Alan Howard
alan-howard.bsky.social
Alan Howard
@alan-howard.bsky.social
Bibliophile and traveler
Reposted by Alan Howard
NYT: Trump's appointees to the court of appeals vote for the Trump admin 92% of the time (113 for 12 against)-a much more lopsided split than judges appointed by other Republican Presidents (68% for 32% against) or Democratic Presidents (27% for 73% against).

(& he's doing wildly illegal things)
January 11, 2026 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
Wut?
Chris Wright: "President Trump is no helper to the oil and gas industry, and certainly there is no corruption, preferential placement of people. There's not of that. I can assure you of that."
January 11, 2026 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
State capitalism amirite?
BRENNAN: Do you want to own portions of oil companies?

CHRIS WRIGHT: That's certainly a very real possibility
January 11, 2026 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
ICE has become the Gestapo. The United States should not have such an entity. It's antithetical to the Constitution. Defund ICE. My tax dollars should not be spying on - and murdering - my neighbors and possibly me.
Social media monitoring systems, cellphone location tracking, facial recognition, remote hacking tools — now being turned on Americans by ICE to target protesters. bit.ly/3Kq348R
ICE Wants to Go After Dissenters as well as Immigrants
The Trump administration is being open about its plans to violate Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment rights.
www.brennancenter.org
January 11, 2026 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
I can still recall all the tut-tutting from the media when Harris made this argument.
Kamala Harris at her closing campaign rally:

"Donald Trump intends to use the United States Military against American citizens who simply disagree with him."
January 10, 2026 at 9:17 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
Trump is doing to politics what biz schools taught future CEOs to do: break the social contract (e.g., the one btw mgmt & labor that once ensured steady jobs) & extract all the value stored inside.

This will have the same effect on politics as it did on the labor mkt: instability & immiseration.
If I was the commander in chief of the Imperial hegemon I would simply not dismantle the network of military and diplomatic alliances, favourable trade deals, and broad cultural paramountcy that had made my nation the most wealthy and powerful the world has ever seen.
January 11, 2026 at 11:28 AM
Reposted by Alan Howard
I mean, that’s a pretty good line
Frey on Noem: "That was some wild and crazy stuff. It sounds like she doesn't believe a single word she's saying right now. And I don't know if Donald Trump was drinking a glass of water if she'd actually be able to speak."
January 11, 2026 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
A lawsuit filed by a group of New York City employees against their health insurer cites ProPublica's reporting on ghost networks, where health plans list providers who supposedly accept that insurance but who are not actually available to patients.

By @maxblau.bsky.social
They Couldn’t Access Mental Health Care When They Needed It. Now They’re Suing Their Insurer.
A new lawsuit alleges that an insurer’s ghost network hindered New York City employees from accessing the mental health care they sought — and harmed the reputation of psychiatrists wrongly listed as ...
www.propublica.org
January 11, 2026 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
Kristi Noem, while governor of South Dakota, supplemented her roughly $130,000 salary by secretly accepting $80,000 donated to a political nonprofit she was affiliated with, records show.

She never disclosed this income on federal ethics forms.

(Published June 2025)
Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations
A dark money group paid $80,000 to Noem’s personal company when she was governor of South Dakota. She did not include this income on her federal disclosure forms, a likely violation of ethics requirem...
www.propublica.org
January 11, 2026 at 4:00 AM
He will be missed.
npr.org NPR @npr.org · 12h
For three decades with the Grateful Dead and three more after the group ended following the 1995 death of his bandmate Jerry Garcia, Weir helped build and sustain the band's legacy across generations. n.pr/4sB2wy2
Bob Weir, guitarist and founding member of the Grateful Dead, has died at 78
For three decades with the Grateful Dead and three more after the group ended following the 1995 death of his bandmate Jerry Garcia, Weir helped build and sustain the band's legacy across generations.
n.pr
January 11, 2026 at 5:56 AM
Reposted by Alan Howard
Defence minister says Somalia has ‘confirmed information’ that Israel plans to forcibly move Palestinians to Somaliland.
Somalia ‘has confirmed information' of Israel's Palestine-Somaliland plan
Somalia's defence minister says Israel plans to forcibly move Palestinians to Somaliland, citing confirmed intelligence.
www.aljazeera.com
January 11, 2026 at 5:30 AM
Machado is desperate to get close to Trump and lead Venezuela.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/w...
Machado Offered Trump Her Nobel, but Prize Institute Says It’s Not Allowed
www.nytimes.com
January 10, 2026 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
Because of course not. I mean, c’mon
“.. After Mr. Trump promised the $100 billion in investments by Big Oil, two people close to the companies attending Friday’s meeting cautioned that they were not aware of any such commitment by the businesses.” 🤡

@nytimes.com #OOTT
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/b...
January 10, 2026 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
I wasn't aware of this shooting. It's well reported in the local news but I hadn't seen it in East Coast reporting.
A Black man was killed by ICE (off duty) in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. And like Renée Good, he was an American citizen. But most people have not heard about Keith Porter.

I need y’all to realize this. Black people experience this lack of visibility all the time when it comes to being victims.
January 10, 2026 at 4:08 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
Some 600 immigrant kids were sent to federal custody by ICE in 2025.

A 17-year-old was detained at a traffic stop because officers couldn’t make contact with his dad, who is deaf.

Another kid ended up in a shelter after making a wrong turn.

(Published Nov. 2025)
ICE Sent 600 Immigrant Kids to Detention in Federal Shelters This Year. It’s a New Record.
Under a zero tolerance policy, the first Trump administration separated immigrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. New data suggests separations are happening all over the count...
www.propublica.org
January 10, 2026 at 4:00 AM
Reposted by Alan Howard
All the lies they're telling about Renee Good are in service of an even bigger lie: that individual human lives have no intrinsic worth and are therefore theirs to dispose of. publiccomment.blog/p/the-poison...
The Poison Always Drips Through
On Renee Good and George Floyd
publiccomment.blog
January 9, 2026 at 9:34 PM
Complete rubbish. The man doesn’t understand anything.
⚡️Russia will take over Greenland if US doesn't get there first, Trump claims.

"We are going to do something with Greenland, whether they like it or not. Because if we don't do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we're not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor."
Russia will take over Greenland if US doesn't get there first, Trump claims
"We are going to do something with Greenland, whether they like it or not," Trump told reporters. "Because if we don't do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we're not going to have Russ...
kyivindependent.com
January 10, 2026 at 12:25 AM
Reposted by Alan Howard
Is It Good Politics to Defend a Harmless Woman Getting Shot in the Face? talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/is-it...
Is It Good Politics to Defend a Harmless Woman Getting Shot in the Face?
I’ve seen some comments that whatever the hideousness of it President Trump’s...
talkingpointsmemo.com
January 9, 2026 at 11:55 PM
He’s going to steal Venezuela’s oil and minerals. And he is starting by stealing Machado’s Nobel Prize.
sometimes things are simply so stupid that i can't get my head around the idea that they are happening.
This is sad on so many levels — about something that was intended to celebrate the best in people.

@nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/w...
January 10, 2026 at 12:23 AM
Reposted by Alan Howard
This is so profoundly horrifying on so many levels. I don't even know what to think or to say about the agent not even devoting his full attention or both hands to threatening to shoot and then actually shooting this woman in the face.
We've analysed this video of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good yesterday in Minneapolis frame-by-frame to highlight the positioning of the gun and phone in the ICE agent's hands.
Video: @minnesotareformer.com with annotations by Bellingcat
January 10, 2026 at 12:14 AM
VP Vance says this video proves the ICE agent was in danger. My question is, what planet do you live on? This proves nothing….
New video has emerged of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The video shows Good speaking in the seconds before the shooting.
January 9, 2026 at 9:13 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
Rep. @AOC: I understand that Vance believes shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not. That is a fundamental difference between Vance and I. I do not believe that the American people should be assassinated in the street.
January 9, 2026 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Alan Howard
None of ‘em
Trump keeps talking about Venezuela agreeing to do tons of stuff for the US oil companies. I've seen zero acknowledgment of any of this from Venezuela officials. Which oil company is gonna trust Trump on this?
January 9, 2026 at 8:39 PM