took a few days off for my brain and one pretty alarming observation i have is just how easy it is to not hear about the bad stuff that is happening if you don't explicitly dip into specific information streams (not a new problem but feels orders of magnitude more siloed than even 2-3 years ago)
They’re going to keep pushing until something stops them.
Howard is the obtuse simpleton that Wall Street folks told me he was
(tracy chapman voice) clowns got a fast car
Yep, definitely that and not a screw up by incompetent people who are out of their depth.
I think the Atlantic piece is probably the scoopiest scoop of the last few decades. And it has clarified one thing - other than the total idiocy of sending opsec over group chats - Hegseth and Vance have a genuine animosity towards Europe. Something for us all to ponder.
It did get a bit daft in the UK at one point, but it would be blissful right now in the US
Also also also appeasing Trump never ever works
World’s worst parent and it’s a high bar.
Trump's moves, which started on day one with his pardoning of roughly 1,500 people jailed for storming Capitol Hill four years ago, and commuting the terms of the hardest core offenders, have ticked nearly every box on the scholarly checklist of democratic backsliding. But his alacrity has also cast the system's defenders into disarray. "This is moving a lot faster than any of us anticipated," says Steven Levitsky, a Harvard scholar and co-author with Daniel Ziblatt of How Democracies Die. The capture of state institutions that took strongmen like Viktor Orbán or Recep Tayyip Erdogan many years to accomplish, "Trump is trying to pull off in months". Moreover, a hostile seizure of the key government organs has never been tried in a wealthy and established democracy like America, he says. "Trump's speed and intent is remarkable. Even when they happen slowly, such all-out assaults are hard to stop."
The Republican-controlled Senate dutifully confirmed every Trump nominee, including several whose conduct and record would have caused their rapid ejection in any other era. The US now has, among others, a health secretary who doubts the efficacy of vaccines, an FBI director who has vowed lawfare on Trump's enemies and a director of national intelligence accused of parroting Kremlin propaganda. Almost no Republicans objected when Trump stripped security protections from erstwhile officials, including Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, John Bolton, a former national security adviser, and Brian Hook, his ex-Iran envoy. The FBI says each are on an Iranian hit list. "It's pure fear and cowardice," says Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican Congressman who served on the committee that investigated the January 6 assault and who Trump has threatened with arrest. "I've lost
if you read one FT article this weekend make it this blistering piece by @edwardluce.bsky.social on Trump’s assault on democratic norms in America
www.ft.com/content/3741...
