Recent posts by Public Intellectuals and Advocates on Bluesky

The Republican budget bill continues the attack on the healthcare of everyday Americans. And is a dirty piece of legislation.

Donald Trump’s housing market.

at 1:09 -- "think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?" I met him once -- he was completely gracious and interested in talking to a young punk about politics. A total class act. youtu.be/wgqirITCor8?...

To celebrate The New Yorker’s centenary, we invited six photographers to reinterpret covers from our archive. See the rest here: nyer.cm/4r8uOG7

An appeals court has tossed @ninajankowicz.com's defamation suit against Fox News. "As a disinformation researcher, the part of the outcome that stands out most to me is the failure of the law to meet this moment in our information ecosystem," she writes: wiczipedia.substack.com/p/the-justic...

Sounds like Kashyap Patel’s performance for one wasn’t well-received by the rest of the administration. On the bright side, if he gets fired he can always go back to podcasting

In case you were curious how things were going, Kash “See you in Valhalla” Patel went full on looney tunes Colonel Jessep during a Senate hearing today.

GEORGIA — “Former Georgia Lt. Gov Geoff Duncan announced his candidacy for governor Tuesday… The former Republican will run as a Democrat.” www.yahoo.com/news/article...

NYT catalogs the way Trump's invasion of DC has shut down normal life. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/u...

"In every authoritarian country that has ever existed, it is a crime to criticize the regime, and that's what they are doing." @monacharen.bsky.social, joined by @monacharen.bsky.social, on Just Between Us, for Bulwark+ members only:

“In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump’s DOJ deleted a study from its site stating right-wing violence ‘continues to outpace all other types of terrorism & domestic violent extremism’ in 🇺🇸 — The study was available online until Friday.” newrepublic.com/post/200537/...

Coming tomorrow. Something that's been talked about for many decades, but not done. That's changing. Subscribe; it's free, and you'll get the link by email and future posts. erictopol.substack.com

🚨BIG NEWS: Republicans just quietly added a line to a defense bill that would empower the Pentagon and Pete Hegseth to deploy armed private mercenaries inside the U.S. at the southern border for the first time in American history.

Charlie Kirk frequently said that “college was a scam”

Yes, release the Epstein files!!!

“Stay in your cars! Tell everyone to stay in your houses.” Illinois state senator Karina Villa out in the street warning folks about ICE

"Do we understand what the difference is between a king and president?" Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked at an event in Manhattan today.

These spot-the-difference games are getting really hard

Free speech is on the chopping block 💙 if you want to protect our First Amendment rights

It's like Trump has a big stack of baseball cards listing each of our traditional allies, and he's rushing to see how much he can destroy not just that relationship but the goodwill citizens of those allies once had to the US.

Pull the red carpet out from under Trump's feet.

A Republican member of North Carolina’s elections board sang the praises of bipartisanship at a U.S. Congressional hearing on elections Tuesday, despite working in recent months to shift the state’s voting rules toward the GOP. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

"'If ICE came and got all the undocumented out of Belmont Cragin, we would lose our community.'"

Trump’s Addiction to Power by Division

JUST IN: Former GOP Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a fierce Trump critic who supported Kamala Harris, is running for Georgia governor as a Democrat. “I’m running for governor…to make Georgia the frontline of democracy and a backstop against extremism.”

Trump called for a crackdown on the "radical left". But right-wing extremists are responsible for more political violence ⬇️

TikTok misusing our personal data is bad. Selling TikTok to a Trump-aligned billionaire family and one of his biggest political donors is even worse.

In leaked audio, GOP candidate Winsome Sears boasts of incorporating DOGE architect Vivek Ramaswamy into her campaign for Virginia governor. Thousands of families in Virginia have lost jobs because of DOGE.

I feel like Kash came very close to saying in today's hearing that the Epstein survivors aren't credible. Which is consistent with Todd Blanche letting Ghislaine slander them in her "proffer."

If you want people to use alt-text on here you can’t place a character limit on it. Or at least you can’t place a limit on it that wouldn’t match up with as much text as one person can add into a single page with the smallest font Is there any technical reason to have a character limit on alt-text

What a surprise. Trump being inconsistent. The guy says...whatever.

Gee, I wonder why. www.404media.co/doj-deletes-...

When pressed as to why he murdered Kirk, Robinson told his partner: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Robinson said he planned for a little over a week and added the bullet engravings because he thought it would be amusing to see discussed on Fox News. trib.al/AkzPAxI

UTAH — Judge tells Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer Tyler Robinson he faces the death penalty, sets the next hearing for September 29th

They each became involved in the progressive world, too. Bob became a major figure in the NRDC environmental group. Paul, who made it on to Nixon's enemies list, later was a part owner of The Nation magazine. They were each gracious, smart, and engaged. They entertained and enlightened.

1. Prosecutors released this text exchange they say took place between Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, and his roommate, whom they say was also a romantic partner.

MAGA has radicalized its own base. No matter how much they spin and attack "the left," the reality remains their base is now a massive threat to both national security and other Republicans. Parts of the base don't believe Kash Patel on Epstein or Charlie Kirk's murder. Whoopsie.

NEW: A Republican member of North Carolina’s election board — who helped shift the state’s voting rules in the party’s favor — lauded the importance of bipartisanship on the election board at a U.S. Congressional hearing on elections. From: @jimsaksa.com

Trump’s so-called Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States.

"In the current environment of fear and uncertainty at NASA, it will be more challenging than ever to elicit dissenting views, making it more difficult than ever to prevent the next human spaceflight tragedy."

LIVE: View of Utah court where Charlie Kirk assassination suspect is set to appear virtually reut.rs/3VTvbiO

I'm really concerned that white people are just not up to the task. A lot of y'all are well meaning but you're just not up to the task because you've never been systematically oppressed and you refuse to listen to people who have been

What? I'm doing whose job for them?

Peter Thiel & The Antichrist: Silicon Valley Apocalypse Hype

They are so hilariously afraid of Zohran

Definitely the easiest target to hit, as other Rs talk about investigating liberal think tanks/funds like OSF and Ford. There's no political constituency for antifa, by definition. But Rs frequently pretend it's a paramilitary wing of Chuck Schumer's Democrats. They wouldn't mind a crackdown.

The U.S. government is “weaponizing the immigration system in a manner that is completely unconstitutional,” Kilmar Ábrego García’s lead immigration lawyer said, after his client was rearrested in August.

A good thread on why Ezra's latest pieces are so terrible.

Maybe Ezra Klein should have asked Ben Shapiro about his friend and fellow Daily Wire podcaster, Matt Walsh, who is calling for the death of everyone on the left and LGBTQ people.

"It was as if Robert Redford looked at the cinematic landscape, sighed, and said, 'You don’t need all this makeup, all this CGI crap to tell a story. You just need my face.' Would that we could all be so fortunate." www.thebulwark.com/p/robert-red...

BREAKING ABUSE OF POWER: Sore Winner Trump is EXTORTING million from the @nytimes by suing the paper for $15B for reporting THE TRUTH leading up to his *win* in 2024. To line his pockets, he's done the same to Paramount and ABC. HE MUST BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE ASAP!!!! www.npr.org/2025/09/16/n...

A two-fer of beneficial associations with the planetary, primarily plant-based diet journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

Hiding the truth.

The Trump admin has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, according to four people familiar with the matter, including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Fun fact: Nancy Mace is trying to censure me over comments I never said.   Her res does not contain a single quote from me because she couldn’t find any.   Unlike her, I have routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology.

Rep. Nancy Mace continues to use a transgender slur — isn’t that considered hate speech?

@lisaramirez.com is a really good candidate to follow.

⚡️'Immediately clarify the incident' — Home damaged during Russian drone incursion may have been hit by Polish missile, media reports. Political pressure in Poland is mounting amid reports that a home damaged during Russia's drone incursion on Sept. 10 may have been caused by a Polish missile.

This looks faker than the war on Christmas

They want us scared into silence. Don’t fall for it.

Trump: “300 million people [Americans] died last year from drugs.” So… basically the entire country?😂

You're kidding right

Clare Malone Profiles the “House Inhabit” founder Jessica Reed Kraus, tracing her rise from a mommy blogger to a “Make America Healthy Again” maven.

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump and his allies wasted no time crafting an insidious and baseless narrative: that the left is violent, the right is under siege, and only they can restore order. Sound familiar? The Nazis tried the same playbook.

The next wannabe governor from Florida was spared prison, had his record sealed, and got not one, but three chances at redemption. Now he’s pushing a D.C. crime bill that would deny those same chances to young adults in the District. That screams “opportunities for me, but not for thee.”

The Dept. of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the U.S.

Every single word👇…no lies detected!

Kash Patel testified he did not discipline or terminate FBI employees because of their assignment to specific cases involving the President, alone. When I asked him if that meant they were terminated in part for work on those cases, he refused to give a straight answer. Watch:

Among Republicans, even more visible than grief was a growing sense of rage. in Congress it has produced executive branch investigations, new bills, and a cultural push to punish ordinary people for speaking ill of Kirk. Press Pass from @cheetah.bsky.social: www.thebulwark.com/p/republican...

Book bans get headlines, but the bigger threat to books is hiding in plain sight: A handful of companies control how ebooks reach readers, and they can cut off access with a click. New from @mariabustillos.com in @columjournreview.bsky.social ⤵️

Things have gotten out of hand and it’s now going both ways. People are being doxxed and fired from their jobs, and in response, some are retaliating by taking screenshots of those who doxxed them to return the favor.

Former senator Joe Manchin talks the problems with the Democratic brand and how they help shield Republicans from anger over their own mismanagement - like in West Virginia. Manchin joins @timmiller.bsky.social on today's Bulwark Podcast:

NEWS: Pam Bondi pushes forward with criminalizing "hate speech," Trump removes FBI agents from investigating child predator networks to conduct deportations, Kash Patel grilled by the Senate, and more. All the news you missed today: open.substack.com/pub/aaronpar...

He flagged Trump’s name for special handling, then said everything’s above board. Spin, meet sunlight. Kash Patel said “no credible information” tied Epstein to others. The record shreds that claim.🔥👇 www.jackhopkinsnow.com

The Trump administration and Department of Energy policies have already cost Americans 91,000 clean energy jobs and counting. They are actively killing jobs in rural places and small towns across this country, and they have no plan to replace them.

The Utah County attorney recounts a text exchange between the killer and the roommate. Full: www.c-span.org/program/news...

Important cat business. You wouldn’t understand. Photo from my collection, 1972.

JD Vance's threat to use the power of government to attack his political opponents under the pretext of national security is nothing new. Decades ago, my father and I watched the infamous Joe McCarthy do the same thing. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/personal-history-my-father-and-joe

The trans partner of Tyler Robinson had no knowledge about it and was told to delete messages but didn't and instead turned them immediately over to the police and cooperated. Yet, the right is demonizing her and blame everything on trans people despite the trans person here doing the right thing.

In a trio of cases, two currently pending before the Supreme Court and one that is likely to land on the justices’ doorstep as soon as Tuesday, President Donald Trump claims new powers that, if he prevails, would give him near-total control over all US fiscal and monetary policy.

Private equity firms are about to profit off of a school voucher provision tucked into the "Big Beautiful Bill."

Worst boyfriend ever. The roommate is basically a trans Jodi Foster.

Why did they move Ghislaine Maxwell? Who made the deal and what were the terms?

BREAKING: 80% of TikTok would be controlled by Oracle $ORCL, Silver Lake, and A16z, per WSJ

Hahaha yes! I have heard that one! As you correctly discerned it is ridiculous and not true. Any cat with visible tabby markings can have an “M”. Has nothing to do with Maine Coon lineage.

THE most important part: PATEL DID NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION They are running away and frantically pointing elsewhere for a reason.

"You work hard, pass through gates, and eventually succeed. I don’t disbelieve this proposition, exactly. But it now seems like an incomplete understanding of reality. The world is not just a ladder; it’s also an ecosystem." www.thebulwark.com/p/right-piec...

Now leading HuffPost:

I am just remembering how adamant some people were on here that this was a PROFESSIONAL HIT.

As the Trump admin pushes for legal consequences for those who criticize Charlie Kirk or minimize his death, employers are likewise handing down disciplinary actions and firings.

"U.S. TIKTOK USERS WOULD BE ASKED TO SHIFT TO NEW APP" To paraphrase Jack Donaghy, never follow a fascist to a second location

Still waiting to find out how Trump and Republicans think cutting health insurance for 15 MILLION Americans makes America healthy again.

Really think it's important to give props to Never Trump Republicans when they walk the walk on democracy and the rule of law, at great personal risk to themselves -->

Really think it's important to give props to Never Trump Republicans when they walk the walk on democracy and the rule of law to great personal risk to themselves -->

I’m sticking with “assassination is bad” and add “if, as these charges suggest, you assassinated someone to fight hate, you absolutely condemned a bunch of other people to die as a natural consequence.”

REPORTER: Florida pulled vaccine mandates for children to attend public schools. Is that the right call? What should parents be doing? DR OZ: Well one thing you can be sure of is kids love their kids more than anybody else loves their kids

REPORTER: Dr Oz, how many rural hospitals have you personally visited? DR OZ: Dozens. Oh, not in this term. This -- heh -- this is 24/7 job.

Scoop: Israel presented Syria with proposal for new security agreement

In one alleged exchange, Robinson tells the roommate, "To be honest I had hoped to keep this secret till I died of old age. I am sorry to involve you."