Dick Schmelling

[Igor Bobic @igorbobic]

Van Hollen criticized Schumer & DSCC in interview with @alivitali today:

“We have two members in that room, newly elected senators, who would not be there if Schumer and the DSCC had had their way. And, you know, Schumer and the DSCC sided with the crypto industry and AIPAC against these candidates.”

[pokey pup @Whatapityonyou]

Holy shit this article about ICE agents hired by DHS is brutal.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Massie: "I do have a message to the troops. This secretary has used our troops to go seize oil for large corporations in America. You shouldn't be used like that. You signed up to pledge your life for this country if need be, and that obligation shouldn't be diminished to stealing oil for big corporations."

[Better Khal Saul 🍉 @BreakingBraavos]

The attorney who attempted to sue Hasan Piker for antisemitism and "violence against Jews" has been disbarred

[Dick Schmelling @bigtrickle]

@jakebrodes *the front

[Dick Schmelling @bigtrickle]

@jakebrodes My favorite part of that story is rep from NY Alfred Ely getting captured by the Confederates, spending almost 6 months as a pow because he wandered into front for a better view.

[Mario ZNA @MarioBojic]

🚨🇩🇪When I saw Germany's current top general, Christian Freuding, I thought I was watching a restored footage from 1941.

[Dick Schmelling @bigtrickle]

@Goodolddays2000 @MarioBojic Wait why did he turn into Bill Cosby for a second?!

[Dick Schmelling @bigtrickle]

This shit is so fucking cynical and deeply racist. It also doesn't work on us anymore. You may discipline some cowards with this but no one is buying your race baiting bullshit. Move along.

[Jack Schlossberg @JBKSchlossberg]

There’s an effort underway to erode black political power in this country by blocking the election of the first-ever African American Speaker of the House.

[soul khan @soulkhan]

a jewish individual deciding for themselves that they want a jewish partner bc they want to continue jewish religious and cultural practices in their home is different from "i will not stand for intermarriage for my kids" lol don't act like greenblatt is doing a neutral thing

[donald boat @laserboat999]

You realize this is a dream job for a sizable chunk of the population. Immured inside a big concrete cylinder & drip fed worm percocet so you can play Space Shipping Tycoon for 5,000 years in a row. There’s guys out there doing that for free right now

[Diabetic of Enlightenment @dee_of_e]

[guy who doesn’t know what arbitrarily means]: you don’t need to read books

[kev joon @never_oppressed]

The line that conservatives have drawn with Charlie Kirk is so stupid. Trivializing a genocide, where 1000s of children have been murdered, is totally fine. But making fun of a guy who believed school shootings are a worthwhile price to pay for 2nd amendment is beyond the pale.

[Daniel Sherwood @DanielSherwoo11]

@JerusalemDemsas Part of the problem with technocratic elitism is that it is undemocratic and many of its practitioners do not have the self reflexivity to grasp they hold their positions because of their interest in serving the elite not because their positions are true.

[Liam 🇵🇸 @Hezbolsonaro]

Millions of Paraguayans have lost their savings due to the collapse of a bank involved in corrupt deals orchestrated by right-wing President Santiago Peña. His daughter attends Columbia University in the US and wears a shirt saying "tax the poor".

[Lina Khan @linamkhan]

Why should Congressional Democrats investigate corporate America if their mandate is to deliver real economic change? Because investigations are a key catalyst for securing reform and legislation. For much of the last century, Congress used to be the main institutional player working to secure an economy that serves working people. A key tool was oversight. Lawmakers routinely investigated complex markets and major corporations, identifying problems and exposing wrongdoing. A major goal of these investigations was to learn what was driving certain problems and figure out how to fix them.

After Democrats took back the House during the first Trump administration in 2019, I joined the House Judiciary Committee as a staffer on the Antitrust Subcommittee. Under the terrific leadership of @RepJerryNadler and then-Rep @davidcicilline, we pursued an 18-month investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, securing key evidence of how their business practices were undermining competition and harming people, setting the basis for both lawsuits and proposed legislation.

A few lessons from that experience:

1. The quality of legislative oversight depends on the staff and the support of top members to confront power. Committee and Subcommittee Chairs that are focused on getting answers and unafraid to take on powerful corporate interests will make the difference between oversight that doesn’t surrender to their evasion tactics and oversight that aims low or flames out.

Even a relatively small number of dogged, talented lawyers ready to dive in can make a big impact. In the 1930s a single congressional lawyer, Ferdinand Pecora, helped reshape our entire banking system by subpoenaing records and interrogating top financiers, including J.P Morgan. The investigation exposed self-dealing, market manipulation, and tax avoidance, and laid the groundwork for foundational New Deal legislation, including the Glass-Steagall Act and the Securities Exchange Act.

2. Eliminating bottlenecks to moving investigations forward is key. For example, the House should make sure that Subcommittee Chairs can issue subpoenas rather than needing the sign-off of the full Committee or its Chair. A credible threat of sending subpoenas is critical for credible oversight.

3. Ensuring that members can develop the muscle to effectively interrogate CEOs requires investing in real preparation. In the lead up to the hearing with Bezos, Pichai, Cook, and Zuckerberg, the Antitrust Subcommittee spent months reviewing millions of documents collected from the firms, interviewing affected parties, briefing members on key evidence, and conducting practice hearings. Members came into the hearing deeply informed and able to rebut and call out CEO dissembling. The result was some of the most effective member questioning of executives we’ve seen in decades. @TheProspect wrote up a great overview: https://t.co/7BYC3UHFbW

4. For decades, institutional capacity in Congress has been extremely weak. Much of this traces back to the Gingrich Revolution, which was effectively the 1995 DOGE-ing of Congress. Republican leadership fired over 600 professional staffers, eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment, and gutted research capacity. None of that capacity was ever meaningfully restored.

As a result, members have way fewer resources to develop serious expertise or go deep on a new topic. Members should start rebuilding that capacity so the institution can fully play its Article I role, where Congress can again do serious policy development and legislating and serve as a real check on the executive and judicial branches.

5. AI markets should be high on the list of investigations. The business decisions of the major AI firms have huge public ramifications, yet the public is at a severe informational disadvantage when it comes to how these markets work and the choices these firms are making. A congressional investigation will help ensure future legislative action is based on a more complete view of what is going on rather than selective and partial corporate disclosures.

[John Ganz @lionel_trolling]

You can't lecture people about epistemology when you insisted, against all evidence, that denouncing ICE was bad electorally because it raised the "salience" of an issue that was good for the GOP. It turned out to be total BS.

[Scott Colom Stan @BeshearStan]

James Talarico received *more early votes* then Paxton received in TOTAL

This race was over before it began 😭

[passed out drunk at the steamboat Arabia museum @GarlicCorgi]

Why have you only begun to fight two years into his final four year term