John Goldin

paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-does... “So when Trump says “We’re making a freaking fortune,” what he really means is that his policies are taking more than half a trillion dollars at an annual rate out of the pockets of ordinary Americans, and giving that money to the oil industry….”

Lula won in part by banning online gambling

It's remarkable to me that, even as France, Germany and Spain flirt with the temptation of far-right rule, voters with long-term experience of it in Poland, Hungary and now Serbia have gone to such great efforts to rid themselves of it.

open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa... “That’s because the campaign against him is an example of a destructive, dangerous trend visible all over America: Republicans and their allies not even pretending to observe traditional standards of accuracy, civility, and basic decency in politics….”

paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-crisis... Krugman is always a model of clarity, but today’s substack is a particularly good broad overview of his thinking about where things stand. (Subscription required, but worth it.)

An understandable response I’ve seen to this is “oh so THAT’s where they draw the line?” and as awful as other things have been, with this candidate/party/president, ok yes: this actually seems like a fine place to draw a moral red line

@gabrielzucman.bsky.social: So let met get that straight: paying a wealth tax is impossible (“billionaires have no liquidity”, “it would be taxing unrealized gains”, “their wealth is virtual”) but one man paying half a billion to influence elections is possible. Did I understand well?

I think he makes an obvious point (that in a democracy you need to win elections to exercise power), but he has also painted himself into a corner whereby acknowledging the limits of his argument is now more painful than doubling down on it, in part due to how personalized the debate has become.

The plain fact of it is thus: the Trump administration wants to re-segregate higher education. It is a racist project straight-up-no-chaser. Accommodating any of this puts you on the wrong side of history, makes you a collaborator in this project. ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

If I had to distill the most important sociocultural fronts being challenged by the US far-right today, they would boil down to the following three. I'm listing them from broad to narrow in terms of their issue sets, but I think they're all equally important and mutually entangled.

NEW, from Bloomberg News: “Elon Musk has now given more than $445 million in the current election cycle.”

The “once great” state of Minnesota is now full of Somali immigrants… like this one. www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/story/2...

There is genuine public rage about Musk, which is what Congress is responding to, so when he says he will come for the people pulling the strings, he means the voters.

This one's maybe a little on the ling side, but trust me, it's worth it. I've cried reading it multiple times. (1/3)

Krugman credited me & referenced my work in his post, but used the wrong link...here's the correct one: charlesgaba.substack.com/p/republican...

GIFT LINK: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

Trump just claimed the United States had done “a lot” for Ukraine, but that Ukraine has done “nothing” for the United States. This is unjust in the highest degree. And not just untrue in the normal sense — it is a big lie, designed to bring about horror and chaos. snyder.substack.com/p/trumps-big...

When JD Vance says Abdul El-Sayed should express "gratitude" for what America has given him, Vance is really saying he's lower on the American hierarchy than "heritage Americans" are. I asked El-Sayed to respond to this point. Here's his answer: newrepublic.com/article/2169...

The VA and DoD are constantly trying to find more people exposed to the contaminated drinking water. This is just a thing that’s already happening.

the routine, pay for play pardons are all by themselves one of the worst corruption scandals in american history!

His real agenda? Facilitating a redistribution of national wealth on a scale not seen before. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/o...

Trump: "Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine."

Crazy this is not obvious to Wall Street: every democracy saw what Musk did to Ukraine last week and confirmed security need for Starlink alternative. Those alternatives will not just serve defense needs, but also be viable commercial alternatives, crushing any hope of SpaceX's monopoly projections.

Pretty remarkable for a survey of the state of the modern GOP to omit any mention of racism or authoritarianism. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/19/o...

Note: TikTok - 15% owned by Musk pal Larry Ellison - permanently banned our "Musk" the movie account on the platform. www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politic...

It's important for Congress to know whether the big social media platforms are operating as publishers or whether they are carriers, and if they're carriers, whether all accounts are on an equal footing or whether they reserve the right to play favorites. All important info for regulation.

Bruh

(THR) - TikTok has banned the entire Musk film account, citing political content that violates its policies. .. raises concerns about Big Tech suppression that the very film seeks to expose.” @thr.com www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politic...

Guilford CT says No Kings!

Great article overall, but you should at least read the beginning about the relatively low level of MN corruption. And this ending: "If Democrats run and hide every time Republicans yell 'Black people, fraud,' they will lose. Because Republicans always yell 'Black people, fraud.'"

Update: Trump has now contributed $0.00 of his own money towards the ballroom. bsky.app/profile/ronf...

Students from North Carolina A&T can be seen marching back to their HBCU after voting on the first day of early voting in the state. The Guilford County Board of Elections voted to remove the school’s on-campus polling site. (video via Todd Simmons) greensboro.com/news/local/g...

as you read the insane campaign fundraising numbers dropping today please recall that currently Elon Musk is personally responsible for about 1 in every 20 dollars spent on behalf of Republicans nationwide in 2026; I wouldn’t be surprised if when the dust settles that number is as high as 1 in 10

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

CDC just closed offices in Angola and South Sudan. Zimbabwe is next; a dozen more may follow. CDC staff overseas support countries to find outbreaks early and stop them before they reach us. Decisions have consequences. Lives will be lost, including American lives. bit.ly/4B5n6uG

I left x despite having a large following bc I don’t want to make free content for the world’s wealthiest racist. It’s not worth it to me.

Y’all, I hate to rain on the dead bot parade, but the Yandex data center destruction doesn’t seem to have significantly impacted social media bots. I made temporal graphs of X posts about AfD around the time of the attack and there’s no sign of a sudden dip or residual impact on that conversation.

He truly believes that because Putin and Xi put on a show for him that they are his allies. He's childlike and gullible even as he is unspeakably brutal and corrupt. What a horrifying combination. And such a mark for powerful leaders who are smarter than him. Which would be all of them.

50 years later, media companies - our bosses - are larger and more profitable than they've ever been, and we're poorer than we've ever been. The share of the money generated by our labor has declined, even as our rights over the product of that labor have expanded.

The thing to know about Tom Emmer is he wants to lead the House GOP and probably would be Speaker now had Trump not “killed him” in 2023. www.politico.com/news/2023/10... And he’ll sell out everyone he used to support — Ukraine, Somali-Americans, whoever — to get there.

henryfudgeofficial.substack.com/p/freehold-o... “Then the arithmetic of composition took over….Nobody designed the cage. It emerged as if designed, from the sum of reasonable choices, which is exactly why it is so hard to see and so hard to blame anyone for.

Remember when he screamed "No puppet! YOU'RE the Puppet!" in that really panicked way that had a bunch of us like "…uhh… kinda seems a weird way to deny that"? Anyway, we all know Russia doesn't have that much diesel to sell, making this sanctions-avoiding money laundering on a global scale, right?

This is petty and least important aspect of this but: I reported on this years ago and the trump campaign falsely denied the reporting, and now via Hegseth they’re just doing it. Monstrous

These different incentives from standalone media owners vs. "common owners" like Benioff is the subject of one of my working papers www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/07aux...