Jake Waage
jakobist.bsky.social
Jake Waage
@jakobist.bsky.social
Reposted by Jake Waage
Now seems like a swell time to point out that Frontline just released this excellent 11-minute mini-documentary about what happened inside CECOT.
Surviving CECOT (full documentary) | Deported to a Maximum-Security Prison | FRONTLINE + ProPublica
YouTube video by FRONTLINE PBS | Official
m.youtube.com
December 21, 2025 at 10:26 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
Rick Steves is an American treasure. Just all-around, one of the absolute best of us.
It’s the “season of love and giving”…but this year, doesn’t it seem more like a “season of fear and taking”? Like many of you, I’ve been saddened by the human impact of draconian government budget cuts and how angry many housed Americans are at unhoused Americans.

🧵 1 of 9
December 21, 2025 at 3:28 AM
Reposted by Jake Waage
In terms of US politics, Bush v. Gore is the defining event of the century. It set the template: a ruthless right that instinctively seeks power & doesn't give a shit about rule of law...and a bunch of hapless, feckless octogenarian Dems worried about the good opinion of centrist opinion columnists.
The 25th anniversary of Bush v Gore is today. The conspiracy mongering & corruption of the GOP has been brewing for a long time.

Roberts, Barrett and Kavanaugh were all on Bush's legal team, where they pushed unfounded legal theories. SC justices were already enmeshed in voter fraud myths.
Here's Sandra Day O'Connor endorsing News Max levels of voter fraud conspiracies in the 2000 election.
December 12, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
Forty years ago, 90% of media outlets were spread across 50 companies.

Now, just 5 companies control 90% of the media market.

This consolidation hurts consumers and helps oligarchs. 🧵
December 5, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
What's changed is that the Court has become more transparent in its corruption. There's not even an argument here beyond the implicit one which is: how do you expect us to hold the House without those seats?
#BREAKING: Over dissents from the three democratic appointees, #SCOTUS puts Texas's new House maps back into effect for (and, presumably, through) the 2026 midterms.

The three Democratic appointees, in an opinion by Justice Kagan, dissent.

I'll post the ruling shortly.
December 4, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
rfk jr wants to kill your kids, it’s really that simple.
Kennedy’s Methodical 2-Decade Quest to Dismantle Vaccine Policy
www.nytimes.com
December 4, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
i made a video about the president's gutter racism against somali-americans and how a scandal became a smear became a call for de facto ethnic cleansing
Donald Trump’s racist attack on Somali Americans
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
www.youtube.com
December 4, 2025 at 9:59 AM
Reposted by Jake Waage
When it comes to money-losing tech revolutionaries, OpenAI is in a class by itself.

(via Deutsche)
@weisenthal.bsky.social
December 4, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
this is stalin shit
Sen. Roger Marshall on Trump's health: "I'll work 110 hours a week. He outworks me. He's the first person I've ever known that works harder than I do. He runs around that golf course. He's in incredible shape right now. And you talk about sharp! He's playing 4 dimensional chess"
December 4, 2025 at 5:44 AM
Reposted by Jake Waage
“When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47% drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, & critical reasoning.

Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage.”🧪
December 4, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
Statehood for D.C. is an ethical obligation at this point, required to protect the rights of our residents to govern ourselves against such out-of-state troops being sent to patrol our city.
NEW: Republican-led states, in a new filing at the D.C. Circuit, say D.C. residents are irrelevant, D.C. belongs to everyone else. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The filing is led by the South Carolina and West Virginia attorneys general. Both states sent troops to DC.
December 2, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
Dude's falling asleep while his ministers lavish him with praise for his energy and work ethic. "Surreal" doesn't even begin to describe it.
Dozy Don
December 2, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
This exposé is breathtaking. Witkoff and Kushner do not just have conflicts of interest - thy are deeply woven into a web of Russian influence peddling by "investments". Money, personal ties and geopolitics have become indistinguishable.
bylinetimes.com/2025/12/01/t...
December 2, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
Trumpism and Trumpists are incompatible with American culture and traditions and should be purged.
November 28, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
The Beeb has been a bedrock of free speech since WW2. This is appalling.
Note that the BBC openly admits in an email to me that the removal of this claim about Trump's world-historical corruption was done "on legal advice."

Translation: Trump's threat of a lawsuit, no matter how bogus, has now been rewarded.

newrepublic.com/article/2036...
November 26, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
Some may take comfort in Trump not being able (yet) to jail his enemies, but these attacks are costly and deter people from opposing him. In that way, they tilt the playing field even when the efforts at retribution are not fully successful. Precisely what competitive authoritarian regimes look like
NYT: “.. Trump is facing obstacles as he tries to use the Justice Department to investigate, prosecute and jail those he targets.”

But his appointees “are harnessing a range of departments .. and rarely used powers outside the Justice Department to inflict pain.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u...
November 26, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
Steve whitkoff is an actual traitor
November 26, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
This is exactly what you do
With presidents who coup
cnn.com CNN @cnn.com · 28d
Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro must begin serving his 27-year prison sentence for plotting an attempted coup, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ruled. https://cnn.it/4p1dgDV
November 25, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
This should be a major scandal. The Blaze falsely reported that a former U.S. Capitol Police officer was the Jan. 6th pipe bomber. But it wasn’t just another miss by conservative media promoting conspiracies.

Someone in US intel - at ODNI - was promoting it:

www.cbsnews.com/news/jan-6-p...
November 25, 2025 at 10:25 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.
November 25, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
BREAKING: This is huge news, the EU's equivalent of the 🇺🇸Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.

🇪🇺Court of Justice just ruled all 🇪🇺countries must recognise same-sex marriages granted in other member states.

This effectively legalises gay marriage across 🇪🇺
www.reuters.com
November 25, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by Jake Waage
November 25, 2025 at 12:20 AM
Reposted by Jake Waage
this dumb shit is what i mean when i say this is a purely aesthetic “politics.” yeah man, why can’t we have a fusion of cosmopolitan social democracy and revanchist hierarchies of wealth and privilege? tough question.
Matt Stoller: “..Trump & Mamdani defeated establishment in their own way, representing hunger of voters on the right & left who want something different. If those sides cd come together.. that would be a sea change in how we organize our political economy”.

www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-r...
Monopoly Round-Up: Why the Establishment Freaked Out Over a Mamdani-Trump Press Conference
Meta wins its antitrust case, there are now two fire truck antitrust claims, the stock market got wobbly, and Larry Summers was exiled from the establishment, at least for now.
www.thebignewsletter.com
November 24, 2025 at 7:04 PM
Reposted by Jake Waage
I just feel we need to keep saying, over and over, that the problem with DOGE was not its failure to cut spending. the problem with DOGE is that it CUT GLOBAL AID LEADING TO THE DEATHS OF 600K PEOPLE AND COUNTING. 1
DOGE is one of the greatest failures of the Trump administration. The next Democratic administration should pick up that issue and actually work to cut government waste, fraud, and abuse. I’d suggest starting by taking a look at Elon Musk’s government contracts.
November 24, 2025 at 5:17 PM