The Fifth Declension
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thefifthdeclension.bsky.social
The Fifth Declension
@thefifthdeclension.bsky.social
700 followers 1.6K following 1.1K posts
experience: writing code very slow study: biology, 日本語 interest: visual art I'm at the limit of what I can track, so i rarely follow back - no offense intended. I block bogus-looking accounts.
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Reposted by The Fifth Declension
"They are coming for people just trying to get by. Landscapers, roofers, tamale women, Lyft drivers waiting in a lot at O'Hare, the people standing outside a Home Depot hoping that today might be better than yesterday."
ICE has been cracking down hard across the vast expanse of the greater Chicago area, and I wrote a little bit about what you need to understand about what it’s like here now. Plus, I compiled some resources for locals to get alerts and whistles. dansinker.com/posts/202…
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The pain about to be unleashed on tens of millions of Americans—from starvation to ripping away health insurance to pre-schools to home buyers to struggling farmers is unlikely anything any American president has ever done on purpose.

And Trump believes he's fully immune to the damage he's doing.
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Can we please have a Democrat with a spine who is not doing this kind of soulless bullshit, please? Please?
GOV. WHITMER: “.. no one is worried about building a ballroom in Washington, D.C. What they want is to make sure that they can feed their kids next week.” Most Americans are “never going to step foot in a ballroom over the course of their lifetime.”

@thehill.com
thehill.com/homenews/adm...
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The Art Deco brilliance of the Helsinki Central Railway Station
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DO NOT talk to FBI without a lawyer.

Just don't.

They won't agree to record the intvw. They'll take notes & "summarize" in a 302. It's *their* version, but if inaccurate, you'll lose any swearing contest later.

And if you lie to them re. anything material (or they say you did), it's a felony.
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I wonder if there is honest discussion happening in journalism schools across the country and around the world about the general failure of the elite corporate media covering US govt and political affairs.
it’s wild that this is just sort of the most openly corrupt administration of all time and they’re just allowed to do that and most media doesn’t say a word about it
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If he were right, the import price index (which measures pre-tariff prices) would have fallen by enough to offset the sharp tariff hike. It didn't.
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One of the reasons I hate To Kill a Mockingbird is the book reinforces the idea that the "real" racists are white, poor, and deviant and that "respectable" white people aren't racist but are at the mercy of the real racists.
You probably already know about @runforsomething.net . The list of alums on their website continues to grow.
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TL;DR: "everything, everywhere, all at once" needs to be Dem candidate recruitment policy for at least the next two election cycles, and really should be normalized into standard electoral strategy

7/7
@thefifthdeclension.bsky.social
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Trump-hostile state legislatures can slow-walk complying with federal initiatives, or redraw Congressional maps

Trump-hostile municipalities can control the police departments that Feds leverage to do crimes

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@thefifthdeclension.bsky.social
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State and local candidates then become your farm team for statewide and federal offices in 2028+. You might find people who are unusually skilled at campaigning or fundraising or organizing

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@thefifthdeclension.bsky.social
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It also ensures that if there's an "upside surprise," you have candidates who can win unexpectedly instead of Rs winning by default

That was the fatal error NC Dems made in 2016, when Rs won an outright majority of the Legislature the day candidate filing closed

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@thefifthdeclension.bsky.social
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Contesting every race also brings out more voters than it would otherwise, because local candidates can mobilize their neighbors and friends in a way the national parties can't. It's "push" vs "pull". It's distributed load applied to politics instead of physics

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@thefifthdeclension.bsky.social
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The entire country is so vast and diverse that the whole system is architected on subsidiarity.

The federal government simply does not have the infrastructure or people or money to achieve its goals without state and municipal help

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@thefifthdeclension.bsky.social
Reposted by The Fifth Declension
State and local governments. I can't overstate how important it is for Dems to contest every state legislative race, in every district, everywhere

You live in Wyoming in an R+25 district? Run a Dem anyway. In an Alabama R+50? Run a Dem. Electing a dog catcher in MS? Run

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bsky.app/profile/thef...
How best can democracy survive if Democrats can't flip both House and Senate in 2026?

(I know: dumbass unknowable question. Curious to hear you riff on it, though.)
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Schiff voted to confirm one of Trump’s judges roughly an hour before his account posted this.
Donald Trump's deployment of federal agents to San Francisco will not make the city safer or improve the quality of life for residents.

It will only serve to inflame tensions, which is tragically what the president seeks. 🧵
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This is very, very true

Easy example to confirm is pretty much any litigation. Witnesses who can recount an experience in an intimate setting like an office sound one way, and will sound totally different in a more formal format like court

Likewise when talking to people vs talking to a camera
People keep saying this but I strongly disagree that most people can successfully perform an emotion on camera or speaking in front of a crowd if you merely authentically experience that emotion. It's much harder than you think it is. bsky.app/profile/inep...
It's still galling that a Democratic politician would need speech training and acting classes to learn how to convey anger at the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. So many Dem politicians are Turing Test failures, trapped somewhere in the uncanny valley between human and robot.
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The problem is that there’s safety in numbers and all of the numbers are with cowardice. I keep thinking about how more than 140 House GOP voted against PA and AZ’s official electoral college votes *after* the insurrection. Even when he tried to kill them and failed, they didn’t choose themselves.
A 14-word replacement for most op-eds, substacks, etc about this moment.

The GOP could stop ALL of this, right now—if a handful of Sens or Reps could step outside the cult.

It would take four in the Senate, four (maybe five) in the House, to change history.

Until then, they're all to blame.
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this is what will happen if mamdani makes bus rides free
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Proud of the Rapid Response To Kristi Noem's press conference in Minnesota yesterday. 🐸

1,500 protestors showed up outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Building to greet her. ✊🏼

Chanting: "No more Minnesota nice, we don't want your dirty ICE." 🧊
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In 1874, Monet exhibited with Pissarro, Sisley, Manet, Cézanne, Degas, and other artists rejected by the Paris Salon. Visitors were shocked and outraged.

Impression, Sunrise caused the biggest stir—some said they couldn’t even tell what was painted.