Patty Foss

[Sen. Michael Garrett @MichaelKGarrett]

I cried today. I'm not going to pretend I didn't.

Four presidents shared a stage in Chicago, a thing that used to be ordinary and now feels almost holy, and I felt the tears come before I understood them. At first I thought I knew what they were. I thought they were grief. I thought I was crying for how far we've drifted from that morning in 2008 when so many of us let ourselves believe, all the way down, that America could be better than her history. That we could be better. The distance between that morning and this one felt like the whole sad arc of the story, and for a moment I let myself sit inside the ache of it.

But the longer President Obama spoke, the more I understood I had it backwards.

He told a story I can't stop thinking about. The line we all know, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice, didn't start with Dr. King. King was borrowing it from a Boston minister named Theodore Parker, who preached it more than 170 years ago. And here is the part that broke me open: Parker preached it at one of the darkest moments this country had ever seen. The Compromise of 1850 had just made it a federal crime to shelter a man fleeing slavery. In Boston, a young fugitive had been seized, tried, and marched to the harbor by hundreds of armed officers, put on a ship, and sent back south into chains. While the whole city watched.

That is when Parker said it. Not in triumph. In the dark.

He admitted he couldn't see how it would end. “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe,” he preached. “The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve... I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see, I am sure it bends toward justice.”

He couldn't see it. He believed it anyway. And then he kept fighting.

As Obama put it today, Parker's words were “a declaration of faith, a defiant call, not to abandon hope or give way to fear, but to stay true to our better selves, and true to one another, and to keep fighting... even in the face of cruelty and bitter disappointment, even in the face of impossible odds.”

And that's when my tears changed. Right there. They stopped being grief and became something else, something that scared me a little with how much it felt like hope. Because I realized I wasn't witnessing a eulogy for a country we'd lost. I was watching a man reach down and hand us back the very thing we had set down in our exhaustion. The arc doesn't bend on its own. It never did. It bends because people put their hands on it and pull, people who can't see the end and reach for it anyway. People in the dark, refusing to believe the dark gets the last word.

He would not let the day be about him. He said it plainly: America's story “isn't frozen in the past. It has chapters yet to be written, not by one person or a few people, not by Barack and Michelle... but by all of us.” Michelle said the same thing in her own way, that the center was never about them, never for them. Look up at that building and you'll see three words cut into the stone: You are America.Not him. Not them. You. Us. The ordinary, the unfamous, the tired, us.

And then Bruce Springsteen walked out with a guitar and sang “Land of Hope and Dreams.” If you don't know it, it's a song about a train, a train with room for everybody on it. Saints and sinners. The lost. The broken. The ones who've been left standing at every other station their whole lives. This train carries everybody. He sang it soft and aching, like a prayer he wasn't sure would be answered but was going to say anyway, and when the last note left him he turned to the Obamas and said the only thing left to say. “I love you.”

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

While Pentagon spending hit $1 trillion last year, defense contractor CEOs got a raise: 

General Dynamics CEO: $25.9M 
Northrop Grumman CEO: $25.3M 
RTX (Raytheon) CEO: $24.8M 
Boeing CEO: $23.5M 
Lockheed Martin CEO: $23.4M 

This is the military-industrial complex.

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

Today, Elon Musk, a trillionaire, pays the same amount into Social Security as someone making $184,500.

If we end that absurdity and lift the cap on taxable income, we can make Social Security solvent for 75 years and expand benefits by $2,400. My Social Security bill does that.

[Nadira Ali🇵🇸 @Nadira_ali12]

TRUMP: "We need $2 billion a day to reopen the Strait of Hormuz."

🇺🇸US Senator: "Wait, wasn't the Strait of Hormuz already open before the war? Then why did we start the war? You created a crisis out of thin air for no reason."

[Maryam @hell_line0]

I saw one post this morning that said women over 50 shouldn’t wear their hair long and another post that said women over 50 shouldn’t wear their hair short because it ages them more and I just want to say that women of all ages should wear their hair however the fuck they want

[Julius Kim @Julius_Kim]

You mean to tell me that the FBI had time to spend the last 9-11 months investigating #Comey seashells, but didn’t have time to investigate the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti?

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

The people who posted racist memes of the Obamas as apes are asking to tone down the rhetoric. 🙄

[Canada Hates Trump @AntiTrumpCanada]

Oh for fuck’s sake. The USA does not need a fucking ballroom. It needs a regime change.

[Maryam @hell_line0]

She shouldn’t Have To Say Any of This….

[Steven Beschloss @StevenBeschloss]

No matter how long I live after we get through this dark chapter, I will never get over the immorality, the amorality, the corruption, the criminality and the cruelty in service to one of the worst humans to ever walk the earth.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

God’s heart is torn apart by wars, violence, injustice and lies. But our Father’s heart is not with the wicked, the arrogant, or the proud. God’s heart is with the little ones and the humble, and with them He builds up His Kingdom of love and peace day by day. Wherever there is love and service, God is there. #ApostolicJourney #Algeria

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

If you can't use the 25th Amendment to remove a guy posting pictures of himself as Jesus, and then saying he thought he was a doctor, you can't remove ANYONE.

He is certifiably insane with dementia, and the entire Republican party is SILENT about it.

[Rushi @rushicrypto]

The most annoying thing about being human on Earth right now is the absolute waste of potential.

Brilliant minds and artists could be solving world hunger, climate change, and ending cancer, etc.

We could house, feed, clothe, and care for everyone.

But instead, we’ve decided to let a handful of asshats become billionaires, start wars, murder and imprison people, and keep the majority in poverty while ruining the climate.

It’s so stupid. The wasted ingenuity hurts to think about.

[Covie @covie_93]

This stephen miller tweet aged like stephen miller.

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

While everyone has moved on, I remain deeply troubled by Trumps threat to wipe out an entire civilization. No American president has talked in such terms. No American president ever should.

[Rep. Melanie Stansbury @Rep_Stansbury]

Just because a President announces he’s agreed to a two week ceasefire moments before he threatened to commit war crimes, does not mean he is suddenly fit to serve. #25thAmendment

[Nate @mexinorseman]

Boise is wrapping the flag poles with pride colors. At this point, the mayor is just trolling our state legislature.
And, I'm all for it.
That's some funny sh*t.

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

If you are in the US military please watch this before this evening.

PLEASE REFUSE ILLEGAL ORDERS.

[Ro Khanna @RoKhanna]

We need to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump.

Threatening war crimes is a blatant violation of our constitution and the Geneva Conventions.