Nate Yoder

Husband to Grace, Father to Hannah, Kyle, Kory, Avid fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes

[Nate Yoder @nateyoder5]

@BulwarkOnline 2 + 2 = 3

[Nate Yoder @nateyoder5]

@SenBillCassidy If only someone had the power to keep unqualified nominees from their positions. 🙄 Sorry, Senator, but your protest is nothing but empty words.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

The irony of Republicans controlling all branches of government while

bankrupting the country, starting a war, sending money to fraudulent programs, violating the Constitution, giving corporations immunity...

but arguing that the biggest problem we have is “stolen elections.”

[Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 @RachelBitecofer]

That “off limit” site was the grave site of the USS Arizona and the 1,177 sailors entombed within her.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

Every Democrat since Carter has decreased the federal deficit.

Every Republican since Eisenhower has increased the federal deficit.

[Tim Alberta @TimAlberta]

My conviction remains:

God did not ordain Donald Trump to rescue the American church, or revive the American church, or redeem the American church.

God ordained Donald Trump to test the American church. And the American church has failed.

[UFO Hunter @iamufohunter]

🚨 The guy on the left was arrested and convicted for illegally selling missiles to Iran during the Reagan Administration. The guy on the right is a Fox News "military analyst” who thinks Iran shouldn't have missiles. They're the same guy.

[Felix Prehn 🐶 @felixprehn]

Private equity firms bought 500 hospitals. Death rates in their emergency rooms went up 13%. They fired 12% of the staff. Then they paid themselves billions in dividends.

A Harvard study just confirmed what doctors already knew: people are dying so investors can hit quarterly targets.

Exactly what happens. A PE firm buys a hospital using debt. The debt gets placed on the hospital's balance sheet, not the firm's. Now the hospital owes hundreds of millions it never borrowed. To service that debt, the hospital cuts costs. Costs mean nurses.

The numbers from the Harvard/University of Chicago study are horrifying. After PE acquisition, emergency department salary spending dropped 18.2%. ICU salary spending dropped 15.9%. Hospital-wide employees were cut 11.6%. Emergency department deaths rose 13%, seven additional deaths per 10,000 visits.

A separate study found patients undergoing surgery at PE-acquired hospitals had 17% higher odds of dying within 90 days.

Steward Health Care, owned by Cerberus Capital, filed bankruptcy with $9 billion in debt after closing hospitals across Massachusetts. The CEO lived on a $40 million yacht while emergency rooms went dark. Eight hospitals serving 2 million people nearly disappeared because a PE fund extracted more cash than the system could survive.

The private equity industry has poured over $1 trillion into healthcare. They operate a quarter of ERs nationwide. This isn't going away.

The investing angle nobody talks about.

Non-PE hospital operators like HCA Healthcare (HCA) and Tenet (THC) are the direct beneficiaries. Every time a PE hospital closes or deteriorates, patients flow to the nearest competitor. HCA has returned 1,200% since 2011. Patient volume from PE closures is a structural tailwind nobody's pricing in.

Medical staffing firms (AMN Healthcare, Cross Country) charge premium rates specifically because PE hospitals cut staff. The staffing shortage IS the business model for these companies.

The disruption play: outpatient surgical centers (SCA Health, now part of UnitedHealth) are pulling profitable procedures out of hospitals entirely. PE-owned hospitals lose their highest-margin surgeries to outpatient, and the death spiral accelerates.

Pull up tradevision and monitor healthcare M&A alerts, hospital closure filings, and patient volume migration data. When a PE-owned hospital announces "restructuring," the patient volume shift to competitors like HCA starts within 30 days. That 30-day window is when the competitor's earnings revisions haven't updated yet. Free to try.

(a private equity firm bought your local hospital. borrowed $500 million in the hospital's name. fired 12% of the nurses. emergency room deaths rose 13%. then they paid themselves dividends. nobody went to prison. they're currently buying another hospital.)

[Brad @BraddrofliT]

The ICE surge in Minnesota cost $280M of our tax money, to detain 4k people of whom only 30 were accused of violent crimes, plus another 530 with minor traffic violations.

$9 million per capture of the "worst of the worst". Plus two civilian deaths.

Your tax dollars hard at work 🙄

[Catherine Rampell @crampell]

Republican Gov of Vermont:

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

This woman speaks for the majority of Americans. 🙌🙏🫶👇

[Rudy Gersten @DCBarno]

Fellow conservatives, deep down many of you know it but are too afraid to say it. Trump is destroying the very fabric of this country. Enough. Republicans need to speak up. Stop supporting this madman and make it known. Nothing will happen to you. Except possibly saving your soul

[Shane Claiborne @ShaneClaiborne]

Lord have mercy.

[Tim Alberta @TimAlberta]

Okay so,

1) an American citizen exercises his First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and his Second Amendment right to bear arms, out of apparent concern that a tyrannical federal government is violating basic protections afforded under the Constitution

2) after coming to the aid of an unarmed woman who's been shoved to the ground by a masked federal agent, the citizen -- impaired by pepper spray, holding nothing but a cell phone -- is dragged to the ground by a group of other masked agents

3) during the scuffle, shortly after one masked agent removes the weapon from the restrained citizen's person, several other masked agents open fire, unloading 10 shots from close range and killing the unarmed citizen

4) despite video evidence, a spokesman for the federal government says the citizen approached agents with a gun, provoked a violent confrontation, and planned to "massacre" law enforcement

You really want to defend this? Go ahead. Just know, you look like an absolute fool.

[Oliver Alexander @OAlexanderDK]

Imagine going back 15 years and telling Republicans this:

One day, you will cheer federal agents for killing people who were carrying firearms while exercising their Second Amendment rights.

[Nate Yoder @nateyoder5]

@RachelBitecofer Satire account

[David J. Bier @David_J_Bier]

More lies. The people picked up on the streets in these mass ICE raids are not criminals who would've been picked up at jails. They are racially profiled workers. Trump's policy is explicitly designed not to target public safety threats. It's indefensible. Hence, the lies

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Shared today by Bev Perry in the Expand Dem Values in the House and Senate Facebook group.

I need to say something that's been bothering me for a while, and I'm saying it as a Marine Corps veteran who leans center-right.
This isn't partisan. This is observation.
We've slow-faded into accepting militarized police as normal, and nobody seems to notice or care.
Even as a USMC pilot, I went through six months of infantry training as an officer before flight school. I've worn the gear. The helmet, the tactical vest, the whole kit. And I can tell you from experience, it changes you.
There's a psychological shift that happens when you strap that stuff on. You feel different. You carry yourself different. You start seeing the environment differently. In the Marine Corps, that shift was appropriate because it's a combat culture and organization.
But these are American streets. American citizens. And we've got law enforcement dressed like they're kicking down doors in Fallujah to serve warrants in suburbia.
What happend to high standards and real policing tactics? Think Adam-12...Officers Reed and Malloy. Crisp uniforms. A revolver. A baton. High standards and professionalism. They looked like public servants because they were public servants. They de-escalated. They talked to people. They were part of the community.
Now? Tactical gear, beards, ball caps, Oakley sunglasses, sleeve tattoos, and a tactical kit that would make special operators jealous. And we've turned it into a fetish. We celebrate it. We assume that because someone looks hard, they must be a professional.
They're not.
I loved the Marine Corps. But I'll be honest, I was also blinded by it for a while. Mission first. Unit over everything. And that mentality made sense in that context.
But law enforcement doesn't get that critical examination. "Back the Blue" has become a shield against accountability. A blanket assumption that a badge plus gun equals hero. That tactical gear equals competence.
It doesn't.
Most people who join law enforcement aren't special operators. They're average people who desperately want to belong to something bigger than themselves. I understand that impulse deeply, it's why I joined the Marines. But wanting to belong doesn't make you qualified. Looking the part doesn't mean you can perform under pressure. And wrapping yourself in warrior aesthetics doesn't make you a warrior.
Old school law enforcement represented something. Standards. Bearing. Discipline. Professionalism that was demonstrated, not costumed. A revolver and a baton meant you had to rely on your training, your words, your judgment, not overwhelming firepower.
What I see now in law enforcement is the costume without the culture. The gear without the training. The authority without the accountability.
Are there good people in law enforcement? Of course. I know some personally. But this reflexive "law enforcement can do no wrong" mentality is lazy, dangerous, and intellectually dishonest.
A woman is dead. And before we sort ourselves into teams and start assigning blame, maybe we should ask harder questions:
Why do we accept a militarized police force as normal?
Why do we assume tactical gear equals tactical competence?
Why have we let "Back the Blue" become a substitute for actual standards?
I wore the uniform. I went through the training. I know what that gear does to your head.
It shouldn't be normalized on American streets against American citizens.
And we shouldn't pretend everyone wearing it is qualified to carry it. The fact that he called her a “fucking bitch” after he shot her three times should be a huge red flag for all of us.