Every Effing Day

Donald Trump is talking a lot about John Husted's ass, but the fact that he floated the idea of Viktor Orban to head the UN suggest who is real man-crush is. everyfingday.substack.com/p/leader-of-...

Hope and anxiety both are running high over the midterms. With likely Republican losses in deep red states, there are concerns both about voter suppression efforts and efforts to discredit the results after the ballots are counted. What are the risks?

FEMA has more than 20 times as much money to devote to rescue and recovery than all 50 states combined. So why is Trump saying that he will make disaster assistance the responsibility of the states? It’s a terrible idea, but it underscores two of the qualities that make this a terrible presidency.

Back in February, the State Department started applying a partisan test for promotions in the foreign service. This looks to me like hedging their bets: they know they may lose in November, and again in 2028, but creating a Trumpian "deep state" may leave room for a new MAGA coup in the future.

The back-and-forth on whether Trump is the traitor or Musk is continues, and there are stories of Meta interfering in democracies. For ordinary companies, politics is bad business. But these aren’t ordinary businesses, and that is a problem not just for free markets, but for democracy.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, his recent efforts to crack down on voter fraud in California are very reassuring to me. Specifically, I am reassured to see that the Trump Administration hasn’t learned a damn thing from its elders about how to rig an election.

Science, as filtered through this humanities guy, suggests one simple rule for living a longer, healthier life: shift your political views to the left. everyfingday.substack.com/p/warning-st...

Fair Q

This is so utterly wrong., lnkd.in/p/g-2wwV3K

A Guardian report on the new approach to deportations after the ouster of Kristi Noem - dispersed, utilizing local collaborators, swift, and invisible - put me in mind of The Memory Police, a great book about dementia, symbolized by totalitarianism, and totalitarianism, symbolized by dementia.

This week even basic facts cannot be confirmed. But any clarity would probably be illusory. The way to survive and move forward isn't to force certainty onto an uncertain world, but to hold multiple possibilities at once, and move forward as best as you can given the things that could be true.

As important as the midterms are for democracy, they may usher in a more difficult and dangerous period. And even if the risks are overblown, living in this liminal political space will continue to take a personal toll on all of us. Some thoughts on how to ride the rough waves ahead.

Whatever happened with Starlink in Ukraine, it shows the problems with privitization, and also with monopolies. As the power of men like Elon Musk grows, are our human rights dependent on their whim? everyfingday.substack.com/p/rights-and...

U.S. policy today seems to be driven primarily by who Trump owes a favor to, or who will help him cash in. everyfingday.substack.com/p/scratchmyb...

Given the politicization of justice under Trump and Todd Blanche, it is hard not to see conspiracy in a search warrant executed against one of the President's most hated opponents, just three weeks before an election.

It is hard to understate how destructive US sanctions announced on Friday could be to the ICC. But with 125 out of 195 nations a party to the court, there will be concerted efforts to help the ICC survive, and in the end, it may leave the United States more isolated than the court we are attacking.

Like many, I was horrified and angry at the announcement that the Department of Defense will take a page from ISIS and livestream a man’s death. But alongside the outrage, I find it pathetic - an attempt by the Administration to be even a shadow of the brutal dictators they imagine themselves to be.

After the end of WWII, a set of tools has emerged to hold perpetrators accountable and effectuate reforms to guarantee these crimes will not recur. But those tools were developed in response to horrific atrocities. In places like Hungary and the US, the same tools may miss the real threat.

everyfingday.substack.com/p/markwaynes...

When I read Marco Rubio's full speech in Athens yesterday, my first thought was that he must have learned his bullshit European history at Hillsdale College. My second thought is that what he is offering stands directly opposed to everything the United States has stood for (imperfectly) since 1945.

Paramount-Skydance acquires Warner Brothers AS the FCC deletes a rule to promote diversity in media ownership AS Trump plays shell games around who is paying for his "Paid for by the US government" campaign ads? There are some shenanigans afoot, and they all add up to building a propaganda machine.

The DOJ and the Department of Education have teamed up to stand up for parental rights. It is one of a number of ways in which conservatives have weaponized the instinct to protect children. everyfingday.substack.com/p/child-prot...

It’s clear to me that the reason the anti-vax movement has grown so unreasonably strong is that too few of them remember polio. What is less obvious is that the reason Christian nationalism is enjoying a heyday is that they have forgotten the Spanish Inquisition.

Instability in the U.S. is straining alliances and trade partnerships, which may harm the U.S. economy, which may hamper our best hope of overcoming instability: addressing rampant growth of inequality. everyfingday.substack.com/p/a-death-sp...

beahahaha

Three years ago, I made a brief foray into Truth Social. What it showed me, about MAGA and also about myself, was disturbing. But it was also in some ways hopeful. everyfingday.substack.com/p/once-more-...

They lie for him. They defend whatever outrageous or stupid thing comes out of his mouth. They privately complain and publicly stand by his side with shit-eating grins. They wear shoes that are too big. What makes these Republican leaders so cowardly?

Eric Schmitt brought quite a load of bullshit to the Senate floor. The fact that his staffers would take the time to make a poster but not to check the facts says a great deal about the time we live in, and the way in which lies are the currency of the Trump realm.

Four stories on immigration crossed my screen yesterday, none related to the others, exactly, but together giving a picture of a system that is trying to optimize for efficiency over decency. It is mass deportation in the process of being industrialized. everyfingday.substack.com/p/four-stran...

Mass deportations have been on my mind of late. Four stories came together for me yesterday, not because I have anything profound to say, but because collectively, they show how the system really works.

Two weeks ago, up to a third of the people in ICE detention were quietly erased from its public database. Why? everyfingday.substack.com/p/disappeare...

Mass deportations reflect not so much anti-immigrant anger, as much as one facet of a deeper anxiety among some white Americans about their decline as a percentage of the population. If that’s right, the attack is best seen as part of a larger strategy to maintain a kind of racial oligarchy.

When the state does something evil and there are no consequences, that action is sanctioned and becomes policy. 22 years ago, we sent an innocent man to be tortured in a country that was not his own. This year, we have done similar things 25,000 times. everyfingday.substack.com/p/remigratio...

The election is in six weeks. I never would have thought a court would do something this irresponsible. Impeach Roberts. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/u...

The idea of the Thucyidides Trap of Graham Allison has always kind of irritated me. The lesson from the Athenian historian really shouldn’t be that, when you have a rising power and a declining one, war is inevitable. It should be that power brings hubris, and hubris makes even smart people stupid.

Even the lowest low budget horror flick can have a genuine fright or two. Donald Trump is no exception. everyfingday.substack.com/p/dr-trumps-...

The image of Trump speaking inaudibly to Newsmax and the few other journalists not boycotting the White House is yet another example of how Trump and those in his orbit fail to understand that the vast power the presidency holds does not mean that the rest of us have none at all.

There has been a growing sense of alarm about Russian incursions into NATO airspace. It might be to destroy supply lines to Ukraine, or to test NATO defenses and resolve. My guess is that it is some of all of that, but more than that, an attempt to foster political disarray.

Will artificial intelligence destroy humanity? Probably not, because that is a poorly constructed sentence. Will humanity destroy itself with AI? Yeah, maybe. everyfingday.substack.com/p/meet-the-n...

Grants and other funds cancelled or frozen by the Administration amount to ten percent of all federal discretionary funding. The cost is enormous - to the states, to the future, and to GOP candidates who cannot run on bringing home the bacon. Why? everyfingday.substack.com/p/boss-tweed...

I was called for jury duty for the first time in twenty years, when I contributed to the verdict in a trial that continues to haunt me. I was not selected this time, but the process helped me see how the process is misaligned with human psychology. everyfingday.substack.com/p/homo-jurid...

So far in 2026, the government has attempted to strip citizenship from something like 14 times as many people as average for any full year. Someone else beat Trump though: Daniel Ortega did 220 in 2023. And one of them was just picked up by ICE. everyfingday.substack.com/p/exiled?r=5...

“The EPA will not operate as a science-based regulatory agency. But, depending on what happens with the information it gathers on drinking water, political regulation may be its new beat.” everyfingday.substack.com/p/weaponized...

Amodei said it. Musk and Altman said it. Donald Trump called them (not in so many words) the new nattering nabobs of negativism. The American right is unable to see its way to regulating AI because 60 years of neoliberal cultural hegemony has made the idea unthinkable.

Sartre dismissed the status of antisemitism as protected speech by noting that "it is first a passion." What does that mean, what kind of distinction does it draw, and can it speak to how we might put bounds on the hateful rhetoric of our time? everyfingday.substack.com/p/hate-and-t...

Sartre dismissed the status of antisemitism as protected speech by noting that "it is first a passion." What does that mean, what kind of distinction does it draw, and can it speak to how we might put bounds on the hateful rhetoric of our time? everyfingday.substack.com/p/hate-and-t...

This picture illustrates why Donald Trump as merely a cosplay tyrant: a competent dictator knows there is power everywhere around him, but again and again, Trump walks in to every situation believing he holds all the cards. By the looks of him, he had his ass handed to him again.

I used to say that cold sesame noodles are like a PB&J for adults. Trump’s speeches at “Trumpapalooza” were like a grown-up game of “I’ve got your nose!” everyfingday.substack.com/p/for-which-...

I would have passed under the World Trade Center with a couple of minutes of the first plane striking, on the A Train to my job on 3rd Street and Broadway. I did not feel anything, but it changed the direction I was going in, and that the country is going in, and brought us, unfortunately, to today.

Nailed it