Donna 🐸

In case facts still matter

"It's frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence." ~ George Orwell #DaveGranlund

The Trump administration's $25bn Polar LNG project on Alaska's North Slope will be turned over to a Kremlin proxy, the Financial Times and New York Times report, quoting former Exxon executives. For Alaska voters, this is the big October surprise as they head for the polls.

In his acceptance speech, Lula says he will work to regulate digital platforms in Brazil. “Digital crimes must be dealt with like real-life crimes.” This comes after Meta directly interfered with the Brazilian elections, favouring Flávio Bolsonaro.

David Jolly: "The problem in this environment is not that I used to be a Republican. It's that Byron Donalds still is one."

Congrats to Lula on overcoming Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump to defeat Hospital Pervert Jr., even as his opposition literally blocked off roads and turned off bus service during election day. Fascists are scary but they are always, 100% of the time, ultimately gigantic fucking losers.

Hungarians, Brazilians, and Serbians are giving me hope this year.

For some reason my top guy on the vote count in Brazil is French. (I started following him for the vote count in Hungary.)

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Vučić concedes election, says Student List will be the largest party www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Check out how easy this is.

I think the real purpose here is to keep the seat empty for as long as possible while they contest it. I can even see the Supremes using the shadow docket to keep it open pending a decision on the question of ranked choice voting or even if a person with the same name can run.They are that corrupt.

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Are you registered to vote? vote.org

What’s funny about all this is Obama’s decor joke was spot on and the people who think he was denigrating the Cheesecake Factory qua Cheesecake Factory are actually betraying that they are elitist city slickers who have never been to one. (Like me!)

🇰🇵🇰🇷 NYT: Military cooperation between Russia and North Korea is fueling an arms race on the Korean Peninsula—Pyongyang is developing missile and unmanned aerial systems, while Seoul is accelerating its own weapons development. Russian officers are also training North Korean drone operators.

Republicans spent years investigating the dick pics found on Hunter Biden's laptop but are refusing to do anything about the treason found on Jared Kushner's phone.

The solar panel is the new peace symbol. Pass it on. @billmckibben.bsky.social

The Trump administration did not ask companies to present an exhaustive case for why they deserved a waiver from these new requirements. It was as easy as sending an email to the E.P.A. and invoking the obscure exemption language in the act, a provision that no president had ever used

I suppose the discorse is as good a reason as any to repost this article, just to underscore that the joke was about bonkers decor, not food quality: www.thedailymeal.com/1362672/chee...

So as I headed to Ingram for the first time in March, I wanted to know who the local faces of the national immigration crackdown were. Who was driving the black Dodge Charger? www.propublica.org/article/depo...

This is a town of three stoplights, five gas stations, five Mexican restaurants, and five churches. It is — or was — 45% Latino. Yet within a year of the flood, the town’s tiny PD had delivered the equivalent of 10% of Ingram to ICE.

We don’t know if the early vote will be predictive because all Republicans could just be waiting to vote until Election Day. But what this means in practice is that to win, Trump/GOP will have to have the most successful EDay mobilization operation in modern history— and that it’s completely stealth

Since resigning this spring amid scandal, former U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales has sent tens of thousands of campaign dollars to companies recently created by his wife and that don’t appear to have any physical or online presence. bit.ly/4yXWaf7

This new report today with my NYT colleague Anton Troianovski follows up on our earlier reporting this month on the Lukoil deal that would bring financial benefits to business partners of the Witkoff and Trump families. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/u...

Trump's Spending Our Money On Farmers,What About SNAP Benefit Recipients.......?

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Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c... The exemptions represent the biggest presidential intervention in enforcement of the Clean Air Act in the half-century.

as you read the insane campaign fundraising numbers dropping today please recall that currently Elon Musk is personally responsible for about 1 in every 20 dollars spent on behalf of Republicans nationwide in 2026; I wouldn’t be surprised if when the dust settles that number is as high as 1 in 10

Musk’s Dirty $$$$ robertreich.substack.com/p/musks-dirt... Elon Musk has quietly spent $445 million for Republicans so far in this year’s midterm elections.

"Paving the way for job losses": New Senate Investigation Reveals Trump is Opening Floodgate for Mega-mergers macfarlanenews.substack.com/p/paving-the...

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Congrats once again to all the politicians, journalists, artists, celebrities, and brands who STILL prop up this man’s right-wing propaganda platform every day by using it as an official communication channel.

As MS NOW and The New York Times have each reported, in the past two weeks, a Russian disinformation network disinformation analysts have dubbed Storm-1679 or Matryoshka (the Russian word for those iconic nesting dolls) has begun to inject false election-related material into US social media.

If you only read the New York Times or watch CNN, you have no way of knowing this happened.

Glad to see CNN reporting on this. @jimacosta.bsky.social and I raised concerns about DHS potentially using a military-grade “heat ray.” After 20+ years in national security, I find this deeply troubling. A weapon designed to inflict intense pain. Against civilians? Why does DHS need this?

“These actions do not signal an agency trying to pause.” From Dylan Baddour at Inside Climate News: Regulators in Texas did not stop processing permits for data center projects when Gov. Greg Abbott publicly ordered a pause last month.

Trump's envoy called Putin a humanitarian. Twenty months of American complacency, and Ukraine gets the bill.

So we are "fighting fraud" by establishing a NEW slush fund where Trump personally decides payouts? What a grift. Trump is serious about fraud—serious about committing it!

Washington has discovered a brilliant financial strategy. Cut benefits for people who need them, cut taxes for people who don't, and borrow the difference from people who aren't old enough to vote.

We have to think about collapsing Trump poll numbers and Rs turning on him the same way we'd think about finally being able to corner a rabid raccoon in your garage. Good news: he's out of options. Bad news: he's a rabid raccoon.

Talarico: Elon wants our land. He's already trying to buy one of our beautiful state parks down in South Texas. He wants our water for these AI data centers. And he wants his very own personal United States senator — and that's what he thinks he can get with Ken Paxton.

It's all about priorities, and we are not on their list.