pitfall-jake.bsky.social

Shameful. Congress should pass a revised version of the Russia sanctions bill with no Presidential waiver authority.

He's such a phony. His wife's name was Usha Chilukuri when they met. His in-laws names are Radhakrishna and Lakshmi Chilukuri. He was married in a Hindu ceremony presided over by a Hindu priest.

Oh, FFS, he's a Yale Law School graduate, he's visited the region multiple times, and he's met with dignitaries from there. Spare me the faux populism.

Are you fucking kidding me. www.wsj.com/opinion/vikt...

Brazil is… wow. Nationally, regionally, hemispherically, globally important election result. A choice against democratic backsliding. May it be a significant point in an international trend.

The danger of "sharia law" in the US is zero. The danger of Christian nationalist zealots like Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton destroying the country the invented the separation of church and state so that they can impose their blinkered version of Christianity on us all is sky high.

That he would call that woman a mother and walk away from the young child who was raped -- and the two children who were abandoned when the woman fled with the rapist rather than show up in court -- is entirely on-brand. Sociopath. Narcissist. Liar. And yes, rapist.

“it would be totally irresponsible to leave a crucial military asset in the hands of a racist, authoritarian conspiracy theorist.”— Paul Krugman on Elon Musk, arguing that the U.S. government should nationalize Starlink. paulkrugman.substack.com/p/its-time-t...

Not a surprise from this administration, but both unlawful and incredibly destructive of effective governance. www.washingtonsun.com/administrati...

Humiliating and dangerous: Trump has now finally just made America an ally of the Kremlin and is aiding Putin in his war against an American friend and partner. Shameful betrayal of a US friend, and pathetic submission to a US enemy. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

Forbes describes how Trump used an environmental easements on Trump National Golf Club in Florida to dodge $825 million in taxes, "give or take a couple hundred million." This is how Todd Blanche is helping Trump cheat on his taxes. www.forbes.com/sites/danale...

Those of you familiar with him know that Mike Davis is one of the genuinely fascist players in the MAGA legal world. Here he is first lying about what Slotkin said and then threatening her with assassination. A product of the corruption and rot of the conservative legal movement.

The timing of this raid and reports that a White House official was involved raise serious questions that should concern all Americans, regardless of political party.

No doubt this has occurred to other bystanders as well, but it would seem that a handful of billionaires dropping $150 million into a single state's election in an attempt to defeat a wealth-tax initiative just about makes the entire case for a wealth-tax initiative.

"Next month, Trump is hosting the 'most exclusive dinner in the world' at his golf club in Virginia — & you’re invited! Well, only if you can pony up millions to buy his scammy meme coin. It’s just another breathtaking bit of corruption that, by now, is depressingly routine." — @snipy.bsky.social

Roger Marshall chose Trump over Kansas. Now his non-stop cable news cheerleading for the most corrupt president in American history could cost him his job. Good. Kansas deserves better. We all do.

Just a reminder that these Haitian immigrants in Springfield -- who came here legally, did everything they were asked to do and more -- became a target of federal crackdowns because the white nationalist vice president shamelessly spread racist lies about them.

Read somewhere “I can’t be bothered to read something no one could be bothered to write.”

Two-Term Republican Gov. Bill Graves supported Roger Marshall. Now, he's with Adam Hamilton.

"Getting French-Canadians to the point of embracing the mindset of 'we must all hang together or we shall all hang separately' is an amazing feat. Only Trump could have made the US seem so awful that the Quebecois would embrace Canada First."

Glad about the result, but I don’t think it speaks well of us as a country that after two years of human rights violations, war crimes, naked gangster corruption, and contempt for the Constitution, he’s finally unpopular because gas got expensive.

Beyond the horrific nature of this as an actual part of the government, there’s something just truly evil but also stupid about taking immigrants and sending them to a place they’ve never lived in before. This is something that a man child bigot would think up, so naturally Stephen Miller did this.

to be clear, the admin is alleged to have deported AT LEAST 25,447 individuals TO COUNTRIES THAT ARE NOT THEIR OWN with, evidently, ZERO PROTECTIONS. this is a scandal and crime of historic proportions.

The United States government killed another innocent person.👇

Tough competition of course, but the Trump admin deciding that white South Africans are the only group of people on earth currently worthy of refugee status has to be the most overtly racist thing any administration has done in decades

"In Trump’s first term, he reneged on JCPOA & reimposed sanctions, vowing that a policy of “maximum pressure” would force Iran into a “better deal.” trump got this enormous gamble completely wrong & US as well as others pay the price. Haven't seen any front page stories exploring this central point

Sen. Susan Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to Navatek, whose CEO illegally funneled thousands of dollars to her campaign. The FBI sought to launch a probe and was eyeing Collins and other lawmakers. Then Trump gutted the unit in charge. THREAD 🧵

“Trump has proposed building a new fleet, with battleships at its core…But his plan would have been outdated a century ago. Unless senior Navy officials steer him off his course, the nation will spend billions to make the Navy more vulnerable and less deadly.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/o...

Research units from across government have been gutted. More than 10,000 PhDs have left government. For example the research arm of the Department of Education lost 90% of their staff and the research office for the Secretary of Health and Human Services lost an estimated 60% of their staff.

I wish there were a single sentence that could simultaneously encapsulate and explain every single problem we have in modern society.

Trump’s obsession with these vulgar memorials to his own vanity is a reminder of the darkness around him, of his hostility to democracy, his loathing of honor, and his disordered mind. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The DOJ official who made the threat is the same guy who was instrumental in brining criminal charges against Abrego Garcia - charges that a judge threw out for vindictive and selective prosecution.

This administration would be so funny if it wasn’t so historically embarrassing and destructive. America deserves serious leaders.

…

These are the people who cut food stamps for hungry children because they say poor people don't want to work.

Reminder that Joe diGenova, a guy with no morals, standards, or ethics of any kind, professional or otherwise, quit amid DOJ pressure to bring indictments where, in his own words, there was no evidence.

If you don’t have amnesia, you’ll remember that Biden, a president responsible for AUKUS, the US-Japan-Korea trilateral, increased FMF for Taiwan, and extensively using the Entity List against Chinese firms, was portrayed as too soft on China.

In a hidden-camera operation, pardon brokers Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl said that for $300,000, they could help a felon get a pardon from the president. They said their services included working with influencers to advocate for his case. cbsn.ws/4dj706z

www.welcometohellworld.com/i-do-not-bel...

I'm serious when I say I've lost track of all the recent revelations of literal Nazis working in high-level positions in Republican congressional campaigns and I would very much appreciate a journalist who took the time to detail as many of them as can fit into an article.

this guy is one of the architects of a war that might rank as one of the worst strategic missteps in american military history and here is on CBS getting a softball interview about his feelings

Is this a “holy shit” story? Because it seems like one.

This will devastate our research+innovation capacity, bedrock of the 21st century economy. 35% of *all* employed people in the US with STEM PhD degrees are both foreign-born *and* graduated from a US university. —> nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/292... Shutting them out is extremist folly.

Note that this is separate from and additional to the $100,000 tax on H-1B visas, which is the next step after OPT for about half of international students who want to stay and contribute to the US. The combined effect will be to make it practically impossible for most int'l students to stay.

This colossal new tax will likely be charged to the university (!). Few universities — obviously — will pay. That will mean a collapse in access to OPT. That in turn will kneecap international enrollment at US universities, because the bridge OPT provides is a major reason students come—>

So the GOP is celebrating a guy who created a darknet marketplace for heroin and meth, and put out multiple muder-for-hire contacts to conceal his crimes.

Unprecedented corruption www.wsj.com/politics/pol...