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thomasgrose.bsky.social
@thomasgrose.bsky.social
59 followers 18 following 290 posts
Semiretired American freelance journalist living in the UK. Was a regular contributor to Time (mainly European edition), U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, Newsweek and several other publications.
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Jonathan Bernstein makes a similar point: messaging, strategy, etc. rarely matter much. If conditions in upcoming election years favor the out-of-power party, Dems will likely do very well. goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/a-mantra-f...
A Mantra for the Democrats
And stop pretending that party platforms are just messaging.
goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com
Totally agree, which is why I think that if Trump kicks the bucket, MAGA splinters into at least 3 different warring factions, none of which will have anything like the power Trump's MAGA wields nor a charismatic front man who commands universal adoration among the faithful.
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🚨BREAKING: The Department of Justice (DOJ) this week placed two federal prosecutors on leave after they wrote in a court filing that on Jan. 6, 2021, “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol,” a source familiar with the personnel moves told Democracy Docket.
DOJ Puts Prosecutors On Leave For Accurately Describing Jan. 6 Attack
Read more here.
www.democracydocket.com
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Trump illegally tore down the East Wing of the White House and we are no longer talking about it.
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oh just straight up gutter racism!
So here's Andrew Cuomo reacting to Maria Bartiromo wondering if Mamdani will "change the look of New York" and have Muslim women "completely covered up," telling her that Mamdani "doesn't understand New York culture" because he has "dual citizenship" and "he's a citizen of Uganda."
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what Democrats need to understand is that these are not judicial confirmations in the traditional sense—the only people Trump is sending to the bench are people who will further his corruption and backstop his anticonstitutionalism; voting to advance any Trump appointee is fucking madness
and yet still, TODAY, Democrats in the Senate are voting in favor of Trump's judicial nominees
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This is a short-sighted and stupid position by the American Federation of Government Employees. Trump is trying to destroy public workers' unions. Why side with him to gain very temporary relief?
Top Federal Workers’ Union Breaks With Democrats on Shutdown
www.nytimes.com
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Standing there insisting this is all somehow Democrats' fault because they won't support *your* budget -- a budget that explicitly wages war on Democratic constituencies and Democratic programs -- when you refuse to negotiate or compromise at all is just ludicrously laughably stupid.
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A core feature of our unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis is that the Speaker of the House is permitted to performatively lie in public with impunity from the podium every day & the assembled media in front of him offer approximately no pushback at all on the lies.
Mike Johnson: "Democrats are required to open the government. They keep saying, 'Republicans are in charge of government.' We aren't!"
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Back in 2017, I joined 15 colleagues in resigning from the President’s Committee on the Arts & Humanities. We warned that attacks on culture would escalate. Today, those warnings are reality: museums closed, history rewritten.
Trump’s Campaign to Defund the Arts—and Rewrite History
"The campaign to defund the arts, capture our museums, and rewrite our history is a prelude to silencing dissent."
time.com
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Ominous - threats of retaliation deterring challenges against the government is a key mechanism of democratic downfall
We have reached the point where the *American Bar Association* cannot find attorneys willing to represent them in litigation against the Trump administration.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
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We are in the middle of a prolonged constitutional meltdown, where the president is seizing vast powers he should not have, eviscerating the existing constitutional system that has kept America stable and prosperous for most of 250 years.

And our leading political outlets are doing… this
The Washington Post opinion section is a thing to behold today. (Don't worry, I canceled my subscription, but old habits die hard, and I tend to still navigate to their front page during my news reading in the morning.)
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The "theory" is "I've got big guns and the Supreme Court said I'm immune from any criminal prosecution, and Congress lets me get away with everything, so I'm gonna murder brown people with big explosions and tell the public I'm saving them from drugs."

Saved you a click.
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When Massachusetts passed a "millionaires tax" in 2023, conservatives claimed the rich would flee.

But two years later, they haven't — and MA has collected $5.7B for infrastructure and public education.

A reminder that positive change can still happen at the state level.
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Just curious, how many units of housing are going to be in this ballroom?
I can’t believe there are not one but two articles, in major papers, with this dumb framing. It is not NIMBY to express dismay when a big part of the White House is suddenly rubbled
So it takes 21 grafs before this analysis mentions the Epstein files, which is the main reason this shithead is keeping the House on permanent vacation.

Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/u...
Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself
www.nytimes.com
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every passing day, rightwingers are inventing new and unexpected ways to signal to the world they may be the dumbest iteration of humans so far
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With FBI, DEA, US Marshals, other federal agencies, state police, county police, and local police, most Americans who wanted to work in law enforcement and could pass basic qualifications could get a job.

ICE’s recruiting pool is primarily people who couldn’t.
NBC News finds that:
-- ICE has shortened its training from 13 weeks to six.
-- Nearly half of recruits couldn’t pass an open-book written exam.
-- Recruits "are supposed to attest" they can pass the physical-fitness test, which requires them to run ... 6 mph.

www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...
Some new ICE recruits have shown up to training without full vetting
The recruits have had criminal backgrounds or failed drug tests or were unable to meet physical or academic standards, raising concerns about the agency’s rush to hire immigration officers, sources to...
www.nbcnews.com
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I hope the construction company and everyone who so much as picked up a sledgehammer is sued into oblivion.
Construction workers involved in the demolition of the East Wing of the White House have signed non-disclosure agreements and are not permitted to speak to the press.
Trump Gags White House Wrecking Crews as Backlash Mounts
Construction workers at the White House have said they aren’t allowed to speak to press.
trib.al
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By the way, if you think I’m overstating things, the U.S. once had to tear down the entire embassy chancery in Moscow, and rebuild it (for a cool quarter-billion or so) because the place was bugged to hell.
Listen: covert supply chain intervention concerns regarding implantation of listening devices in, say, new buildings in US military bases in Guam are considered really serious. And this is the WHITE HOUSE. Has there been vetting of vendors? Contractors and subcontractors? All labor? We don’t know!
Isn’t the presidential bunker on that side? Because I can’t even imagine the potential CI issues
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This headline should say that Zhao got a Trump pardon after supporting the Trump family’s crypto businesses.
This is obvious corruption by the convicted felon in the White House.
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The optics of Trump building a ballroom that 99.9% of Americans will never set foot in while millions line up for food banks are worth more than any policy paper or economic proposal. This image is a visceral punch in the mouth that needs no words. It should haunt the GOP for a generation.
a live look at the demolition of the White House's East Wing for Trump's ballroom
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Not the WSJ having the only even moderately acceptable push alert here.

NYT and NBC with basic journalism fails here.