rhammersley
banner
rhammersley.bsky.social
rhammersley
@rhammersley.bsky.social
3K followers 4.1K following 2.2K posts
energy/land-use/enviro attorney, ecologist, activist & political junkie, angler/hunter, cyclist/triathlete, music lover, futbol (Arsenal) & Michigan sports fan; live in Traverse City. (he/him) https://about.me/rosshammersley
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by rhammersley
my latest: i spent weeks investigating how frustrations about data centers were about to swallow american politics…

…and then the 2025 election happened, proving the electoral impacts are already here.

read and share my deep dive on the bipartisan AI techlash shaping our elections before our eyes!
The Data Center Backlash Is Swallowing American Politics
Activists on both the left and the right are pushing back against rampant AI development.
heatmap.news
Reposted by rhammersley
This photo expresses a simple truth: Donald Trump is not the person you can count on when you need help.
incredible photo that's definitely worth at least 1,000 words from Andrew Harnik of Getty
Reposted by rhammersley
Yeah, just to say: FDR thought a lot of his fellow aristocrats were basically anti-democratic, but more than that what he thought they were was lazy, selfish, entitled, spoiled, decadent. He knew about Hearst and the Liberty League types. But he feared appeasement more than counterrevolution.
takes one to know one sometimes, and I think a good-faith member of the elite class having their eyes opened has more withering estimation of the elites than anyone else, including revolutionary theorists or skeptical middle class supporters. FDR knew them to be inert, for vividly personal reasons
FDR would've felt incredibly vindicated by all of this. A core proposition of the New Deal was that the country's ruling class was incapable — at best — of defending the Constitution, and that it was up to a dissident vanguard of intellectuals, in conjunction with workers and farmers, to do it.
Reposted by rhammersley
Reposted by rhammersley
“The destruction of U.S.A.I.D. [caused] public man-made death. And the cruelty and lethality will only grow as the Administration expands its rollback of public-health advances to the homeland.”
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands
The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes.
www.newyorker.com
Reposted by rhammersley
Every day, as a Jew, I am going to call the ADL's tip line to report Mamdani anti-Semitism with at least three seismically moronic insights. I will begin with an accusation that the new mayor prefers strawberry and blueberry bagels to savory, and sometimes schmears butter.

Fuck Jonathan Greenblatt.
Reposted by rhammersley
Trans hatred is an exciting message for (a) die-hard GOP voters and (b) a handful of wealthy pundits & consultants who wrongly call themselves "liberal." But it doesn't move normies and never will.

In 2022, GOP went all-in anti-trans in MI & PA and similarly got clocked by Whitmer & Shapiro.
Spanberger’s GOP foe spent 57% of her ad budget on anti-trans attacks. Spanberger focused on the economy. You see what won. trib.al/fkMmsR4

The simple truth told time and time again in the polls: The public doesn’t care about trans issues. Voters care deeply about the economy, inflation, & prices.
Reposted by rhammersley
BREAKING: SCOTUS lets Trump administration implement anti-trans, anti-nonbinary passport policy.

The Democratic appointees, led by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. The ruling, which applies during litigation, effectively reverses two lower court rulings.

Today, at Law Dork:
Breaking: SCOTUS lets Trump administration implement anti-trans, anti-nonbinary passport policy
The Democratic appointees, led by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. The ruling, which applies during litigation, effectively reverses two lower court rulings.
www.lawdork.com
Reposted by rhammersley
We should totally do renewables.
Wait, what?

He did what?

JFC. Trump wants to protect coal, an industry that employs fewer than people than the Cheesecake Factory.
Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative

electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
Australia's extensive solar power penetration makes so much energy that the government wants to offer free electricity at peak hours.
electrek.co
Reposted by rhammersley
When the shakedowns just start happening in public.

$NVO
Trump to the Novo Nordisk CEO: "Maybe you should give us a piece of the company like I've been asking for."
Reposted by rhammersley
It’s been a pleasure working with Lex and everyone in the politics vertical at Teen Vogue. I’m heartbroken that my column, Disability Visibility, is gone. Teen Vogue was one of the few places that published disabled journalists regularly. I just spent the last 2 months working on my next column
I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.
Reposted by rhammersley
I'm one of the four fired employees. I was a writer & producer at Bon Appétit for nearly five years, during which I helped organize our union and sat on our bargaining committee.

I am, to my knowledge, the only trans woman in our union and the only trans woman on editorial who doesn't work at Them
New: Conde Nast fired four employees who were among a group that confronted the company's head of human resources on Wednesday over the decision to fold Teen Vogue into Vogue/recent cuts. Employees who were fired included journalists from the New Yorker, Wired, and Bon Appétit.
Reposted by rhammersley
Legal groups sue Trump administration over use of Israeli spyware on immigrant communities, @alexmar.bsky.social reports. Civil rights attorneys are seeking documents disclosing details on the extent of ICE’s use of invasive Israeli spyware to track, monitor, & target immigrants & activists.
Legal groups sue Trump administration over use of Israeli spyware on immigrants
Civil rights attorneys are seeking documents disclosing details on the extent of ICE’s use of invasive Israeli spyware to target immigrants
prismreports.org
Reposted by rhammersley
NEW: In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, a pair of Democratic senators said the DOJ’s efforts to seize voter data from states “appear to be driven by blind allegiance to the President’s unlawful” sweeping anti-voting order and pose serious privacy risks.
DOJ Efforts to Seize Voter Data ‘Pose Serious Risks’ to Privacy and National Security, Senators Warn
Read more here.
www.democracydocket.com
Reposted by rhammersley
Trump and Republicans found billions of dollars to send to Argentina.

But they’re not willing to work to find the money to help people afford their health care premiums, keep hospitals and clinics open, or ensure people can afford groceries.
Reposted by rhammersley
Are these low prices in the room with us?
Reposted by rhammersley
Reposted by rhammersley
On March 6, #SCOTUS denied a Trump emergency application in the Dellinger case. That was the last time that happened; today's ruling is the 24th (consecutive) grant since then.

I survey this broader pattern (and its alarming implications) in a new draft paper here:

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Reposted by rhammersley
SCOTUS has granted a stay in Trump v. Orr, the trans passport case, meaning that the government will be able to once again deny gender marker changes to trans passport applicants.

This is a terrible decision with horrifying consequences for trans folks.

www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
Reposted by rhammersley
ACLU @aclu.org · 7h
BREAKING: The Supreme Court granted the Trump administration's request to enforce its discriminatory passport policy while our lawsuit makes its way through the courts.

This decision undermines the freedom of transgender, non-binary, and intersex people to have our IDs reflect who we are.
Reposted by rhammersley
Because the government, more specifically this administration, knows what your gender is better than you do…😡
#BREAKING: #SCOTUS grants yet another stay to the Trump administration, putting back into place a new State Department policy requiring passports to display their bearers' biological sex at birth.

Justice Jackson (joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan) once again dissents.