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Reposted by Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas

T. Greg "Antifa General Counsel" Doucette @gregdoucette.bsky.social · 46m

This is the part that kills me. Rs literally did this *mere weeks ago* and it was barely a one-day story, already forgotten to the mists of time

Alan Mygatt-Tauber @amtappeals.bsky.social · 59m

Every time a GOP Senator blames the shutdown on Democrats, a reporter should ask why they don’t just eliminate the filibuster for budget bills, like they just did for block confirmations.

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Joe Sudbay @joesudbay.bsky.social · 12m

of course, Adelita Grijalva should be sworn in ASAP so she can be 218 on discharge petition

let's not overlook that only 4 of 219 House Republicans have signed it. Other 215 Rs are protecting Trump from Epstein files

Includes Lawler, Van Orden, Evans, Ciscomani, Kim, Valadao, Kean, Miller-Meeks

Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 3h

so theres a possibility the attorney general has seen evidence the president raped children and now the entire republican party is helping to cover it up?

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Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 16m

“Israeli and foreign sources are telling me in the last hour: "Optimistic about the chances of reaching a deal, entering the critical hours"” - Diplomatic Correspondent Amichai Stein is, now, reporting

Avishay BSG (Ben-Sasson-Gordis) @avishaybsg.bsky.social · 32m

Media sources (and people I’m talking to) are optimistic that agreement on first stage of Gaza deal (centered on hostage release) may be imminent. By the end of the week if not tonight. It can still collapse but the tone is the most positive I’ve heard in a long time. Possibly at all.

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Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 54m

yup.

Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 1h

One way to force media to pay attention:

Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 1d

It's really time for some Dem-aligned organization to run polling asking about Trump's mental health (i.e., is he suffering from dementia, is he able to run the country). I think that's the only way mainstream news orgs will cover his obvious decline.

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GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 10h

lmao, kristi noem wanted a black bloc fight and got an inflatable rave instead. fuck you DHS, rip city forever.

Courtney Vaughn @courtneyvaughn.bsky.social · 12h

Streets are still closed off in front of the Portland ICE facility at 8:30pm. Protesters have gathered on a side street. Dance party in progress.

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 1h

in retrospect it was just great how milquetoast centrists decided the best way to react to the AWESOME police corruption and brutality exposed by the George Floyd protests was to go "actually, defund the police is a bad slogan, the Unserious Left needs to shut up" bsky.app/profile/mcle...

Morgan Clendaniel @mclendaniel.bsky.social · 1h

They've known they have little to no control over these forces since 2020 and all chose to ignore it during the Democratic administration that might have given them some cover to do something about it!

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 1h

hell Pritzker could fund this on his own, he's rich enough. the Great Khan ought to have a Praetorian Guard, it stands to reason

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Godspeed You! Bluesky Emperor @andrewpaul.bsky.social · 1h

they should also start boning up on which of their local cops are big Odin fans...

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 1h

if blue state governors and mayors aren't already thinking about the reliability of various police forces nominally under their control, they should start immediately

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 2h

The situation in America is not great. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

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Travis Mason-Bushman @snarkranger.bsky.social · 1h

Mike Johnson furiously backpedaling on the back pay thing is a pretty good indication that nobody in the GOP has the slightest clue how to deal with the shutdown.

Jennifer Shutt @jennifershutt.bsky.social · 1h

Speaker Johnson appears to say furloughed federal workers should get back pay under 2019 law

"It has always been the case. It is tradition and I think it is statutory law that federal employees be paid. And that’s my position."

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Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 1h

The inability of Democratic politicians at every level to maintain control over the internal security apparatus might get a bunch of people dead.

Jessica Pishko @jesspish.bsky.social · 1h

In a fight between Pritzker and and police, who is going to win? This is what happens when both parties allowed law enforcement to become one of the most powerful political actors in the country -- a taxpayer-funded political movement that wants to kill people.

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Jessica Pishko @jesspish.bsky.social · 1h

The Fraternal Order of Police is on the side of MAGA and against the people they are supposed to be "policing." I think this says a lot to the people who insist local police are going to be "resistance."
www.foxnews.com/us/national-...

National police union calls Chicago's refusal to help ICE agents 'shocking' violation of duty

Police union leaders called Chicago's alleged directive to not assist ICE agents surrounded by protesters a violation of law enforcement's duty to protect fellow officers.

www.foxnews.com

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Dylan Williams @dylanwilliams.bsky.social · 2h

Senators will vote today on whether to block Trump’s use of US Armed Forces to attack vessels in the Caribbean.

Trump may soon expand these illegal attacks into a full-on war with Venezuela.

Call your Senators and ask them to vote for the Schiff-Kaine resolution.

Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121

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Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · 2h

Weird. It’s almost like making accusations generates friction which generates news which rallies your supporters.

2 Key Democrats Come Out And Say It: Trump Has 'Some Kind Of Dementia'

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Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 2h

We hAvE A MaScUlInItY CrIsIs: The Manfluencer Edition

Consider this another installment in the ongoing Wimpification of the Conservative Male. Time was, part of being a man* was admitting when you had done something wrong and actively taking steps to remedy it**. You needed to take your lumps and…

We hAvE A MaScUlInItY CrIsIs: The Manfluencer Edition

Consider this another installment in the ongoing Wimpification of the Conservative Male. Time was, part of being a man* was admitting when you had done something wrong and actively taking steps to remedy it**. You needed to take your lumps and then fix the problem. But not our manfluencers (boldface mine): Manosphere podcasters didn’t win Donald Trump the presidency in the 2024 election cycle, but…

mikethemadbiologist.com

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Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 2h

To add to this⬇️, post-election polling likely underestimates the salience of protecting democracy *today* as too many people couldn't imagine what fascism might be like *back then*. Now they don't have to imagine anymore, it's something they're seeing and experiencing, so it's more salient.

Meredith Shiner @meredithshiner.com · 4h

Bridging my current life in Chicago and my past life in D.C., I argue today at @newrepublic.com that Democrats should ~never~ vote to fund this government. Make John Thune blow up Senate rules and Republicans wholly own the U.S. extra-military military doing war crimes against us, funded by us.

The Case for the Forever Shutdown

Senate Democrats actually allowing the GOP to stop funding the government is only the first step. Now they have to make the case that Trump’s government is illegitimate.

newrepublic.com

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 2h

I mean read this, the Trump administration in an official document is saying that Americans won't ever pick crops and America won't have enough food to eat because of ICE raids!
prospect.org/politics/tru...

As a result, employers are facing significant economic harms, the filing claims. And incredibly, given the administration’s unceasing rhetoric to the contrary, the Labor Department definitively rejects the idea of Americans replacing the missing workers. “The Department does not believe American workers currently unemployed or marginally employed will make themselves readily available in sufficient numbers to replace large numbers of aliens,” the filing states, adding that agricultural work involves “a distinct set of skills and is among the most physically demanding and hazardous occupations in the U.S. labor market.” (For what it’s worth, nearly half of all agricultural workers are native-born, and significantly more than half are U.S. citizens, according to Department of Agriculture data.)

The Labor Department even claims that broadly advertising agricultural jobs, which is required under the H2-A rules, has not led to a boost in applications from U.S. workers. This is a bit of a fiction; workers who apply often do not receive jobs, and nobody is really checking to see if applications are coming in. “The system isn’t set up to prove that there’s a labor shortage of U.S. workers,” said Costa, of EPI.

In the end, the Labor Department concludes, the only way to protect agricultural employers from disaster and consumers from rising prices and food shortages is to slash wages in the H-2A program to make it more viable to bring in workers. This is an odd response to a workforce crisis, since cutting wages across the sector will likely drive existing workers to look elsewhere for jobs. In fact, farm employers in Florida fear that H-2A foreign workers won’t apply for these jobs anymore because the wages are so low. (There were 384,900 H-2A applications last year.)

But the filing states, “Without swift action, agricultural employers will be unable to maintain operations, and the nation's food supply will be at risk.”

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Dave Jorgenson @davejorgenson.bsky.social · 2h

The Post laid off seemingly the remaining of their liberal-leaning staff members on Opinion last Thursday, when some of them were observing Yom Kippur.

from @oliverdarcy.bsky.social for Status
status.news/p/washington-post-opinion-cuts-adam-oneal

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Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 2h

JUST IN: The Republican Mayor of Fairbanks, Alaska’s second biggest city, lost re-election last night to a Democrat.

Mayor David Pruhs is a conservative who fought protections for LGBTQ+ residents; he made comments this year drew condemnation this year from Alaska Natives. He lost to Mindy O'Neall.

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Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 2h

Or if Dems, who want to focus on economics, had pushed for the ACA fix *and* ending the tariffs ("Trump's taxes"), it would be really hard for Republicans.

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Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 2h

#60 (Southern New England) needs to be subdivided. Don't really see Boston & Hartford as part of the same entity (I would group Eastern MA and RI together).

Terry @terrylamarche.bsky.social · 3h

The creator has a newer version of the map and still refining
www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fcultural-map-of-the-us-which-number-are-you-im-from-the-v0-6qni1uq553of1.png%3Fwidth%3D4501%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D38a1e7be2962abca329e74698e84a9191d060518

Reddit - https://preview.redd.it/cultural-map-of-the-us-which-number-are-you-im-from-the-v0-6qni1uq553of1.png?width=4501&auto=webp&s=38a1e7be2962abca329e74698e84a9191d060518

www.reddit.com

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Meredith Shiner @meredithshiner.com · 4h

good morning to the intern doing @schumer.senate.gov’s clips

Every time Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York-the Democrat with the most power in a shutdown because his withholding of seven senators toward a procedural vote keeps Republicans from proceeding-says that Democrats are looking to open the government through a negotiation around and deal on Affordable Care Act subsidies, he is acquiescing to the idea that a government in which Border Patrol agents paid with our tax dollars can shoot real bullets at protesters in Chicago after screaming "Do something, bitch!" can and should be deemed legitimate.
The truth is that Democrats can pay a million consultants to come up with a million different talking points on health care subsidies. They can keep holding press conferences in the Senate studio like every other press conference before it, talking to the same reporters, pretending like we live in a redeemable timeline where if they just keep on acting like it's 2007, we might fall through a time portal that makes it so. But we live here in a country with a co-opted executive branch led by racist, xenophobic idiots who do not believe in law, empowered by a slavishly devoted Supreme Court that has decided shoveling unlimited power to said executive is more important than the law it disregards, and where the president thinks he can send national guardsmen from red states to blue states just because people of color live here and Fox News hosts hate that.

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Meredith Shiner @meredithshiner.com · 4h

Bridging my current life in Chicago and my past life in D.C., I argue today at @newrepublic.com that Democrats should ~never~ vote to fund this government. Make John Thune blow up Senate rules and Republicans wholly own the U.S. extra-military military doing war crimes against us, funded by us.

The Case for the Forever Shutdown

Senate Democrats actually allowing the GOP to stop funding the government is only the first step. Now they have to make the case that Trump’s government is illegitimate.

newrepublic.com

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Collins Watch @collinswatch.bsky.social · 3h

Susan Collins and her allies (Newsmax donated to her super PAC last cycle) are trying to find a way to plausibly argue that, when the shutdown ends, she was the one who "solved" it.

They pulled the same ploy in 2013. Got debunked (tinyurl.com/2f7kd9fu) but too many outlets played along. #MEpolitics

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Mike the Mad Biologist and Tsar of All the Antifas @mikethemadbiol.bsky.social · 3h

I mean, imagine if Dems had said, "End the tariffs, because prices are soaring." I can't see Republicans being able to back down w/out a major loss of face, but healthcare is an easy one to give. The only thing I can think of is they've internalizing the "never surrender on anything" mindset.

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