Richard Badger

Dover resident, phone monkey and researcher. (he/him, also down with gender neutral)

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Buried in a DOJ court filing on Friday is the part of this story that hasn't gotten enough attention.

The Department of Homeland Security is now exploring coordinating with the USPS to monitor mail-in ballot flows, identify anomalies, and generate "authorized investigative leads." The postal service - created by Congress as an independent entity - is being evaluated as a surveillance and investigation tool for federal law enforcement, applied specifically to Americans who vote by mail.

That is a separate track from the voter eligibility list story. Both are running simultaneously. The March 31 executive order requires states to submit lists of voters who have requested absentee ballots for federal eligibility approval before those ballots can be sent. On May 29, USPS began drafting compliance plans. Election officials in California and Wisconsin have already documented slower ballot delivery times since the policy changes began.

The NAACP sued Thursday, arguing the new rule violates a 2021 court-enforced settlement in which USPS agreed to protect mail-in voting and prioritize timely ballot delivery through 2028 - a binding legal commitment the agency is now moving to undermine. A federal judge in a separate case has expressed being "very concerned" about the harm the order could impose on voters.

The American Postal Workers Union's statement named what this actually is: "The Postal Service serves all Americans - regardless of party, religion, or race. It is not a tool for politicians to pick which Americans get which benefits." That sentence is a legal argument and a civic one. The postal workers who sort and deliver ballots in Elkhart and Fort Wayne and rural Hamilton County are being asked to participate in a process their own union has called unconstitutional. That matters.

[Pulp Librarian @PulpLibrarian]

If Airwolf had an Italian disco theme tune...

[Aaron Nagler @AaronNagler]

The trench run in the original Star Wars was cut by Marcia Lucas. (Yes, there are Special Edition shots in here) She rightfully won an Oscar for her groundbreaking work on the film and contributed to so many more. RIP to an unheralded cinematic genius.

[Mustache Bob @MustacheBob2]

Starship exploded. Again. Like it always explodes. It explodes because it's a dead-end design. SpaceX will never reach the moon. SpaceX will never reach Mars. SpaceX sets the US space program back every day we foolishly decide to rely on it.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

RIP to a real one.

[Todd Spence @Todd_Spence]

Paul Rudd and Adam Scott recreated the BOSOM BUDDIES sitcom intro just for fun and the attention to detail is insane 😂

[FrancescoMarciuliano @fmarciuliano]

I hope this scooter blares the “Wonder Woman” TV theme every single time. Of course, that means the rider will be doing Mach 3 in about ten seconds.

[Dr. Allison Wiltz @queenie4rmnola]

Love to see our people meet the moment

[soli @solisolsoli]

By Carter Goodrich

[oxford (fatmogging @ charliscores) @PUBERTY_3]

porn is important because every crusade against porn is secretly a crusade against every “perverse” thing which inevitably will encompass gays and trans ppl. btw. just in case u didn’t see the fascist writing on the wall

[R @shibadad8]

If the Democratic Party was anything close to Zohran, we would be in for generational change in this country.

[Ted Alcorn @TedAlcorn]

With data from @nytimes API, I analyzed all national+local coverage since 2000—224K articles— to see which topics in each state get covered out of proportion to the rest of the country. A portrait of how the paper of record sees America, one state per tweet, alphabetical. 👇

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

The quote is accurate but the most specific detail in the piece is the base-naming mechanism.

Congress prohibited military facilities from being named after Confederate leaders. The DoD searched millions of service records for individuals who shared surnames with the traitors - Bragg, Hill, Pickett, Lee - and formally declared the bases were always named after those other men. The administration offered this explanation with what Waldman describes as "a sneer and a giggle."

That's not policy reversal. That's a documented official lie entered into government records and maintained as the formal position of the United States military.

Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee were moving to eliminate substantially Black congressional districts within hours of the VRA ruling. Hours. Those redistricting maps were ready before the ink dried. They needed legal permission. Roberts provided it, completing work he started in the Reagan administration.

The Albert Pike statue came back up last year. He was a Confederate general and an early architect of the Ku Klux Klan. The administration put it back.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

A 17-year-old in Iowa boiled beets in her chemistry class and turned them into stitches that change color when your wound gets infected. Her name is Dasia Taylor. It started as a science fair project.

She wanted a low-tech version of the "smart stitches" Tufts researchers built in 2016. Those used thread wired up with sensors and a tiny chip that pinged your phone if something went wrong. Cool, but useless without a phone or a hospital that can afford it.

Her version doesn't need any of that. Healthy skin is slightly acidic, like lemon juice but much milder. When bacteria grow in a wound, the chemistry flips and turns more like soap or baking soda.

Beet juice has a quirk. The same red pigment that stains your fingers when you cook it shifts color based on what it touches. Bright red on healthy skin. Dark purple on infected skin. The switch lines up with infection almost exactly.

She tested ten threads before finding a cotton-polyester blend that soaked up the dye and changed color within five minutes. That was the prototype.

Around 1 in 40 American surgeries end in an infection at the cut, costing hospitals more than $3 billion a year. In poorer countries the rate is closer to 1 in 9. In parts of Africa it's 1 in 6. In some Ethiopian hospitals, up to a quarter of surgery patients leave with an infection.

The whole game is catching it early. Spot it in time and antibiotics handle it. Miss the window and the patient is back on the operating table.

Dasia filed a patent in 2021 and started a medical device company called VariegateHealth in 2022. The stitches haven't been tested on real patients yet. New medical device patents can take a decade. She's also looking into a side benefit: the beet pigment kills bugs like E. coli and Klebsiella in lab tests.

Smart stitches need a phone to read them. Hers just need eyes.

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

Impossible to lose them on a dark evenings walk

[Justice Democrats @justicedems]

Everyone needs to watch @Justinjpearson's floor speech from the TN State House.

"Today, you will take the only Black-majority district from us. But I want you to know: No matter what you do, no matter how much you try to break us & make us bend & quit — we will still be here."

[Rebecca Nagle @rebeccanagle]

Navajo Highways, a children’s series that highlights Navajo culture through puppetry, is nominated for two Emmy awards! https://t.co/MiLYtSNjFz

[Yaffa the Lesbian Witch🖖 @archaicf0ssil]

Avery Brooks was delivering the performance of a lifetime in Far Beyond the Stars. I like that the editor knows this isn't right but he allows himself to be complicit anyway because he's too comfortable with the way things are and doesn't want to be the one to bring about change.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Todd Blanche has been Acting Attorney General for three weeks. Harry Litman, a former federal prosecutor, documents what those three weeks produced.

Seditious conspiracy convictions for the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys - the hardest cases from the largest criminal investigation in DOJ history - moved to vacate. Four pages. No legal argument. No claim of innocence. No allegation of prosecutorial error. Just "interests of justice." On remand, dismissal with prejudice means Stewart Rhodes and company can now sue the United States for malicious prosecution, the same path Michael Flynn took for $1.25 million in taxpayer money.

Four career prosecutors fired for working FACE Act cases. Fired and smeared simultaneously via a 900-page weaponization report released the same day. The felony cases those prosecutors brought involved defendants who physically forced their way into clinics and blockaded doors while livestreaming. Blanche's new policy: FACE Act cases involving abortion clinics require "extraordinary circumstances." Cases involving houses of worship get full DOJ attention. Same statute. Different outcomes based on the political valence of the victim.

Two Pirro prosecutors showed up unannounced at the Federal Reserve. The Fed's own counsel - Robert Hur, who investigated Biden's classified documents and found no basis for charges - sent a tart letter advising them that if they wanted to challenge Judge Boasberg's ruling quashing their subpoenas, courts provide an avenue called an appeal. Pirro has not filed one.

Cassidy Hutchinson's prospective perjury prosecution assigned to Harmeet Dhillon's Civil Rights Division. Perjury prosecutions are not the Civil Rights Division's jurisdiction. Litman says he has never heard of a single instance of this happening. The assignment exists to put the case in the hands of a trusted enforcer.

Blanche is a former SDNY prosecutor. He knows what every one of these moves means. That is Litman's sharpest point. Bondi was over her head. Blanche was formed by the institution he is dismantling. He knows exactly what he is destroying and is doing it anyway.