Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Stand up, dammit!

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

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

Their shamelessness is their super power.

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

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Petty moves from a petty man.

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

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Open Thread: Flee While (If) You Still Can

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THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT RECOMMENDS THAT AMERICANS LEAVE IMMEDIATELY FROM OVER A DOZEN MIDDLE EASTERN NATIONS DUE TO SAFETY RISKS.

— FinTwitter (@fintwitter.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 4:54 PM

The State Dept urges Americans to DEPART NOW from the countries below using available commercial transportation, due to serious safety risks.

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— Shipwreck (@shipwreck75.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 4:57 PM

End of the day, even his fellow oligarchs are just NPCs to Dear Leader. But Semafor would like us to remember the real victims here — “Exclusive / Riyadh becomes transit hub for worried rich fleeing Gulf”:

Riyadh has emerged as a key exit route for the super-rich and senior executives stranded in the Gulf looking for a safe passage out of the region.

Cities including Abu Dhabi and Dubai have become playgrounds for the wealthy over the past few years, attracted by the year-round sunshine, tax-free lifestyle, and perception of safety. That was shattered over the weekend as Iranian missiles and drones rained down on the two cities, along with Qatar and Bahrain, causing those that could to attempt to flee.

The Saudi capital’s airport is one of the few still operating in the region, forcing executives and their families stranded in other parts of the Gulf to take the long drive in order to catch private jets or commercial planes.

Private security companies have been booking fleets of SUVs to ferry people on the 10-hour drive to Riyadh from Dubai and then charter private planes to take them out of the region, according to people familiar with the matter. They have been evacuating a mix of people, including senior executives at global finance firms and high-net worth individuals in the region for business or holidays, the people said. The rush in demand is sending prices for private jets and SUVs soaring, these people said.

“Saudi Arabia is the only real option for people who want to get out of the region right now,” said Ameerh Naran, chief executive of private jet brokerage Vimana Private; private jets from Riyadh to Europe now cost up to $350,000, he said…

Riyadh’s emergence as a relatively safe spot in the region is a turnaround for the city, which has previously carried a higher risk perception than its neighbors. In prior years, regular rocket attacks by the Houthi militia in Yemen caused frequent closures of airspace. And in previous moments of crises or regional instability, like the Arab Spring or last year’s 12-day war between the US and Iran, the well heeled have typically traveled through other cities. Before that, strict religious rules and the legacy of terror attacks in the early 2000s gave a perception that the kingdom was unsafe.

But with few other options available, Riyadh has seen perceptions change.

“We’ve been approached by a mixture of clients including families, individuals, and corporations that want to get out of the region either because their fear for their safety, or for business reasons they just need to be able to travel,” said Ian McCaul, operations and future plans director at UK-based security firm Alma Risk…

"The trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics when moving to Dubai."

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— Emma Yeomans (@yeomans.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 10:19 AM

From two drones according to the Saudi MOD. It doesn’t sound like major damage but highlights how vulnerable US assets and interests are at the moment.

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— Michael Hanna (@mwhanna.crisisgroup.org) March 2, 2026 at 7:38 PM

lmao even the KSA gets to learn where doing business with trump eventually leads

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) March 2, 2026 at 11:08 AM

Open Thread: <em>Flee While (If) You Still Can</em>Post + Comments (173)

Open Thread: Trump Promoting Jeremy Carl, Professional Bigot

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Behold, the genetic superiority of the master race. bsky.app/profile/chri…
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— Adam Serwer (@adamserwer.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 4:27 PM

With any luck, and if GOP Sen. Curtis doesn’t chicken out, Mr. Carl won’t actually get the new job… but the Trump administration is certainly promoting his abhorrent views. Per the NYTimes, “Trump Nominates an Apostle of ‘White Erasure’ for the State Department” [gift link]:

Jeremy Carl, President Trump’s nominee for a senior State Department post, struggled at his confirmation hearing on Thursday to answer what should have been an easy question, since he wrote an entire book about it: What is white identity and why is it under threat?

After nervously rambling about white food and Black food, white music and Black music and white worship styles, Mr. Carl told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that a loss of a dominant white culture is weakening the country. That notion has become an intellectual framework animating much of what has been described as the New Right, and Mr. Carl, who would if confirmed be the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, is one of its most prominent proponents.

But Mr. Carl’s halting defense of his theory on “white erasure,” along with previous statements about race and Jews, has put his nomination in danger. A Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee chairman, John Curtis, Republican of Utah, came out in opposition immediately after the hearing was gaveled closed…

On Friday, Mr. Carl defended himself on social media from the accusation that he is a white nationalist. “White culture,” he wrote, “was simply the culture of the overwhelming majority of Americans who lived here” before the 1965 immigration reform “radically transformed American demographics.”…

If confirmed, Mr. Carl would lead outreach to institutions such as the United Nations. He previously served in the first Trump administration’s Department of the Interior after making a name for himself as an international energy expert at Stanford University.

Mr. Carl sits at the intersection of several movements and institutions gaining power and prominence within the Republican Party. He is a proponent of “national conservatism,” a movement that holds that American society lost its moorings when it drifted from a core power structure centered on the Christian white men who founded the nation and instead embraced diversity, multiculturalism and feminism.

He is a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a Trump-aligned research organization that became the intellectual nerve center of the American right…

Mr. Carl has argued that white people should organize as a group to protect their rights.

“White Americans are increasingly second-class citizens in a country their ancestors founded and in which, until recently, they were the overwhelming majority of the population,” he writes in his 2024 book, “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart.”

He also accused the Democratic Party of waging an “all-out assault on the rights of white people.” (About 64 percent of the people who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 were white, compared to Joe Biden’s 61 percent in 2020, according to Pew Research.)…

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

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you don't have to like it, but this is what peak progressivism looks like
the left will go so much farther if it embraces patriotism and joy as a rallying cry to aspire for the country to be better

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— Thorne ?? (@ens0.me) February 20, 2026 at 10:35 AM

Speaker Mike Johnson denies request for the Rev. Jesse Jackson to lie in honor in Capitol www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol…

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— Timothy McBride (@mcbridetd.bsky.social) February 20, 2026 at 6:27 PM

Happy Black History Month. To put it in terms he might recognize, Self-styled ‘Speaker Moses’ cravenly denies the claims of an actual prophet:

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has denied a request for the late Rev. Jesse Jackson to lie in honor in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Jackson’s family made the request to Johnson after the civil rights icon and two-time presidential candidate died Tuesday at the age of 84, the sources said. CNN was first to report the development…

A GOP leadership source said that in denying the family’s request, the speaker looked to precedent where the practice has been reserved for former presidents, military leaders and other top government officials.

The GOP source noted that recent requests for former Vice President Dick Cheney and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk to lie in honor had been denied.

Yet a handful of private citizens have lain in honor in the majestic rotunda. That short list includes civil rights leader Rosa Parks in 2005 and Capitol Police officers who died in the 1998 shooting and after the Jan. 6 attack. The Rev. Billy Graham, the Southern Baptist minister and evangelist, lay in honor in 2018.…

[Billy Graham]

Black leaders slammed Johnson’s decision to deny the Jackson family’s request.

“Mike Johnson will defend a president who wants to unlawfully nationalize elections, but won’t authorize a civil rights legend to lie in honor. That tells you everything you need to know about Mike Johnson and his gross disregard for our Constitution and our democracy,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

“Rev. Jesse Jackson preached to all Americans to Keep Hope Alive, and to dream of a nation where all people are treated with dignity and respect. No message could be more fitting for all Americans to embrace at this time,” the NAACP leader said.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson will lie in state for two days next week before he is laid to rest following services at his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition headquarters in Chicago. https://to.wttw.com/46TFZmT

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— WTTW – Chicago PBS (@wttw.bsky.social) February 19, 2026 at 1:42 PM

Big victory for the American people.
And another crushing defeat for the wannabe King.
www.cnbc.com/2026/02/20/s…

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— Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social) February 20, 2026 at 10:33 AM

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Sunday Morning Open Thread

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The Democratic Tea Party is real & it is beautiful
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— Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) January 31, 2026 at 5:50 PM

===

GIVE HIM HIS HAT AND BACKPACK BACK YOU GHOULS
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— Courtney Milan (@courtneymilan.com) January 31, 2026 at 6:27 PM

It should not take a court order to get a toddler out of a prison.
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— Governor Tim Walz (@governorwalz.mn.gov) January 31, 2026 at 4:22 PM

=====

Ironically, his second post is just
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”except that Nazi fuck thinks this is a bad thing.
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— Malaclypse the Middle (@malaclypse.bsky.social) January 31, 2026 at 1:40 PM

Exactly. Like, yes. That’s why we’ve been a world leader for so long. Not just because we can kick someone’s butt, but because we’re the place people have come to as a land of opportunity. And he hates that.

— drmag00 (@drmag00.bsky.social) January 31, 2026 at 1:52 PM

It’s the greatest foundational myth any nation has ever had, and these evil fuckers want to mock our legacy and disrespect the Mother of Exiles. Nope, I’m not okay with that anti-American bullshit.

— Malaclypse the Middle (@malaclypse.bsky.social) January 31, 2026 at 1:54 PM

=====

Karl must’ve known the old Yiddish proverb: When you are rich, you are wise, beautiful, cunning — and you sing good, too!

As a side note, it’s funny to see so many of these emails with thirsty academics repeatedly enact Marx’s bit in the 1844 Manuscripts about the power of money. “Oh Mr Epstein, your house in New York is enormous and, unrelatedly, your questions at dinner were so intelligent, so insightful, so deep.”
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— Kieran Healy (@kjhealy.co) January 31, 2026 at 11:05 AM

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Open Thread: Rep. LaMalfa Is Dead / Mike Johnson Is Unhappy

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GOP lawmaker Doug LaMalfa dies at 65

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— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) January 6, 2026 at 9:43 AM

Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a California Republican known for his expertise on water and forestry issues, has died at 65, according to statements from GOP officials.

LaMalfa, a fourth-generation rice farmer and former state legislator, was serving his seventh term representing a rural district in the northeast corner of the state. He sat on the Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Transportation and Infrastructure committees….

Republicans who were close with LaMalfa were not aware of any health issues he had, and many were in shock Tuesday morning about his sudden passing, according to six GOP lawmakers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private matters.

LaMalfa suffered an aneurysm and then a heart attack after being taken into surgery, according to one of the lawmakers and two others familiar with the matter.

His death also further narrows an already slim Republican majority in the House. Now with a 218-213 advantage, Speaker Mike Johnson can afford no more than two defections on party-line votes where all members are present and voting…

Under California law, Gov. Gavin Newsom has 14 days to set a date for a special election. He could set the date as soon as mid-May, though he could also schedule it to coincide with the state’s June 2 primary. The winner would serve out LaMalfa’s term under current district lines.

His successor, however, will face a wildly different political landscape in the November election. LaMalfa’s seat was among those targeted by California Democrats in their bid to redraw district lines to counter President Donald Trump’s mid-decade redistricting push in Texas and other states.

In November, California voters approved a gerrymandered House map that folded LaMalfa’s turf into a new, blue-leaning district — threatening to push him into a competitive race after years of cruising to reelection in a largely Republican district. He was up against a Democratic former state Senate leader who had already piled up money and endorsements…

(When I hear ‘two [Republican] defections’, I immediately think “Tom Massie, Rand Paul”.)

He was a ‘pragmatist’, and a ‘character’, but every news story I’ve seen about Rep. LaMalfa’s death focuses on his importance as a pawn…

Trump on the late Rep. LaMalfa: "You know, he voted with me 100% of the time."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 6, 2026 at 10:19 AM

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Open Thread: When It Comes to Redistricting, Pigs Get Fat, Hogs Get Slaughtered

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Rand Paul says gerrymandering to the point that Democrats have no representation is bad and dangerous.
Gerrymandering to the point that Democrats have minimal-but-some representation is fine with him, though. Just don't be so nakedly greedy that you foment violence, that's his line in the sand.

— Kurt Busiek (@kurtbusiek.bsky.social) December 14, 2025 at 3:53 PM

Young Prince Rand said this on NBC today:“I think it’s gonna lead to more civic tension & possibly more violence in our country. Think about it: if 35% of Texas is solidly Democrat & they have zero representation, how does that make Democrats feel? I think it makes them feel they’re not represented…”

Of course, he referred repeatedly (defensively) to Both Sides — since his own state of Kentucky has been extremely gerrymandered, and not by Democrats — but if a totally self-interested career pol like Rand is willing to say this, I don’t think the other Republicans are happy, either.

i think the other thing that's going on here that the primary players don't want to talk about for obvious reasons is that shutting your state out of the House Democratic Caucus entirely is a really bad idea if you think Dems are about to take the House.

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— post malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 1:05 PM

either you can have some kind of advocate in one of the rooms somewhere or you can just…. not.

the WH, this WH, isn’t going to do shit for you in the situation where you’re shut out.

Maybe your Senators will, maybe, unless Rs lose the Senate too in which case you’re just all the way outside looking in on budget and appropriations.

i am reasonably convinced that this is also why the Maryland State Senate is dragging ass on redistricting their lone Republican out, even though Andy Harris is an exceptionally stupid and antagonistic prick even by the exalted standards of the larger blue-state-R tribe.

This is in fact exactly why a lot of states that could district themselves to be clean sweeps instead have one or two minority party seats still, like Indiana. You want somebody who can still bring home the bacon when your party's locked out nationally.

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— Andy Craig (@andycraig.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 1:09 PM

This sounds right, but an even simpler metric is how it comes across. If you have <4 reps, having them all be of one party is plausible in a fair system, but if you get a clean sweep of 7-10 reps where 30-40% of voters favor the minority (MD had Hogan until Jan. 2023), it comes off as dirty pool.

— Andy Genz (@ajgenz.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 1:24 PM

I think another obvious factor is that Trump directed swatting, death threats, & harassment to the Indiana GOP legislators & it wouldn’t necessarily stop if they capitulated. Trump made conditions so bad for GOP back benchers that they had nothing to lose by not cooperating.

— Jon Pennington (@jonpennington.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 1:28 PM

There is also a risk the gerrymander backfires with a big enough Dem swing. I’m not informed enough on the margins there to know if that’s a worry in this case but it can be since gerrymanders spread your voters more thinly.

— Gluon Spring (@gluonspring.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 2:19 PM

Kinda wild how quickly the entire trump admin moved on from the whole Indiana thing and how much it probably should tell everyone that you can tell him to fuck off and their need to constantly own the news cycle will mean that they move on from you within days.

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) December 14, 2025 at 4:56 PM

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Open Thread: Philip Bump Is Now At MS-Now

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What Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation says about the post-Trump GOP
When Trump finally leaves the stage, six different MAGA coalitions will vie for influence in the Republican Party.

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— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) November 25, 2025 at 8:49 AM

It’s the Washington Post‘s loss. “What Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation says about the post-Trump GOP“:

… Greene’s resignation announcement spurred a flurry of agreement from other Capitol Hill Republicans. Speaking anonymously — a very important caveat — they told reporters from Punchbowl News that Greene’s depiction of a neutered legislature was accurate and as frustrating as she suggested…

… I’d say there are now six post-Trump coalitions to consider.

The Never-again Trumpers. This evolution of the Never Trumpers is perhaps the most obvious group, the central carryover from Fabrizio Lee’s 2021 delineation. These aren’t entirely Mitt-Romney or George W. Bush-style Republicans, but the group includes many who would fit that description, people who sided with the establishment against the Tea Party or who objected fervently to Trump’s rejection of agreed-upon (if imperfectly manifested) conservative and American values.

It’s important to note that this group will almost certainly be larger in future years than it was in 2021. There will be more space for people in the waning days of Trump’s presidency (and after) who reject Trumpism on the grounds of his break with party tradition than there are now. Just as twice as many people said they were at Woodstock as actually were, there will likely be plenty of people who claimed to be Never Trump but were actually Very Much Trump.

The anti-establishmentarians. One segment of the right embraced Trump because he rejected the sort of establishment Bush and Romney embodied. Despite being a billionaire crony of America’s wealthy and powerful, Trump managed to tap into this sentiment by relentlessly casting institutions and the establishment as dangerous in aggressive terms.

To some extent, he believes it; to some extent he understands that eroding trust in everyone else also lowers the bar for how much trust he needs to have instilled in himself. As a political tactic, though, it worked, convincing millions of people to come out and vote for him who might otherwise have stayed home out of the belief that voting didn’t matter. We’ve already seen that this bloc invests its energy and power in Trump almost exclusively, with Republican candidates stumbling in years when Trump wasn’t on the ballot. It’s likely that, in a post-Trump world, most of these voters will dissipate back into indifference rather than coalesce around someone else. What it depends on, really, is that someone.

There’s an important subset of this group: the conspiracy theorists. They are inherently anti-establishment, since conspiracy theories necessarily depend on a rejection of fact and authority. But, thanks to Trump’s self-serving embrace of conspiracy theories as a means to accumulate power, those conspiracy theorists are also heavily loyal to Trump (as Fabrizio Lee found in 2021)…

The Trump loyalists. Just as Trump retained significant support in March 2021, he will also retain support in 2028 and beyond. It’s just a question of how much — and who is the elected standard-bearer for the idea.

Oddly, this may be the weakest of the six competitors for the right’s power. A lot of Republicans will position themselves as the inheritor of Trumpism, but since Trumpism is so dependent on Trump, those inheritors will never be able to actually keep the loyalists satisfied.

Perhaps the most potent non-Trump faction on the right at the moment is the America Firsters. Greene used the term repeatedly in her resignation statement, referencing the idea that MAGA hasn’t gone far enough in protecting the U.S. and its citizens.

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