Balloon Juice - Open Threads Archives

Sunday Morning Open Thread: How Do We Reform the Supreme Court?

by Anne Laurie| September 28, 20257:25 am| 214 Comments

This post is in: Activist Judges!, Open Threads, Supreme Court Corruption

Barrett spurns Supreme Court bias claims after string of Trump shadow docket wins
“I want people to understand, agree or disagree with the decisions that the court reaches, that we are engaged in a legal enterprise."
@courthousenews.bsky.social
www.courthousenews.com/barrett-spur…

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— Kelsey Reichmann (@kelseyreichmann.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 5:54 PM

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Thomas also gave public remarks on Thursday, suggesting that the precedent purge isn’t ending anytime soon www.courthousenews.com/thomas-signa…

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— Kelsey Reichmann (@kelseyreichmann.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 10:05 PM

Josh Marshall has some proposals:

For 26 but especially 2028 it's time for Democrats to make clear that the current Supreme Court will have to be reformed (expanded in number, reformed in structure) to allow popular govt to continue in the United States. Not so much a litmus test as precondition for any other promise to be credible.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 11:38 AM

2/ My own preference is for the number of Justices to be expanded by at least six for terms of ten years (re-appointable) and the Court restructured to operate more like one of the federal appellate circuits. But that’s just one idea, not necessarily the best. This can all be done by simple…

3/ majority votes. There remains a lot of resistance to these necessary reforms. But the last eight months have helpfully clarified the extreme corruption of the current court. No new legislation can have real impact as long as the Court willfully misinterprets the plain meaning of statutes or …

4/ makes de facto rulings without opinions that provide explanation or precedent. The responsibility for this dangerous set of circumstances rests entirely with the corruption of the current members.

5/ It’s a very secondary matter. But this is also something all law professors and people in legal academia generally need to reckon with. Over the last three or four years there’s been a growing number of law profs who’ve been forced to reckon with the current majority’s extreme corruption …

6/ and realize, admit that reform is necessary. But quite a few still persist making excuses for the current corruption as though it were a matter of differing judicial philosophies etc. In a way it’s professional self-preservation because if the work of the legal judicial/academic system isn’t …

7/ an intellectual pursuit, a matter of scholarship and thought but rather a system of mystification and pure power than what are you doing exactly? Then it’s just PR work for people who got great grades as undergrads and nailed the LSATs. I’m not saying that’s the entirety of it.

8/ But that’s the reality for those who haven’t been able to reckon with the Court’s corruption.

Another ‘engaged in a legal enterprise’ proponent heard from:

Justice Anthony Kennedy tells @npr.org's @ninatotenberg.bsky.social "very worried" about our country, and that "Democracy is not guaranteed to survive."
Kennedy wrote Citizens United and was the fifth vote in the rest of the Roberts Court's anti-democratic decisions.
www.npr.org/2025/09/27/n…

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— Mike Sacks (@mikesacks.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 7:34 PM

Sunday Morning Open Thread: How Do We Reform the Supreme Court?Post + Comments (214)

Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Presidential ‘Library’ Finds A Home

by Anne Laurie| September 28, 20251:22 am| 39 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Trumpery

Trump Picks Florida Parking Lot for His Presidential Library msn.com/en-us/news/p…

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— tommyboy0690.bsky.social (@tommyboy0690.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 6:09 AM

There’s a lot of well-justified skepticism that any of the funds currently being donated by cowed corporations and aspiring criminals / grifters will get spent on an actual library. But the latest iteration is being promoted as part of a(nother) hotel complex, which is at least plausible — giving Mad Granpa an excuse to ramble for the media about marble (never terrazzo!) floors and classy (Temu fake gold) decor.

Excellent look at the $67M parcel of land in downtown Miami that Miami Dade College hurriedly transferred to the state this week so that it can be gifted to the Trump Presidential Library.
“There was a lot of sacrifice in order to gain that piece of land for the expansion of the college…"

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— SFDB (@sfdb.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 4:59 PM

As the state of Florida prepares to hand over more than $67 million worth of downtown Miami real estate to President Donald Trump for a future presidential library and hotel, former Miami-Dade College President Eduardo J. Padrón calls the move “unimaginable” and a loss for Miami’s future.

Padrón, president emeritus of Miami Dade College and the namesake for one of its campuses, said the land that’s been transferred to the state was meant for an expansion of the college’s Wolfson campus to accommodate its growing student population…

Miami Dade College’s Board of Trustees voted this week to transfer a downtown lot next to Miami’s iconic Freedom Tower to the state — in a special meeting with an advance notice that merely noted trustees would discuss: “potential real estate transactions.”

Trustee Roberto Alonso said the board received a request from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office on Tuesday, Sept. 16 asking the college to convey the property to the state, without any additional detail…

NBC News reported that the president and his family hope to turn the site into a library with an attached hotel — the first presidential library to become a hotel development.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote on social media platform X that on Sept. 30, the state cabinet would vote on gifting the land to the Presidential Library Foundation…

Uthmeier and Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia each have posted online that they look forward to gifting the plot of land to Trump. Each was appointed to their positions by DeSantis after former Attorney General Ashley Moody was appointed to the U.S. Senate, and former CFO Jimmy Patronis was elected to Congress…

The lot lies across from the Kaseya Center, a major venue for Miami Heat basketball games and large music concerts. On the other side of the street sits the iconic Freedom Tower, where hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees were processed in the 1960s, a property owned by the college.

Numerous downtown attractions like Bayfront Park, Bayside Marketplace, the Perez Art Museum and the Frost Science Museum are within walking distance, making it one of the few undeveloped tracts of land in the city center…

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Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Presidential ‘Library’ Finds A HomePost + Comments (39)

Will TACO Don Chicken Out Again?

by WaterGirl| September 27, 20259:31 pm| 58 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics

This is interesting!

I don’t even begin to know whether this is a good move or a bad move. Your thoughts?

(Reuters)

WASHINGTON, Sept 27 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with the top Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress on Monday to discuss government funding ahead of a September 30 deadline to keep the government open, a White House official said on Saturday.

Trump had previously scrapped a meeting with the top Congressional Democrats – Representative Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Chuck Schumer – to discuss government funding.

Jeffrries and Schumer released a joint statement Saturday evening confirming the Monday meeting, and said: “We are resolute in our determination to avoid a government shutdown.”

The federal government is on the brink of its 15th partial shutdown since 1981 because lawmakers have failed to agree on a plan for discretionary funding for the new fiscal year, or about one-quarter of the $7 trillion budget.

On September 19, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a stopgap bill to fund the government through November 21. The bill fell short in the Senate where Republicans needed 60 votes.

Senate Democrats rejected the bill, demanding that any legislation undo recent cuts to healthcare programs.

Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the Senate compared with the 47 held by Democrats, and have a 219-213 majority in the House.

News of Trump’s meeting with Congressional leaders on Monday was first reported by Punchbowl News.

Will TACO Don Chicken Out Again?Post + Comments (58)

War for Ukraine Day 1,311: Russian Strategic Bombers Are Up

by Adam L Silverman| September 27, 20257:50 pm| 33 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine

Let’s start here.

It’s 2 AM local time in Ukraine/7 PM EDT and the alerts referenced below began to go up one to two hours ago:

Russian strategic bombers are in the air, likely heading to bomb Ukraine.

I cannot begin to describe the feeling of knowing that missiles will fall on your country in a few hours to murder someone. And yet, it happens to us again and again.

Keep us in your thoughts.

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 5:57 PM

❗️Tu-160 takeoff from Olenya airfield

— MAKS 25 👀🇺🇦 (@maks23.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 5:31 PM

❗️5 Tu-95MS and 1 Tu-160 in the air heading for launch lines.

— MAKS 25 👀🇺🇦 (@maks23.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 6:27 PM

+ tu95s already moving to launch positions we are so getting bombed tonight chat

— Mira of Kyiv 🇺🇦 (@reshetz.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 6:09 PM

Although, of course, I can only imagine the stress polish f-16 pilots are under

— Mira of Kyiv 🇺🇦 (@reshetz.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 6:24 PM

There are signs fascist Russia is preparing a big missile strike tonight: communications with Tu bombers on combat frequencies have been recorded, monitors say. Shahed attack drones are already crossing the country from the east. A large attack has been expected for some days.

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 4:14 PM

It is now 2:40 AM local time in Ukraine/7:40 PM EDT and all of Ukraine is now under air raid alert for Russian drone and missile attacks.

Last night Jim Appleton asked:

Curious if you have thoughts on a comment here appending a substack speculating in part that the GOFOR hoedown could really be about a loyalty oath cum purge.

My sense, very far removed from this realm, is that such a purge would be a catastrophe for the purgers.

But that their dim wits do not exclude the possibility of them eager to execute.

I largely ignore Snyder because he publishes on substack and I try to avoid anything published there as it is designed to monetize white supremacists, antisemites, neo-NAZIs, and other bigots and racists. I’m NOT saying Snyder fits in any of those categories, he obviously isn’t, but because substack is set up the way it is and for the purpose it is set up for, I don’t read anything on there unless I have no choice.

That said, I don’t think he’s bringing them together for a loyalty oath followed by a purge. I think we’re going to get what has been leaked: he’s going to give them a lecture on what he thinks the warfighting ethos and lethality are. I would also not be surprised if Trump shows up with the press in tow and just turns it into an impromptu rally type of thing. Largely because we never bring all of these senior leaders together in one place. Because it isn’t a very secure thing to do. Is it possible we get loyalty oaths and purges? With this crowd anything is possible, but I doubt that’s the case.

President Zelenskyy did not give an address today. He did give a press briefing.

Zelenskyy:

If Russia threatens a blackout in Kyiv, let them prepare for a blackout in Moscow‼️

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 9:22 AM

Here’s the video with English closed captioning turned on.

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Georgia:

Day 304 of uninterrupted, nationwide protests in Georgia. A large crowd gathers on the 32nd anniversary of the fall of Sokhumi. 🇬🇪

🎥 Mo Se

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— Rusudan Djakeli (@rusudandjakeli.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 12:24 PM

On its 304th day, Georgia’s continuous protest was dedicated to the 32nd anniversary of the fall of Sokhumi.

#GeorgiaProtests

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— Publika.ge (@publikage.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 12:59 PM

🚨 A resident near the occupation line reported that Russian soldiers kidnapped 4 children (ages 10–11) from the village of Tamarasheni, Kareli, Georgia.

The State Security Service told Publica: “The children are with us and safe.” No further details were given.

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— Publika.ge (@publikage.bsky.social) September 27, 2025 at 1:07 PM

🗣️“Offering your support to #Georgia is not only an act of solidarity – it is the pragmatic choice. Another repressive regime in the neighbourhood would endanger Europe’s own security. To abandon Georgia now would be to reward Russia’s aggression,” – unlawfully jailed journalist Mzia Amaglobeli to EU

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— Batumelebi&Netgazeti (@netgazeti.org) September 27, 2025 at 5:00 AM

From The Guardian:

My cell is painted green, the same colour we once used in the newsroom. Two benches and a table are bolted to the floor. Nothing moves. The bed is narrow, but I haven’t fallen out yet. When I was free, but already expecting arrest, I used to joke that prison would give me the time I always lacked – finally, I could read. But here in Rustavi Women’s Colony No 5, I have almost lost my eyesight. So now I write in encroaching darkness, about the darkness that is falling across my country, Georgia.

The only window in my cell sits high up near the ceiling. On my 50th birthday, my friends and colleagues assembled on a hill opposite the prison to hold up posters and balloons. I climbed on to a chair but couldn’t quite see. I watched their greetings on the news later.

For the past eight months, this has been my life under Georgia’s repressive regime: one that seeks to silence journalists, erase dissent and break our spirit. On 12 January 2025, I was arrested on charges of “attacking a police officer” during a demonstration. I spent almost seven months in pretrial detention while the case was heard. On 6 August, the judge reclassified the charge, and I was ultimately convicted of the lesser offence of resisting an officer, receiving a two-year prison sentence. This gives me the dubious honour of being the first female journalist imprisoned in Georgia for politically motivated reasons since the country’s independence in 1991. I was offered a plea deal – an admission of guilt in exchange for a lighter sentence – but I refused. To reconcile with injustice is to be buried alive.

I had to find new ways to protest against the injustice this regime has subjected me to. I remember cutting off my braid shortly after I was imprisoned. They lent me scissors for two minutes, standing right at the door of the cell, watching how I used them. Back then, they offered me many things, but I took only 10 litres of water. I was on a hunger strike for the first 38 days. I am now writing this letter to send to the offices of Batumelebi, the outlet I co-founded, where my friends and colleagues continue the fight in my absence.

I have moments of weakness. Sometimes my eyes fill with tears. But I try not to stay in that state for long. The truth is, I have no other choice: this illegitimate government is trying to abolish journalism, the profession to which I have devoted 25 years of my life. My colleagues are in mortal danger simply for doing their job. For me to stay silent now would be to betray them, myself and about 60 other political prisoners in Georgia today. Outside these prison walls, people have taken to the streets for nine months straight. Holding EU flags aloft, they have been drenched by water cannon, suffocated by teargas and brutalised by riot police. Yet they refuse to surrender. Their determination is our hope.

We have faced stark existential choices before. In 1921, Georgia’s short-lived democratic republic was swallowed by Russia, with the help of Georgian Bolsheviks. Back then, the youth also fought valiantly in the streets, only to disappear for the next 70 years under the shadow of Soviet domination. Now history threatens to repeat itself, with Russia pulling us back into its orbit, aided by collaborators within our own government. The regime dances to the tune of the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia and continues to advance its interests. The regime has abandoned our European path and adopted the tools of Russian rule: propaganda, repression, corruption and fear.

But Georgia is not Russia, and Georgians have consistently demonstrated resilience. Despite being invaded by Russia in 2008, and the ongoing arrests and kidnappings of our citizens in the Russian-occupied territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, we still choose Europe. The youth of Georgia are leading this fight against exhaustion, against despair and against the cold calculation of those who would sell our freedom.

What can be done? Support Georgia’s beleaguered civil society and our independent media. Do not punish ordinary citizens by revoking visa-free travel. Target those truly responsible: Georgian Dream party officials and their business networks. Speak out for the people in the streets, for the journalists behind bars, for a society that refuses to bend.

Offering your support to Georgia is not only an act of solidarity – it is the pragmatic choice. Another repressive regime in the neighbourhood would endanger Europe’s own security. To abandon Georgia now would be to reward Russia’s aggression.

Georgia’s national motto is “strength is in unity”. For me, being part of the EU means sharing in and contributing to that strength. We belong not in the Russian world of dictatorship and fear, but in the European family of free nations. From my cell, I can see more clearly than ever that Europe is not just about geography, it is about values: dignity, justice, equality and solidarity. And in Georgia, we are fighting for those values with everything we have – with our pens, our voices and our bodies on the streets.

Our struggle is part of Europe’s struggle, as Ukraine’s struggle is part of Europe’s struggle. And I ask you, our European friends: do not let go of our hand. Together, we can defeat the darkness and ensure that freedom prevails. Because freedom, truly, is more valuable than life.

The PRC:

China’s “mutual travel” visa-free deal with Russia looks one-sided.
Hardly any Chinese head to Russia — but Russian shoppers flood Hunchun, loading up 25kg of duty-free goods from malls & bazaars.

— Olga Nesterova (@onestpress.onestnetwork.com) September 27, 2025 at 2:21 PM

The EU:

Denmark and the rest of Europe are waking up to potential attacks that could be directed against hundreds if not thousands of targets in each country on.ft.com/3VDScpZ

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— Financial Times (@financialtimes.com) September 26, 2025 at 1:55 AM

From The Financial Times:

Denmark’s recent drone incidents have laid bare European airspace vulnerabilities and raised questions about how airports and authorities should respond to such breaches.

Danish officials have faced criticism over their failure to identify or take down any of the unmanned aerial vehicles spotted at six separate locations near civilian and military airports this week.

Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen did not “rule out” that Moscow was behind Tuesday’s incident at Copenhagen airport, after Nato and the EU condemned Russia’s “reckless” behaviour when flying drones and aircraft into the airspace of countries bordering Russia or Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Nato aircraft shot down Russian drones that had entered Polish airspace, while Romania scrambled jets when one drone flew in from the Black Sea and Estonia raised Nato fighter jets when Russian aircraft breached its airspace.

But the incidents in Denmark, which is not a so-called eastern flank state, involved drones of undetermined origin, with the sightings occurring at night and Moscow fiercely denying involvement.

Echoing Danish police and military intelligence, Fredriksen said late on Thursday that she did not know who was behind the five drone sightings earlier that day at regional airports and defence installations. Ministers said it appeared to be a “professional actor”.

“It points to the challenge of protecting critical national infrastructure,” said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “There’s a cornucopia of riches that a malevolent actor might want to go after in terms of causing mischief. It’s very easy to do, and it’s very difficult to counter.”

While the perpetrator was still unknown, Russia was constantly testing Nato members’ reactions with operations “that blurred the lines between defence and law enforcement”, said Giuseppe Spatafora, an analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies.

Denmark faced “drones that potentially were launched in our neighbourhood”, said defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen. One theory is they could have been launched from ships crossing the Baltic Sea.

The Danish government has made a series of high-profile military investments in the past few weeks including in mid- and long-range air defence as well as long-range missiles capable of striking Russia.

But Poulsen admitted that “we cannot today present a solution that removes the threat from drones”, even though he insisted Copenhagen would buy “whatever is needed”.

For that, Denmark is asking for help from Ukraine, including at a meeting on Friday where the EU is offering to co-ordinate the acquisition of Ukrainian technology to erect a “drone wall” on its eastern flank.

In its defence against Russian aggression, Ukraine has developed cheap anti-drone capabilities that no other European country can boast such as the use of acoustic sensors, mobile patrols that use heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft cannons and more recently cheap interceptor drones.

Even then, Poulsen admitted: “We have to have a certain honesty: even though we have the right tools, there can still be drones that we have problems detecting because there is a big jump in technology.”

Excellent Read: The United States of Snitches

by Anne Laurie| September 27, 20255:47 pm| 92 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Republican Politics, Trumpery

The country is run by conservative content creators with low numbers and poor engagement.
Social media is an altar of power for the conservative torment nexus. They're one step away from *follow4follow* behavior.
The United States Of Snitches – defector.com/the-united-s…

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— Veronica Ripley 🏳️‍⚧️ (@nikatine.com) September 17, 2025 at 1:57 PM

National treasure Dave Roth, at Defector:

… There aren’t really central tenets to Trumpism, at least beyond the bigoted defaults of the stupid and spiteful stripe of the American Elite from which Trump himself emerged; that absence of ethos, at least beyond the belief that it is the absolute and natural right of that rancid elect to prey upon everyone and everything else, constructs a perverse permission structure of its own. Trump did not invent any of this so much as it invented him, and the fantasy of Trumpism, for those who have remade or simply discovered themselves in the service of it, is that Trump’s followers might through their service claim for themselves the same privileges that Trump himself has so delighted in abusing. This is not how it works for followers, though, or with Trump; those who live to serve him have always very clearly been destined to be buried alive with him. It is, in every degrading sense, a sort of American Dream.

… This combination of laziness and mercilessness perfectly suits a movement of dully depraved local gentry, but it is striking how much this relentless and scattershot pettiness has made its way upward. For all of Scheming Vizier and aspiring genocidaire Stephen Miller’s superheated rhetoric of total culture war—”With god as my witness,” Miller said on Monday, “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy this network and make America safe again for the American people”—the instinct to snitch and bully and gloat has reliably won out even among actual elites. The Governor of Texas brags on social media about the explusion of an 18-year-old Texas Tech student who engaged in the wrong type of free speech in the designated campus Free Speech Area. Pam Bondi, Attorney General of the United States, goes on TV and reminds a rogue Office Depot employee that it is very much within her power to prosecute him. Trump himself, who gets testy when people talk about someone other than him for too long, has moved all the way on, and out inexorably toward the first tee.

The entire program is lavishly and howlingly fascist, of course, but it is also so preposterous and so small. All of this underwrought bombast and frantic bullying is doing real and unjust damage in actual people’s lives, but it is also slick with the sort of flopsweat that adheres to the phrase “like and subscribe.” In the absence of governance, or just in its place, the state has taken up a grim and shameful kind of content creation. The conservative elite, all purpose and prayerfulness in their powerful offices, now has to crash out about nonbinary baristas and kick around sophomores with septum piercings for clout, like common influencers.

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Again, this all emanates from and returns to Trump himself, whose industry as a content creator is exceeded only by his blank and insatiable appetite for consuming it. There is a certain type of content that the big guy likes, which is mostly cops roughing up bad guys, but also rich people attending fancy parties and crowds rising for him in unanimous applause and footage of missiles blowing things up. The political culture now works mostly to create those images for him and explain why they are so popular and important. It shows them over and over again, and discusses them in tones of calculated awe—are they bigger, will there be more, how radical or reckless or bold are they, do you think, relative to the ones from yesterday, or last week?

These things are in fact not popular, and are increasingly unpopular; for the many people who cannot subsist on content and grievance alone, it has become very difficult to ignore the reality that everything else in American life is atrophying due to the attention and resources currently being redirected to manufacturing this content. No one and nothing else matters; Trump, in his bloated imperial phase, no longer even pretends that anyone or anything else ever could. This leaves the people who have given themselves over to this bleak fandom on their phones, mostly, but not entirely out of the game. Their job is to like and subscribe and amplify and support, and to await the call to hop into the crypt with their president and everything he has hoarded away for himself…

But for all of Miller’s furious Cobra Commander rhetoric, for all the metastatic gilding and trophy clutter in Trump’s Oval Office, for all the strident and signifying fascism down on the streets, the reality of all this is plain and shabby. It is not any kind of full-spectrum authoritarian command, or even the grubby paranoid snitchscape of oppressive surveillance states, but the more familiar sputtering busybody bullshit and hair-trigger offense of a deranged Homeowners Association. Not some grand tyranny directed from above, but a sweaty congeries of little tyrants patrolling the little fiefdoms they’ve arrogated for themselves, working less to knit their awful stupid grievances together than merely against their neighbors everywhere and anywhere possible. Vance, true to form, was just amplifying the one thing that Trumpism has ever offered—not real opportunity or purpose, not inclusion or community, not even personal advancement, but merely the chance to hurt other people and get away with it.

So this is it: the old national crises of meaninglessness and arbitrary violence and anomie and elite impunity, reshaped by the soft hands of the elites who authored and command all those crises into an opportunity for regular Americans to meet the moment and fulfill their duty as citizens by trying to get the lib wife of the guy who manages the Buca Di Beppo near the mall into some kind of trouble. There is no actual purpose to it, no broader program in it, nothing but the belief that all these cruelties are allowed, now, and so might replace any other right and every other thing that had come before. “People say, ‘Oh, people have a right to say things,'” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said on Fox News. “Well, actually they don’t necessarily have a right to say things.”

The Senate’s resident libertarian was talking about the nasty stuff that people say to him online. His statement is ridiculous on its face, un-American not just in its defiance of the oldest national values but in its violation of the longstanding national bias against whiny little twerps, but it was also absolutely in earnest. These are clowns, factory seconds, prissy sadistic losers, and the clock is ticking. They know as much. They also really mean it.

Excellent Read: <em>The United States of Snitches</em>Post + Comments (92)

Open Thread: Lindsey Halligan, Avatar of the Trump Minions

by Anne Laurie| September 27, 20252:26 pm| 117 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Post-racial America, Republican Stupidity, Trump Crime Cartel

"U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala expressed confusion and surprise at some points during the seven-minute court session when a federal grand jury impaneled in Alexandria, Virginia, returned the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey Thursday night."

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— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) September 26, 2025 at 11:17 PM

"Okay. It has your signature on it," Judge Vaala told Halligan, who responded, "Okay. Well."

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— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) September 26, 2025 at 11:21 PM

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Lindsay Halligan, the newly-installed US Attorney prosecuting James Comey at President Trump's direction, is an insurance attorney and a Miss Colorado finalist. She has never prosecuted a case. fortune.com/2025/09/25/l…

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— Kyle Clark (@kylec.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 10:10 PM

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Happier days…

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Open Thread: Lindsey Halligan, Avatar of the Trump MinionsPost + Comments (117)

Saturday Afternoon Football and More Open Thread

by WaterGirl| September 27, 202512:48 pm| 59 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Talk About Whatever You Want

Open thread!

I am pairing this with the JeffreyW story from Raven that is going up at noon so we can keep that thread about BJ peeps and have another place to talk about whatever.

So here you go. Have at it!

Saturday Afternoon Football and More Open ThreadPost + Comments (59)

Professor Bigfoot on Sunday Morning Open Thread (Nov 9, 2025 @ 9:54am)

MagdaInBlack on Sunday Morning Open Thread (Nov 9, 2025 @ 9:53am)

Paul in KY on Saturday Morning Open Thread: Parsing Chaos (Nov 9, 2025 @ 9:52am)

JML on Sunday Morning Open Thread (Nov 9, 2025 @ 9:52am)

Matt McIrvin on Sunday Morning Open Thread (Nov 9, 2025 @ 9:51am)

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

We will not go back.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

T R E 4 5 O N

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

We still have time to mess this up!

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Sunday Morning Open Thread: How Do We Reform the Supreme Court?

Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Presidential ‘Library’ Finds A Home

Will TACO Don Chicken Out Again?

War for Ukraine Day 1,311: Russian Strategic Bombers Are Up

Excellent Read: The United States of Snitches

Open Thread: Lindsey Halligan, Avatar of the Trump Minions

Saturday Afternoon Football and More Open Thread