robingphillips.bsky.social

Just a reminder that Starlink terminals were installed on the roof of the White House and other govt buildings. Thought that might be a relevant datapoint for some of you.

The Supreme Court has, over the course of decades, legalized behavior that is poisonous to a functioning democracy, Leo J. Wise, a former Justice Department prosecutor, argues:

“It looks dangerously like the construction of an internal spying agency...” "It’s also a weapon that the government will likely use against not only undocumented immigrants, but everyone else, too. That includes political enemies, intelligence experts said... prospect.org/2026/10/14/i...

So Musk is saying it was the Trump Admin who did it and the Trump Admin is saying it was Musk who did it.

One teen said he informed the ICE agents he was a citizen but was told, “I don’t give a damn.… Your parents can’t help you now.” trib.al/YQTcfYI

civilizational collapse, anyone? "Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training, and destroying them in the process. "It’s possible to scan these rare books without destroying them, but cutting the spine makes it cheaper and faster..." www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

You can’t talk about debt without talking about how we got into a bad predicament, and there’s only one correct answer: tax cuts enacted this century

ICE deported a U.S. citizen. Brian Morales had proof he was born in Denver. Agents refused to see it, threatened him with prison and pressured him into saying he entered illegally. This isn’t law enforcement. If Brian isn’t safe, neither are you. PAXIS.app | Keep it free: GoFundMe.com/PAXIS

Why the hell did this many Dems just vote to confirm a Trump judge this week? Durbin Fetterman Heinrich Hirono Kaine King Peters Rosen Shaheen Slotkin Whitehouse www.senate.gov/legislative/...

variety.com/2026/tv/news...

If they had sufficient proof of non-citizens fraudulently registering, to say nothing of voting, they would be bringing indictments. Not issuing press releases.

This country was one person's vote away this morning from putting any birthright citizen in danger of being deported tomorrow. We are so much closer to the abyss than we think. Man oh man.

If the National guard is enforcing laws that don’t exist the commanders who give the order will need to be help accountable

One of Elon Musk's most cryptic posts says this: "Whatever happens, we have got the spaceships, and they do not." We decode this here. It's a serious statement about the future he actually envisions: newrepublic.com/article/2119...

This is bombshell stuff.

We’ve got the Onion Newsvan circling the cursed UFC fight outside the White House.

The administration’s rapid response account is… mad at the Weather Channel. For reporting the weather.

It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war.

This is why they want to pass FISA Section 702 without reforms.

Trump and his apparatchiks are working to weaponize the entire federal government on behalf of election subversion. www.yahoo.com/news/politic...

I thought people were kidding, turns out Elon really did axe the screwworm containment program back in March 25. fucking imbecile www.agri-pulse.com/articles/226...

The Purcell principle now officially just means “Republicans win.” For the reasons Sotomayor lays out here, SCOTUS’s eleventh hour intervention for Alabama Republicans is indefensible. It’s going to unleash massive chaos on the ground for both voters and election administrators. What a disaster.

Still my favorite Onion video. "𝐏𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐮𝐞'𝐬 𝐊𝐚𝐟𝐤𝐚 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐢𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭" Please watch every cubic inch of everything on-screen. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEyF...

New from me: Some of Donald Trump’s favorite world leaders have been scoundrels, bullies, and dictators. The China summit showed, yet again, that such men can both intimidate and flatter Trump into taking their side, even against the United States. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Please understand the depth of corruption - agrees to drop bogus lawsuit, because he controls govt, we pay him 1.7 billion to do that & $ goes to people like J6ers under false claim they were wrongly prosecuted. And his DOJ facilitates and promotes all of this.

"Neither former President Barack Obama nor Joe Biden traded stocks or bonds while in office..." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

A point that the great @donmoyn.bsky.social often makes is that the handing out of governing spoils is a signpost on the road to authoritarianism. I think this quote captures this very well, and it's an exclamation point on this madness. 6/6 newrepublic.com/article/2105...

In Louisiana and likely Alabama, actual, cast votes are going to be tossed out as officials speed ahead with new (or previously enjoined) maps. This is such an extreme use case for the Purcell principle that the court ignoring it here signifies that it was always a made-up toy, not law.

This is absolutely outrageous. SCOTUS reinstated Texas gerrymander 15 weeks before primary because they claimed it was too close to election to block it but now allowing Alabama to gerrymander one week before primary after trial court found map was intentionally discriminatory against Black voters

“officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.”

SCOOP: Two weeks ago, the head of the CDC delayed publication of a report showing covid vaccine cut likelihood of ER visits and hospitalizations by half. Now that report is no longer allowed to be published in CDC’s flagship scientific journal. My latest. 1/2 www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

The Justice Dept’s theory of the case— that the group that single-handedly disassembled the Ku Klux Klan defrauded its donors by concealing that it was using paid informant to do that work and more— has about as much merit as the now-dismissed charges against Jim Comey.

"Dear America" letters from people who work at the besieged US Department of Housing and Urban Development: dearamericaletters.org

Famously vengeful Knicks owner Jim Dolan has long spied on people at his iconic arenas. WIRED goes deep inside the operation that allegedly tracked a trans woman, lawyers, protesters, and more. www.wired.com/story/madiso...

"The arch is what happens when a powerful and deeply insecure man looks at hallowed ground and sees another opportunity for a monument to himself. The fallen buried at Arlington deserve better than to spend eternity in the shadow of someone else’s ambition." open.substack.com/pub/kevinmle...

I am, and it is, and no, they don't

To conservatives who’ve objected when some of us have suggested Trump is a fascist, and who’ve complained when some us point out that much of real existing American conservatism has devolved into fascism, if you’re silent about Trump’s threat of genocide you’re proving the point you’ve objected to.

This is why I try to protect words for when they are needed to convey the immediacy and threat they represent. What Trump is threatening in Iran is *genocide*, pure and simple. Of course, that word doesn't land the way it used to.

Meanwhile Prof Tim Snyder is also issuing warnings about the same.

This was entirely foreseeable, and many of us warned that if the Department abandoned all of its principles, the decent public servants in its ranks would abandon the Department.

“Dumping the Army chief of staff in the middle of a war, without explanation, is a reckless move even by Hegseth’s standards,” @RadioFreeTom argues: theatln.tc/u4Lw54Ut

According to the Times:

It seems we just bombed some residential buildings in an attempt to kill a former diplomat who was trying to facilitate negotiations. A civilian trying to *end* hostilities, surrounded by other civilians in their homes. We are completely lost.

Hegseth's repeated moves to purge the military of anyone not judged a Trump loyalist should set off major alarms. But, because Hegseth presents as such a buffoon, his role in Trump's authoritarian project is underrated. wapo.st/3OfHHck

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

Watership Down gave me PTSD Doc.