John King

History. Addicted to global events, policy and Rutgers football.

[Justin Amash @justinamash]

Forty-seven members of Congress skipped the vote on the KIDS Act, which establishes the infrastructure for mass surveillance of Americans online.

This bill needed a two-thirds majority to pass, so just 17 more no votes could have sunk it!

A couple members might have a legit excuse, but 47? No way. They bailed to avoid going on the record, even at the cost of furthering the surveillance state.

[John King @jjfking]

@Lokert17 @BillKristol Similar to how the battle flag of northern Virginia was largely not used between the 1870s and 1950s until the clan and other racists revived it as a symbol to intimidate black peoples from exercising their rights and rally fellow segregationists to their cause.

[John King @jjfking]

@Lokert17 @BillKristol Dems were Confeds& S was Dem until FDR embraced desegregation&Dems through LBJ continued it. This spawned Dixiecrats (who became GOP) who were upset by the rejection of traditional southern racial superiority. Nixon saw electoral opportunity &flipped S by opposing integration

[Tim Walz @Tim_Walz]

Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went.

The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.

[Council on Foreign Relations @CFR_org]

U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have signed a memorandum of understanding to end hostilities between the two countries. @stevenacook, a Middle East expert at CFR, analyzes what the agreement means for various parties, assessing that it heavily favors Tehran.

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

The decision to go to war — to order American soldiers to die for our defense — should always be the last resort, when all other ways of achieving US objectives have failed. Trump could have signed this MOU without war. That makes his war a catastrophic failure. Americans and others died for nothing.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

I would like to appeal once again for reflection on the consequences of war and for their prevention through wise and responsible decision making, for this is not the result of an inevitable fate, but of free choices and, therefore, of morally accountable actions.

[Emoluments Clause @Emolclause]

#BREAKING: Velshi: “What if I told you this? The Trump administraction had ALREADY spent 50 TIMES that much in taxpayer money to build his ballroom? What if I told you Trump had already taken $50 billion out of the U.S. treasury and spent it, all as part of what looks very much like a pay to play scheme to finance his vanity project? And I’m not making this up, a brand new report from the government watchdog group Public Citizen looked into the private donors who are supposedly funding the Trump ballroom as a gift. Guess what their investigation found? ‘More than half of the publicly identified donors…have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more $50 billion during the past six months.’ The report also found that most of the same companies are also facing federal enforcement actions over alleged wrongdoing and that some have had such actions suspended by the Trump administration since the start of Trump’s second term.”🙄

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention.

The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean.

And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them.

Record-breaking temperatures.

A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse.

The response?

Yank out the instruments and walk away.

That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency.

For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives.

The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident.

That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.
https://t.co/MzE4AW1QBv

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

Donald Trump Jr takes a financial stake in a company…

3 months later, the Pentagon gives it $620 million…

after Trump’s White House told them to…

And the company’s valuation rose from
$200 million to $2 billion as a result.

This is corruption.
https://t.co/TLcOxyzOWO

[Dylan Byers @DylanByers]

NEW: Sharyn Alfonsi goes scorched earth on Bari Weiss:

"Over the weekend, my contract with CBS News expired, drawing to a close nearly twenty years with the network, including more than a decade at 60 Minutes.

Following an intense editorial dispute over our CECOT story, repeated attempts by my representation to establish a path forward were met with absolute silence from network executives. The message could not be clearer: my time at 60 Minutes is apparently over.

In the coming days, network leadership may attempt to hide behind corporate euphemisms like "modernization" and “restructuring” to explain away my departure. Don't be misled. This was not a routine corporate transition; it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting, and it sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom.

Fearless, independent reporting has always been the defining standard at 60 Minutes. Today, CBS management is abandoning that mission, choosing access journalism over accountability and protecting power rather than scrutinizing it.

The wall between editorial independence and corporate interest at CBS is being methodically torn down. Journalists willing to challenge authority are being pushed aside in favor of those who will not. If this continues, the result will be a broadcast that looks like 60 Minutes but lacks the courage and character to produce journalism that matters.

To my colleagues, who became family - working beside you has been the privilege of a lifetime. You are second to none. I’ve learned exactly what it costs to hold the line right now. Hold it anyway. Viewers and the people who trust us with their stories deserve nothing less."

Backstory:

- January: https://t.co/l518elnE4b

- April: https://t.co/8pWTTjOIbk

- May: https://t.co/LfKHnm18nF

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

Here's how the corruption works:

Thursday: RJ Reynolds donates $5M to Trump

Saturday: Trump invites RJR execs to Mar a Lago; execs ask to loosen regs on flavored vapes; Trump calls up RFK Jr. and tells him to change it

Friday: FDA changes the policy
https://t.co/Udu1RhYtKI

[LiorLefineder @lefineder]

How many Roman cities survived the Dark Ages collapse?

Comparing a database of 405 Roman cities to a database of medieval cities, we can see that around 33 Roman cities survived as cities into the 8th century.

The rest — around 372 (92%!) — were destroyed or depopulated to become small towns or settlements.

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

Trump helped turn the Strait of Hormuz into a global crisis—and now he’s looking to China to help bail us out.

Think about how that makes us look to the rest of the world.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

What kind of world are we leaving behind? Unfortunately, it is a world distorted by war and war-like language. This pollution of reason comes from the geopolitical sphere and invades every social relationship. Any simplification that creates enemies must be corrected, especially in universities, through complexity of thought and wise exercise of memory.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

🇺🇸BREAKING: Someone placed a $920 million crude oil short at 3:40 AM.

70 minutes later Axios reported the US and Iran were close to a deal.

Oil dropped 12%.

The trade made $125 million in profit.

Minutes after that Iran launched the “Persian Gulf Strait Authority” and oil surged 8%.

$760 million placed before Trump’s last announcement.

$920 million placed before this one.

Every major announcement in this war has been front-run by someone who knew it was coming.

What kind of war is this?

This is more like a trading desk with an army.

Never stop connecting the dots.

[Council on Foreign Relations @CFR_org]

“We’re in a moment of superpower suicide,” says CFR democracy expert @TimothyDSnyder.

“We are choosing to be far less powerful than we could be. We are choosing that, right? And that’s the element of choice in a suicide. And then there’s the substance of what we’re doing, which is that in domain after domain—long term, short term, ethical, strategic—we are cutting ourselves off. . . . We’re doing it in education. We’re doing it in research. We’re doing it in the way we’re fighting war. We’re doing it in economics.”

🔗 Watch the full conversation: https://t.co/BbOz8sq0AL

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

German Chancellor Merz: It is quite obvious that the Americans have absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever.

And the fundamental problem with these kinds of conflicts is always the same: it is not enough to simply get yourself in—you must also figure out how to get yourself out.

We witnessed that reality quite painfully in Afghanistan over the course of 20 long years. We saw the exact same thing happen in Iraq.

So this entire situation, as I have mentioned previously, is at the very least ill-considered. I do not see, at this present moment, what strategic exit the Americans are choosing—especially since the Iranians are either negotiating very skillfully, or just as effectively, refusing to negotiate at all.

Making the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave empty-handed—there is a sense that a whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly the Revolutionary Guards.

As Europeans, we have extended an offer to assist in reopening the Strait of Hormuz once hostilities come to an end. We have also offered to deploy specialized minesweepers from Germany to clear the strait, which appears to have been mined.

But first, the fighting must stop.

And right now, I do not see how that is achievable in the short term. The Iranians are proving stronger than initially expected, and the Americans do not appear to have a convincing or coherent strategy for negotiations.

This is a complex and very difficult situation.

(Translated from German)

[Justin Amash @justinamash]

Bailout + nationalization.

Trump is the most corporate socialist president of our lifetime.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth. #ApostolicJourney #Cameroon https://t.co/bKteFZ3iWE