CVM

Live in upper midwest USA. Working for a habitable future. I ❤️ 🇳🇱. #BusIsBest #GoByBike #ClimateActionNOW #Gardens4All @[email protected]

[CVM @VMCat]

and this is another P2025 bullet point accomplished.

[Miles Taylor @MilesTaylorUSA]

Yesterday Donald Trump tripled the size of his personal political army inside the government. Illegally. And almost no one noticed.

Here's what happened:

He signed an order converting ~8,000 of the most senior career officials in government into employees he can fire for any reason, or no reason at all.

These aren't rando's. They're the directors, chiefs of staff, and the people who write the rules or decide who gets federal money, i.e. the lieutenants right below his political appointees.

Until yesterday, they answered to the law. Now they answer to him.

A president normally gets ~4,000 political appointees. People he can bring into government and fire at will. I was one of them at DHS. You serve at his pleasure, full stop -- so if you're gonna speak truth to power, you're prepared to quit (or get fired if he doesn't like it).

The rest of the federal government is PROTECTED from firing if they tell the truth.

But Trump just stripped those protections. Adding 8,000 more people to his personal army. Overnight. Without asking Congress.

With the stroke of a pen, those people now serve at the pleasure of the president. They're "his" people, whether they like it or not.

And the chilling effect is real. An official who can be fired this afternoon for "subversion of presidential directives" (the order's own words) doesn't need to be hand-picked to know what's expected of him or her.

The threat does all the work.

By the way, this order is illegal. The law only lets Trump reclassify jobs when "necessary" in exceptional circumstances. And this blows an 8,000-person hole in the merit hiring / firing system created by Congress.

Without permission, Trump has created a whole new category of stormtroopers inside the Executive Branch.

If this doesn't get challenged in court, you're going to see the U.S. government become a very different place.

Here's the full story: https://t.co/mJzrvzhxGR

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

Dear Scott Pelley: pull the entire 60 Minutes team together and go to MSNow and offer a package deal to recreate the show for Sunday night and call it The Hour

[Deep Singh Badhesha @DeepNotShallow]

Xcel Energy made nearly $1 Billion in profit last year

Why in the hell do we allow a private company to make profit out of public infrastructure.

[Andy Boenau @Boenau]

Cars are parked for 95% of their life, so they make excellent walls to protect people using bike lanes.

[NRDC 🌎🏡 @NRDC]

The Trump administration is planning to auction off lands near Arizona’s iconic Grand Canyon National Park and Grand Canyon–Parashant National Monument for oil and gas drilling. Submit a comment to help us fight back: https://t.co/sJJJ78omnu

[Rethink 794 in MKE 🌆 @TearDown794]

This isn’t building height. It’s tax productivity.
Some of Milwaukee’s most valuable land is tied up in infrastructure generating little revenue. Unlocking it could mean tens of millions $.
So why is the conversation only about traffic? 🤔
Join the Convo: https://t.co/4j9ycik6cK

[CVM @VMCat]

that was the one good thing walker did. why evers resurrected it is beyond me. and I think there's still an active lawsuit. #FixAtSix @sierraclubwi

[Kid Riles @kid_riles]

I see a lot of bitching on here regarding the east/west I-94 Interstate expansion project in Milwaukee.

I get it.

But remember…

It would have been completed by now if Scott Walker wouldn’t have completely cancelled the project.

As always…
Fuck Scott Walker🖕

[CVM @VMCat]

From your lips to our city council's ears I wish.

[ITDP @ITDP_HQ]

Decades of car-first planning have left our cities with traffic, pollution, and communities cut off from one another. But cities don’t have to be this way. By designing streets that put people first, we can create vibrant, healthy, and connected urban spaces.

It’s time to shift gears toward #CompleteStreets - learn more 👉 https://t.co/bqtrGwJYNx

[Vignesh Swaminathan PE MrBarricade @viggyswam]

Public space reclamation is not anti-car. It's pro-people. Public streets belong to the full public, not only to those who arrive by car. Changing who the street serves isn't an attack on drivers. It's an update to a 70-year-old assumption.

[Leela Gray @LeelaJGray]

You can't solve problems you refuse to measure.

Yet this month, 900 ocean monitoring instruments are being physically pulled out of the water. A $368 million system. A decade to build. Designed to run 15 more years.

Gone.

This network tracked hurricane intensity, coastal flooding, marine heatwaves, and sea level rise. The data was free, public and used in over 500 scientific publications. Congress tried to stop it... twice. They got overruled anyway.

For a coastal community like FL-13 that just lived through Helene, this isn't abstract. This is the difference between an evacuation order that comes in time and one that doesn't.

Florida deserves a representative who fights for the science that protects us, not one who looks the other way while it gets dismantled.

#LeelaGrayforCongress #LeelaJGray

https://t.co/8SBFNnsFcU

[CVM @VMCat]

But what about DATA CENTERS??

[Sara Rodriguez @saraforwi]

I grew up in a working-class family. My grandparents were dairy farmers, my mom was a union teaching assistant, and my dad served during Vietnam and fixed phones.

I learned early what it means to work hard and still need things to go right. Those are the families I’m fighting for.

[MeidasClips @MeidasClips]

Charlie Angus: "Israel's announced that they're going to go ahead with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This is a war crime ... Either the international rule of law stands for something or it's a joke. Either we have the Statute of Rome and we hold gangster criminal regimes to account, or hey, you can do what you want, because the next country will do what they want. That can't be allowed to happen."

[CVM @VMCat]

But what about the DATA CENTERS????

[Stu Levitan @StuLevitan]

Of the Dem candidates with a path to the nomination, Kelda would clearly be the strongest candidate in November and has the best platform and skillset to get important, progressive stuff done for Wisconsin. I'm with her.

[Mobility Behaviour 👨‍🎓 @davidlois_uned]

Cálculo de costes/beneficios externos, que pagamos (o disfrutamos) entre todos, de tres formas de moverse:
🚘 = 0,11€ por km. de coste
🚲 = 0,18 €/km. beneficio
🚶= 0,37 €/km. beneficio

[CVM @VMCat]

@keldahelenroys if you won't stop data centers your plans are meaningless to many of us.

[CVM @VMCat]

@MollyBeck @MSpicuzzaMJS was the debt paid? I can't read the paywalled article.

[Sandi Bachom 📹 @sandibachom]

Why isn’t this being reported on? It’s been out there for a long time and she was kicked out of Romania because of it

[CVM @VMCat]

This is big. WTF other candidates?

[Francesca Hong For Governor @FrancescaHongWI]

I’m the only candidate willing to stand up to Big Tech and the AI data centers threatening our state's natural resources.

Wisconsin should build infrastructure that benefits the people who live here and creates long-term jobs for union workers -- housing, roads, clean energy.

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

Israel announces that surviving Palestinians will be expelled from Gaza.

No headlines.

No statements of outrage from politicians.

Silence.

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

NEW: Cancer rates in Iowa are rising faster than anywhere else in the country.

Politicians blame individual choices, but the real villain is the industrial farming covering the state.

We went, tested the water, and found cancer causing levels of chemicals running through Iowa.