Michael Phillips

KenoshaRacineTwinCitiesDallasSanDiegoSt.PaulLAChicago.

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

Congratulations to this first-rate Tribune layoff casualty, now in a better place

[Ray Long @RayLong]

Lizzie Kane: Chicago's loss is Sacramento Bee's gain
New Bee farm-to-fork journalist excited to ‘jump into a new reporting space’
@lizzie_kane17
Read more at: https://t.co/f1mCH0aLmd
https://t.co/KoWCAFRrqk

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

If it’s possible to ignore the visual ugliness and focus on the metaphor: It’s heartbreakingly apt. America the brutal, 2026.

[Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸 @Amy_Siskind]

OMG 💔

[Alex Prompter @alex_prompter]

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.

Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.

Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."

Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.

They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.

One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the metered intelligence business model.

And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

Mom, now 93 and delightful as ever, consented freely and gladly to this 2023 interview. I'll always love the image of a gang of first-year Catholic college girls in the middle of Nebraska, dancing back to the dorm after seeing "An American in Paris." https://t.co/opI5hbJCwN

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

A truly great day for so many fierce talents.

[Laura N. Rodríguez Presa @LAURA_N_ROD]

Our team won a Pulitzer Prize for our coverage of Midway Blitz: “For its powerful coverage of the Trump administration’s militarized immigration sweep of the city that described in vivid, muscular prose how the siege-like incursion of ICE agents unified Chicagoans in resistance.

At a moment when the government tried to silence us, we chose to stand up and keep working. What an honor and privilege to do this work alongside my team at the @chicagotribune.

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

This country is staring at the fire and doing not much of anything to put it out.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

JUST IN: A Trump judicial nominee was asked point blank: is Trump eligible to run for a third term?

Their answer: “I would have to review the actual wording…”

Sen. Chris Coons then asked every nominee in the room to confirm the Constitution bars a third term.

Silence.

Every single one of them refused to say it.

Trump is appointing judges who won’t affirm the 22nd Amendment to his face.

Never stop connecting the dots.

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

Damn good piece.

[The A.V. Club @TheAVClub]

Paramount acting so quickly to punish a journalist that disagreed with the powers that be is a warning of the kind of management style that would control more than a third of the industry if the merger goes through

https://t.co/IGPD1qYCyI

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

It's physically painful to watch society get less and less intelligent, more evil, weird, and devoid of empathy every single day.

[Decoding Fox News @DecodingFoxNews]

This has gone off charts viral. It’s a transcript I made of the 60 Minutes interview that shows the exact cuts made by CBS. It’s free for anyone to read - No Paywall.

https://t.co/b1h16O5CwU

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

This is important—is it because LA, Chicago and Mpls resistance to the ICE onslaught failed to trigger the hoped-for declaration of martial law? Asking for a nation. Sorry, “friend.”

[Thomas P (TOM) Logan 🇯�� 🇺🇸 @TokyoTom2020]

🚩Note: Critical international response to the White House Correspondents Dinner (#WHCD) incident and post-facto “ #ReichstagFire” political implications:

🔥🔥🆘The international 🌏press has been quick to frame the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting as a potential "Reichstag moment," with several non-American outlets expressing skepticism about how the incident will be leveraged for political gain by Trump, his party and core supporters.

Foreign Media Skepticism (Last 4 Hours)

• 🇫🇷Le Monde (France): A lead editorial suggests the incident is being "meticulously staged" to justify a broader crackdown on domestic political opposition. The analysis notes that while the trauma is real, the speed with which the administration pivoted to "enemies within" rhetoric suggests a prepared response.

• 🇩🇪Der Spiegel (Germany): Using the most direct historical parallels, commentators have questioned whether this represents a "Washingtoner Reichstagsbrand" (Washington Reichstag Fire). The skepticism centers on the immediate call for emergency decrees and the suspension of standard legal oversight following the shooting.

• 🇪🇸El País (Spain): Reports focus on the "transactional use of tragedy," noting that the incident provides a convenient distraction from recent setbacks in the Middle East and domestic economic pressures.

• 🇬🇧The Guardian (UK): Coverage emphasizes the "security-industrial complex" of the administration, suggesting the shooting will be used to permanently "fortify" the executive branch against judicial and legislative scrutiny.

The prevailing sentiment in these original-language reports follows three distinct lines of skepticism:

The "Pre-Written" Script:

Observation that the political messaging—targeting specific "radical" groups—emerged before the shooter was even fully identified.

The "Bargaining Chip" Theory:

In Asia, particularly in 🇹🇼Taiwan (United Daily News), there is concern that a "shaken" administration might use the domestic crisis as an excuse to pull back from international commitments, focusing instead on internal "purification."

The "Basket Case" Narrative:

Across European outlets, the shooting is cited as final proof that the U.S. has devolved into a "failed state" where even the most secure elite gatherings are subject to the same chaos as rural schools.

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

MAGA accounts tweet in unison about the need for a White House ballroom following WHCD incident

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

I mean, we all respond to recent traumatic events in our own way

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

Candid photograph of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth after walking out of a press briefing by President Donald Trump at the White House, following a shooting incident during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, in Washington, D.C.

📸 REUTERS/Kylie Cooper

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

Take a close look at this.

NBC News published a major investigation this afternoon. Six reporters. Six named sources inside the US government. The story breaks open something the Trump administration has been hiding for two months.

The damage Iran did to American military bases in the opening phase of the war is far worse than the Pentagon has admitted.

Repairs will cost billions of dollars.

Here is what NBC found.

[Vadim Rizov @vrizov]

Yes, MICHAEL is going to join the ranks of those movies. Exactly.

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

Well, these technical glitches happen. Right in the nick of time.

[Micah Erfan @micah_erfan]

🚨 HOLY SH*T: Fox News just cut one of their reporters off as they seemed to indicate the shooting was a pre-planned false flag.

[Candice Frederick @ReelTalker]

Yes, all of this. And it's been helping destroy actual journalism.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

Nine years ago, the Senate held hearings about whether a president can launch a nuclear attack not authorized by Congress - a retired general reminded lawmakers and the military that they can refuse a president's illegal order.

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

Schumer’s time has come. And gone, man, gone.

[Farran Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren]

Swear to the almighty I'll vote for whoever primaries this fool in '28. WhoEVER. The first Uber driver willing to take me to JFK. The oldest cat at Brooklyn ACC. The nesting dove in our backyard, I don't CARE. If he survives a primary I'll write in Nan Goldin, I am DONE.

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

@GuyLodge Wonderful news, Guy! None better.

[Michael Phillips @MrPhillipsPart2]

RTing this not idly, but because it seems like the plan. In a presidency built on shady theatrics, to put it mildly, this may be the endgame—with no apparent Republican resistance on the horizon.

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

I agree with renowned historian Timothy Snyder. Trump is going to stage a coup. As Snyder explains, Trump's proposed 50% defense budget increase should be seen as nothing short of a bribe to secure military loyalty for a coup attempt — and that a staged domestic terror attack is Trump's best remaining path to nullifying elections.

Pete Hegseth's recent firing of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George is more evidence that the fascist authoritarian Trump regime is more interested in loyalty than competence. If the 79-year-old pedophile psychopath is to succeed in conning the US Armed Forces into supporting him in overthrowing American democracy and the constitution, his only chance is to have quislings and sycophants throughout the top brass in the military.