Susan

BSA manager, foodie, self-professed nerd

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Let us ask Mary, Queen of Peace, to teach us to renounce hurtful words, hasty judgment, gossip, and slander. May we learn to cherish and nurture love within our families, among friends, in the workplace, on social media, in political debates, and in Christian communities, so that hatred may give way to hope and peace. #ApostolicJourney

[NBC News @NBCNews]

NEW: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken steps to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military, some of whom are seen as having been targeted because of their race, gender or perceived affiliation with Biden administration policies or officials, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process. https://t.co/KUvNlQcNV4

[Susan @SMCoco44]

@therookie Happy Birthday @DericAugustine !! 🎂

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

I continue to follow the situation in the Middle East with dismay. Like other regions of the world, it is torn apart by war and violence. We cannot remain silent in the face of the suffering of so many defenseless victims of these conflicts. What wounds them wounds all of humanity. The death and pain caused by these wars is a scandal for the entire human family and a cry that rises to God!

[Governor JB Pritzker @GovPritzker]

Donald Trump’s agents are untrained, unqualified, unprofessional, and dangerous.

It’s time for them to stop their assault on American cities.

[Amanda Litman @amandalitman]

“Please get the truth out about our son.”

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC]

Americans are being killed in the street by their government. Our Constitution is being shredded and our rights are dissolving. Resist.

Senate Dems should block ICE funding this week. Activate the National Guard.

We can and must stop this.

[Captain Mark Kelly @CaptMarkKelly]

Don’t let this White House lie to you. Believe what you see.

Alex Pretti was trying to help a woman off the ground. Then immigration agents tackled, shot, and killed him.

It’s time for them to get the hell out of MN.

[Congressman Seth Magaziner @Rep_Magaziner]

The ICE and Border Patrol surge into Minnesota and Maine must end immediately.

Too many people, including children and US citizens, have been hurt, imprisoned, had their homes broken into and civil rights violated. These operations are making everyday people less safe. (3/4)

[Pete Buttigieg @PeteButtigieg]

If there was ever a moment for libertarians and conservatives to step up and join the rest of us, we’re in it.

Americans have to unite and stop this descent from a freedom-loving nation into the kind of place where masked, militarized government agents are sent to politically noncompliant areas to roam the streets, terrorize civilians, and deploy violence with impunity.

[Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris]

Alex Jeffrey Pretti was an ICU nurse at a VA hospital. His life, through his profession, was dedicated to serving his community and our country.

As so many have now seen on video, his final act before he was killed by federal agents was doing everything in his power to protect his community.

Alex and tens of thousands of Minnesotans have boldly defended their neighbors against the murderous occupation of an American city by the federal government. I am enraged and heartbroken for Alex, his family, Minneapolis, and America.

[Variety @Variety]

Jimmy Kimmel speaks out against "angry finger-pointing" after Charlie Kirk's death by shooting.

“Instead of the angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence."

Read more here: https://t.co/B3CFDx8g20

[The Boston Globe @BostonGlobe]

For over a year, 12-year-old Dante Fowler hadn't been allowed to go to school with other kids.

His school district said it couldn't educate him because of his severe autism. Stuck in a broken system, he fell apart — and his family watched, helpless. https://t.co/hZa98ZlJvF

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

Sen. Alex Padilla was just handcuffed and detained while standing up to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at her LA press conference.

This is not America.

[Hakeem Jeffries @RepJeffries]

Senator Alex Padilla is a good man and principled public servant.

The brazen and aggressive manhandling of Senator Padilla by the Trump administration is a sickening disgrace.

Anyone who assaulted the Senator should be held accountable.

No one is above the law.

[NESN @NESN]

#CrochetingWithCrochet 🧶🐷

"I'm getting about a row done per inning... it's going to be a sweater."

We'll try to keep an eye on @rockmeannadeus's progress throughout this one 👀

[(((Charles Fishman))) 💧 @cfishman]

The federal government doesn’t ‘give’ money to Harvard. The $2.2 billion in frozen payments isn’t for Harvard sophomores’ tuition or library books.

The US government is buying services from Harvard: scientific & medical research & development.

These aren’t ‘woke donations.’

They are contracts. Proposed, reviewed, awarded, with metrics and deadlines and standards of performance.

Harvard is a government contractor in that sense — lab by lab, scientist by scientist — just the way any other company is a contractor.

That’s true of Columbia’s $400 million in ‘frozen’ contracts — and all the rest.

R1 research universities do crucial research the federal government can’t do itself, but that we as a nation have decided we need done.

Mission driven. Pioneering. Essential.

They can’t be done — as Sean Hannity just suggested — at community colleges & vocational schools.

That’s not what the $2.2 billion is being spent on.

…You could Google it. Of course.

[✨neuron divergent EKG slayer MD✨ @fuqekgs]

Hi! I'm autistic! I'm a dual MD/PhD student. I will be applying to residency this year.

I pay taxes. I've held multiple jobs. I'm a published author. I just paid my taxes for the 10th year! I played soccer as a kid and competitively swam.

We exist💕 stop generalizing

[Boston Bruins @NHLBruins]

Brad, for 16 years you have represented the Spoked-B with immense pride and passion. You set the tone every night with your intensity and drive, while becoming one of the best players in the history of our franchise.

You will forever be a Boston Bruin.

Thank you for everything.