#it was ted cruz specifically

[thoodleoo]

had a dream the other day that america decided to bring back the poena cullei (death penalty where you sew someone up in a sack with a bunch of animals and then throw the sack into a river) but only for us senators and so every senate meeting just devolved into people shouting "THE SACK! THE SACK!" whenever ted cruz talked

[boosstergold]

Didn't get a reply back on this but I'm going to post a few (DC) recs anyway? These are mostly places I think are good to start. (Disclaimer that these are influenced by personal taste).

Easy mode: Short contained run, probably less than 30 issues (can be more), very unlikely to have any crossovers, does not require much (if any) further knowledge of characters.

Medium mode: Approx 40-75 issues, will have some crossovers but you won't need to read them if you don't want to, may require a little wiki-ing about some characters/events but only if you're curious.

Hard(er) mode: We're reaching 100+ issue territory, many crossovers (some which can be ignored, some which may be confusing if ignored but you can wiki those if you don't want to read them). Believe me it is fairly easy to ignore a missing crossover/event issue and barrel on back to the main story in most cases.

Green Lanterns

Easy: Far Sector, Green Lantern: Legacy - both self-contained, introduce new characters.

Medium: Green Lantern Corps vol 2(2006-2011) - a few crossovers events here, (don't feel you have to read every blackest night crossover lmao just read what you want even if that is just this comic alone), Green Lanterns (2016-2018) (Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz).

Hard(er): Green Lantern vol 3 (1990-2006) (Kyle Rayner's run) #48 onwards, long run, not all of it is amazing quality but it is more good than not. Significant number of crossovers because this spans 12 years.

Superman

Easy: The Man of Steel (1986) six issue mini reintroducing Superman post-crisis, Superman Red & Blue (2021), Superman Smashes the klan (2019-2020), Batman/Superman: World's Finest (2022-ongoing)

Hard(er): Superman (1987-2006) + The Adventures of Superman (1987-2006) + Action Comics (1938-2011 starting at #597) These 3 titles run concurrently and the story sometimes moves from one to the next meaning you will miss something if you're not reading all three. (I am currently reading these and am only in the first quarter so cannot say anything about quality of later issues).

More under read more

Blue Beetle

Easy: Blue Beetle vol 2 (1986-1988)(Ted Kord), Blue Beetle vol 3 (2006-2011)(Jaime Reyes)

Hard(er): Justice League International/America (it renames at issue #26) (1987-1998) Team book (obviously) and a long run where quality is not always consistent but is fun overall and essential for Ted's character.

Booster Gold

Easy: Booster Gold vol 1 (1986)

Hard-(er): Justice League International/America (see above)

Misc.

Easy: Young Justice (1998-2003) (if you like Tim, Kon, Bart, Cassie etc an essential read)

Medium: Wonder Woman vol 5 (2016-2023) #1-#54 a good re-introduction of Diana post n52 (side note that I've heard Wonder Woman vol 2 (1987-2006) is good but I have not read it yet).

[solitaryyconfinement]

I managed to archive many reposts from Natalie / Samantha Rupnow’s TikTok account (targetedbloodsport) before it was taken down at the end of December, and I finally brought myself to write a little summary of things about her that I found there.

(I didn’t mean to idolize her by writing this, just thought that digging into her daily internet life could be interesting + I was a little annoyed with amount of misinformations on social media regarding her case)

Ideologically: anti-liberal, right-wing, white supremacist, pro-Trump, anti-refugees and similar stuff. I didn’t see anything that would indicate her being a radical feminist, or even feminist at all. Quite the contrary, she rather mocked them. + I believe that I don’t need to really emphasize it here, but since many people, e.g. on Twitter, still believe in it: she also WASN’T trans (nor support them in any form), there’s lots of her childhood photos proving it.

Reposted a lot of tiktoks about love for nature, videos with cute animals etc. (one of the main themes on her profile), as well as about eco-terrorism.

Also reposted a lot of stuff regarding love for her boyfriend and being happy with him despite the distance. She wasn’t a femcel, although clearly had an interest in Elliot Rodger.

Shooters/other killers that she was a fan of/was interested in: Vladislav Roslyakov (+ mentioned in her manifesto), Pekka-Eric Auvinen (+ mentioned in her manifesto), Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (+ both mentioned in her manifesto), Elliot Rodger, Brenton Tarrant (e.g. reposted AI minions version of his shooting), Anders Breivik, Payton Gendron, Dylann Roof, Patrick Crusius (+ mentioned in her manifesto), Alexandre Bissonnette, Ted Kaczynski, Luigi Mangione, Guilherme Taucci Monteiro (+ mentioned in her manifesto), and Luiz Henrique de Castro, Cho Seung-hui, Timur Bekmansurov, Vyacheslav Zinchenko, Colt Gray, Varg Vikernes. Also: Arda Küçükyetim (mentioned in her manifesto), Anton Lundin Pettersson (posted edit of him on Twitter - Postalbrained account), Adam Lanza (called herself a „Sandy Hook Truth finder and writer” in one of her tweets - Rotten_Rc account), Mikhail Pivnev (Twitter pfp - Postalbrained account), Daniil Zasorin (Discord pfp), Alina Afanaskina (liked a post about her on Tumblr), Dmitry Vinogradov (mocked a guy who didn’t know him, Twitter - Rotten_Rc account), Jeffrey Dahmer (created Spotify playlist themed around him on September 2022, shortly after the Netflix series - so far her earliest found connection to true crime). She didn't like Audrey Hale (reposted tiktok about cops who killed her), Nikolas Cruz (made fun of him on Tumblr) and Salvador Ramos (called him a huge fag on Twitter - Rotten_Rc account).

Music that she listened to: KMFDM (obviously; also all related stuff like MDFMK or discography of Tim Skold), Alex G, TV Girl, Nirvana, Blod Besvimelse, Crystal Castles, Frank Sinatra, ABBA, musical The Phantom of the Opera, Gioacchino Rossini (specifically reposted about William Tell Overture), Rokiczanka (song „W moim ogródecku”). Also, from her Spotify and Volf.fm: Mindless Self Indulgence, Radiohead, Deftones, System Of a Down, Rammstein, Nine Inch Nails, Korn, Misfits, Queen, The Smiths, Marilyn Manson, Fried By Fluoride, dj trippie flameboy, Goreshit, Kitty Gore, Memo Boy, Rory in early 20s, Columbine Carcass, BONES (including album „TeenWitch”), Sematary, Tanin Jazz, Katya Sambuca (song „Клан”), Joost, Melanie Martinez, IC3PEAK, She Wants Revenge, MGMT, The Smashing Pumpkins, Gorillaz, Slipknot, Eminem, Kate Bush, Nick Cave, Chemlab, Acumen Nation, Sister Machine Gun, Made Of Pain, Killing Joke, Decalius, Nightmare At Hanging Rock (including song „Columbine”), grandson, salvia palth, BRN1NG BRA1N SOUND INDUSTRIES, 4ut1st, heelflip, Kroka Koka, German Error Message, Alan Aztec, Tyler The Creator, The Neighbourhood, Lana Del Rey, Sufjan Stevens, Lady Gaga, Mitski, Billie Eilish, Grimes, Ayesha Erotica, Ski Aggu, The Living Tombstone, Andreas Rönnberg, Ensemble Vanya + Liliana Bush & Daria Scherbak (their „Russian Cyberfolk Song”), soundtrack from the game NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD.

Movies/shows that she liked: Donnie Darko, Dead Poets Society, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Evangelion, Puella Magi Madoka Magica (had the main character on her pfp), Fight Club (both videos that she uploaded there herself were related to that film, with Tyler Durden / Narrator's monologue about insomnia, and song „Where Is My Mind?” by Pixies), Taxi Driver, Joker (though didn’t like the second movie), American Psycho, A Clockwork Orange, Zero Hour (episode about Columbine), Zero Day, Elephant, Klass, Duck! The Carbine High Massacre, The Dirties, Dexter, The Boys (mainly Homelander), Inglourious Basterds (mainly Hans Landa), Breaking Bad, Terrifier, Creep, The Shining, All Quiet on the Western Front, Kill Bill (repost about Gogo Yubari), Saw, Lucky Star, Arcane, Titanic, The Notebook, 500 Days of Summer, Mysterious Skin, Suicide Room, Lilja 4-ever. + was a fan of Ryan Gosling. Also liked Tumblr posts about the movie Lisa Frankenstein and J.D. from Heathers.

Games that she played: Postal (+ wrote a positive review on Steam about it) Manhunt, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Bloodborne, Silent Hill, Minecraft, Doki Doki Literature Club. Also Roblox, Genshin Impact (she streamed herself playing it on Twitch approx. 5 months prior to the attack) and (from her Xboxgamertag account): DOOM, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Fortnite.

Many of her reposts were centered around Russia and Poland (about their memes, history, military or „aesthetic” + also shared a tiktok showing them dividing the territory of Ukraine), as well as other European countries like Germany, Serbia, Finland, Sweden or Norway. As an additional info, her Duolingo account shows that she was learning German and Russian.

Reposted tiktoks about novels of Kafka and Dostoevsky.

Reposted tiktoks about Russian neo-nazi Dmitry Borovikov.

Reposted tiktoks about Gleb Korablev and Ukrainian suicide duo Vika & Vova.

Reposted tiktoks about GypsyCrusader.

Reposted tiktoks about looksmaxxing.

Reposted tiktoks about hating school, hating popular girls/popular kids in general, „feeling like a burden to everyone”, witnessing parents arguing with each other etc.

Bonus: reposted tiktok about hating TCC girls that are making edits of school shooters to KMFDM songs. Didn’t age too well.

The marked things are the ones that were most likely to be her favorites (e.g. movies that she reposted the most tiktoks about, perpetrators that were the most ideologically similar to her etc.)

I couldn’t add more than 30 screenshots at one time, so I’ll maybe make another post for them. UPDATE: part 2.

[earlgreylatte]

DC, Marvel Comics, RoR, Gintama, FFXV, FFXVI, DMC, Mortal Kombat, Invincible

* = Sexual Content

The Lantern Called Nowhere - Platonic Green Lanterns/Batfamily, Kyle Rayner

Eldest Daughter Syndrome - Invincible

Your Throne - Qin Shi Huang*

His Völunder - Qin Shi Huang

His Völunder - Jack

Three Lifeforms - Hal Jordan

Returnee - Justice League Various

Love to Highball - Hal Jordan

Morning Glory - Hal Jordan*

Hello, You - Yandere Mark Grayson

Variant Madness - Yandere Mark Grayson*

Nocturne - Vampire Hal Jordan

Play to Lose - Radiant Black*

Power Ranger BF and his Magical Girl GF - Kyle Rayner

How long they last NNN - Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Booster Gold, Ted Kord, Bruce Wayne*

When you let go of their hand - Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Booster Gold, Ted Kord, Bruce Wayne

2V1 - Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Booster Gold, Ted Kord, Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle, Helena Bertinelli, Vic Sage*

No Idea - Matt Murdock, Peter Parker, Wade Wilson

Small Blurb - Ted Kord, Booster Gold

Give and Take - Yandere Green Lanterns*

Will you be my Valentine? - Helena Bertinelli

My Bloody Valentine - Diana Prince

Vibes - Ted Kord, Booster Gold

Unyielding - Mark Grayson*

Loverboy - Kyle Rayner, Peter Parker, Johnny Storm*

Cloak and its Dagger - Yandere Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, Jessica Cruz*

Sharing is Caring - Yandere Green Lanterns*

The Not So Little Things - Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Booster Gold, Ted Kord, Bruce Wayne*

Schedule? - Yandere Green Lanterns

Limed Ash - Yandere Booster Gold, Ted Kord

Friends with Benefits - Yandere Hal Jordan, Booster Gold, Ted Kord, Kyle Rayner, Johnny Storm, Peter Parker, Matt Murdock*

3some ask!! - Johnny Storm, Peter Parker*

3some Returns - Johnny Storm, Peter Parker*

Nicknames and Petnames - Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Booster Gold, Ted Kord, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Roy Harper, Wally West, Kyle Rayner

Nicknames and Petnames - Peter Parker, Johnny Storm, Matt Murdock, Wade Wilson, Clint Barton, Scott Summers, Kurt Wagner, Logan Howlett

Mirror Thoughts - Green Lanterns*

Burnt Leaves - Yandere Johnny Storm

Forced to write because my favs never have enough content😔

21, she/her, Desi, mediocre writer, call me whatever! Love to interact with those that have similar interests!

Recs

Banners/dividers from @cafekitsune

Inbox is always open, so send an ask, but I’ll only write the interesting and sexy ones lol

No hyper specific character requests (‘reader is like (this character)’, ‘they’re a musical theatre nerd’, etc).

No male reader

No non/con

No incest or underage characters

[mariacallous]

A grant to study linguistic differences between Hebrew and English was flagged as an example of “woke DEI grants” in a new database released by Sen. Ted Cruz.

The database is part of ongoing Republican efforts to justify significant cuts to federal research funding and diversity programs under President Donald Trump.

The $226,000 grant, given by the National Science Foundation to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2022, was flagged by the Texas Republican senator’s team as having an inappropriate focus on “gender.” 

But according to the description of the research in Cruz’s own database, the sole mention of gender in the grant’s description is in reference to the fact that the Hebrew language (like many) assigns gender to nouns.

The UMass grant was also one of seven in Cruz’s database of Biden-era grants that stated an intent to promote partnerships between American and Israeli research institutions — something that did not appear to mitigate opposition from Cruz, an avowed supporter of Israel. He said in a statement that the more than 3,400 grants in his database demonstrated that the NSF had funded “questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”

A request for comment to Cruz’s office was not returned; nor was an inquiry sent to UMass. Cruz, the chair of the Senate committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, said in a statement that his data “exposes how the Biden administration weaponized federal agencies to push a far-left ideology.” 

He added, “Congress must end the politicization of NSF funding and restore integrity to scientific research.”

The public database of grants compiled by Cruz provides a window into how Trump and his allies are thinking about cuts to research funding. The flagged grants mentioning Israel were made to six universities including Brown, the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. They cover a range of scientific topics, from studying cognition to magnetic technologies to energy storage. 

What they have in common is a stated intent to collaborate with an Israeli university. For example, Michigan’s grant specifically references a partnership with Ben-Gurion University in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva, while a second UMass grant mentions partnering with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in the port city of Haifa, as well as “outreach by the Israeli collaborator to local high schools in Haifa.”

The second common thread among the Israel-related grant descriptions is the use of keywords flagged by the database as related to gender or DEI. Cruz’s team sorted the grants based on the presence of keywords related to the categories of “gender,” “status,” “social justice,” “race” and “environmental justice.”

None of the grants to mention Israeli partnerships make such topics the focus of their research, though some state a general commitment to “groups underrepresented in science” or “outreach to women and underrepresented minorities.” UMBC’s grant states that it will allow participation “for local high school students from underrepresented groups on the US side, and from various nationalities on the IL [Israeli] side.”

The UMass grant exploring the Hebrew and English languages makes no such commitment to diversity. Its reference to gender comes as it states that “English and Hebrew differ in how they organize the words within sentences and whether they assign gender to nouns; Hebrew assigns masculine and feminine genders to nouns, similar to languages like Spanish and French but unlike English.” 

The project’s stated focus is to study how such linguistic differences affect “interpretation errors” among people who speak both languages.

Cruz’s dragnet of so-called “woke” research grants also comes as a number of American researchers and campus groups have pushed for boycotts of all Israeli institutions, in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza. 

The database was posted as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has targeted federal research funding on the basis of keywords that, the Trump team claims, reveal evidence of gender- and DEI-driven agendas. On Tuesday a federal judge intervened to block steep cuts to medical research funding at the National Institutes of Health. Another injunction blocked key parts of Musk’s effort to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

A report last week in the Washington Post found that NSF staff were also being directed to comb through their research projects in search of dozens of offending keywords, including “women,” “victims,” “trauma” and “ethnicity.” Such efforts are part of a larger slashing of federal spending, including the shuttering of entire departments, that scholars say is unlawful and may be leading to a constitutional crisis.

[coochiequeens]

Well, I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair,” Newsom said in a podcast episode with conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It's not just an issue of fairness it's an issue of rights versus privilege. Playing a sport is a privilege. No one should have the right to take the place of a more talented athlete who earned the privilege to participate.

By Shania Shelton and David Wright, CNN Thu March 6, 2025

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said transgender athletes playing in women’s sports is “an issue of fairness” in a break from most Democrats’ position on the topic.

“Well, I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair,” Newsom said in a podcast episode with conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

“I revere sports, and so the issue of fairness is completely legit. And I saw that the last couple of years. Boy did I saw how [Republicans] were able to weaponize that issue at another level,” he said.

Newsom addressed both sides of the issue, saying, “You know that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well. So both things I can hold in my hand.”

Newsom’s comments come after President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports, delivering on a political issue central to his 2024 campaign.

Other Democrats have gotten pushback for comments similar to Newsom’s. Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts has been vocal about transgender policies and told The New York Times in November that identity politics, particularly around transgender rights, hurt Democrats in the election, saying, “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Moulton got criticism from Democrats for his comments, and his campaign manager, Matt Chilliak, resigned in response to the remarks, according to The Boston Globe.

Newsom has a long record of supporting LGBTQ rights. He ordered the city and county of San Francisco to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004 after being elected mayor of San Francisco.

The California governor’s comments come as he eyes a potential 2028 presidential bid, having watched Republicans wield the issue against Democrats last cycle.

Transgender policies were a major factor in the advertising wars of the 2024 presidential race, as Trump and his allies leaned into sharp attacks on former Vice President Kamala Harris’ record, running waves of stark TV spots.

“Kamala’s agenda is they/them, not you,” said one ad, referring to the pronouns used by some transgender and non-binary individuals.

Newsom called the ad “devastating” to her campaign during the podcast. He went further, saying, “She didn’t even react to it, which was even more devastating.”

In total, Republican advertisers spent more than $60 million on ads that referenced transgender policies and LGBTQ rights during the 2024 presidential campaign, some of which included specific references to athletics participation, according to data from the ad tracking firm AdImpact.

The debate spilled into some key Congressional races as well, as Republican candidates echoed the messaging from pro-Trump advertisers.

An ad from Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, who was challenged unsuccessfully by Democratic Rep. Colin Allred last year, featured several girls playing school sports as a large, dark shadow looms over them. A narrator says, “Colin Allred could have stopped men from competing in women’s sports, but instead he voted against our daughters. What kind of man does that?”

In response to the criticism, Allred became the first Democrat that year to take to the airwaves directly rebutting the attacks, saying in an ad of his own that “I don’t want boys playing girls sports or any of this ridiculous stuff that Ted Cruz is saying.”

[tim-official]

i am pro-voting and will be voting from abroad this year specifically and only because i want to see ted cruz miserable. i am voting entirely out of schadenfreude. he has been a senator for nearly all my adult life and i just want him to have a really, really bad time. if you live in texas please consider how nice it would be to see photos of him tired and dejected

[darkmaga-returns]

NewsGuard has since removed any mention of Microsoft from its website.

“Big Tech is finally beginning to recognize the censorship of conservative viewpoints will no longer be tolerated by the American people,” Cruz, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said in a statement to Newsmax on Thursday.

“I am happy to see that the leadership at Microsoft has renounced their support of NewsGuard’s so-called media literacy tool in response to my letter.

“NewsGuard’s biased rating system stifles intellectual diversity, hinders critical thinking among young students, and undermines our nation’s core values of free expression.”

In his letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Cruz pointed out that NewsGuard has targeted outlets such as The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and NewsMax, branding them as “unreliable,” while left-wing outlets such as Jacobin, The Atlantic, and The New Republic are deemed reliable.

NewsGuard has also “found a willing partner in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)” to use their “media literacy” tool browser extension used by over 800 public libraries worldwide.

In November, Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr, now chairman, wrote to the CEOs of Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet demanding that they fess up about their censorship activities targeting conservatives. Carr specifically identified NewsGuard, which exists to “censor free speech and conservative news outlets.” -Newsmax

Major advertising agencies have used NewsGuard to censor conservative media – including Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis, Magnite, PubMatic, TripleLift, Comscore, Zefr, and Giphy.

[vintageandroid]

More Actionable Things You Can Do

I just want to mention Jay Kuo's substack The Status Kuo, which not only updates on current events with the Federal Government and context, but also, critically, shares things that can be done and specific issues to address with your representatives, and also highlights things that are being done or have been done.

Mostly I wanted to link to his most recent one, which is lengthy but ends with some serious suggestions of things citizens should speak to their reps about.

tl;dr: put the blame on Musk right now and not Trump; urge your Dem congress members to join Senators Schatz and Kim:

[explanation + scripts below the "keep reading" cut, for both Dem reps and GOP reps.]

The second tactic is one suggested by the recent statements of Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey. Both senators focus on the fact that while the Democrats are out of power in government, they are not without power to slow or even stop the seizure of the financial levers of the government by the Trump White House. Sen. Schatz declared last week that he would use his right to withhold unanimous consent on all new state department appointees unless and until USAID was restored as an agency. This was a tactic used by Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Tommy Tuberville to stall Biden-era appointments. Such a move would force each and every Trump appointment to go through a full round of regular process before the Senate, instead of batching groups of appointees through. It would mean the GOP Senate would have to decide between using its time to pass things like the budget or get appointments through. Other Democratic senators should be urged to join Schatz in his protest so that he is not a single target who is easier to bombard. Sen. Kim also drew attention by suggesting over the weekend that he’s open to shutting down the government in order to protest the takeover of government systems by DOGE and the shuttering of whole agencies like USAID. Normally, it is the GOP that has threatened shutdowns when it didn’t get its way politically. Here, all the Democrats would have to do is pledge to do nothing—not lift one damn finger—to help the GOP pass its budget or lift the debt ceiling… unless the White House backs off of its attempts to shut off the money and furlough government workers. The government faces a March 14, 2025 deadline to enact a new budget. Barring something truly wild, it almost certainly will have to lift the debt ceiling to do so. Hardliners within the GOP inevitably will use the opportunity to try and extract concessions by way of drastic spending cuts to popular programs. If the Democrats band together behind Sen. Kim’s call to “Just Say No,” as it were, then the budget disaster will be entirely in the hands of the GOP.

(Excuse the long-ass excerpt; there's even more in the link above.)

I encourage you to call or write to your senators, especially if you have dem senators, and encourage them to unite with these two.

Let me give you a simple script.

If you're calling, begin by stating your name and your zip code, and if you're leaving a voice mail, include your address and, perhaps, a phone number. Then, choose one of the bracketed sections:

As a constituent, I urge Senator [Name] to band with [Senator Schatz]/[Senator Kim]'s call to [withhold unanimous consent]/[shut down the government] in protest of Musk's attacks on government agencies. Voters want to see you taking action right now. Thank you for your time.

That's it! That's all you have to say! You can reword that to suit your preferences better, but the important thing is, you don't have to be eloquent, you just have to tell them what actions you want them to take.

Calling is usually better than emailing, but a) the phone lines are melting to bits because they are getting 1500 calls a minute instead of the usual 30-50 and b) emailing is better than nothing. If you can, call, but if you can't, email! Simple as that.

If you have a Republican senator/rep, your focus should be on Musk. This isn't a perfect script, but let me try. Again, if you're calling, give your name and zip code (and if it's a voicemail, your address and maybe phone number), and then:

I want to express to Senator/Representative [whoever] that I believe Elon Musk has too much influence over the current administration given that he was not elected and his actions seem largely self-serving. I urge Senator/Representative [whoever] to take action against his rushed and clumsy dismantling of government agencies. Thank you.

Again, feel free to reword that and if anyone has a better script with more specific actions, feel free to add that.

Also, please remember to be polite to staffers and to be brave and do the thing! As I said in my 5Calls post last week, feel free to let me know you contacted someone and I'll tell you how cool you are for it.

[kiefbowl]

conservatives have always had a problem with stupidity but something shifted in...gwb era I think. the brazenness of stupidity is a bit much to handle anymore. like why did ted cruz fleeing his state during an emergency not ruin his career utterly. that would not have flown in the 50s conservative voters wanted to be treated like they were not fools then. now they are full on cult members who don't give a shit and will be like out loud white immigrants don't count and I'll cry if you call me racist about it even though I just said it specifically and out loud.

[prolifeproliberty]

Ted Cruz has really disappointed me here.

IVF is not pro-life.

Please call your senators and ask them to reject this bill. If your senator ran as a pro-life candidate or claims to be pro-life, PLEASE emphasize in your call that IVF is not compatible with pro-life values.

Even if you don’t care about IVF specifically, this bill represents huge federal overreach. It’s like the Roe v Wade of IVF. And worse, because it’s legislation and not a court case.

[vomitdodger]

This is interesting if you like debate, take an active interest in true constitutionality issues and mental gymnastics. About a six min vid. Discusses whether Harris is eligible for presidency based on the constitutional requirements. Not that I think it will make a difference. Discussion centers around what is a “natural born citizen” and “subject to the jurisdiction within”. Point being Harris was born on US soil while her non-US citizen parents had expired stays.

I’ve tried to find a definite answer for about two days and no such luck.

Points of considerations:

The Supreme Court has never officially ruled on this. There is much academic inference but it’s never ruled on a case/scenario like this.

The founding fathers original intent of “natural born citizens” was what most people would think…born to US citizens…not an anchor baby (Harris). Note they included the specific word “natural”.

Citizenship was later clarified to children of citizens born overseas…basically. Example: Ted Cruz born in Canada and McCain born in Panama Canal zone. Both considered “natural born citizens” so eligible to run.

Anchor baby’s are often referred to as “birthright citizens”. This is comrade Haley. Difference is her parents were in the US legally although not yet naturalized. Harris’ parents were neither…they stayed past their defined term. This is really key.

Most academics and some court rulings have made or attempted to make the terms “natural born” and “birthright” interchangeable. Others have said..not so fast…go back to original intent…they are not the same for constitutional legalities.

Truly a constitutional scholar/legal issue that would only be officially settled by the SCOTUS. Again not that it will likely make a difference anytime soon, if at all.

If you try to find info disregard anything in the last year or so…it’s clearly a setup for future Harris runs. Disregard fact checkers and the usual media. Disregard any source that simple lists the 3 presidential requirements as worthless, low IQ input.

I also suspect there’s heavy media censorship of arguments against Harris’ scenario. Most articles simply list those 3 basic requirements without any constitutional scholar authority….so again low IQ, meaningless input to influence the masses with repetition. Which is exactly what the media does.

[serpenttailedangel]

I'm back in "reading scholarly articles by people advocating for major policy and education program change" mode and, subsequently, back in "disgusted by the amount of mask-off shit people just straight up say that you get called a conspiracy theorist for repeating to people who don't read this garbage even though these fuckers publish their insanity" mode. Presumably, these people expect that no one outside of their circles reads their stuff, so they can put it in ink. Although I guess it also helps that they use a lot of deceptive language and contradictions to try and snag people who aren't thinking too hard about what they read.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has a book available for free digital download in which they argue for some pretty insane shit (claiming to support academic freedom while also mentioning they want certain research subjects suppressed, wanting more politicized disciplines to have equal input to things like chemistry and biology in medical research, and new ranking for schools based on how well they comply with this guideline rather than the quality of their research or how good they are at teaching.) I tried telling someone about it IRL and they told me that whoever I heard about it from must have been lying. When I told them I was specifically citing UNESCO's official publication on their website, this person concluded that the only logical explanation was that the UN was hacked and someone wrote and posted a 100 page hoax paper for nebulous false flag reasons, and the UN has been unable to take the fake paper down and unwilling to release a statement saying it's fake for a year now.

But. like, in defense of the people who haven't read this stuff and also don't believe it when you talk about it, I've checked four different times to make sure that the author of Drag Pedagogy is an actual person affiliated with Drag Queen Story Hour events and not some intern Ted Cruz paid to write a false flag article. Sometimes shit gets so mask-off that I struggle to believe my own eyes.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Tristan Snell:

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was the best economy in over 50 years; it was the highest tax increases in over 50 years, the highest tariff increases in almost 100 years, and the worst stock market collapse since 2020, 2008, 1987, or the Great Depression, depending on much further everything keeps plummeting. Donald Trump does not seem to care, and worse, he and his inner circle do not seem to know what they have done — and do not seem to know basic economics. The #1 question everyone is asking is now: What the hell is going to happen, and where does this end? The answer may be an unexpected one — because it may be conservatives that help lead a revolt to stop Trump and the tariffs, returning control over tariff rates to Congress (where it is vested by the Constitution). I can hear everyone’s objections even as I type these words. It’s a cult. They never stand up to him. They’re scared of him. No one will ever hold him accountable. All of those things are true. But ultimately these are self-interested political and economic actors — and they will operate in large part by personal cost-benefit analyses. If the cost of their support for Trump begins to feel heavier than the benefit of their support for Trump, the scales may shift with a sudden jerk. Let’s game out how this could happen — and how it may already be beginning.

The Courts — Charles Koch and Leonard Leo did what?!?

First, there is already a very quiet coup happening in the courts, one that went almost unnoticed. The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Florida to stop the tariffs, arguing that Trump lacks the legal authority to enact them (specifically because he has based his authority on a federal law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), that relates to the use of economic sanctions against adversaries and makes no mention of tariffs). But who is the NCLA? They’re a relatively new organization that focuses on administrative law and what they perceive as regulatory overreach — but most saliently, it is funded by Charles Koch and Leonard Leo. Yes, that Charles Koch and that Leonard Leo. This is, as Joe Biden might put it, a BFD. It shows that even though Trump has captured most of the conservative institutional apparatus, its principal bankrollers are unwilling to stand idly by while Trump annihilates one of the pillars of conservative orthodoxy — namely, free trade.

[...]

Congress — 9 votes for a revolution?

Meanwhile in DC, there are already signs of pushback in the Senate — and while the conventional wisdom seems to be that the House is hopeless, that may not necessarily be true. On the Senate side, there is a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Chuck Grassley (D-IA), who is appropriately enough the only person in the Senate who was alive during the Great Depression. That bill requires that all new tariffs expire after 60 days unless they are congressionally approved — and it allows Congress to stop a tariff at any time before that. Cantwell and Grassley claim to have a total of 7 Republicans supporting the bill already — other than Grassley, co-sponsors include Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and, yes, Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The other 2 GOP supporters are easy to guess: likely Rand Paul (R-KY) and Susan Collins (R-ME), who voted for a different resolution to block Trump’s tariffs on Canada. And there’s at least one more potential vote for such a bill, one you may not expect — Ted Cruz, who’s voiced concern over tariffs and their effect on the economy.2 And this was all before the weekend of angst — and before whatever happens this week. How could all of this work? Senate leadership has already indicated that the bill will get some sort of hearing. Would there then be a strong enough opposition to stop the bill from getting a final floor vote? If so, could there be 6 more votes to get to the 60-vote cloture threshold? It all depends on how much pain is being felt — and whether Republicans would see enough safety in numbers. And perhaps safety in knowing that someone like Charles Koch could help fund their re-elects even if Trump turns on them. The House, of course, is a very different story, where the leadership is much more in lockstep with Trump. But what if there were different leadership?

Three words: motion to vacate.

We all remember Matt Gaetz’s successful coup to oust Kevin McCarthy in 2023; at that point, a motion to vacate the chair — to force an up-or-down majority vote on the speaker — could be initiated by a single member of the House GOP caucus.

The threshold has now been raised to 9 members, as of the beginning of this year. So consider this scenario. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) has already stated that he intends to bring a House bill to parallel the Cantwell-Grassley bill in the Senate. If Mike Johnson uses his Speaker powers to scuttle any consideration of Bacon’s bill, could there be 9 votes for telling Johnson bring this bill to the floor, or else? I think many, many Republicans are finding themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea — somewhat literally. They can stand 100% with Trump even as the economy crumbles. Or they can try to save themselves, even as they may face a rising Democratic blue wave in the midterms. The more Republicans distance themselves from Trump on tariffs, the more they can start calling themselves “moderates” or “focused on results” or “true conservatives, focused on lower taxes,” the more they might be able to craft themselves lifeboats rather than going down with the ship.

With the Trump Tax Hike Tariffs in force, could Republicans begin to stand up to Orange Foolius, even if it’s just one issue?

[fierceawakening]

I want us to seriously consider the possibility that the shooter was a leftist.

Not because I know. Sometimes assassins are people who are just very out of touch with reality, who don’t actually have clearly discernible politics. Think of the guy who shot Gabby Giffords, who from all accounts was actively psychotic with delusions centering on Giffords ignoring or betraying him.

(Nota bene I do not think and am not saying most people experiencing psychosis are violent. I’m using the specific example of a guy who was to explain how someone can fixate on a politician for a reason that’s not clearly political.)

But I think we’ve got to consider it.

“We’re out of nonviolent solutions.” “What the system does to us is violence, and it should be answered with force.” “You don’t debate fascists, you punch them.” “The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.”

We have to consider that maybe this person believed those things. Things a lot of us have been telling ourselves for a very long time.

Because look where what might have been that got us.

The violence didn’t succeed, so even if someone sincerely believed it was the only way, uh. Oops? The would be hero died. Their target, the one they saw as the villain, is fine. And will keep doing the villainy they were willing to die to try to stop.

And if it had succeeded?

What would we be seeing now?

I think a lot of us have had the idea that if an assassin did succeed, it would wake people up. Republicans who had been licking Trump’s boots would snap out of it, like whichever minions of Sauron didn’t die themselves in the Ring boom.

We’d suddenly see Ted Cruz defending his wife’s honor. Lindsey Graham finding his spine. People snapping out of a spell, and waking with a smile.

What we’re seeing today? Dictatorships love martyrs. They’re going to make him one even though he survived.

Those of us who said are we sure we should punch the Nazis? Maybe we should just ridicule them so much they can’t look strong?

We weren’t cowards. We were trying to tell you this.

It’s not going to be like waking up from a dream. It never is.

If you consider violence, and let me make very goddamn clear I do not think you should for reasons I just bothered to explain…

…you have to be VERY sure what you want to see will follow.

Which means you don’t just get to hope this doesn’t happen. You have to be sure you can rule it out.

Otherwise everything’s the same but now there’s some blood on your hands.

[zaprowsdower27]

So, the Des Moines Register, a big newspaper in Iowa, pays polling company every election to poll specifically Iowans. This polling company polls just Iowa, not just for the newspaper but in general. They're supposedly the gold standard in polling. In the last twelve years, the most their poll has been off was five percentage points in the 2018 governor's race - and other than that it's all under 3 percentage points.

Their latest poll has come out.

It has Harris beating Trump in Iowa by three percentage points. For context, Trump beat Biden by about eight percentage points in Iowa in 2020 (Selzer predicted a seven point margin).

If you plug that into the fivethirtyeight election map, the one that lets you pick which way you think a state is going to go and then incorporates that assumption into how it models the other states, it says that if Iowa goes blue, other things that are likely

Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia go from 'lean R' to 'likely D'

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada go from 'toss up' to 'solid D'

Florida, Texas, and Ohio go from 'Likely R' to 'Lean D'

Alaska goes from 'Likely R' to 'toss-up'

Overall, the map goes from saying 226 likely/solid D electors, 50 toss ups, and 43 electors leaning R to saying 407 likely/solid/leaning D electors and 3 toss-ups

The last time a president won with over 400 electoral votes was thirty-six years ago in 1988

If there was a D presidential victory margin that wide it would likely put the Senate back in play, particularly vis-a-vis Ted Cruz and Rick Scott in Texas and Florida

I'm going to assume that this poll is somehow an inaccurate outlier despite the widely respected gold standard pollster because I don't think my brain is capable of processing that level of hope at this point