Gray Flannel Man

Why am I so unimpressed by these strikes? Israel and the US have failed to target significant elements of Iran's nuclear materials and production infrastructure. RISING LION and MIDNIGHT HAMMER are tactically brilliant, but may turn out to be strategic failures. 🧵 1/17

Imagine seeing news travel in a flash w/the telegraph Imagine seeing electricity for the 1st time Imagine seeing the internet for the 1st time Imagine seeing US democracy failing wholesale MASSIVE changes Some seen w/in our lifetimes. If you're reading this, you're seeing the last one #RESIST

Again, Trump is the arsonist looking for applause for putting out a fire he started.

Great thread:

Great thread right here that contextualizes the far right.

WATCH — @underwood.house.gov : “Elderly will lose Medicaid. Nursing homes will close. What are people supposed to do? They don’t care… there’s no way to sugarcoat it - it will be devastating for our communities.” #TrumpsTrillionsTransfer

Elon Musk and DOGE broke numerous aspects of Social Security delivery Rather than fix the damage, the Trump administration has simply stopped reporting the data www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

THIS JUST HAPPENED: Brad Lander walked through the fire, got burned, and came back with a fucking gasoline can. ICE arrested him — now he’s escorting migrants right past them, again. Most politicians wouldn’t show up. He showed out.

This seems…important @cnn.com @wsj.com @nytimes.com @financialtimes.com @washingtonpost.com

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

And people ask what’s the big deal if Trump nominees just do what the boss wants?!….

To paraphrase a Jesuit saying: “A world view that can’t stand up to the scrutiny of other ideas, is not a world view worth having.”

In the spring of 2008, I feared America was on the verge of war with Iran — and, believing that it’s good style to get to know people before you bomb them, I made “Rick Steves’ Iran,” a one-hour special that could (and would) only debut on PBS. Sadly, this special has become pertinent again today.

Lander just got detained by federal agents as he tried to escort a man out of the courtroom. Lander was taken in an elevator with masked agents, along with one member of his NYPD security detail.

Padilla: I was forced to the ground, first on my knees and then flat on my chest. And as I was handcuffed and marched down a hallway repeatedly asking, why am I being detained? Not once did they tell me why. I pray you never have a moment like this

"Trump's message is plain. If you commit violence in his cause, he will have your back...America in 2025 is making political murder easier. This is a choice, not fate." My column. www.ft.com/content/e172...

Collins: "What did [Mike Lee] have to say?" Sen. Tina Smith: "Honestly, I don't think this is a person who is used to being confronted. I don't think he's someone who is used to being challenged and I think he didn't quite know what to do."

The Minnesota assassin appears to be a hate-filled right winger. So can we stop walking on eggshells about MAGA's legitimization of political violence? Yes, Republicans have also been the target of inexcusable violence, but this isn't a "both sides" issue. 1/ A🧵on the danger.

Some thoughts about the military parade in my hometown of Washington DC today -- specifically, the route. Military parades in DC are quite rare. But when they happen, they have always begun, symbolically and geographically, at the Capitol and moved outward. 1/

Donald Trump and his fascist movement fetishize political violence and treat it like an acceptable form of discourse. This is the result. These people want to kill their opposition. And they feel justified in doing so bc they exist in a conspiracy unreality. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Here’s how crazy our world is: a sitting US Senator was manhandled and arrested for asking a question at the press conference held by a Cabinet member who has appeared in front of his subcommittee 6 times and that s not the worst thing that happened today

This!

@chuckschick.bsky.social Senator - shut down the Senate now!

@schumer.senate.gov @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social What are you going to do about this? We need you to use every lever possible to grind Trump’s agenda to a halt. We need a constant stream of filibusters and floor speeches until the American people understand that this is authoritarianism.

Senator Padilla’s office sends me this video of his take-down and detention at Sec. Noem’s press conference in L.A.

THIS A UNITED STATES SENATOR ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA BEING PHYSICALLY SHOVED OUT OF A MEETING ABOUT WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS DOING TO THE BIGGEST CITY IN OUR STATE.

A United States Senator. For trying to ask a question. Welcome to Donald Trump’s America. 🇺🇸

THIS.

Terrific thread right here:

I am a historian and the consensus as to the start date for Italian fascism is when Mussolini, accused of having his party disappear a leftist member of Parliament, made a speech daring anyone to do anything about it - no one did.

Good thread here:

ICE crossed a line in LA

Watching CNN’s simulcast of George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck. Hope Jake Tapper is as well.

As a historian of military coups (1/3 of my book #Strongmen is on that subject) this sight unsettles me...

WOW. Breaking news from ABC that has the potential to cast serious doubts on today’s indictment of Mr. Abrego Garcia.

We don’t need to back off the American Gestapo and we don’t need to respect its agents. People exercising state violence are not entitled to anonymity. Nor are the people directing the state violence.

Trump is slowly figuring out that it was the Koch operation that chose, and is served by, “his” Supreme Court nominees, and that “his” people Leo and McGahn were really working for the polluter billionaires. Let’s review the history. 🧵

If accused, we have rights under our Constitution to have evidence presented, interrogated, & independently judged. We must force the president to recognize this or no one -- not you, not me, not your kid -- has rights, just the perpetual threat of foreign gulag. bsky.app/profile/reic...

I can't stress enough how wrong and disingenuous the most recent wave of COVID revisionism is. The *only period* when Democratic counties had higher death rates was April-May 2020. From June 2020 onwards, Republican laxity and denialism were the most powerful force driving deaths.

ukrainian social media today:

This is just eye opening. The entire SpaceX direction is a money hole. We have got to stop thinking billionaires are geniuses. www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/starship-d...

SecState Rubio claims that no on has died because of USAID cuts and suggested that I had lied in my reporting. So here I show him photos of specific children who have died because of the Trump administration's reckless cancelation of aid: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/o...

NEW: The Trump administration's fiscal year 2026 budget request's appendix says with no details: "The President's Budget proposes to reorganize the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau at the Department of Commerce" www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...