Brian Cook

Here is the essence of the American republic’s dilemma. Those with considerable wealth and control over productive assets do not necessarily need a regime of self-government to sustain their lifestyle and wealth-generating pursuits. But the republic needed them if was to prosper over time.

Better yet, build a constitutional shield for the administrative state by making it an independent fourth branch. Both theory and design practice show the way.

Your company is spending so much money on AI that it doesn’t have money to pay you is how AI will steal your jobs.

It will be hard enough to pressure Democrats to act with sustained force against the MAGA corruption and destruction. But if you vote for ANY Republican, at any level, you are just cheering on the continuation of this crime spree. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/trump-s-ty...

lol, is this advice for Iranians or Americans?

OR YOU COULD DO YOUR JOB, MARK AND HELP THEM

Trump and Republicans are restarting their voter fraud misinformation machine ahead of the midterms. When I checked, Republican candidates were implicated in voter fraud at up to 38,000x the public’s rate. If they were actually worried about voter fraud, they’d start with their own candidates.

It’s going to be a long, very rough road to get us out of the competitive authoritarian, police state wreckage of the republic and on toward a truly good society. We have no choice but to take that road or this will be everyone’s experience sooner rather than later.

What we now know for certain is that the American people, their lawmakers, and law enforcers have no experience, no training for dealing with an attack on the democratic process by their own government. I think the integrity of this election will hold overall, but it will be injured & badly shaken.

Going through old notes today, I was reminded that the NY Times' Peter Baker wrote in January that Trump had "changed the definition of normal." It helps us understand NYT's shortcomings when we realize it accepts the idea that Trump gets to decide what's normal.

When you’re so atrociously anti-environmental that another corporate law firm says, ‘yeh no thanks this guy is way too much.’

The aims of impeachment are to hold Trump accountable for his attacks on the constitutional system, but also to restore some integrity to a badly damaged system. To argue against impeachment & investigation is to subordinate the Constitution to electoral goals & essentially to render it meaningless.

We'll see how far the attempt goes, even if it will clearly fail. But a constitutional system that sees such an attempt by its chief executive and then leaves him in office has already been shattered. Merely trying is betrayal enough and places him outside of constitutional or democratic legitimacy.

This is appalling, illegal, immoral, and 500 other things, by a private citizen who is not even in the same universe as the chain of command.

Grind it into dust. And don’t feel bad about those who insist they are good Republicans with useful ideas. If they are good, they can follow the example of their forebears and start a new political party. First principles: Constitution and nation over party. People’s welfare over oligarchs.

What makes something impeachable? It’s not what most people think. 🧵 The Constitution lists treason, bribery, or “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” That last phrase was never defined, and it’s where almost every impeachment fight happens. @flareusa.bsky.social

Free and fair elections depend on people who are willing to speak up when they witness wrongdoing. That's why Government Accountability Project created a new guide: On the Front Lines of Election Protection: A Guide to Speaking Up. Here’s what to know... 🧵

The Executive Branch has no authority to regulate states’ election decisions as to candidate qualifications, and the choice to file a lawsuit like this just days before an election speaks volumes about the political corruption festering at the top levels of the DOJ.

Again, this is something we've known for a while. Democrats with near certainly will win the House majority. It is the business model of the handicappers to delay and release ratings changes piecemeal to drive their content. They need people to think there is still a horserace until the finishline

Americans were upset about inflation, so they threw out the leaders who oversaw slowing inflation, opted for a candidate promising to raise prices faster, and got what they voted for.

VICTORY: A California court just ruled that DHS’s armed home visits are voter intimidation and ordered it to stop. The court also recognized DHS is basing its actions on records known to be inaccurate and to misidentify U.S. citizens as noncitizens. Beau Tremitiere puts it plainly:

link to a presentation I did yesterday at Tufts on donald trump's effort to undo the American Revolution by attempting to claim the kind of power associated with 17th century British monarchs: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5D3...

We taxed such wealth aggressively in the middle 20th century and we reaped the benefits of it in stable employment, expansive R&D, etc. It was when investors & corporations were cut loose from the bonds holding them to the society they are meant to serve that we began our slide toward oligarchy.

I've studied a lot of elections that were subverted & contested by white conservative lawlessness. And as this regime has repeatedly shown, we should expect more of the same. But when their efforts failed, it was bc people turned out & voted en masse, making repression dangerous & impossible.

Poor Gerald Ford. His high approval rating did nothing for him in 1974: Democrats gained +4 Senate, +45 House en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Un...

THEY ARE NOT POWERLESS TO STOP HIM! Go back to Washington, stand on the steps of the Capitol and demand Johnson and Thune recall the House and Senate, and impeach him. THIS IS HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO WORK! THERE IS LITERALLY AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL! (It's called the Constitution.)

The Hidden Health Costs of AI Data Centers explains the harms of data center pollution and documents at least 30 federal actions that could increase health risks. Read the report: safernotsicker.org/take-action/...

This guy is supposed to be smart? (Not to mention that even the Titanic, as big as it was, could be turned around in much less time than “overnight”).

“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy.... Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” — Dr. Gustave Gilbert, U.S. Military Chief Psychologist in the Nuremberg Trials, Nuremberg Diary

imagine if they'd been doing this for the last 11 months #ImpeachConvictRemove

Our country is not Trump’s personal playground. Enough of this crap.

The United States has slid into competitive authoritarianism, write Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way. The slide has been modest and remains reversible—but it is real. Even after Donald Trump, American democracy will remain fragile. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/a...

This week a white nationalist tried to assassinate a member of Congress and you probably didn’t even hear about it—and a reminder that being an elementary school student in the US is more deadly than being an ICE officer: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/three-shoo...

UPDATE: While the No Kings Instagram is back up, admins remain locked out and cannot post Meta must restore full access immediately Until then, continue following for updates: @ACLU.org , @MoveOn.org , @publiccitizen.bsky.social & @Indivisible.org -TN

This is all very interesting, but look at the headline in the example offered. What does “disregarding” the law mean? Is there another category besides obeying or disobeying the law? The headline invites the possibility and therefore weasels out of stating the obvious: Trump this breaking the law.

“The Trump administration’s anemic request for more disclosre is not enough, akin to blandly asking criminals to file monthly reports regarding which crimes they have committed.” garymarcus.substack.com/p/we-must-re...

I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking this. But if the SecDef (haha) wants to livestream a firing squad, he should be the sole executioner. If you want it, you gotta own it, you ghoul.

“Vaccines will be ineffective against competently designed pandemic weapons. Russia may not be competent yet, but future AI will democratize competence. “We should stockpile pandemic-proof PPE and install germicidal far-UV and glycol misters in public spaces.”

The Clean Air Act was written to protect people from pollution. Exxon and Suncor want the Supreme Court to use it to block a Colorado community's lawsuit. Former EPA officials who enforced that law say the companies have it backward. EPN's Marc Boom explains.

To paraphrase: Efficiency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

A weed killer linked to liver cancer in farmers is back on U.S. fields – and its maker, Bayer, got to pick the rules. Dicamba can vaporize and drift far from where it’s sprayed. Courts rejected its approval twice. This year, EPA approved it again. EPN’s Peter Murchie explains.

"The United States descended into soft competitive authoritarianism during Donald Trump’s second presidency. Regime change occurred with striking speed." muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/a...

In sum, we have entered end-stage capitalism because the vast majority of owners of capital have decided they no longer need or want a robust, democratically accountable public sector to succeed. This will be their undoing. But how long it will take and what comes next is yet to be determined.

We can't afford to continue living under oligarchy, and as oligarchs' greed and folly drives the old system beyond its breaking point, we must seize the opportunity to build a better successor." pluralistic.net/2026/10/03/f...

When climate scientists say things are going to be horrendous, people find out many years later that we’re right. With this El Niño, the “find out” part will come in months.