Chenteria

[Acyn @Acyn]

De Niro: I hate to say it, but loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser.

I can’t love a country that starts stupid and inhumane wars, killing thousands of innocents and indirectly causing the deaths and suffering of millions more.

I can’t love a country that takes healthcare away from millions of people and uses that money to enrich their pals in the Trump-Epstein class.

I can’t love a country that sends out masked militias to shoot citizens in the streets, torture our neighbors, and separate families.

I can’t love a country that’s led by a racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant.

And let me just say it: I can’t love a country that’s led by Donald Trump and his sycophant Congress.

[Rep. Dan Goldman @RepDanGoldman]

First, @SecKennedy refused to pay the legal non-profits representing unaccompanied minors for work they did per a contract.

Now, @SecMullinDHS is sending federal agents to ambush their offices and demand confidential client records without a warrant.

This is disgusting intimidation and a massive waste of time, resources, and money.

The cruelty of this administration targeting the most vulnerable along us is repulsive and un-American.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Elias: Why does California have signature matching? They have it to satisfy the same right-wing zealots who claim there’s fraud, right?

So they do this whole kabuki theater that takes all of this time in order to contend with the fact that people say that if you don’t do signature matching, there’s going to be fraud. And then they get attacked for taking the time to do that very thing.

The fact that the New York Times thinks there’s a middle ground here… Here’s my message: I don’t compromise with Republicans because there is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist, and they are trying to burn down democracy.

[Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1]

Reuters: US JUDGE ORDERS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO REINSTALL SIGNS, EXHIBITS IT REMOVED FROM NATIONAL PARKS DISCUSSING TOPICS LIKE SLAVERY, CLIMATE CHANGE

[Travis Akers 🇺🇸 @travisakers]

Elon Musk: Trillionaire

Jeff Bezos: Billionaire

Public School Teachers: Can anyone help me get some pencils for my students?

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

RFK Jr has cut Alzheimers research.

Alzheimers.

One of the most devastating, urgent and increasing health problems we face today.

He's not interested.

He's a nasty piece of work.

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

🚨EXCLUSIVE: A commercial airline pilot tells MeidasTouch they filed FAA and NASA safety reports after lighting from Trump’s UFC event at the White House allegedly flooded their cockpit on approach to Reagan National. The pilot called it “10 times worse than any laser illumination event” they’d ever experienced. https://t.co/L6taUKdgbG

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

“It’s time to wake the fuck up”

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Half of my fellow graduate students when I was getting my PhD were foreign nationals. Do you realize one third of all the Nobel Prizes in sciences won by Americans were won by immigrants to America? If you’re gonna trail the world in practically everything, including your economy, it’s time to wake the fuck up”

[Warren Gunnels @GunnelsWarren]

If Bernie's 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires had been enacted in 2012, Elon Musk would be worth less than $365 billion instead of the $1.2 trillion that he's worth today.

Elon would still be the wealthiest man alive & every family in America would have universal childcare.

[Emoluments Clause @Emolclause]

#BREAKING: Carol Leonnig: “…what we were hearing last night…was that the Ohio Organizing Collaborative…one of its offices in Cleveland was targeted and raided by FBI agents yesterday. In addition to that, what we learned was that a series of FBI agents were fanning out across the state…to interview people and approach them at their homes, who had worked as volunteers registering voters, or as canvassers for the collaborative, and those interviews, if you can call them that, were conducted often WITHOUT warrants…So FBI agents were essentially just going into people’s homes and saying we’d like to ask you a few questions, which is NOT how the FBI normally investigates these kinds of matters…their great concern is that this is part of a larger Trump administration effort to basically target swing states and to target pro democracy organizations who might register Democratic voters, or help them register to vote, and question and sow distrust in those swing states in the integrity of the elections.” 😳

[Michael T. Lester @MichaelTLester]

Trump is once again talking about Kharg Island and saying we can take it "at a time of our choosing."

He's not wrong. We can get troops on that island.

But he's not telling you what happens next.

Kharg Island is 16 miles off the Iranian coast. Iran has every square foot of it registered for artillery and rocket fire. They've spent the last three months laying anti-personnel mines on the beaches, pre-deploying shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and moving IRGC troops into hardened positions. They know we might be coming.

Every one of our ships in our assault force is 47 seconds from an Iranian anti-ship cruise missile. Every Marine on that island is within rocket artillery range of a coastline that runs 1,500 miles. We can't suppress that effectively even if we used all of our forces

I flew CH-53E helicopters in Desert Storm, and I know what it means to put troops in a fixed position on a small island with no room to maneuver and no friendly territory within reach. The military term for that is a kill box. The political term is leverage. The human term is a body bag.

The analysts are being careful in how they are framing it. Ryan Brobst and Cameron McMillan of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is about as hawkish as think tanks get, wrote in March that a seizure and occupation "is more likely to expand and extend the war than it is to deliver any sort of decisive victory." Former CENTCOM commander Joseph Votel said troops on the island would be "very vulnerable" and would require massive logistical backup. Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute put it more plainly: "I think the Iranians can probably sit back and attack Americans on Kharg Island, and casualties will mount up."

That's the politically correct version.

Here's what they're not saying out loud: Iran has FPV drones. The same camera-equipped drones being used by the millions in Ukraine. If our troops land on that island, Iranian drone footage of American casualties will be on every screen in the world within hours. Trump will own every frame of it.

Iraq bombed Kharg Island for four straight years during the Iran-Iraq War. From 1982 to 1986, but they never put a single soldier on it. They couldn't. The Iranians rebuilt and kept exporting oil. That's the historical record on what "taking Kharg" actually means.

And here's the part that makes even less sense: seizing the island doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz. Kharg is 300 miles from the strait. The Iranians mine the strait from their southern coastline. You'd have to suppress 1,500 miles of Iranian coast to fix that problem. Kharg is just a political symbol, not a solution.

We can bomb it into rubble. We've already struck over 90 targets there. Trump can destroy every oil facility on that island from the air, permanently. That's a real option with real consequences for Iran's economy and real consequences for global oil markets.

But putting Americans on the ground 16 miles from the Iranian coast, surrounded by water, within range of everything Iran has left?

That's not a strategic or tactical military operation. That's just a sacrifice of American lives.

Are you OK with that?

[Warren Gunnels @GunnelsWarren]

Can’t stop thinking about how Wall Street is celebrating Elon Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire, while he single handedly eliminated humanitarian aid that will lead to the needless deaths of 4.5 million of the poorest children in the world in the next 4 years.

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

people need to understand that using tax money to fund programmes that support the community is LITERALLY THE ENTIRE POINT OF HAVING A GOVERNMENT

[VoteVets @votevets]

BREAKING: In a shocking maneuver, Senate Republicans just BLOCKED a Democratic effort to BAN federal troops from entering polling stations or seizing ballots or voting machines. Makes you wonder what they’re planning this November…

[Liam Nissan™ @theliamnissan]

Yup

[American Oversight @weareoversight]

In 2020, Trump allegedly took classified docs to Mar-A-Lago, including ones that were so classified only 6 people had seen them.

There’s an entire report on this scandal. But a judge has been keeping it hidden for years.

We’re fighting for its release.
https://t.co/NyOqKrCJ0C

[Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov]

Military historian Phillips O’Brien: There have been no U.S. peace efforts in Ukraine.

There have been efforts to get Putin a very good deal, forcing Ukrainians to give up more territory and people. That is not peace. That is Washington trying to deliver Putin a success. 1/

[Acyn @Acyn]

Buttigieg: Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that there have to be nine Supreme Court justices. That one doesn't even take a constitutional amendment. It just takes a readiness to set up a court that fits this country. 

We could have 13 seats matching the district structure of the federal judiciary, but also a process that makes it less partisan. We cannot have partisan warfare every time there's an opening on the court

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

“Dear migrants, before I say any other word to you, I want to bow before your dignity.

“You are not numbers or case files.

“You are people — with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn.” — Pope Leo XIV