Paul A. Jesteadt

Progressive. Multicultural pluralism. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
- MLK Jr.

[Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews]

New York Times alert: “In little-noticed court documents, federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, in the 2024 election”

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

A reminder that these are Nuremberg-level crimes. A war of aggression against a country that didn’t attack you. A deliberate premeditated attack on civilian targets. A goal to punish a foreign populace to feel ‘pain’ and not choose targets based on proportionality and with discrimination.

[Democracy Docket @DemocracyDocket]

🤔 DID YOU KNOW? Texas made the same clerical error as New Jersey with noncitizens — but the two instances are being treated very differently.

“Have you heard the Department of Justice condemn Texas?” Marc Elias asks.

If you’re sick of the hypocrisy, join our fight: https://t.co/auxKGg1rl7

[Mother Jones @MotherJones]

The advocacy group Ohio Immigrant Alliance released a list of 59 active and former ICE and CBP agents charged with sexual and violent crimes between 2007 and 2026.

Fifty of 59 cases the group documented were sex crimes, many of them committed against children. https://t.co/DLTuqfjLIq

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

70% of Americans don't want energy-guzzling AI data centers being built in their communities, including 63% of Republicans.

Trump's response?

"You can't fight it, you have to go with it."

Reminder that Trump owns millions of dollars worth of stock in Big Tech corporations pushing data centers.

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

There's a scourge of NDAs surrounding data center development — tech billionaires are getting local politicians to keep their projects a secret.

People around the country are increasingly outraged to find that their politicians have signed on to agreements proposed by the oligarchs at Meta, Google, Anthropic and other corporations that allow tech giants to hold them to secrecy.

We went down to Louisiana and talked to folks who say this is a crisis of corruption.

[Hal Singer @halsinger]

Thanks to @BernieSanders for getting this GAO report published. No huge surprise that gig workers are increasingly dependent on food stamps and Medicaid. What’s maddening, however, is how we consider gig jobs as being “employed” when measuring unemployment. Not all jobs are equal. If more Americans must receive food stamps to supplement their gig work, the labor market is not thriving, regardless of the seemingly low unemployment rate.

[The New Republic @newrepublic]

Between 2020 and 2025, Walmart increased its profits from nearly $15 billion to nearly $22 billion. Meanwhile, the number of Walmart employees relying on Medicaid in the 11 states sampled in the GAO report increased by 55 percent. https://t.co/XN9zxKxPph

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

As I said months ago, Trump's war strategy is straight out of the authoritarian's playbook.

[Hal Singer @halsinger]

A bill in Massachusetts, H.99, would ban grocers from using biometric data collected on their premises to personalize prices. In my latest with Gavin Sicard, we make the economic case in support of a such a ban. The only winners from personalized pricing are the companies engaged in the practice. Personalized pricing also creates new costs borne by consumers because its data requirements incentivize companies to invade our privacy wherever they can. (Link to follow)

[Democracy Docket @DemocracyDocket]

NEW: 25 states and D.C. are suing FEMA and DHS for allegedly withholding billions in disaster funds in an attempt to coerce states into implementing Trump's anti-voting policies.

The aid is meant to provide a vast range of disaster services, from mitigating earthquakes to managing wildfires.

[Mother Jones @MotherJones]

After Trump launched his war on immigration, millions of people sprang into action against ICE’s raids, killings, and mass detentions.

But what looked spontaneous was the product of years of organizing, adapting as ICE became more powerful, mobile, and difficult to track. https://t.co/sRYWjo6l6z

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

Republicans in Congress think you’re stupid.

They put a Congressional stock trading “ban” up for a vote in the House. Seems like a good thing right?

Except their “ban” lets lawmakers and their families keep every stock they already own.

They can continue voting on legislation and making decisions that affect those companies. Then, they can sell those stocks and cash out.

In other words, the conflict of interest stays. They’re betting they can slap the word “BAN” on a bill and count on you never reading the fine print.

And guess who would face no restrictions whatsoever? The biggest offender of them all: Donald Trump.

Trump’s accounts have made thousands of trades involving hundreds of millions of dollars since January, and this bill would let him keep doing exactly that.

We need a real ban on owning and trading individual stocks that applies to members of Congress, their families, the President, and the Vice President.

No loopholes. No special exceptions.

They think you’re stupid, but we know better. Do not fall for this complete sham of a “ban.”

[Acyn @Acyn]

Jessica: California prosecutors working for Gavin Newsom, busted a hospice fraud wearing, $267 million in fraud, they were doing that without the administration. California submitted a 60 page integrity action plan to the federal government and has gotten no response.

Watters: That’s not true.

Jessica: Yes it is true. Here are three facts that you cannot refute. Newsom signed a hospice licensing moratorium in 2021. The Trump administration replicated it in 2026. The Trump administration even praised Newsom's crackdown on EBT fraud. They had an 80% drop. And then there is the elephant in the room, which is that Donald Trump has either commuted the sentences of or pardoned people who have defrauded American people through the medicare and medicaid system to the tune of almost $2 billion. So they want us to take RFK JR or Donald Trump seriously when they talk about fraud and they are pardoning the fraudsters themselves. That reeks to me.

[The New Republic @newrepublic]

Trump Invents the Corporate Pardon https://t.co/qj0RiDp5K2

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

In the year since Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, over 5 million Americans have lost SNAP, and Southern and Midwestern states were hit the hardest:

- Arizona lost 54% of its SNAP enrollees. That’s over 437,000 residents, including 183,000 children, without SNAP benefits.

- Georgia's SNAP enrollment dropped 22%, or around 522,000 people.

- Louisiana and Florida both saw a 22% decline in enrollment, with 9,000 children in Louisiana losing coverage.

The average U.S. SNAP enrollment is -12%. The only territory with increased enrollment is Guam.

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

Trump's nominee to run the CFPB, Brian Johnson, is a former Capitol One executive who previously consulted for payday lenders and credit reporting agencies

Now he could lead the very agency meant to rein those predatory companies in.

The fox is in the henhouse. https://t.co/2UqBh2oBvg

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

BitMEX was fined 100 million dollars for running what prosecutors called a money laundering platform. Trump pardoned the company and its executives the same week that fine came due, a use of the pardon power that never existed before this presidency, since a pardon has always cleared a record, not erased a debt already scheduled for payment. Nine corporate pardons total now, wiping out roughly 200 million dollars in fines, some of it money meant for actual victims.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

65% of Americans support Medicare for All that would “replace most private insurance plans” and corporate Dems’ new think tank @SearchlightInst is announcing their faction’s opposition ahead of the midterm elections

it is impossible to overstate how much the DC elite who run the Democratic Party truly hate you

[The Daily Beast @thedailybeast]

Stephen Miller went on a bizarre rant about “communist” Democrats that curiously referenced a number of Donald Trump’s own actions since returning to office last year. https://t.co/bscZLlaU3M