maire fagan

We were warned. 'A coup attempt without consequences
is a training exercise.' We were warned

[Barry R McCaffrey @mccaffreyr3]

Trump blockades all shipping from the Persian Gulf stopping our Gulf allies from exporting oil, LNG, fertilizer, and general cargo imports. This creates a catastrophe for our allies and a calamity for global economy. Trump sees this as clever.

[Michael Gerald Gibbs🏳️‍🌈🍁 🇺🇦 (He/Him) @Mikeggibbs]

I grew up in a time when the Catholic Church was in steep decline, bleeding out from unspeakably horrific crimes perpetrated by generations of Priests and Nuns that were finally exposed to the world.

The Church seemed unwilling to do anything, let alone apologize to the many countless victims and survivors of these crimes.

So, people left Catholicism in huge numbers. This was a Church in rapid decline, facing death.

So I never imagined the day would come when the Catholic Church would be exploding with new members, basking in surges of public support.

Only one person is responsible.

Pope Leo has not only saved his Church.

He's leading a revolution.

A movement for morality and social justice that is refreshingly, authentically, Christian.

May this Pope live a very long life.

Humanity needs the moral clarity he's preaching now more than ever before in recent memory.

[Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla]

“Of all the prevailing media narratives around Gavin Newsom, the one that is most conspicuous by its absence is how under its two-term governor California became the top performing economy not just among its 49 siblings but also any developed nation.”

https://t.co/Whlk5fN0Fq

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

Pope Leo XIV is on a generational run.

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Adm. James Stavridis, confirming that Trump's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is a literal ACT OF WAR that is going to require a massive presence in the Middle East. Trump is gambling with the entire global economy.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Those who pray are aware of their own limitations; they do not kill or threaten with death. Instead, death enslaves those who have turned their backs on the living God, turning themselves and their own power into a mute, blind and deaf idol (Ps 115:4–8), to which they sacrifice every value, demanding that the whole world bend its knee. Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life. #Peace

[Richard Stengel @stengel]

For all his authoritarian tendencies, in the end Orban did the right thing: he conceded the election, did not make phony accusations of fraud, and called his opponent to congratulate him. That's the lesson American conservatives should take from Viktor Orban.

[Tomi 🇺🇦🇫🇮🇪🇺 @TallbarFIN]

Now that Orban is history, it's time for EU to go all in:

First, finally push trough that 90 billion € aid package for Ukraine.

Next, hit russia hard with the 20th sanction package.

Put everything in motion which was vetoed and stopped by Orban ✊️

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Too on point not to share, “Aussie reply to Trump rant about NATO not being there for us.

Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
"NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your fucking mouth. Credit (borrowed from) Jim Scroggins - original author 📷 unknown”

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

Orban concedes defeat. The support of Trump, Vance, Putin, Lavrov, Weidel, Milei, Le Pen, Fico, Babis and many others could not overcome Hungarian anger at a stagnant, corrupt regime

https://t.co/yfMCWUFk34

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

Illiberal democracy is a loser, and the Hungarians figured it out. Americans next.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Tonight in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square, something is shifting. A sea of young Hungarians, who have grown up knowing nothing but Orbán’s iron grip, are out in the cold, singing, chanting, and daring to believe that things can change.

These are people who have never voted in a free election. They have watched the courts get packed, the press get muzzled, and the money flow to Orbán’s cronies while they were handed nationalism and grievance in return. Tonight they are saying: enough.
What makes this remarkable is who has kept Orbán in power.

Donald Trump calls him a great leader. Vladimir Putin calls him a friend. Two men who have made careers out of crushing the thing these young Hungarians are standing in Heroes’ Square demanding: accountability, dignity, a future that belongs to them and not to a political machine.

Orbán has sold Hungary’s sovereignty in two directions at once, cuddling up to Moscow while draining Brussels. His people have paid the price in rigged institutions, stifled opportunity, and a media landscape where independent journalism is a survival sport.
But Hungary’s millions have not disappeared. They have been waiting. And tonight in Budapest, they are making noise.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Stay connected,
Follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

Just flagging this again for. @FoxNews so they can begin their year long coverage of the “pallets of cash” since this is 5 times bigger than Obama did

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

If we accept that the Trump administration is on
Russia's side, everything then makes sense

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Timothy Snyder is a Yale historian who has spent his career studying authoritarianism in Eastern Europe. The framing he's amplifying from emptywheel is precise and documented: this is a transnational effort, funded by Russian oil, to replace Western liberalism with a pro-Russian ideology posing as restoration.

The money trail is specific. Hungary's Mathias Corvinus Collegium - Orbán's "pet university" - received a $1.7 billion endowment in 2020: 10 percent stakes in Hungary's largest energy company and largest pharmaceutical company, plus $462 million in cash. That endowment is funded in significant part by Russian oil revenues flowing through state energy contracts. MCC then funds a sprawling network of think tanks, fellowships, publications, and summits pushing the same ideological program across Europe and into the United States.

Heritage Foundation signed a "landmark cooperation agreement" with Orbán's Danube Institute. Heritage's president Kevin Roberts has praised Orbán's movement for fighting for "Truth, for tradition, for families." Gladden Pappin - Harvard-trained, Catholic, now running a Hungarian state foreign policy institute - sits in bilateral meetings on the Hungarian side when American officials visit. He was in Vance's study at the Naval Observatory for drinks with Orbán last fall.

If Magyar wins Sunday he has pledged to defund MCC, recover its state assets, and end the use of public money to build political networks. That is why Vance flew to Budapest. That is why Trump endorsed Orbán twice by video. That is why the pipeline near Serbia produced two backpacks of explosives a week before the vote. The Sunday election is not about Hungary. It is about whether the money laundering vehicle for this network survives.

[Meanwhile in Ukraine @MeanwhileInUA]

Zelensky just reminded JD Vance that calling Ukrainian territory a "scrap of land" isn't a negotiating position. It's an insult.

With full diplomatic courtesy and zero diplomatic softness, Zelensky explained what Vance apparently doesn't know: the territory in question has 200,000 residents, strong fortifications, and sits exactly where Russia wants to build a bridgehead for its next offensive. Giving it up doesn't end the war. It stages the next one.

Then the closing line: "Every square meter of our land is Ukrainian land and, with all due respect to any of our partners, it is definitely not theirs."

There's no misreading that sentence.

[LongTime🤓FirstTime👨‍💻 @LongTimeHistory]

ICE detain 2 elementary students—deport them within 48 hours.

'This week ICE crossed a new alarming line," said lawyer. "Children are being targeted."

They were deported with nothing but the clothes on their backs—to place where they have no home, no belongings, nor resources.

6-year-old Denis and 11-year-old Genesis—both students at Burton Magnet Elementary School—were detained with their parents while attending an asylum hearing.

Their phones and documents were taken away before being driven away in unmarked van with dark tinted windows—so they couldn't even wave goodbye to their family.

"If we do everything according to the law we can still get kidnapped in the middle of the day and taken away... What are people supposed to do?"

Incident occurred in Durham, North Carolina.

[Chuck Todd @chucktodd]

So I’m confused: does this administration condemn countries who interfere in other countries’ politics or encourage it?

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.