Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

All hail the time of the bunny!

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Republicans do not trust women.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

“They all knew.”

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

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War for Ukraine Day 1,256: The Cost

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A painting by the Ukrainain artist NEIVANMADE. The upper 1/2 is grey and there are black Shahed drones on it aimed towards the bottom of the painting. The bottom half of the painting has a blood red background and in the center of the bottom is a house, to it's left is a swing set, and to its right is a car. They are charcoal grey on the blood red background background. The drones are targeting the house, swing set, and car. Above the house and below the drones are the words "Russia Kills To Erase Free People".

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Last week was a very long week and this has been a long, but good weekend. So I’m just going to run through the basics tonight so I can rack out.

One additional item: I know some of you are tracking that a retired US Army Special Forces (Green Beret) officer, LTC (ret) Anthony Aguilar, has publicly blown the whistle on what he observed – war crimes and crimes against humanity – during the short time he was working as a contractor for the very bizarre organization that is allegedly providing and distributing aid in Gaza. Here is the video of his entire interview, which was conducted by Argentine-Israeli reporter Noga Tarnopolsky, who is also France24’s Israel correspondent. It’s in English.

The cost:

All day, people have been bringing flowers to the building in Kyiv shattered by a Russian missile. 31 lives ended here.

Over the past few days, I’ve been translating their obituaries from Ukrainian media into English. Not just because they deserve to be remembered – though they do.
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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 3, 2025 at 12:20 PM

But because I want you to think of them the next time you hear recycled russian propaganda. ‘But you celebrate bombing oil refineries,’ they say. ‘But you this, but you that.’

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 3, 2025 at 12:20 PM

Yes. We celebrate setting fire to the Russian war machine. The same machine that does this to sleeping families. To children. And you should too.

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 3, 2025 at 12:20 PM

Ukraine and Russia have agreed on a prisoner exchange involving 1,200 people, Zelensky reported after talks with NSDC Secretary Umerov and PO Head Yermak. Work on the lists continues, including efforts to return civilians and abducted children.

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) August 3, 2025 at 6:26 AM

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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‘For Entertainment Purposes Only’ Open Thread

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www.truthdig.com/articles/is-… Who Thinks the Free Press Is Worth a Quarter-Billion Dollars? – Truthdig

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— LeftonMain (@leftonmainst.bsky.social) July 26, 2025 at 9:18 PM

Jeb Lund, at Truthdig, on “CBS News, David Ellison and Bari Weiss’ extremely overvalued bonfire of elite vanities”:

… Weiss’ name appeared last week in relation to CBS owner Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance Media as a potential adviser for CBS News. That would have been a howler just a few years ago, but given that Paramount has already paid Donald Trump’s presidential library what was effectively a $16 million bribe and canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” after he described the settlement as “a big fat bribe,” this didn’t seem out of character for the company’s zesty new direction. The merger went through yesterday, and her future awaits.

What shape her advisory role ultimately takes is still up for grabs, but her reported asking price is a $250 million payday for her news site, the Free Press, which changed its name from “Common Sense,” and which entirely bypassed a descriptive title like, “No, Old Rich White Guy, After Further Review It Turns Out You Were Right All Along.”

Aside from the above, it’s not clear what service Weiss actually offers CBS. Ostensibly, her conservative brand was proposed as a sop to the Trump administration, to grease approval of the CBS/Skydance merger. But one would think the name Ellison would do that already. That handle belongs to David Ellison — CEO of Skydance Media, which brought you a Jack Reacher movie starring garden-gnomic Tom Cruise and coincidentally the worst “Star Trek” film. But Ellison is a leader the same way that you’re the driver when you sit in your dad’s lap and steer the car; you might have your hands on the wheel, but come on. And in Dave’s case, his dad is Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, and — in the universe of right-wing whackjobs in charge of tech companies — something like the Karl Lueger to Elon Musk’s Adolf Hitler. You don’t need Bari Weiss to gloss this pedigree, and the problem for her, Ellison and CBS, is that she can’t do anything else.

Weiss has been very fortunate until now. If Musk’s rockets could fail upward with the same reliability as her career, there wouldn’t be ducks choking to death on engine parts in Texas wetlands today. The problem is that a national network news division is the sort of results-oriented, audience-dependent job where this kind of luck runs out, especially if it long ago should have.

Her first taste of notoriety began during her undergraduate years at Columbia University as she tried to silence and punish professors for talking about Palestine without her consent. That this act launched her career as a free-speech warrior is sort of like learning that Batman became a vigilante after watching his parents get murdered by his own hand…

Naturally, the right-wing leadership of the New York Times came calling. Today, Weiss’ Times career reads like a sales pitch for subscribing to the Free Press, but at the time it felt of a piece with the opinion section’s commitment to laundering conservative grievances at the expense of and often directly contradictory to the rest of the paper’s reporting. The Times already employed Stephens, and Ross Douthat was in the middle of his metamorphosis as the in-house fascist ball fondler. It would take a lot to stand out, but Weiss found a way…

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Possible NYC Meetup in August

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strange visitor (from another planet) is suggesting a meetup in August when (I’m guessing) NotMax will be in NYC visiting his mom.

NotMax arrives Aug 15 and heads back home on Sept 1.

Anybody else up for that?

strange visitor is thinking maybe Hamilton’s – right outside an F stop in BK – with good drink menu and great food.  (Is BK Brooklyn?)

Any thoughts on that or other places as a good location?

Chime in below!

Update: I’ve added this to the sidebar  under FEATURING so you guys can carry on the conversation over the coming days.

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Infuriating / Heartbreaking Read: Heightened Scrutiny

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Heightened Scrutiny hits theaters this week, so I wrote about its lucid case against The Atlantic, New York Times, and every other outlet pushing transphobia for clicks www.avclub.com/heightened-s…
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— Jacob Oller (@jacoboller.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 1:07 PM

From the AV Club (in mid-July):

When Heightened Scrutiny played at the Sundance Film Festival in January, audiences didn’t know how United States v. Skrmetti, the trans healthcare case argued in front of the Supreme Court by ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio, would shake out. Arguments in that case, which Sam Feder’s intimate documentary gives ground-level context for, were heard on December 4, 2024. The justices’ decision wouldn’t come down until June. In the interim, the end of the documentary relied on Schrödinger’s ruling; Strangio’s efforts were relentless and surrounded by the rapturous support of his community, but the film had also laid bare the prejudice stacked against them. Donald Trump had not yet retaken office, open hatred was not yet so publicly encouraged. Winning or losing seemed equally possible, equally implausible. Now, though, Heightened Scrutiny is being released to general audiences who already know its ending. That means the majority of its power comes from another case it argues: One against high-profile media outlets and the writers who made targeting trans people into a professional beat.

While much of Feder’s film follows Strangio as he practices, preps, and advocates on a grassroot level for trans youth, some of the most painful and infuriating segments give context for where this apparent surge of nationwide transphobia came from. As the film’s mix of journalist and trans advocate talking heads—like Columbia Journalism dean Jelani Cobb, Semafor executive editor Gina Chua, and Mina Brewer, the 22-year-old model misgendered on The Atlantic‘s famous fearmongering cover—unpack, at its root are a few well-respected publications and the lucrative business model that’s always accompanied moral panic.

These interviewees, shot by Feder in the same diner-style booth at a restaurant (a place for a chat, not a pulpit for a sermon), movingly explain how public opinion had been astro-TERFed against them. A decade ago, Laverne Cox (who also appears in and executive produced the film) dominated the cover of Time, the face of the “transgender tipping point” that would lead to increased visibility of and rights for trans people. For a bit, that inclusive shift seemed true. In 2016, for example, the NBA relocated its All-Star game out of Charlotte because of its discriminatory “bathroom bill.” Trans rights were good PR, worth backing up with a billion-dollar pocketbook. But, between 2021 and 2024, the nation went from having absolutely no states with laws banning gender-affirming care for adolescents, to 23. This turn seems to have originated from far-right Christian nationalists, but was given a massive platform, and an Anita Bryant-like rallying cry, by outlets with a bit more clout than The Daily Wire—all “just asking questions.”…

This framing, analogous to Bryant’s claim in the ’70s that those dastardly gays were “trying to recruit our children into homosexuality,” paved a path for an onslaught of op-eds. Media analyst Julie Hollar provides Heightened Scrutiny with research showing that, over the course of a calendar year, the New York Times was far more likely to run stories portraying the trans rights movement as a threat than to cover any threat against trans people. In the kind of journalistic “if it bleeds, it leads” strategizing that had Nightcrawler‘s star orchestrating his own crime footage, the click-inducing backlash to and credulous consumption of transphobic rhetoric only encouraged editors to greenlight more of it. The floodgates were opened. Hate-reading developed into actual hate. It became such a transparent trend that it led to one of the best Onion headlines in years: “It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible.”…

It’s not like the aggressive regression of these outlets—musing on trans athletes and children and the locker rooms and school bathrooms they should be forced to use—has been a secret, but their influence on the laws of the land has rarely been spelled out with such directness and clarity as in this film. Though Skremetti may have prompted the Supreme Court to reopen a slew of trans rights cases, the case was itself prompted by the endless poking and prodding of a select few columnists trying to stay in the spotlight by egging on a witchhunt. No amount of fair, compassionate coverage could fully combat a court literally stacked against pretty much every thinking member of the American public. But as Heightened Scrutiny makes plain, selling out your neighbors for a cushy op-ed gig sprays gasoline on the oppressive flames.

When this doc screened at Sundance, nobody knew how United States v. Skrmetti was going to shake out. Now that we know how it ends, the film’s argument against the media is all the more infuriating

— Jacob Oller (@jacoboller.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 1:11 PM

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hope the traffic was worth it, bozos

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— Jacob Oller (@jacoboller.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 2:03 PM

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It really is an ugly feedback loop: media bolsters faulty outliers & scare stories for attention, people and governing bodies react negatively to these false and misleading stories, media writes about how these people influenced by their articles justifies the coverage even more.

— Mitch Wolfe (@whrwlfthrwlf85v.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 7:22 PM

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Can SCOTUS Be Kept from Doing Their Worst?

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Supreme Court Decisions Again Today at 10 am ET (June 26 Edition) & Open Thread

prostrategdragon sent me an interesting / disturbing / action-oriented article from Sherrilyn Ifill.

Facing This Court

A Sober Look at What to Expect in Trump v. Casa And What We Do About It

by Sherrilyn Ifill

None of this means that I am conceding defeat at this point. To the contrary. Even if, as I now believe, the conservative majority would be likely to rule in the President’s favor in Trump v. Casa if the merits were before them today, does not mean that the Court will in fact, ultimately rule in his favor. There’s still time. But it does mean that we must think now about how to create the conditions that can diminish the majority’s willingness to take such a dangerous step, and we must prepare the public for what it will mean if they do.

The article begins:

I have spent a fair amount of time since last summer’s decision in Trump v. United States[i] trying o understand the contours of presidential power in the eyes of justices who constitute the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Announcing that the President of the United States has immunity for any crimes committed in office so long as his actions could plausibly be described as “official acts,” was an astonishing and dangerous conferral of power on the president – especially on this president – who had shown himself in ways great and small, to be likely to use the cloak of immunity to commit acts even more lurid if he were returned to office than he had in his first term. Trump won the election, and his actions in Trump 2.0 reflect his full understanding of the gift of impunity provided by the Supreme Court.

So what is this conservative majority’s understanding of presidential power? Do they truly not see the danger to the country of a fully unrestrained president? My conclusion a year later is simple. We must with clear eyes confront the only reasonable explanation for the actions of the conservatives on the Supreme Court over the past two years. The conservative majority on this SCOTUS is fully aligned with President Trump’s vision of his Executive power. Not because they are “up to something,” or because of “moneyed interests.” But because the conservatives on this Court have come to genuinely embrace the MAGA vision of Trump’s presidential power. They are aligned with his claim to unfettered executive power, and they do not intend to restrain him.

Precedent, the public interest, the integrity of lower courts and even, I fear, the Constitution must yield, they believe, to that vision.

Yesterday’s decision in McMahon v. New York,[ii] granting a stay of the district court decision enjoining Trump from taking action to close the Department of Education is consistent with this. Issuing no decision to support this extraordinary decision that will dismantle a nearly 50-year-old federal agency is shocking, but only if we continue to believe that there is any other rationale for the Court’s decision besides the obvious one.

It has been long understood that agencies created by Congress can only be shuttered by Congress. Even President Reagan, who announced his campaign for the presidency on a platform that including closing the Department of Education, knew that he could not do so unilaterally. In his first address before both houses of Congress, he made a plea to Congress to join him in fulfilling that campaign promise.[iii] Reagan never could convince Republicans in Congress to support his plan, and so the Department of Education continued its work, rooting our discrimination in educational services, financing every IEP for school children in the country, providing funds to support state shortfalls in education and administering Pell Grants.

Now by granting the stay sought by the Trump Administration, the Supreme Court has allowed Trump to dismantle the Department of Education during the pendency of the litigation. Which is to say, they have allowed Trump to unilaterally dismantle a federal agency created and funded by Congress – not after trial on the merits and appellate review. Not in a carefully crafted decision explaining its rationale. But on the shadow docket and without a word of explanation.

The Court could not make that decision unless it believed that Trump would win the case on the merits. After all there will be no Department of Education to activate after months of litigation, if the Supreme Court later determines that Trump lacked the power to end the Dept. This lifting of the stay imposed by the District Court on Trump’s action tells us that a majority of the justices believe that after litigation on the merits, they would likely conclude that Trump’s actions do not violate the Constitution.

I now believe that the conservative majority on this Court is likely prepared to accept Trump’s argument for overriding the Constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. The rationale for such an egregious decision? I cannot fathom. But neither could I imagine the rationale in the immunity decision. They truly believe that Trump’s power should not be constrained.

Once you accept the proposition I have outlined above, then you must accept that finding a rationale to uphold this anti-constitutional usurpation of power by Trump, may be the only project occupying the majority as the merits of the case makes it way up to them, not whether to uphold it.

If we’re honest, the signs have all been there. I have been troubled by the Court’s refusal – at oral argument in Trump v. Casa, or in its voluminous majority opinion and concurrences — to make even a passing reference to the merits of the case. At oral argument, Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, especially talked about the potential consequences of a decision in the national injunction question within the context of the birthright citizenship guarantee. The six justices in the majority maintained scrupulous silence – an odd stance to take in a case challenging a specific constitutional right. Justice Coney Barrett’s majority opinion treats the Court’s silence about the merits as a restrained virtue of its decision. I do not believe that to be the case. The majority’s refusal to say even a word about the monumental context in which the nationwide injunction issue came to the Court seems….ominous.

Sounding the alarm:

Beyond the dubious basis for the Court to advance a “carveout” for the Federal Reserve,[v] is the even more dubious decision of the Court to write to narrow the reach of a stay order to an issue not before it, and that had not even occurred yet. Perhaps it was a pragmatic move by the Court to protect the markets, but the conservative majority has shown little concern for the consequences of many of its other decisions related to presidential power. The Court’s discussion of the Fed in the Wilcox case, makes the Court’s assiduous silence in Trump v. Casa about an EO that purports to overrun an explicit constitutional right, looks less like justices exercising discipline, and more like justices hiding their hand until the right moment.

None of this means that I am conceding defeat at this point. To the contrary. Even if, as I now believe, the conservative majority would be likely to rule in the President’s favor in Trump v. Casa if the merits were before them today, does not mean that the Court will in fact, ultimately rule in his favor. There’s still time. But it does mean that we must think now about how to create the conditions that can diminish the majority’s willingness to take such a dangerous step, and we must prepare the public for what it will mean if they do.

How do we address what may be the Court’s likely inclination to side with Trump on the birthright citizenship issue? I have no doubt that the litigators are doing their part. They are fully equipped with the arguments, the legislative history, the historical context and will provide the briefing and oral advocacy needed to win this case when it comes before the Supreme Court. The amicus briefs filed in the case will be plentiful and illuminating. This case should, by all rights, be a slam-dunk for the Casa lawyers.

But I worry that a decision in this case upholding Trump’s EO would be a catastrophic moment for democracy in this country. We need the engagement of all Americans in working to head off this moment, and in recognizing what it means if we are unable to do so.

If we are to create the conditions that will make the conservative majority on this court (frankly Justices Roberts and Coney Barrett) hesitate in making an extraordinary and unconstitutional announcement of presidential power, we must imbed the knowledge that the lawyers and historians know among the people, not just the Court. We must create an atmosphere of expertise about birthright citizenship, and about the 14th Amendment, and about its significance in our lives.

Moreover, should this Court take the extraordinary step of authorizing this President to override an explicit constitutional right, then every American must be fully cognizant of the magnitude of this decision.

It begins with educating the public. To that end, the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy will be hosting a set of webinars, or “teach-ins,” during the first two weeks of September designed to equip ordinary Americans with the information you need to see with clear eyes the choices the Court will be facing as it decides the merits of this case. We cannot fight effectively when we are uninformed. When some still believe that the core issue in this case is about “migrants” and not about whether democracy and the rule of law will survive in our country, we must bring the information to the people. Every American should know – must know – what is at stake in this case.

So, look for registration information next month. The webinars will be free and open to all who register up to our capacity to accommodate. We must be equipped with the truth if we are to fight. Let’s go!

What do you think?  Do you think the threat is as real as the author does?  Is it worth trying to spread the word by sharing information about the webinars far and wide?  If it’s not worth it, why the hell not?  If we want any kind of functioning democracy, we cannot just roll over.

Open thread.

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Fighting for Virginia – Balloon Juice Angel and 6x Matching!

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Announcing 2 simultaneous Balloon Juice Angel match opportunities this morning.

Sunday Angel #1 will match up to $100 per person when you tell us about your donation in the comments or by email.

Sunday Angel #2 will match $250 for the first 4 people who donate $250 and let us know in the comments or by email! (update,  done!)

I certainly can’t afford that – but it’s a one-time opportunity to turn $250 into $1,500, and they are betting that there might be 4 of you who might jump at that chance.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  (update, and there were!)

As we start another round of fundraising for Four Directions in Virginia, I want to share a bit of inspiration that one of our BJ peeps shared with me.

The trick is that we have to not give up.  To not tell ourselves that it’s hopeless.  To not let them beat the fight out of us with their unrelenting evil.

THIS IS ALSO AN OPEN THREAD.

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