearings on this strike. Withhold funding. Whatever you believe you're doing by continuing to fund the military under these circumstances, you're doing the opposite. We can only keep ourselves safe if we establish that attacks like this are categorically unacceptable. bsky.app/profile/samh...

Trump Says 'I Guess' Americans Should Worry About Iran Retaliating on U.S. Soil: 'Like I Said, Some People Will Die' In an interview with 'Time,' President Donald Trump acknowledged the possibility that Iran retaliates with attacks on U.S. soil, saying, 'We think about it all the time. We plan for it'

@slotkin.senate.gov , @kaine.senate.gov , @peters.senate.gov , @reed.senate.gov if you provide the Pentagon w/funding while it's led by a man who targets the *children* of our adversaries & shrugs when asked if they might retaliate in kind, you make Americans *less* safe. people.com/trump-says-i...

@slotkin.senate.gov, @kaine.senate.gov, @peters.senate.gov, @reed.senate.gov: If you provide the Pentagon with additional funding for the war, you will be making Americans *less* safe. Insist on hearings wrt whether POTUS targeted *children* in a first strike attack in his illegal war of choice.

“Iran rejected the ceasefire” yeah I fucking bet they did- why would they ever negotiate with the US again??

There has to be a reckoning for this, or we are lost.

He *did* recognize it as a Nazi tattoo; though. bsky.app/profile/samh...

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It is not clear whether the administration's internal legal analysis relies on any claim that Iran posed an imminent threat. Neither the White House statement nor a letter Mr. Trump sent to Congress said it did. But in public statements, Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as the national security adviser, have invoked that phrase. Mr. Trump went on to say it would be intolerable to allow Iran time to develop a nuclear weapon and long-range missiles — apparently relying on a very elongated view of what counts as imminent.

If the doctrine that Presidents have inherent power to respond to imminent threats leads to a headline in the paper of record reading, “How the Decision to Start a War Became the President’s,” the doctrine is manifestly wrong.

We need a new approach to war powers.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/u...

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To be clear… the USPS is not short on cash.

The USPS actually has tons of cash.

A Republican Congress in their efforts to sabotage the USPS has forced them to fund their pension fund for 30 years at a time.

Something no corporation has had to do.

This could be fixed with a vote.

I keep thinking we’ve hit the bottom but nope it’s just an abyss with no end

you can impeach people after they've been removed from office for the crimes they did while in office and the failure to do so to george w. bush is one of the reasons we wound up here

It implies that we are visitors in someone else’s country.