Important paper. Schools are high-risk environments for respiratory disease transmission MAINLY because classrooms are underventilated. This problem has a workable solution - it just needs political will. Air quality is as important as water quality for public health. MT
@martinmckee.bsky.socialOur paper modelling transmission risk in schools is published in Nature Communications. **The relative contribution of close-proximity contacts, shared classroom exposure and indoor air quality to respiratory virus transmission in schools**
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
Documents show RFK Jr lied to Congress about his agenda in Samoa—he did indeed go to spread anti-scientific doubts about vaccines. He was ultimately successful in getting an outbreak going there that killed 83 people, mostly babies and young children.
No one should be opposed to this.
The president constantly lying about stolen elections, after staging a coup attempt, & now threatening to federalize & steal future elections, should be the primary news story in the country 24/7 & on every front page until he is impeached & removed next week.
Trump at National Prayer Breakfast: "They rigged the second election. I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would've had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego. Beating these lunatics was incredible ... The first time they said I didn't win the popular vote. I did"
One of the antagonists in my book on John Doar is a segregationist judge in Mississippi named Harold Cox.
In 1964, Cox called black plaintiffs in his courtroom "a bunch of chimpanzees," a public comment which generated national outrage and a congressional effort to impeach him.
Today? Meh.
This is a great idea and we should expand it to cover *all* of the justices of the Supreme Court, and then we could see who did unethical stuff like "attended the Grammys" or "bankrolled by a billionaire white supremacist donor who collects Nazi memorabilia" or "married to a January 6th plotter" or
So absurd — with all the corruption on the supreme court, @MarshaBlackburn wants Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson investigated for going to the Grammys, because they said mean stuff about her puppet master’s goons
(As Marsha passes laws to stuff her own pockets with taxpayer cash)
“great replacement” is a white supremacist conspiracy theory that has been cited in NUMEROUS mass shootings including buffalo topps and el paso walmart
furthermore, what we are seeing in MN is a direct result of that hateful racist rhetoric manufacturing consent and democrats should be saying that
"That's just not true, as you well know" -- Sen. Chris Coons is a bit taken aback after CNBC's Joe Kernen pushes the great replacement theory during an interview
NEW: since last year, a pair of "highly trained" feds have been involved in an array of incidents attacking crowds with chemical weapons.
We used public records and open source analysis to identify Edgar Vazquez and Michael Sveum, alongside some other members of their tactical team.
Read more:
Identified: the El Paso BORTAC crew rampaging through the Midwest
One violent duo in particular, U.S. Border Patrol agents Michael Sveum (EZ-2) and Edgar Vazquez (EZ-17), have been frequently seen alongside former commander-at-large Greg Bovino terrorizing crowds wi...
I was just denied entry to the Dilley detention facility while my constituent, seven-year-old Diana, remains inside.
What kind of sick, horrific conditions are children being forced to endure in there?
I will be back tomorrow. Accountability can’t wait.
Dems need to snort whatever he is snorting
So much of ICE and CBP’s violence is just them doing the violence — no even pretense that they’re under threat or that force is justified. They’re using pepper spray and tear gas to express annoyance.
Tonight at 8:30 PM our constituent Ricky was pepper sprayed by ICE on 18th & Polk. 2 agents parked their car, got out and approached observers, started pepper spraying Ricky on public property, and then drove away and left.
Nothing is changing on the ground in Minnesota. ICE must be abolished.
Jeff Bezos' wedding last summer cost somewhere around $50M. That, alone, could have saved all 300 positions cut today at The Washington Post for a year.
Of course, he wouldn't have to choose. He could do both because he's worth $250B, which is nearly the GDP of New Zealand.
They’re trying to run the Kilmar Abrego Garcia playbook with a five year old boy in a bunny hat because nobody can find peace if they embarrass the Trump administration publicly. Normal people didn’t like it with Garcia and they really aren’t going to like it for Liam.
the Epstein files are really devastating because they remind me of how many girls and women miss out on professional opportunities, mentorship and careers because of how many powerful, rich and influential men only view girls and women — and interactions with them — through the lens of sex
[Not loaded yet]
Bitcoin is getting pretty close to being down 50% from its October peak, and it's hard not to view that as one of the most positive indicators we've had in a while.
[Not loaded yet]
BREAKING: TikTok's addictive design breaches EU law.
(Features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, highly personalised recommender system.)
We should be in control of our own time & attention, not Big Tech, be it 🇨🇳🇺🇸🇪🇺
#DefendDemocracy
#HandsOffOurEU
ec.europa.eu/commission/p...[Not loaded yet]
"What [MAGA authoritarians] fear most is the plain truth of being human."
Interesting reflections. Not the main point of the piece but it's pretty astounding that MAGA figures think the anti-ICE protests are operating in Trump's political favor, as Alan shows here. Let them think that.
One point we make in our piece on the intellectual roots of Stephen Miller's worldview is that cosmopolitanism, which is the antithesis of everything he believes, is a prize inheritance from "western civilization"
newrepublic.com/article/2041...This is the same Katie Britt who sneered that Dems' reasonable demands for restraints on DHS are a "Christmas list" and blamed Dems after the ICE murder of Renee Good
paragraph 48: "In Mr. Trump’s second term, Ms. Britt has voted in line with the president 100 percent of the time."
[Not loaded yet]
Kamala Harris ran a good, very aggressive campaign, but started at a significant deficit, and ran headlong into a ocean of misogyny, which has continued to dog her even more post-election, now that people feel empowered to say what they REALLY think about her
-
View full thread
This pro-Trump nostalgia absolutely was confirmed over and over again by the Dems' own internal polling, in a truly horrifying way:
newrepublic.com/article/1882... This is quite a quote from
@rickhasen.bsky.social on possibility of Trump seizing ballot boxes:
"It may take people in the streets protecting the offices where ballots are being tabulated. The Brooks Brothers riot would look very tame compared to what we might see in 2026."
More here:
Here's
@rickhasen.bsky.social detailing the scenario in which Trump uses search warrant to seize ballot boxes in a contested 2026 locale. This is more worrisome than ICE at the polls. Hasen also suggests ways to act against this now.
It's harrowing stuff:
newrepublic.com/article/2062...
[Not loaded yet]
ICE at every polling place?
Not nearly enough goons.
Refuse to seat winners?
No mechanism and would crash markets.
Lie about the vote, falsely claim fraud?
Very safe bet.
Seize ballot boxes in certain locations?
Worryingly plausible, as
@rickhasen.bsky.social and
@gregsargent.bsky.social explain.
The way forward for Dems is to abandon the "turn-the-page/turn-the-cheek ethos" and replace it with "proud accountability for enemies of democracy," says
@brianbeutler.bsky.social.
Post-Trump era must be about accountability, not hollow reconciliation.
www.offmessage.net/p/immigratio...
Immigration, Fascism, And The Politics Of The American Creed
We have to protect what's best about America from ALL threats, not just the easiest scapegoats.
The Trump admin is ALSO changing the rules so that rather than 30 days to file a Notice of Appeal, people will now only have 10 days (in most cases).
That's just 10 days to find $1,000 and appellate counsel for an appeal the government says it will likely automatically deny!
[Not loaded yet]
something I remember from the big tech layoffs of a couple years ago is seeing coworkers with excellent performance reviews - even some who had literally just been promoted - getting thrown overboard for completely opaque reasons and realizing that was part of the point
At the same time, the extent of the Washington Post layoffs highlight how it didn't matter how hardworking, loyal, smart, collaborative, award-winning, competitive, knowledgeable and devoted so many of the staff were. It wasn't enough to prevent being laid off by one of the richest men in the world.
While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot.
I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.
Epstein had many known connections to Silicon Valley CEOs, but less known was how he made money from those relationships.
We did a deep dive into how he got dealflow in Silicon Valley, giving him shots to invest in Coinbase, Palantir, SpaceX and other companies.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/b...
Jeffrey Epstein’s Money Mingled With Silicon Valley Start-Ups
I think a lot about how one of the things that the cultural upheaval of the 1960s produced in the United States was a HUGE decline in compulsory homosociality, with tremendous beneficial results.
Here in the UK the old tradition of single-sex boarding schools for the children of the wealthy actively produces a culture of boys who are desperate for feminine attention but have no idea how to interact with women or see them as anything other than objects of desire. Those boys end up in power.
Hey, remember that time I said that pointing out that AI is giving bad data to ICE is missing the point because ICE doesn't actually care if the data is good? Check out how right I am.
This is an authoritarian power grab, full stop.
Nationalizing elections would put the executive branch in control of who votes and how. That’s how dictators rig outcomes, crush opposition, and assault democratic self-government.
This should alarm everyone:
www.ms.now/news/trump-s...
Trump suggests federal control of elections in ‘some areas’
In a lengthy interview with NBC, the president said he will accept the results of the midterm elections if they are “honest.”
IMDB has flagged Melania the documentary for “unusual voting activity”. Someone is trying to pump up the viewer ratings after critics said it was a worthless piece of shit.
Swear to god, ICE could just announce they're leaving a city but not leave and the media will just stop covering that city completely even though ICE never left.
It's what ICE and the media did with LA and they're doing it with Minneapolis too
👀 Apparently, Ross Douthat invited Seth Harp to debate him on Douthat's "Interesting Times" NYT podcast. Harp says that the episode was recorded, Douthat got crushed, and RD/NYT decided not to publish it.
What?
x.com/sethharpesq/...For those who don't know, Luttig was once considered the intellectual heir to Scalia. He was about as conservative a judge as you could find...
Luttig: It doesn’t matter what the Supreme Court does from this point forward. For two years, the Supreme Court has authorized the absolute lawlessness and unconstitutional activity of this president.
Spiking the Kamala Harris endorsement can be rationalized as something that was done on the opinion side of the newspaper so less dire, but management spiking a news story means the outlet is official dead.
Scoop w/
@nataliekorach.bsky.social: Washington Post leadership spiked a story that had been prepared by the newspaper's media desk, covering the historic layoffs at the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper. Details in
@status.news:
link.status.news/4ai6W4C
Every president from Nixon on released their tax returns, but Trump -- who insisted he would follow that custom -- repeatedly refused to do that. So finally they were leaked, showing he paid only $750 in 2016 and nothing in 2017.
He's now demanding all of us, who *did* pay our full taxes, pay him.
Donald Trump’s frivolous $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns, if he were to win or get a settlement, would be paid entirely by U.S. taxpayers.
trib.al/eiYvT8m
This is why the 4th Amendment says “no person” — instead of “no citizen.”
If only citizens have rights, then no one has rights because all they have to do is say you’re not a citizen and then you have no right to prove otherwise.
JUST IN: A federal judge has barred ICE and DHS from using taxpayer information provided by the IRS.
Judge Talwani says that DHS' view that noncitizens lack 4th amendment rights — combined with ICE use of administrative warrants — is a recipe for abuse.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
it would be more accurate in each of these cases to say "one of several relatively early dominos" but i didn't and now the post has spread widely oh no
jeffrey epstein being the first domino for the financial crash, video game micro transactions, and Gamergate is making me lose my mind
Good god, Schumer has to go. "No masks" is not hard. It's like having a "no pedophiles" rule. If you have to caveat it, you need to just quit and find a better use of your life, like watching paint dry.
Chuck Schumer says ICE should be allowed to wear masks in "unusual circumstances—you know, some guy's picture was put up by a terrorist group or something."
"Twitter is cooking their brains" theory looking pretty strong
Trump job approval rating by news platform
🟢 Twitter/X: +9
🔴 Facebook: -7
🔴 Cable TV: -10
🔴 Podcasts/YouTube: -14
🔴 Local TV: -17
🔴 Instagram: -21
🔴 Broadcast TV: -28
🔴 TikTok: -28
🔴 Newspapers/news sites: -33
🔴 Reddit: -40
www.theargumentmag.com/p/twitter-is...
They're Abrego-Garcia-ing a child -- punishing him because his very existence is inconvenient to them. It's gutter bigotry and petulant sadism all the way down.
Sharing so that you can point and laugh at Carville who hasn't led a winning campaign since the mid-90s...
[Standard caveat that people are bad at predicting what will persuade them.] It's funny that a "fight harder against Trump" message polls the best, and James Carville's anti-defund-the-police message is next to last.
Resistance Moms and the never-Trump Republicans have been right about everything.
Legally here on a work permit. Arrested when he went to renew it. Not fighting his deportation. Yet he's been in detention 29 days. No access to a lawyer. Has been given no information about his case. Family inquiries also ignored. ICE only responded when local news requested comment.
‘Nobody gives me information’: Jacksonville-area man held in ‘Deportation Depot’ for weeks talks conditions, challenges
Macario Pablo-Reyes, 49, has been held for weeks at the Baker County Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, sometimes referred to as the “Deportation Depot.”
