Christopher Luikart

[Adam Analysis @adamemedia1]

Every country needs to do this.

[Cassie Pritchard @hecubian_devil]

Very distressing to see how few Americans genuinely value democracy anymore.

The Right openly despises it.

The Center pays lip-service to it, while really only valuing *institutions and rules*, not actual self-government, which they sneer at.

[Angelica 🌐⚛️🇹🇼🇨🇳🇺🇸 @AngelicaOung]

This is why people talking about China’s dIsAsTrOuS DeMoGrApHiCs don’t seem to realize: old people are manageable if you don’t let them vote infinite benefits for themselves.

The Chinese olds from what I can see live in small apartments, eat in small cheap canteens and gets decent enrichment activities like silver universities. Fat pensions for those « in the system » are a problem. Even the CCP don’t dare touch their pensions. But they are not the majority.

Basically whether in a democracy or authoritarian system, entitlements really need to be structured so carefully because once you start giving it becomes politically impossible to stop.

[Ruwa Romman @ruwaromman]

This is why voters don’t trust us. They see people in the party prioritize personal grievances over policies that matter to them. The message is “my personal grievance matters more than your quality of life” so they act accordingly. Extremely disappointing to say the least.

[Gregg Nunziata @greggnunziata]

Quite generally, we need to rediscover our capacity to amend the Constitution. We should start with the pardon power.

[Hunter📈🌈📊 @StatisticUrban]

I fear in more functional times the answer would be obvious: a constitutional amendment enshrining the Fed's independence in the highest law.

Not an exaggeration to say a politicized Fed could result in the immiseration of billions of people, given the US economy's importance.

[just matt @questionableway]

it’s a pretty glaring flaw in the united states constitution that congress can create and empower executive agencies but they cannot protect their independence or disempower them

[Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates]

reshaping the military so that if/when T***p requires a military coup to remain in office, US military will be MAGA-controlled & obedient to his command.

nothing could be plainer to see--yet---no one seems capable of stopping it nor does the media seem eager to investigate.

[NKY Lefty @NKY_Leftist]

It's not healthy for society. If you can't understand why, take it further, imagine instead that Musk manages to somehow accumulate far more wealth. He takes massive ownership stakes in every company. He buys out, or locks out through political influence, competitors, market by market until they fail/sell.

He could buy out the media. If they won't sell, since he owns so many major companies, he pulls advertising. He slaps them with as many lawsuits as he can throw at them until they cannot sustain themselves, and must do as he says or sell.

He'd have enough money to basically purchase any political race with ease. Between that and having the media doing his bidding, democracy is effectively dead.

Imagine he decides to offer insane amounts of money to start buying all of the farms and ranches. Now he controls the food supply. Where it goes. Who gets it. What they have to pay for it.

Wealth begets wealth. The more wealth you have, the faster your wealth grows, and the more disproportionately it grows compared to normal, working folks. A society which allows trillionaires while the bottom 50% are struggling to pay bills and wondering if they'll even be able to retire is a society that is headed rapidly towards failure. I suspect if there was a hypothetical communist multi-trillionaire that y'all would quickly realize how scary someone possessing that much wealth truly is.

[Fuck You I Quit @fuckyouiquit]

Hot take: student loans shouldn’t exist in the first place. Higher education and skills training should simply be a feature of your society, not a profit center for loan sharks.

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

Told you.
And this is why, as the reality becomes clear, journalists are going to be amongst the most hated people on Earth. The media has totally failed to inform and educate the public about what we face.

[Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex]

Scraping websites and having AI summarize them, so that no one visits the websites, is theft.

Training AI on videos, so that it can make new videos that compete with them, is theft.

We are witnessing the largest theft of creative work in history.

[Tim Hannan @TimHannan]

The Supreme Court is not even pretending to be impartial anymore. Republicans can redistrict but Democrats can’t.

[Brian Beutler @brianbeutler]

No opposition party can accept this state of affairs and retain respectability, and getting Democrats to understand that latter point prior to January 2029 is critical to the survival of democracy in the U.S.

[Charlie @CharlieInUtah]

Don’t respect their decision. Republicans don’t give a fuck about the law so why should you.

[Igor Bobic @igorbobic]

Tim Kaine on VA Supreme court: "The timing of this ruling speaks volumes":

"If the Virginia Supreme Court had legitimate concerns about this referendum, the time to stop it would have been before three million Virginians cast their ballots."

[Graham Platner for Senate @grahamformaine]

I’m old enough to remember when Republicans in Ohio just ignored court rulings repeatedly and did it anyway.

[Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates]

it's the stranglehold of our cumbersome US system of government that presidential elections are just every four years. other countries can challenge & change governments as soon as the people lose confidence in the leader.

doubt that millions of Americans necessarily want T***p dead; they are just waiting for him to no longer be president. (& few of these millions would commit any act of violence in any case.)

[Roose @RuNoseP]

this is probably gonna be a red line for who i vote for in the future.

our social safety net is going to be completely cooked unless we as a party can start being honest about the need to raise taxes. a democratic party that runs on tax cuts is doomed to fail

[Jamesetta Williams 💕 @jamesetta_w]

These focus groups are useful for understanding how misinformed voters were by the press and social media. There's a framing of Trump's presidency that he neglected to implement the things he ran on. But when you actually talk to voters, you realize how many of them believe things he never said, never promised, or never actually produced a policy plan for.

For example, if many voters like John here were worried about the deficit, a responsible press might have covered more intently the fact that nearly every nonpartisan analysis concluded Trump's 2024 platform would increase the deficit substantially, including the CBO, and grilled Trump on those facts. They didn't.