Kari Kempf

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

A population kept in survival mode is less likely to organize, protest, or revolt. That’s why I believe this economic hardship isn’t accidental.

[Warren @swd2]

People are not eating cats and dogs.
Kids are not shitting in litter boxes.
And schools are not chopping off penises.
These are not serious people.

[Governor Gavin Newsom @CAgovernor]

WOW. The Supreme Court just let the Trump Admin move ahead (for now) with its plan to disenfranchise voters across the country.

California will be suing AGAIN to block these Orwellian rules from being implemented.

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

We had a substantial surplus when Bill Clinton was president. It was blown up by two rounds of Bush tax cuts and exploded with Trump tax cuts. The main beneficiaries? Surprise, surprise, the top 1%.

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

.@JamesTalarico: Ken Paxton has been in office since I was in middle school.

Now, less than 100 days before election day, he's pretending to care about the cost of living crisis. He just unveiled his ‘affordability plan’ — and it's mostly just tax breaks for wealthier folks.

When he talks about costs, you can tell it doesn't come naturally. It's a little like he's trying to speak French or something. It's like affordability is a word he learned on Duolingo that morning. He just found out that for other people, the cost of living is something you pay yourself, not something you pass on to your billionaire mega donors.

This is the guy who became a multi-millionaire on a government salary and has sold out working Texans at every turn. Now Ken Paxton wants us to believe he cares about us. Who does he think he's fooling?

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

It's striking (though not surprising given the normal course of authoritarian movements), that the whole Trump/MAGA/GOP message is now simply hatred of the other--of transgender people, of immigrants, and of "communists" as a catchall for everyone else.

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

Holy shit. A THOUSAND TRADES A MONTH.
50 trades per day. This is a TEAM.

He hired professional traders to use inside information to make money for him on the stock market while he uses every lever in the federal toolkit to pump up equity prices.

Staggering organized crime.

[Brian J. Karem @BrianKarem]

Well NO. It is not.

[State of the Union @CNNSOTU]

Former Vice President Mike Pence says he's "heartened" to hear that former CIA Officer Julia Curlee - a trans woman who served as his daily briefer during the first Trump term - said that he treated her with "great dignity."

BASH: "I spoke to her earlier this week, and she said despite your different views, you treated her with "great dignity," and a big moment for her in her life was you telling her mother that you must be very proud of your daughter. What was your reaction to hearing her say that?"

PENCE: "I appreciate the kind words ... My conservative values are fairly well-known, but maybe some people didn't quite know that among our Christian values is — my wife and I believe in treating others the way that we'd like to be treated, with decency and respect.  And I was heartened to hear Julia reflect that that was the experience that took place in our office."

[Josh El @ranchwilder86]

Oh his kids go to school in a state not named Iowa. It’s almost like he doesn’t live in Iowa.

[ThePatrioticBlonde™🇺🇸 @ImBreckWorsham]

TRUMP: “We'll by Argentinian beef.”

Reporters:' What about the US farmers who are suffering?'

Trump: “Argentina is fighting for its life. Do you understand me? They’re dying.”

He says this as 77 American cattle producers are going out of business in the US per day.

[Melissa Eadon @melissa_eadon]

Met @ZachLahn at the fair. I was confused by his answer when I asked about school starting. He said his kids already started school, but Iowa students don't start until Monday after the fair. Iowans know that.

[Barry R McCaffrey @mccaffreyr3]

In my judgement, the US Armed Forces have probably permanently lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases. Iran now poised to control access the Gulf States. US will have to negotiate new access in western Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Europe.

[Brianna Turner @_Breezy_Briii]

Texas is in need of new and improved leadership!! Can’t wait to cast my vote this fall for @jamestalarico #TexansForTalarico

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

NEW: Tens of thousands in Northwest Indiana have gone more than nine days without power. Schools are closed. Families are lining up for food and living in “survival mode.”

In America in 2026, that is a national emergency. It should be front-page news.

[Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta @malcolmkenyatta]

What’s happening in Gary, Indiana, is a national disgrace. The fact that FEMA and state agencies aren’t rushing support to restore power is the perfect example of the rot in this administration and its stooges.

[Isaac G. Bryan @ib2_real]

Black residents in Gary, IN have been without power for 11 days. The federal government is failing to meet the immediate needs of the people. Trump hasn’t said a word. Grocery store shelves are empty, seniors are at risk, and basic needs are not being met.

We are all Gary

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

A friend of mine runs a denim brand. His jeans cost $300 because they're cut and sewn in Los Angeles using premium Japanese denim.

He tells me that Trump's trade war has done three things:

1. They've raised the cost of his inputs. He can't substitute his Japanese denim with American denim because doing so would lower the quality of his product. If he's going to make premium jeans, he has to use premium materials. And the best stuff right now comes from Japan.

2. They've made his products more expensive abroad. In Canada, for instance, the price of his jeans has gone up because of the trade war.

3. He's seen a decrease in overseas sales. He tells me that a Canadian store reduced its orders this year because, as they told him, customers now come in and explicitly say they won't buy anything made in the US.

Of course, if the tariffs encouraged Americans to switch from their cheap $50 imported Levi's to $300 made-in-USA jeans, then that would be great! But that has not happened. People who buy $50 Levi's may pay $60, reducing their purchasing power elsewhere, but they don't switch to made-in-USA jeans.

Hard to see the point of this trade war with Canada.

[KD$ign @KnoxEndemic]

Apparently concert venues are having a hard time getting Millennials to fill the seats. Well, hello. Millennial here. I think I can help.

DEAR CONCERT VENUES:

🎟️ Just tell me what the ticket costs. I do not want to select a $79 ticket and discover at checkout that it is actually $146 because of a facility fee, service fee, processing fee, and a fee for having successfully paid the other fees.

📱 Stop making ticket buying a military operation. I should not need three apps, a verified fan code, a presale password from a credit card I don’t own, and 11:00 AM availability on a Tuesday to buy two seats.

💺 Assigned seats. We did our time standing shoulder-to-shoulder at shows in 2008. Some of us have mortgages now. Some of us have sciatica.

🕖 Start earlier. A 7 PM show is not embarrassing. In fact, I would like to formally recognize whoever invented the 7 PM show.

⏰ And tell us the actual times. “Doors at 7” is not useful information if the opener starts at 8:15 and the person I came to see appears at 10:07.

🚗 Parking instructions written for a normal person. Tell me which garage to use, what it costs, and whether I will spend 55 minutes trying to leave it afterward. I am willing to pay $20 for certainty.

🍺 I will buy your $14 beer. I have accepted this. But if I miss three songs waiting for it, you have broken the social contract.

🚽 Enough bathrooms. We are in our 30s and 40s. Half of us have had children. This is now infrastructure.

🔉 It can still be loud. We are Millennials, not the Greatest Generation. But some of us are bringing earplugs now and we are no longer ashamed of it.

DEAR ARTISTS:

⏰ Please go on roughly when you said you would. We have babysitters. The babysitter has an end time. This is now a logistics problem involving several adults.

🎤 Play the songs from 2004–2014. You know which ones. We know which ones. Nobody needs to pretend otherwise.

🎶 Play some new stuff. Absolutely. We support your continued artistic development. But there is a point in the evening when you need to play the song that was on our iPod Nano while we drove to high school.

📵 You can tell us to put our phones away. We secretly want someone to make us do this anyway.

🪑 An intermission would not offend us. We can use the bathroom, answer the babysitter, check whether the dog has destroyed anything, and look at Zillow for eight minutes.

And please understand: Millennials still like concerts.

We have disposable income now. We are nostalgic. We will absolutely spend irresponsible amounts of money to hear a band we first discovered on LimeWire.

But we also have jobs, children, dogs, mortgages, lower-back problems, and a very clear memory of when concert tickets cost $35.

You want Millennials back?

Make it easy to buy the ticket. Tell us when the show actually starts. Give us somewhere to sit. Play the song from 2007.

We’ll be there.

We just need to be home by 11.

[Henry Winkler @hwinkler4real]

Tom tom is at it again . REMEMBER These elected officials ARE SET for life with life long benefits