Vanessa Enriquez-Rios
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pt007.bsky.social
Vanessa Enriquez-Rios
@pt007.bsky.social
2.6K followers 5K following 9K posts
Cancer & Developmental Biology, PhD👩‍🔬 🏳️‍🌈
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Organic Chemistry, MS
UCLA, Go Bruins 💙 💛
Chemistry, BS
UCSC, Go Slugs 💙💛
Encephalitis Warrior 🧠🔥
Politics
Southern Illinois
Posts Replies Media Videos
pt007.bsky.social
apnews.com/article/nati...
AP News: Last week, a federal judge ordered an end to the deployment but also put her order on hold for 21 days to allow the Trump administration time to either remove the troops or appeal the decision.
November 26, 2025 at 9:20 PM
pt007.bsky.social
Bruce Fanger's take on the Mamdani-Trump meeting is worth a read.
www.facebook.com/share/18tBDx...
What the meeting showed is simpler and more damning: Trump is only powerful when the room fears him. Take the fear away, and he becomes oddly gentle, strangely polite, and completely unable to dominate the conversation. People think tyrants rage because they’re strong. But the truth is they only rage when they know the room will absorb it. Mamdani didn’t absorb it. So Trump didn’t rage. He folded. Nicely. Neatly. Like a man who knows the cameras are watching and doesn’t want the world to see what he looks like when the mask cracks.
November 22, 2025 at 2:09 AM
pt007.bsky.social
Two-thirds of Democrats say their own party makes them feel frustrated. By far the most commonly cited reason is that the party is not pushing back hard enough against Trump.
— @johngramlich.bsky.social
www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...
Bar chart showing the most common reasons that Democrats cite for being frustrated with their party. The chart is based on a September 2025 Pew Research Center survey.
November 10, 2025 at 2:24 PM
pt007.bsky.social
Jemar Tisby, PhD
Coates put it this way, So I don’t think it requires you to feel that you’ll eventually lose. On the contrary, I think it requires you to feel that even if you do lose, you have this steadfastness to keep going. I maintain hope that one day the United States will be better and stronger than it is now. That this trial of character and government will move us “toward a more perfect union.” That positive change just may not happen quickly.
September 30, 2025 at 3:54 PM
pt007.bsky.social
"to as many people as can hear him—‘No, I don’t want your help. I’m just here to patrol you and to desensitize you to my presence.’"
“One day he comes in to walk the office, like he does occasionally, and a few minutes after he passes by, another officer walks through. This time, it’s somebody we’ve never seen before, and he’s like, kitted out. He’s dressed in all black from head to toe; he’s got body armor on. He’s wearing a tactical helmet. He’s got a big gun on him, like a rifle, not like a handgun in a side pouch. He did not have a visible name tag, which is not standard at all—everybody in a federal facility is required to identify themselves at all times, and he had no individual identifying markings. The only writing on his uniform was the big yellow text on his back that said HOMELAND SECURITY.
September 26, 2025 at 1:11 PM
pt007.bsky.social
The opposite is the case. As coequal rulers of this republic — along with people of other faiths or no faith at all — we are not to sit idly by when a president abuses his power. The citizens, including evangelical citizens, have the responsibility to hold Trump accountable for his many grave wrongs. And the singular failure of MAGA Christianity to uphold this biblical obligation has helped unleash Trump’s hatred on our nation.
September 25, 2025 at 3:55 PM
pt007.bsky.social
The bottom line is that American Christians inherit both Scripture’s individual obligation to love their enemies and the national obligation to do justice. That is a high moral calling. Hatred and dehumanization are not viable moral options for us. There is no scenario in which we can cheer for or empower either one.
September 25, 2025 at 3:54 PM
pt007.bsky.social
Cheering Trump’s hatred is tantamount to cheering Trump’s corruption and abuse because hatred is at the root of his administration’s poisonous tree. But that’s not the only theological mistake. You can’t apply Romans 13 to an American president because an American president is not a Roman emperor. He is not our ruler. Yes, he exercises authority, but the sovereign ruler of the American nation is the American people, and our rule is expressed through elections and — crucially — through constitutional law.
September 25, 2025 at 3:46 PM
pt007.bsky.social
A New York Times headline from February 4, 1939 Goebbels End Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime
September 18, 2025 at 8:28 PM
pt007.bsky.social
And if all of that fails and Republicans end up staring at a blue wave next year anyway, some new pretext will be contrived to disrupt the elections. Once you’ve decided that “saving Western Civilization” depends on your party maintaining power, there’s nothing that can’t be justified toward that end.
September 17, 2025 at 2:02 AM
pt007.bsky.social
Steve Vladeck
Tuesday, June 9, 2020, 10:47 PM
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-...
11 states that, per public reports, appear to have sent troops to Washington, 10 have Republican governors. Meanwhile, Democratic governors in at least five states were asked to send troops and refused. In other words, it’s not just that this use of § 502(f) somehow allowed the federal government to exercise command and control over state National Guard troops in Title 32 status; it’s that it was overwhelmingly troops from red states—those who wanted to support the president’s politically controversial mission—not blue states. It shouldn’t take much to see why that’s an ominous precedent to set.
August 17, 2025 at 2:37 AM
pt007.bsky.social
At the Moscow event, a woman who cautiously identified herself as a conservative Republican said she wanted to work together to take on the movement. No one booed her. “Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, progressive, Black, white, whatever it is,” Bell said, they needed to work together. Stankorb agreed: “Maybe we’re not agreeing on policy positions, but I want to believe there’s some core thing that binds us together, whether that’s our sense of rights or liberty or human freedom.”
August 16, 2025 at 10:26 PM
pt007.bsky.social
Peter’s also right that this won’t be won just by progressives. It sure isn’t being won by conservatives. Defeating this requires courage and strategy. Stop playing into their hands.
August 16, 2025 at 10:20 PM
pt007.bsky.social
Earlier this week one of Trump’s jackbooted thugs found himself at the business end of a Subway sandwich. The ovular carbohydrate weapon traveled a short but mighty distance after it was hurled by a 37-year-old white man named Sean Dunn, hitting an FBI agent square in the chest before tumbling to the ground. It was the sandwich’s maiden, and—as far as we know—only voyage. (Dunn was later arrested on a felony assault charge by 20 or so agents, shown in a pathetic video posted to social media by the White House on Thursday. He has since been released.)
August 16, 2025 at 6:36 PM
pt007.bsky.social
Here you go,
@stevevladeck.bsky.social

x.com/steve_vladec...
August 15, 2025 at 1:43 AM
pt007.bsky.social
The small to nonexistent effects of moderation in the modern era shouldn’t be surprising. Decades ago when “all politics was local,” a candidate’s moderation likely carried significant benefits. In the Trump era, by contrast, elections are driven by national tides, candidate charisma, and anti-establishment credibility—qualities that neither political consultants nor academics know how to manufacture. The difference is that we think it’s important to face that political uncertainty head on.
August 14, 2025 at 9:29 PM
pt007.bsky.social
Why This Matter Split Ticket’s flawed analysis isn’t just an academic concern. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, they argued that progressive Democrats are hurting the party’s chances. Split Ticket’s analyses have an aura of quantitative sophistication that make them seem credible. But their own metric doesn’t support this conclusion. It’s built on biased measurement, uses flawed statistical methods, and ignores basic principles of causal inference. When we correct these problems using Split Ticket’s own stated criteria, the massive pro-moderation effect disappears entirely.
August 14, 2025 at 9:29 PM
pt007.bsky.social
This week, Trump named E. J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, as McEntarfer’s replacement, subject to the charade of Senate Republican rubber-stamping that has become so common in Trump’s second term. As with despots throughout the world, Trump selected Antoni on the two criteria that consistently warm a dictator’s heart: loyalty and ideology.
August 14, 2025 at 2:35 AM
pt007.bsky.social
Trump’s tendency to falsely blame Zelensky for starting the war or for failing to stop it is precisely the type of behavior that has raised concern among some experts about his meeting with Putin. “I worry that his [Trump’s] shared authoritarian instincts with Putin, lack of clarity in his mind about his own position, and wish to be seen as a big man deciding the fate of nations at the stroke of a Sharpie will lead to him agreeing to terms which are wholly unacceptable,” Foreman said. He added that also he’s worried that Trump would then attempt to ram a bad agreement down Ukraine’s and Europe’s throats while leaving Russia “free to reattack in due course after a period of rebuilding, having left Ukraine defenseless and weakened.”
August 13, 2025 at 3:49 PM
pt007.bsky.social
In The Red Letter community, one name keeps resurfacing: “Katie Johnson.” She was a Jane Doe who accused President Trump in three different lawsuits of raping her in Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 1994, when she was a 13-year-old aspiring model. She was planning to hold a press conference in Los Angeles days before the 2016 election, but instead, she dropped her suit and vanished. Her attorney Lisa Bloom cited death threats. Her lead lawyer, Thomas Meagher, filed a one-page dismissal in Manhattan federal court. For years, I’ve wondered why.
August 13, 2025 at 3:30 PM
pt007.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/tarapalm...
EXCLUSIVE: Inside the Trump–Epstein Allegation Cohen Was Sent to “Fix” The Katie Johnson lawsuit against Trump disappeared in 2016. Michael Cohen’s account hints at why the mystery remains. Tara Palmeri Aug 12, 2025
August 13, 2025 at 3:30 PM
pt007.bsky.social
There's just one problem: Our model suggests that ideological moderates do not substantially² outperform their party's average member in 2024. Cherry-picking representatives that you identify, for other reasons, as “moderate” dramatically overstates the electoral benefit of actual empirical moderation. While there used to be a large premium for ideological moderation, it has decreased markedly over the last 25 years. In our estimates, moderates do have higher WAR scores on average, but the hypothetical improvement in vote margin due to those values is dwarfed by the uncertainty in House elections.
August 13, 2025 at 3:03 PM
pt007.bsky.social
Moderation is not a silver bullet In 2024, moderate candidates for the U.S. House barely outperformed the average partisan G. Elliott Morris Aug 13, 2025
August 13, 2025 at 3:03 PM
pt007.bsky.social
"Structurally this is very unhealthy if you’re paying your existing debt by raising other debt. That makes me very uneasy,” says the head of a crypto hedge fund, adding: “You may end up with systemic risk as there are too many of these weak structures which have to unwind fully or partially, and that creates pressure on the market. “I’d like this to be under watch by some regulators rather than everyone building treasuries on the assumption that the market is going to rise forever,” he adds.
August 13, 2025 at 1:09 AM
pt007.bsky.social
My main problem with this strategy is that I don’t really understand where it ends,” adds Benoist. “The company is in a loop where it has to continually feed that loop with additional purchases, go back to the market to purchase more — this cycle has to continue to justify the premium.” The biggest risk is how deep the damage will be if — or when — the price of crypto collapses. Inevitably, a crypto downturn means companies whose share prices are linked to tokens will slide too. Those that have raised debt face greater risks as they will need to pay interest to investors, and may be forced to raise more money or then sell their crypto holdings in order to meet debt obligations.
August 13, 2025 at 1:08 AM