Thomas Joscelyn

Fan of Tom Paine.

[Gabriel Sterling @GabrielSterling]

Again, every contest on every ballot in GA has been reviewed and compared to the election outcomes. Of the 1.11 million ballots cast, there were only 23 discrepancies…all 23 were on hand marked paper. Again showing hand marked is less reliable than Ballot Marking Device ballots.

[Thomas Joscelyn @thomasjoscelyn]

Matt Gaetz ended Kevin McCarthy’s tenure as Speaker.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Kevin McCarthy on Platner Allegations: That one thing I know about Republicans is when we had a very bad candidate, we didn't vote for that person. We walked away.

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

"The Founders did not stumble into a diverse, immigrant-heavy society by accident—they lived through it, debated it, and ultimately enshrined it in a Constitution that barred religious tests for office and left the door open to immigrants of every nation and faith"

https://t.co/FeSMvsQCej

[CBS News @CBSNews]

Masked marchers representing the white nationalist and fascist group Patriot Front arrived in Washington, D.C. on Saturday amid celebrations for America's 250th anniversary. Part of the group was seen boarding the Eastern Market Metro stop heading toward the National Mall.

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

Openness to immigration has on balance been a huge source of strength to the United States but it can be a problem when you get immigrants like Elon Musk who fundamentally reject American values and ideals.

[Sarah Longwell @SarahLongwell25]

To understand R’s narrative capabilities versus D’s narrative capabilities, look no further than R’s ability to make Hunter Biden into a full blown “Biden crime family” scandal vs D’s inability to focus relentlessly on Trump & Co’s mind-bending corruption. Everyone should post their favorite insane Trump grift to celebrate the 4th.

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

Marco met with Bukele in his palace to hatch the plan that led to sending innocent Venezuelan immigrants to a foreign gulag with no due process. Surprised this has not gotten more attention.

[Sarah Fitzpatrick @S_Fitzpatrick]

NEW: “It is general knowledge in our practice that for $2 million, you can have a pardon,” a prominent defense attorney told me. Others said $1-2 million is the going rate, though clients were offering *many* times that amount for challenging cases. @michaelscherer @TheAtlantic https://t.co/5KL2vV3HEn

[SNY Knicks @sny_knicks]

OG Anunoby manages a smile when the Citi Field scoreboard shows his iconic play from Game 4 of the NBA Finals 😆

[David J. Bier @David_J_Bier]

Just a reminder that the Republican Ohio governor and the Republican mayor of Springfield are against deporting the Haitians. Even though this could kill their political careers, the people actually affected are against your "help" to "save" their communities.

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

Congress can and should extend TPS for Haitians (and others) for three years.

[David J. Bier @David_J_Bier]

And of course he did

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

The # of Haitians who enriched our culture more than this frigid monster is endless. New Orleans is Mobile without them. Pierre Toussaint financed St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. Basquiat's art. Blake Griffin's oops. Ralph Gilles designed the Chrysler 300. Go back to Ireland @megynkelly.

[David J. Bier @David_J_Bier]

Listen to what he says about his Haitian employees: "I wish I had 30 more. They come to work every day, they don't have a drug problem, they will stay at their machine, they'll hit their numbers, they're here to work. That's a stark difference from what we're used to."

[Ezra Klein @ezraklein]

Enough people have asked me about the Peter Thiel-Dialog story that I think it's worth saying what it is, or at least what I saw it to be. So:

–Dialog is a conference. I went once in 2018 and once in 2022. No one ever asked me to keep it or my presence a secret.

–My understanding was Thiel was one of its founders but no longer involved by the time I went. I never saw or talked to him in connection with Dialog.

–Nor did I see the other names I’ve heard mentioned, like Ted Cruz or Elon Musk or Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Jared Kushner. Dialog was not sold to me as a bunch of big names, which is part of why I went. I don’t need to go to a conference to hear what Ted Cruz thinks.

–You could be a Dialog member, but I wasn’t. I don’t think joining got you much except guaranteed invitations to future Dialogs. There were occasional dinners and webinars, but I never went to one. I would not have described it as a secret or a society.

–The panels were largely self-organized, so people would propose panels and hold them. I went to one on being a working parent and another on whether crypto had any real use cases and another on how to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. You’d usually have 8 or 10 people in a room. It was all very TED-talk adjacent.

–In 2018, I found it very optimistic, with an idealistic hacker-ish vibe. In 2022, I found the conversations and vibe more curdled and resentful. I didn’t enjoy it, and I didn’t go back. (That did prove a pretty good signal of where tech’s politics were going though, maybe I should’ve paid more attention.)

–That said, Dialog was a pretty ideologically diverse crowd. I met some people there who were *extremely* far left and far right. I met some real eccentrics and weirdos. I appreciated that about it.

– I’m a journalist, I go to lots of things in the hopes of getting to know people, hearing new ideas, finding podcast guests, etc.

–Being at something does not mean I endorse it, or everyone at it, or everyone who organized or founded it. I try to go to things where I don’t share the politics and perspectives of the crowd, for obvious reasons.

–I am surprised how credulous some people have been on this story. You have to believe some weird things about the world to believe Julián Castro and Peter Thiel are somehow engaged in a common project. Secret societies, I imagine, need a lot of trust to function, but the people being named here do not trust each other and do not have aligned agendas.

So that’s what I saw at Dialog. I’ll just end by saying it’s a weird experience to have a conference you haven’t thought about for years become the center of a new conspiracy theory.

https://t.co/bG2fPmE3ke

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

Pete Hegseth chose to allow Iran to defeat the our armed forces in order to demonstrate America’s Christ-like humility.

by Ross Douthat

[Dhruv Mehrotra @dmehro]

New: Leaked records show how Dialog, the Thiel-linked private club, secretly grades members by wealth and fame, labels their politics, tracks relationships, and uses algorithms to decide who should meet, who should date, who sits where, and who gets cut

https://t.co/nYqzUSRKqC

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

2 years ago I was on TV with a Nikki Haley Donor who said he'd be for Trump in the general because of Biden's "unforgivable appeasement of Iran" and the "separation of the US from Israel."

If anyone can track him down for me I'd like to get an update our chat.

[Hugo Lowell @hugolowell]

NEW @WIRED: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sought to ingratiate themselves to Trump after the 2024 election — who in return mocked them behind their backs, per new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan

— Zuckerberg sent Trump a photo of a letter one of his grade-school kids wrote that looked forward to the “golden age of america”

— Bezos denigrated The Washington Post to Trump and described the newspaper as one of his worst financial investments

— Trump showed off texts from Zuckerberg and Bezos to other guests, including to Elon Musk, who mocked them as “Firstclass groveling”

— Months after their dinner, Bezos tried to get a favor from Trump, telling him it was a risk for SpaceX to dominate govt space contracts

— Bezos suggested Trump tell Deputy Defense Secy Feinberg to ensure“contractor diversity,” opening the door for Blue Origin to get contracts

— But Trump ultimately screwed over Bezos after he reconciled with Musk, and instead expanded SpaceX’s access to US space launch sites

— WIRED obtained the details from “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” by @maggieNYT and @jonathanvswan ahead of June 23 release

[ProPublica @propublica]

Investigators found that leaders of a prison gang in Puerto Rico were selling inmates drugs in exchange for voting for Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a longtime Republican.

After Trump’s election, prosecutors were told not to pursue charges.
https://t.co/G29lph1tnE