Top recent posts by Online Political Thinkers on Bluesky

Judge Goodwin: "An anonymous government is no government at all. It cannot be held accountable. A masked agent freely uses force without justifying his actions, and the public cannot name him to challenge his conduct. A regime of secret policing has no place in our society."

To my mind, this is the single tweet that explains 95% of the energy behind the MAGA movement.

what do you mean they didn't realize this before

“She has a message for other tourists considering a trip to America: “‘Don’t go – not with Trump in charge. It’s totally out of control over there. There’s no accountability. They don’t seem to need a reason for detaining you.’”

At this point, we should just assume they’re lying. But by their own account the kid had no record. US citizen. At the very least, it looks like multiple policy violations — they surrounded the car, fired into a moving vehicle, killed him through the driver’s side window.

This country is doomed.

One reason I’ve shrugged off all the GaViN nEwSoMe Is tHe FrOnTrUnNeR takes is that Pritzker just so obviously outclasses him. I’m not saying it’ll definitely be Pritzker, but I think I’ll say that there’s no chance GAVIN manages to outmaneuver him.

This is a ridiculous abuse of power.

Any Democrat not promising long prison sentences for Trump officials is one who will accommodate Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, crypto bros, the gambling companies and every other billionaire. And they'll legitimize it under the Democratic brand, with the power of incumbency. This is my litmus test.

You know how Elon Musk treated Twitter employees after he took over the company, and the institutional impact that had? What if we take an approach like that with some military officers, in particular ones with technical expertise?

I can only speak for my own views on court packing, but this is a really gross misrepresentation. I want to pack it w 99 people, not 21, on chaotically rotating panels of 10, so there’s no median vote on the panel and impossible to know in advance who to bribe.

The Roberts Court could’ve avoided all of this if they upheld the Constitution in the first place, instead of thinking they could scrap the parts they don’t like while keeping parts they do.

Hear me out. Iconic Simpsons writer John Schwartzwelder is not a real person, but instead an invented character and pen name for another writer (almost certainly George Meyer) on the show.

Pack the court with so many people that you won't even know their names. That it won't even be news when one of them dies. That they have to meet in an NFL stadium. That their relatives won't realize they're related to a Supreme Court justice. That they quit because they don't feel important.

Positive take (relatively) on “we have lived among such people this whole time”: Yes, and that shows things don’t need to be like this. There will always be the sort of people who’d try to get the state to hurt kindergartners. We just need to keep them out of institutional power, and on the fringe.

GLORIOUS pelican roll this morning! Thank you, bird! 🪶

I can't vote any harder Liz. I picked you in the 2020 primary. I'm on your side. But I kinda can't do anything and I'm hoping you guys can

I have yet to see any evidence that this is true. There are some retention bonuses and some performance-based bonuses, but as far as I can tell the idea of a per-head bounty is an urban legend, apparently circulating even among contract detention staff. I’m open to being wrong. Hope I’m not.

Of course Trump is confused. The Supreme Court told everyone that the Constitution doesn’t apply to him and he can break laws without consequence if he feels like it. They effectively rewrote the Constitution just for him. More than once! Why would he expect the law to suddenly matter for tariffs?

I'm joining the war against sea lions on the side of the sea lions

This week @jamellebouie.net had some questions for me about where the US is at now and why the term "concentration camp" might be a useful way to think about the crisis. (He interviewed me eight years ago for Slate on a similar topic. Let's hope we don't end up having the same discussion in 2034.)

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker writes a letter to President Trump after the Supreme Court revoked his tariffs as illegal: “On behalf of the people of Illinois, I demand a refund of $1,700 for every family in Illinois.”

I don't follow figure skating, so I couldn't figure out why I started sobbing while watching Alysa Liu's gold medal-winning performance. Then it dawned on me: I was watching a young woman be free.

I think as a society we must ask why we care so much about the thoughts of a marketing professor.

George Wallace in 1962: "I started off talking about schools and highways and prisons and taxes and I couldn't make them listen. Then I began talking about n**rs and they stomped the floor." Donald Trump in 2023⬇️

the entire video Lowe put out is even more ominous (the semiotics of Restore propaganda are deeply fascinating, if not evil)

Innovators became rent seekers and are very aggrieved that they’re no longer treated like innovators. Sorry the public doesn’t see the world’s biggest companies and richest people pushing enshittified, mediocre, or damaging products as plucky start-ups doing exciting things. But whose fault is that?

This administration whined to the SCOTUS that they should not have to pay out SNAP even though they were legally obligated to do so. They spent so much cash appealing a court case they knew they were gonna lose just for spite and to waste taxpayer money just to make life worse for poor Americans

sometimes i worry fox news is too subtle and nuanced for its viewers

Levying taxes by unilateral executive action is the singular centuries old most fundamental example of something that's absolutely and inherently illegitimate in the Anglo-American constitutional tradition.

"Why would the president pursue military action against the country without nuclear weapons instead of the one with nuclear weapons" is a question that answers itself when stated plainly, and also explains why any regime wary of foreign intervention would rationally pursue a nuclear arsenal.

No one wants this except the hucksters pushing it

oh we are losing-losing the next war taskandpurpose.com/news/army-wa...

Voting them out is not enough, we need to enact Sherman's solution on these motherfuckers.

So the BC shooters brain was cooked by ChatGPT and Open AI knew about it and did nothing?

The purple area contains all of the highest volume posters, this could be an extinction-level event for non-New Yorkers hearing about the weather

These are the people Chuck keeps losing to at the negotiating table

Hyper-presidentialism is not only something Supreme Court conservatives have inflicted on us, it has been the central project of Scalia school "originalism" since the 1980s. Congress *has* tried to claw back power w/ reforms, and SCOTUS has repeatedly struck those laws down or made them ineffectual.

At Fox News dot com they seem to have moved on from the tariff story entirely.

53 year old father of three who’d lived in the US for 30 years dies of pneumonia in Mexico shortly after he was apprehended and deported by ICE. www.kptv.com/2026/02/21/n...

There is a type of anti-liberal "leftist" pundit who is utterly incapable of producing any assessment of the world beyond “liberal hypocrisy is the real evil.” They are allowing their singular, disdain-driven focus on (neo-) liberalism to completely distort their perspective on reality.

I read this and thought "Oh, this is something a first-year Econ grad student would think of, thinking they're being clever but ignoring 300 different aspects of actual behavior." The guy behind it? Lt. Col. .. sigh ... Justicz (SUCH lazy writers) ... who spent 3 yrs as an Econ grad student at MIT.

you're telling me that a latina from the bronx is catholic?

The plot to enslave America:

man is it wild how Kriss has basically reinvented himself after collaborating with "we need to abolish the gays" people at First Things

it is deeply funny watching a subset of this site realize AOC is a devout Catholic

I’m not even Catholic and I know big a deal this is

San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre was denied access to ICE's Otay Mesa concentration camp today. The county is legally allowed to conduct health inspections but she was turned away by CoreCivic, the private prison contractor that operates the facility. www.instagram.com/reel/DU_uYq2...

Every one of these guys is stupid. Every one. We may look back with disdain on the culture of the 50s and 60s but at least those buzzcuts and long skirts got us to the fucking moon

A normal boss doing this would make the employees want a union but in this case I guess it will just create thousands of cynical, embittered soldiers. So no worries

Subject: Your Niece Body: I totally agree with you and Bill Gates that we hate poor people and I have some ideas on how to get rid of them

A flat refund to every American would actually be reasonably just, but no Dem should agree to support this until Trump comes begging and agrees the checks will say “c/o The Democratic Party” on them. 😇

the "AOCification of Zohran Mamdani" is a phrase that's going to live in my brain rent free

The problem with this framework is it assumes that the two are in tension. In reality, democracy is the only hope we have of achieving societies that provide material and physical security. Without the accountability of elections, leaders will rob the public blind.

To borrow from @scottlincicome.bsky.social: he just likes tariffs

Other countries need to start boycotting the World Cup and the LA 2028 Olympics because the US cannot guarantee the safety of visitors if the Trump admin's goons don't cut it out. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

My aunties-in-law have gotten in days long screaming matches about this that ended with me learning new Hindi curse words and family members gifting rice cookers to each other out of spite

Miami-Dade man who voted for Trump says ICE "kidnapped" his partner of 20 years, who is Cuban. 8 months detained, she hasn't seen a judge and could be deported to Cuba. "I didn't vote for this," he says. "I'm sorry. I didn't know this was going to happen." www.local10.com/news/local/2...

Originalism: Okay, fine, the law doesn’t allow what I want. But what if the people who wrote the law messed up, and wanted the law to allow what I want, except — oops! — they accidentally wrote it differently? That should outweigh what the law says (except when I agree with what the law says).

> and their last line of defense was that Marco Rubio was on the inside

So much time and public money wasted catering to the fragile feelings of white reactionary “Patriots.” whyy.org/articles/phi...

This is the perfect bird shape. 🪶

the crisis of literacy is real and it's here in the replies

On tariffs, the Supreme Court ruled that factual reality is real (rather than a version of "who are courts to say the Trump admin's obvious lies aren't true?") and the law is what the statue says (rather than whatever Trump and his backers wish it said). That's a positive. They often don't do that.

If the judge cites “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” in a case affecting your life (as Elena Kagan literally does in Pulsifer v. United States), you should be allowed to do some crime.

They should invent a tasty food that is right next to my bed.

The Metropolitan Police are contacting Andrew's former protection officers and asking them to "consider carefully" what they may have seen or heard in relation to Epstein. That is the term they used.

We told you of this recently, but we've been asked to comment. Again it's striking because Francis backed Leo in large part due to his diplomacy. Francis sometimes had the loose lips of the bouncer he used to be; in Leo he saw an ally who was more careful. Leo does choose his words. In the few -

Happy Friday to you guys

Contrast how this CEO responded vs how various tech executives have handled this, eg, bringing 24-karat gold bars to the Oval Office, or paying tens of millions of dollars to the president’s wife for a “documentary”

Since 1992, there's only been one US presidential election without someone born in the 1940s at the top of either ticket.

And these are the prepared remarks!

I think Kavanaugh being in the minority on tariffs is a good sign for him on birthright citizenship, because writing a novella-length dissent on tariffs is exactly the kind of punk-ass move he’d pull if he was going to go against Trump on birthright citizenship

“The greatest nightmare for this administration is [ordinary people] paying attention.”

The husband of the Secretary of Education is involved in a sex-trafficking lawsuit and she will not be asked about it. www.postwrestling.com/2026/02/20/j...

"Lawlessness from the court" is gonna roll around in my head for a bit

This is just wrong analytically, but also if this WaPo idiot is wondering where the private sector union members went, hundreds of them just got laid off at his own paper! www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

were we expecting the Living Marxism brigade to not come to the defence of Prince Andrew at this point

We are being way too lenient with the MAGA movement

Always wild that this isn't already illegal www.notus.org/money/tom-su...

it's so funny watching doomers spend like 2 hours over SCOTUS's ruling when (1) Trump enacted even more tariffs and (2) this is what the tariff refunds are going to look like for the right

How wonderful, the snow has finally melted down enough that I can see parts of the yard! Now to take a nice sip of hot coffee while I read this weekend weather report

sorry, as someone who has basically been in a war of words with basically everyone in the postliberal circle i am going to go mad over Sam Kriss managing to reinvent himself as a mainstream writer after a dip in First Things/The Lamp land

It's good that they got at the right result, but the tariffs issue isn't really just a matter of statutory interpretation, nor major questions doctrine. This is a power Congress fundamentally cannot delegate to the president, no more than they could say the president will decide income tax rates.

After 5 years of adventures my hat has finally achieved perfect hatness. Just the right amount of stained, faded, destroyed, and loved. Like a seasoned cast iron pan, a worn out ballcap is an invaluable addition to any wardrobe.

Holocaust survivors spent 60 years warning that Nazis had been normal people, not monsters, and that they would come back if we weren't vigilant. They were right, but then they died and we forgot. We became less vigilant. Now here we are.

in retrospect MAGA getting mad at one wasian and getting horny for another wasian should have been on the bingo card

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands. As a boy, Oleh loved to sit with his dad in the conductor's room as he drove the train. Now, he repairs trains hit by Russian drones -- attacks which are increasingly common as Russia tries to destroy logistics routes.

Chapter 4: Don't Open The Trash Bin In The Garage

1. This is nuts. 2. Once again, we remain far too tolerant of MAGA behavior.

So far from this #EpsteinRegime - the Commerce Sec entangled in Epstein files - the Labor Sec under investigation for alleged inappropriate sexual relationship w/ a subordinate; her husband implicated in sexual assault - the DHS Sec & alleged lover implicated in a reported mile high fuck jet & ↘️

I think the psychosis around data centers in both directions is sort of dumb. They're light/heavy industry land uses with with some positive externalities and some negative ones. It seems like the kind of thing where it's actually basically fine to let the company and the community negotiate?

Today in closed captioning

Can't say I'm surprised that Tracey is going full "Epstein did nothing wrong." Is he still pretending to be a leftist?

He simply doesn't think in those terms. He thought the Supreme Court ruling was an issue of loyalty, not the law.

Judges keep issuing scathing rulings about ICE's law-breaking but then don't impose any penalties on anyone for them, and so then it's just sternly worded letters, not law.

> Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain talking about national restoration > using the Australian band AC/DC's Thunderstuck come on man there had to be at least one British rock band you could have opted for instead