Amelia

Why are we still here?

[Amelia @amelia07]

Some days good things do happen on Twitter.

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

'Vacations.'

The word is 'vacations.'

[Cassandra Garcia Hernandez @CasforTX]

After watching Texas Republicans melt down over their disastrous slate, national losses, and polling that shows growing probability of defeat, y’all better lock in. I have a feeling that whoever gets appointed next won’t be a champion for election integrity or our best interests. Reminder that our current SOS handed all of our data to Trump while other states fought back and prevailed.

It’s straight out of the Trump playbook: install loyalists, undermine trust in elections, attack the process when you don’t like the outcome, and then try to change the rules.#txlege

[Sara McGee for Texas HD 132 @SaraForTexLege]

There are unsettling things on the horizon for election integrity in Texas, y’all….

[Scott Robertson @counterscottGO]

anti-ICE Wemby vs. Mamdani's Knicks, woke is so back

[Dr. Kevin M. Young @kevinmyoung]

The way Christians are contorting their faith into a farce just to avoid Talarico in favor of Paxton says everything about the demise of Christianity in America.

[Trae Crowder @traecrowder]

Can James Talarico truly hope to win in Texas?!

[Andrew Bogusch @AndrewBogusch]

the amount of people telling Abdul Carter how to act, but not Jaxson Dart, isn't surprising, but still disappointing

[Dan Pfeiffer @danpfeiffer]

Trump invading Cuba this weekend to get out of going to his son’s wedding would be very on brand

[Mackenzie Kelly @mkelly007]

The Pease Park troll cost about $300,000 to build, funded by private donors who wanted to create something magical for Austin.

And now it sits burned down. A pile of ashes surrounded by caution tape.

A giant wooden troll where kids laughed, families took photos, and people stopped for a moment to enjoy something whimsical in the middle of the city… gone.

It’s hard not to feel like this is symbolic of something bigger. We build beautiful things in Austin, and somehow we keep finding them destroyed.

Sometimes it really feels like we just can’t have nice things anymore. #atxcouncil

[J.B. Sauceda @jaybsauceda]

@PhotogDina @evan7257 Being told that papas con huevos isn’t a legit order by people with the last name Smith has been my favorite part of the week

[ꪝe @_wej01]

Who is choosing to get an infant car seat?

I’m thinking of skipping it. My husband & I are both safe drivers. I don’t actually know anybody who has gotten into a crash with their baby in the car. Most accidents seem like minor fender benders anyway. We want to avoid container baby syndrome so the whole thing seems unnecessary.

This is how every anti-vax post sounds to me..

[Dr. Allison Wiltz @queenie4rmnola]

This is how Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow began last time

[Mariana @newspicymemory]

and that’s why she’s the real president of this nation and empress of television.

[Jared Ryan Sears @JaredRyanSears]

Trump starts a redistricting battle, thinking Democrats won't retaliate, but they do, and gain more seats. Now Republicans cry foul at their self-imposed problem.

Trump starts a trade war, expecting the world will take it. Instead, the US loses jobs, farms go bankrupt, manufacturing declines, and our trading partners make deals with China rather than with the US. Worst of all, Trump's tariffs are illegal, so the government ends up with nothing for all the trouble.

Trump berates NATO and threatens to invade a NATO nation. Then, when Trump starts a war in Iran without talking to our allies first, he's shocked when they don't show up to help.

Trump bombs Iran, expecting them to cave to his demands a few days later. Instead, Iran attacks US military bases and damages other nations' energy production. It closes the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy markets, sending gas prices over $4 a gallon, and spiking US inflation to the highest in years. The war is in its eighth week.

Trump is outmatched and continues to fail. His first term was a shock to America and the world, but this time, everyone was ready for him.

Trump's bullying no longer works, and that's all he knows.

[Shawn VanDiver @shawnjvandiver]

I’m seeing a lot of people posting the NY Times story. Please consider sharing the words of the Afghans who may get sent to DRC.

[Tim @trouble_man90]

Yea we joke about the double standard in the media, but this is legitimately insane.

[Jim Sciutto @jimsciutto]

I’ve met many of these Afghan vets - both in Afghanistan and here in the U.S. - as have many lawmakers from both parties. They risked their lives alongside U.S. forces and believed the U.S. would honor its commitments. This is a stunning blow to this community.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

A parasite that has been eating people for 3,500 years is about to be wiped off the planet. It infected 3.5 million people in 1986. Last year, it infected 10. And I have not seen it make a single front page.

It is called Guinea worm. You drink contaminated water from a pond in a poor village. A year later, a worm up to three feet long starts coming out of your leg through a burning blister. There is no pill that stops it and no surgery that works. You wrap the worm around a stick and pull it out slowly, over days or weeks, inch by inch. If you rush, the worm breaks inside you and causes a fresh infection.

Guinea worm is ancient. Preserved worms have been pulled out of Egyptian mummies from around 1000 BCE. The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical scroll from 1550 BCE, describes pulling the worm out with a stick. For three and a half thousand years, that was the best humans could do.

Then in 1986, public health workers decided to kill the parasite off. They had no vaccine and no drug. What they had was cheap cloth water filters and a small army of volunteers willing to walk from village to village for decades.

The plan was simple. Give everyone who drinks from a pond a cloth filter to strain out the tiny water fleas that spread the parasite. Then send volunteers walking house to house, year after year, teaching people how to use the filters and keeping anyone with an emerging worm out of the water.

It worked. From 3.5 million cases a year to 10. Four were in Chad, four in Ethiopia, two in South Sudan. The other four countries where the worm used to be common, Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Mali, had zero human cases for the second year in a row. The World Health Organization has already certified 200 countries as Guinea worm free. Six are left.

The last hurdle is dogs. Cameroon had 445 infected animals last year and Chad had 147, so a lot of the remaining work is on animals, not humans. Strays get leashed, and crews treat ponds to kill any remaining worms. The campaign keeps watching until the number hits zero.

When Guinea worm hits zero, it becomes the second human disease ever erased from the planet. The first was smallpox. It will also be the first parasite humans have ever wiped out, and the first disease ever ended without a single dose of medicine. Volunteers walked village to village with cloth filters for 40 years. Now a plague from the age of the pharaohs is about to be gone.

[Just Jack @7Veritas4]

The FBI guy is on a paranoid bender and won’t leave his room.

The War guy quotes bible passages from Pulp Fiction.

The Health guy collects raccoon dicks.

It’s an Idiocracy on steroids.

[Sara McGee for Texas HD 132 @SaraForTexLege]

The sister of someone I grew up with was killed in a domestic violence situation, leaving her two year old without a mother. There were several times the police could’ve protected her and didn’t.

In Texas, you cannot legally be granted a divorce if you are pregnant, even if you have been a victim of domestic violence.

Also in Texas, protective orders are exceedingly hard to obtain, yet protective order violations are not enforced unless the violator just happens to be randomly apprehended during another law enforcement encounter, such as a traffic stop. 23 women in Texas have been killed in the last 3 years by a partner with an active warrant for a protective order violation.

We do not protect women in this state, or this country.

When I am elected, we will be one voice closer to that changing. I will be filing bills to address each one of these situations with solutions.