Trump's mechanism to pay the troops during the shutdown is by far the most illegal budgetary action he's taken as POTUS, potentially setting the stage to break everything.

It's also needless because Congress would easily pass a troop pay bill if Johnson were willing to gavel in.

Long thread.

This is almost literally what the English Civil War was fought over.

That’s $5 billion more than the entire annual USAID budget. All to one country. To rescue one friend of the president’s.

There's literally no reason for Congress to exist if any random freak in the presidential orbit can nullify laws and seize federal funds. All of this is plainly illegal, but Mike Johnson leads the most corrupt Congress in US history (and by a wide margin.)

studio execs & major outlets claim AI is "inevitable" and poised to take over Hollywood. the reality is much different. i spoke with filmmakers, producers, and editors about how AI is actually showing up in productions – and what it still can't do:

My vote in the 2028 D primary for POTUS will hinge almost entirely on the % of this Administration they promise to imprison

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...

ICYMI: “And now, a response from the leader of the frog resistance...” 🐸 🎵 #Colbert

Everyone agrees that we're currently in a dotcom era-like AI bubble. People disagree what sort of bubble it is.

There are 3 stories one can tell about the dotcom crash: a startup story, a telecom story, and an accounting fraud story.

My take: it's giving Enron
open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

“The humans won hands down when it came to notes, which require actual analysis rather than just distillation. The AI programs were ‘an almost total fail across the board.’”

Nice to know I wouldn’t have been so easily replaced at my old job by an A.I.

variety.com/2025/film/ne...

The use of AI to marionette a woman whose tortured existence was spent trying to carve her own life and identity out of the space men forced her into is both damningly macabre and a surprisingly perfect encapsulation of the problems with this ghoulish use of technology.

EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of leaked messages show leaders of Young Republican groups joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape in a private Telegram chat.

Inside rising GOP leaders’ racist chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than 7 months👇

Sam Altman went from “AI will cure cancer" to "ChatGPT porn" in less than a month

The @chicago.suntimes.com photographer who risked their personal health and safety to take this photograph is Anthony Vazquez. Please credit photographers and media outlets. In this age of misinformation, a photo with no context could be anything at all.

There's no "regular politics" anymore because you can no longer maintain the idea that we all agree on common goals but we only differ about the means of getting there or whatever. The guys in charge now are plainly amoral, sadistic nihilists. They delight in it! You can't civilly disagree with that

the actual story here, which the media never talks about, is that police in this country have become a discrete right-wing political operation. the story isn't about cops leaving (they're lying about that), it's about the police trying to exert influence over elections.

This two-parter below is exactly why it's hard to make clothes in the United States.

Let's look at how much it costs to produce a button-up shirt in the US. 🧵

Chicago not letting Portland have all the fun 🐧

the inflatable costume thing is an extremely smart tactic

Also: if you work for ICE, even if you’re not one of the ones arresting citizens or tackling 15-year-olds or zip-tying kids together and segregating them by race, you’re part of the mechanism making it happen, and you should suffer long-term social and post-regime-change consequences.

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:

In a huge coincidence, a Bitcoin billionaire just-so-happened to put up massive leveraged bets against Bitcoin and Ethereum right before Trump posted about new tariffs on China, prompting a market crash.

$200m in profits instantly. $200m we know about, because they likely used many accounts.

Listen to the response to this and look how easy it is to say it.