Kevin Lawrence

A moving essay that speaks to all of us who hope to pass on to the next generation something we know of a beautiful past. newlinesmag.com/first-person...

The lessons from Brazil and Serbia? Don't concede one inch of ground to the far right. Don't appease. Don't triangulate. Don't grovel. Don't say they have "legitimate concerns". Mobilise your base, and fight them with all the democratic means at your disposal.

The Christian Nationalist Protestant takeover of MAGA Catholicism. Was she speaking in Latin tongues when this woman was leading the bishops in prayer. If so, I guess that makes it a sort of Latin Mass. Can women officiate in Latin Mass? mikefoxcatechist.substack.com/p/the-bishop...

📩 New data show that 3.2% of all mail ballots received so far in North Carolina have been rejected. If that rejection rate holds statewide, a total of around 4K ballots, almost all likely from eligible voters, would be projected to be discarded in the state’s election: https://demdock.com/3UCnYGW

GOP: we believe in indoctrination and a little job training DEMs: we believe in job training

Hegseth’s staff broke Eisenhower’s globe. The symbolism is too much to bear. (And of course, they ignored the TRAINED EXPERTS WHO HANDLE HISTORICAL ITEMS. Because EDUCATION? EXPERTISE? WHO NEEDS IT?….im going to get some coffee…)

The irony here is that Confederates killed more U.S. Army soldiers than Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden combined

To put this in perspective chestnut trees used to be dominant species in the United States. Billions of trees were killed by fungal blight and now fully grown America chestnuts are functionally extinct. There is no getting them back. Ever. All for a data center. www.gadgetreview.com/one-of-ameri...

Tim Snyder: The term that I came up with… is superpower suicide. I just can’t see an example of a major country losing so much power so quickly as the United States under Trump. We’ve encouraged our enemies and we’ve made our allies not trust us.

Yet another reason to run on oversight and accountability. Those are promises they can actually keep.

“ICE is fundamentally broken and cannot be fixed," the executive director of Amnesty International USA said.

Gee, wonder where Trump could have gotten the idea that he can weaponize the DOJ to accomplish his political goals

September 12, 2026

When you worship power, compassion and mercy will look like sins. When you worship power, harsh treatment towards those you see as "enemies" will look like righteous strength. When you worship power, the value and dignity of others is solely measured by their conformity to you.

The Legal Wreckage of the Supreme Court’s Ballroom Follies newrepublic.com/article/2150... via @newrepublic.com

“Hold accountable” is after the fact. Too late. Not a solution.

Yet another issue where every single person who touched it needs to end up in jail for us to have any semblance of the rule of law. You cannot have a functional democracy where the government creates a plan to literally throw away votes from places that don't support the incumbent party.

Rest in the peace of wild things, Wendell. Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything, every word. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/u...

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com The president “has ripped an enormously damaging Trump-size hole in the constitutional order, and a future president with autocratic designs will have every tool he needs to push the envelope even further,” our columnist Jamelle Bouie writes.

No caption required…

The president is refusing to spend taxpayer money assisting Americans suffering from natural disasters solely because their states didn't vote for him. I know there are a thousand scandals at the moment, but this one deserves some more oxygen at every level.

"t’s bad enough that the Roberts majority has changed the balance of power and reshaped our government to suit their personal preference. But to give the power to Trump is dangerous to the nation and the world. It’s a crime against democracy. Impeach all six."

I can't stress enough what a crisis this is. Trump's own intelligence agencies concluded that Iran attacked Minnesota's critical infrastructure and Trump is saying that it's Minnesota's own fault and denying it was Iran. The federal government won't defend blue states in a literal war.

No one should ever forget that the reason Trump has such impunity is because of who both Presidents Bush put on the Supreme Court.

The US built the greatest talent magnet ever, attracting the smart, skilled, and striving. They’d come to study, then stay and build things here, or leave with positive impressions and fruitful connections. Helped make the US wealthy and powerful. Then America chose to throw it away. And for what?

Perhaps this's why adult friendship feels increasingly radical. It resists transactional logic modern life rewards everywhere else. Because a real friend offers something profoundly rare: unoptimised presence. Friendship survives purely through mutual choosing. Nobody has to stay. Yet some people do

🚨: Listen closely to realize exactly what we have lost. This acoustic footage captures the progressive erasure of birdsong, serving as a stark and alarming warning of catastrophic biodiversity loss. 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔🤬

Nothing in the agency cases held that Trump could simply shut down an agency of Congress’s creation. That’s what he has done with the election Assistance commission which now lacks commissioners to act. It’s taking the courts cases to the ultimate conclusion and just disabling an important agency.

Earlier this year, DHS told states that the EAC, tiny as it was, would handle CISA's old job of coordinating cyber threat information for the midterms. Now they're gone.

The founder we should talk more about is Thomas Paine, who will fuck your shit up every time. Here he is in The Rights of Man just ripping into any ideas of "originalism" and that kind of garbage.

💪 The Lancet comes out swinging on how the MAGA/MAHA Administration is destroying US science Trump’s new OMB rule will “silence independent experts, codify ideological censorship, prioritise politics over data, & erect new barriers to international collaboration” www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

🚨 We analyzed the Supreme Court’s decisions over the past 20 years and found that for the first time, the court issued more consequential rulings on its “shadow docket” (unsigned orders often decided without arguments) than the traditional merits docket. www.propublica.org/article/supr...

The thing you need to understand is that there are 2 (TWO) different method for amending the constitution 1) The process laid out in the constititon itself (conventions, or 2/3's of both houses followed by 3/4 of states ratifying) OR 2) find five votes on the Supreme Court.

The Senate just UNANIMOUSLY blocked the Trump administration's plan to dismantle an ocean monitoring system "critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems." (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/c...

Quintessential Trump: In 2025, Trump axed the program to combat New World Screwworm, stating that they had "saved" $1.5 million a year. In 2026, the Trump announces a $1 billion emergency program to combat the Screwworm outbreak. $1 billion would have funded the old program for 667 years.

NOOOOOO! Dormition Cathedral of Kyiv‑Pechersk Lavra — a UNESCO World Heritage site and priceless cultural landmark — has been struck and is burning.

On this ongoing, relentless nonsense about AI resistance being classist, excellence is one of the few, fragile weapons working class people can deploy against privilege. Destroy excellence, or cheapen it to the point of routine, and you reward access and wealth.

This Aussie is spot on, it will take years or decades to get rid of capitalism from the government. It’s not just Trump, it’s everything behind him, oligarchs, money, corruption, corporations etc. How can we fix this?

Congrats, John Roberts! You ended the three-branch method of governance!

I’ve been in the I don’t trust the dude with the Nazi tattoo since the beginning and people were like oooooh but the alternative was Susan Collins or Janet Mills dummy. No the alternative is the party cultivating talent and doing capacity building

The U.S. Supreme Court erased all doubts about the sweeping nature of its recent voting rights jurisprudence Tuesday night with a shadow docket ruling that effectively reverses the Court’s own decision in the same matter just three years ago. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Frankly, I want to divest SCOTUS of jurisdiction to enter *any* orders reversing a lower court without a complete elaboration of the reasons why. They are the least busy judges in America with a self-selected workload. If they can't bother to explain it, they should not do it.

Really fantastic @jamellebouie.net column today. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/03/o...

Consistent with our new report: -Federal judges rate the rule of law today below 2021 and 2015. -86% say DOJ appointees often mislead judges, 71% say federal officials often fail to comply with court orders. -Fewer than half say presumption of regularity still merited. See open text quotes below:

Bumping this reply. I do not think the problem is the American people or public opinion. The problem is our Supreme Court is packed and corrupt. The people cannot pay attention to detailed constitutional law while a corrupt Roberts Court rewrites the constitution case by case.

Do not let the White House convince you that they are dictating what happens for the 250th. They're doing a bunch of stuff, but it's all fleeting spectacle. There is genuine, thoughtful, history-focused programming happening all over the United States. Get offline and go find it.