Chris

"You tell people a lie three times, they will believe anything. You tell people what they want to hear, play to their fantasies, and then you close the deal."

[Chris @Shots01]

@Dearme2_ @ViralityEngine mommy hoes be bringing in that paper 💵. ❤️

[Teddy - PolyBackTest.com @Bitcoin_Teddy]

Bill Ackman literally gave a 44-minute masterclass that explains money better than any business school:

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

John D. Rockefeller called her “that poisonous woman.”

He had reason to fear her.

Because Ida Tarbell did something almost nobody had successfully done before:

She documented, piece by piece, how the richest corporation in America quietly built its empire by crushing everyone beneath it.

And she did it so carefully that even Standard Oil could not truly deny what she found.

Ida Tarbell did not approach the story as a detached outsider.

She grew up inside the Pennsylvania oil fields during the violent early years of the American petroleum boom. Her father, Franklin Tarbell, was one of thousands of independent oil producers trying to survive while Standard Oil steadily swallowed the industry.

At first, small oilmen believed competition would decide who survived.

Then Rockefeller changed the rules.

Standard Oil secretly negotiated railroad rebates that gave the company enormous shipping discounts unavailable to smaller competitors. Worse still, the railroads often charged independents extra fees and quietly funneled portions of those payments back to Standard Oil itself.

The result was devastating.

Independent producers could not compete with prices artificially manipulated against them.

Businesses collapsed.

Towns declined.

Families lost everything.

Tarbell watched it happen as a child.

Her father barely survived financially.

One of his business partners eventually killed himself under the crushing pressure surrounding the industry.

Ida never forgot any of it.

But instead of reacting with public fury, she became something far more dangerous:

A meticulous journalist.

By the time she joined McClure’s Magazine at the turn of the twentieth century, investigative reporting was beginning to transform American journalism. Tarbell believed the most powerful stories were not built from outrage alone, but from evidence so overwhelming nobody could dismantle it afterward.

So she began investigating Standard Oil.

And she worked like an accountant assembling a criminal case.

Court filings.

Railroad contracts.

Internal company memoranda.

Corporate records.

Testimony from former executives.

Government documents.

Thousands upon thousands of pages copied by hand because modern research tools did not yet exist.

She traveled constantly between Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Washington gathering material.

Then came one of the strangest parts of the entire story.

Henry Rogers — one of Standard Oil’s top executives and one of the most powerful businessmen in America — agreed to speak with her repeatedly over the course of nearly two years.

He genuinely seemed to believe he could manage her.

Charm her.

Control the narrative.

Perhaps he assumed a woman journalist would eventually soften the conclusions.

Instead, Tarbell simply kept gathering facts.

Then in November 1902, McClure’s began publishing The History of the Standard Oil Company.

Nineteen installments.

Running through May 1904.

The writing itself was not explosive in tone.

That was the brilliance of it.

Tarbell did not rant.

Did not exaggerate.

Did not perform outrage.

She simply laid out, calmly and methodically, how Standard Oil used predatory pricing, secret transportation deals, intimidation, and systematic market control to destroy competitors across the oil industry.

Readers were horrified precisely because the prose sounded so controlled.

The evidence spoke for itself.

And the impact was enormous.

Public anger toward monopolies suddenly crystallized into political momentum. President Theodore Roosevelt — already moving against powerful corporate trusts — drew heavily upon the climate Tarbell helped create.

Then came 1911.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States that the company violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered it broken apart into 34 separate companies.

Those fragments later became corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Marathon, and ConocoPhillips — companies still among the most powerful in the world today.

And Rockefeller himself?

He publicly refused to engage with Tarbell.

“Not a word,” he reportedly instructed his associates. “Not a word about that misguided woman.”

He understood something important:

Arguing with her only gave her findings more oxygen.

Because nobody could truly disprove the documents.

So critics attacked her personally instead.

They called her bitter.

Vindictive.

Difficult.

Emotional.

Almost never inaccurate.

That distinction mattered.

Ida Tarbell spent the rest of her career carrying a strange reputation:

Deeply respected.

Rarely embraced.

She wrote sixteen more books and became one of the most influential journalists of her generation. Yet in private letters, she sometimes admitted feeling that admiration did not always translate into belonging.

Perhaps because she had exposed something many powerful people preferred to keep hidden:

How quietly enormous systems can be built through manipulation that looks almost invisible while it is happening.

And maybe that is why Ida Tarbell still matters more than a century later.

Because she proved journalism does not always require dramatic speeches or public theatrics.

Sometimes the most dangerous thing in the world is simply a patient person with enough evidence.

She did not write to be liked.

She wrote so the record would exist.

And once it existed, even Rockefeller could not erase it.

[TheSteadyState @steadystate2025]

This exchange captures the absurdity perfectly: federal workers were fired, agencies had to bring many of them back, and taxpayers got stuck paying for the chaos.

[caio temer @canalCCore2]

Pouca gente sabe o motivo real de nenhum barco chegar perto. Quando o gelo cai, blocos gigantescos que estavam escondidos submersos disparam para a superfície com uma força absurda pela pressão da água, empurrando tudo no caminho. O perigo real sempre vem de baixo.

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

MACRON: Americans tried to negotiate with Russia. What was the result of those efforts? Nothing.

We Europeans also tried to negotiate with Russia. What happened? Nothing.

Zelenskyy also said, "I’m ready to negotiate with Russia." What did Putin say? "No."

So, President Trump, just like all the G7 members, agreed that Russia has shown no serious willingness to engage in peace negotiations.

We all agreed to increase our support for Ukraine. We all stated that we would increase pressure on Russia, and we all agreed to remain steadfast on this path.

This represents real change compared to the last few months, not just from Europe, but from all G7 members and all those who support Ukraine.

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

He took America to war - killing 13 soldiers, thousands of Iranian civilians and costing taxpayers $60 billion - to get rid of Iran’s missile program.

And now that he’s lost the war, he pretends like it’s no big deal.

Just unforgivable. What a charlatan.

[Jonathan O'Connell @jocwapo]

New on White House ballroom project:

Trump’s budget office on Friday quietly redirected $352M in Secret Service funds largely meant for staff training and retention to “White House Security Measures.”

Source tells us it’s for the ballroom project.

https://t.co/NBQp9vJn8s

[Senator Ruben Gallego @SenRubenGallego]

My father walked out on my family when I was a kid. My mother raised us. I made my own way, joined the Marines, and built a life he had no part in. There are thousands of American boys doing the same thing right now, growing up determined to be better men than the fathers who left them.

Kari Lake decided to take the hardest part of my family’s life and turn it into a weapon. She has claimed for years that I'm controlled by the cartels because of my father.

I am not ashamed of where I come from. Kari Lake should be ashamed of what she is willing to say to get ahead. Thank you to @SenTimKaine for calling it how it is.

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

8D Chess

[Acyn @Acyn]

Gangel: In March, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan go to the oval office for a formal sit down interview with the president. He's very proud about some presidential historian has given him this document, which he says shows he's more powerful than Hitler and Stalin. 

He's proudly reading it and showing it to them, and they can't figure out who the presidential historian is. And they start searching. Name doesn't show up. But the president had said that this historian was a friend of former hall of fame golfer Gary Player. So they search…the historian is Gary Player's former caddie.

[Emoluments Clause @Emolclause]

#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow: “It was supposed to open Friday, it is not open because Trump says he does not want it open. When this bridge does open some day, if Trump ever lets it open, you should know that there is a competing bridge a little way down the river, a privately-owned very old very congested toll bridge that will likely LOSE some of its traffic…because of competition. It will lose some of its traffic to this pretty, brand new bridge that has just been built. The family that operates the competing old bridge, earlier this year, made a $1 million donation to Donald Trump’s super pac. In short order, a member of that family then got an in person meeting with Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The White House and the pac say that was just a coincidence…but after the million dollar donation, he gets this meeting, and then the SAME day of the meeting, Howard Lutnick calls President Donald Trump and then Trump suddenly discovers new supposedly trade-related reasons why he’s now suddenly against this bridge, even though previously he has been for it.” 🤦‍♀️

[Acyn @Acyn]

CNN montage of Trump bashing the JCPOA and releasing any money to Iran:

I would have never given him back the money. I would have said, the money is off the table. Let's start negotiating. And you know what? I would have won that negotiation

[Chris @Shots01]

@GOP__Ls “Only the best!” Another #Trump winner!

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

Fifty years of rules keeping off-road vehicles on designated trails — GONE.

Lifted trucks, ATVs, dirt bikes, snowmobiles.

Anywhere they want. On your public lands.

Nixon protected it. Carter protected it. Trump just erased both quietly on a Friday afternoon.

A grizzly bear will abandon its habitat when there's just one mile of road per square mile. One mile. Now there's no limit on where these vehicles can go.

In the Mojave, desert tortoises have already lost 96% of their population in some monitored areas - partly because off-road vehicles crush their burrows. A federal judge just ordered 2,200 miles of trails closed to protect what's left.

Then Trump signed this.

No designated trails. No boundaries. No framework at all. When vehicles go off trail they shatter habitat into pieces too small for wildlife to survive in. They destroy stream banks. They push predators toward humans. And when that happens, the animals always lose.

There was no vote. No public comment. Just a signature.

Now the agencies tasked with writing replacement rules are the BLM, the Forest Service, and the National Park Service - all under an administration that has spent months dismantling every protection they had.

The Interior Department, led by Doug Burgum, is in charge of most of it. The same Doug Burgum who has opened public lands to drilling, mining, and grazing at every turn.

Don't hold your breath.

When the last quiet place is gone, what do we tell the children who never got to hear it?

#DemsUnited

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

The corporations bankrolling Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom have received more than $50 billion in new or expanded federal contracts in the six months since they wrote those checks.

Of 27 known donors, 16 had federal enforcement actions suspended, dropped, or scaled back. And the White House still will not say how much each donor gave.

That is not a healthy democracy.

That is pay-to-play running out of the People’s House. It is why I helped launch the End Corruption Caucus. I take no corporate PAC money and I do not trade stocks, because public office should never be a personal cash machine.

[Teddy - PolyBackTest.com @Bitcoin_Teddy]

Reporter: ''So you agree that people who break in and vandalize a building should be prosecuted?''

JD Vance: ''Yes'' Reporter: ''Ok, I'm just checking, because you helped raise money for people who did so on January 6th''

JD's Soul Leaves his Body.

[Josh Reynolds @JoshReynolds24]

I still am struggling to wrap my head around the fact this is actually happening…

Don’t care what your political views are, EVERYONE should be absolutely embarrassed & ashamed that this is happening at the Lincoln Memorial & White House. What a joke.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

JUST IN: This Is A Pretty Stunning Detail From The Kennedy Center Fight.

Rep. Joyce Beatty says she was the only board member who tried to stop Trump's name from being placed on the Kennedy Center.

According to Beatty, the proposal wasn't even on the agenda.

She says she joined remotely, attempted to object, and was muted before she could make her case.

Beatty challenged the move in court, arguing the Kennedy Center's governing law did not allow the institution to be renamed after Trump.

This week, a federal judge agreed and ordered Trump's name removed.

Tonight, workers are physically taking it down.

That's the story.

Not just that Trump's name is coming off the building.

That the board member who says she was silenced ended up winning in court.

[Emoluments Clause @Emolclause]

#BREAKING: Ashley Pratte Oates: “I do want to point out one quick thing here though, how it is VERY INTERESTING that Kushner’s investment firm that has been increasingly working with FOREIGN governments and yet we haven’t really talked about that as a huge conflict of interest but yet so-called conservatives were very quick to say one of the issues with Clinton if she were to assume the presidency would be the Clinton Foundation, and her ties to foreign dignitaries, so I do want to point that out because it is a very important point that conservatives have shown interest in before and really should show interest in this time.”🤔