Regina

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Florida paid a portable toilet company called Doodie Calls more than $92 million over six months to haul wastewater out of the Everglades. The state projected it would pay Doodie Calls $480 million over two years. For comparison, building a sewage treatment plant for a city of 10,000 people costs about $5 million.

That is one vendor. At one facility. Built in eight days on an Everglades airstrip using hurricane disaster funds because Ron DeSantis declared immigration a state of emergency in 2023 to access a $5 billion fund set aside for floods and hurricanes.

The facility costs between $1.2 million and $3 million per day to operate. A conservative estimate puts the annual per-capita cost at $500,000 per detainee. Florida spends $30,000 a year to house a convicted criminal in a state prison. The math on Alligator Alcatraz is not tougher than a prison. It is more than sixteen times more expensive.

Three quarters of the men held there have never been convicted of a crime. They are awaiting civil immigration proceedings. They are being held in kennels - cages with steel mesh sides, 16 bunks, three toilets, brightly lit 24 hours a day. Amnesty International documented what it called deliberate neglect designed to dehumanize, including credible allegations of men held in stress positions in direct sunlight without food or water for hours at a time.

Governor Braun opened the Speedway Slammer at an Indiana prison. The Cornhusker Clink in Nebraska. The Louisiana Lockup at Angola. The naming contest is ongoing. The cruelty is the point. The cost is someone else's problem. Florida's emergency fund has dwindled to $200 million. The facility cannot run to the end of the year.

The men in the cages are still there.

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

The whole point is that he is unqualified and will make us less safe. This isn’t a glitch. It’s the design. The US is to bend to its rivals abroad and collapse from within. For this he is the right guy!
https://t.co/76hGh4lbnA

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

🚨 HOLY SHIT.

A U.S. citizen just testified before the Senate that ICE agents ignored his passport, detained him, placed him on suicide watch, and released him WITHOUT charges or explanation.

Read that again.

An AMERICAN CITIZEN says he showed agents his passport multiple times…

and still ended up locked in a cell under 24/7 lights, stripped naked, wearing a hospital gown while guards watched him constantly.

His family reportedly had no idea where he was.

Then after all of that?

No charges.
No explanation.
Just released.

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

BREAKING: 35 Former federal judges have just filed a motion in Florida asking the court to *re-open* Trump's $10 billion lawsuit vs. his I.R.S.

The motion states: "This court was deceived"

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

I am part of this campaign; please join in; you can save lives.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

No nation, no society, and no international order can call itself just and humane if it measures its success solely by power or prosperity while neglecting those who live at the margins. Indeed, Christ’s love for the least and the forgotten compels us to reject every form of selfishness that leaves the poor and the vulnerable invisible.

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

BREAKING: Jen Psaki just hit a MAJOR nerve with a story on Eric Trump’s China trip — and now he’s suing her.

As she does most every night on her MS Now program, Jen Psaki did a monologue on a current topic in the news. This time, however, Eric Trump lost his mind over what she had to say
.
The 42-year-old executive vice president of the Trump Organization took to X Wednesday night to threaten a lawsuit against Psaki and MS NOW after she reported on his presence alongside his father during the presidential trip to China — and connected it to a Financial Times story about a family-linked company pursuing a deal with a Chinese chipmaker tied to the Communist Party.

"I have NEVER been on the board of ALT5," Eric fumed, adding that he has "zero business interests in China. No properties, no investments, nothing!" He concluded by insisting he joined the trip purely as "a loving son who adores my father."

Sweet. But Psaki didn't make up the Financial Times reporting. She cited it.

That report describes how ALT5 Sigma — a fintech company connected to Eric and the Trump family's crypto venture, World Liberty Financial — has a memorandum of understanding to explore a deal with a Chinese computer chip manufacturer to build AI data centers. Congress has warned that the Chinese firm in question has connections to the Chinese Communist Party. Eric and his brother were photographed ringing the New York Stock Exchange opening bell with the ALT5 name displayed behind them.

Neither ALT5 nor the Chinese firm responded to the Financial Times for comment. The deal may or may not be real. But the reporting exists, and it raises exactly the questions Psaki raised.

And those questions don't stop there. Just last month, Eric was on Fox Business bragging that one of his companies scored a $24 million Pentagon contract. Don Jr.'s company landed a nearly $5 million Air Force contract. Both brothers are now part-owners of a drone company angling for major Pentagon deals — while their father's administration controls Pentagon spending.

All of this is happening while Trump's $10 billion IRS lawsuit seeks to shield the entire Trump family from financial audits. Forever.

Eric wants to sue Psaki for asking whether someone should check the books. That answer tells you everything.

Please like and share to spread the news.

[Justin J. Pearson @Justinjpearson]

Speaker of the TN House Cameron Sexton just removed me and every Democrat — and therefore every Black elected official in the state legislature from any committee we served on.

This move strips nearly 2 million Tennesseans from the representation they deserve in TN state leg.

[Tom Bonier @tbonier]

This sort of thing does not happen in a healthy democracy. We are collectively being far too quiet about all of this.

[Regina @raindropsnow]

@_CatintheHat @AP @cv_cev Particularly when the incubation period can be more than 40 days...

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

I’m grateful to our warriors for their precision – today, Ukraine’s long-range sanctions have once again reached Perm, which is more than 1,500 kilometers from our border. Recently, there have also been important results in Chelyabinsk – up to 1,800 kilometers away, as well as in Yekaterinburg – nearly 2,000 kilometers away. The effects of Ukraine’s long-range capabilities have also been felt in Novorossiysk, Krymsk, Tuapse, and in the Samara and Nizhny Novgorod regions.

We have repeatedly offered the Russian leadership the option of moving toward peace. In response, we have received only new Russian strikes. That is exactly why Ukraine’s long-range sanctions are extending to distant locations in Russia linked to its military-industrial complex, war infrastructure, and the financing of its aggression.

Every day, Russia can make a choice and end its war. And not for a few hours in order to receive our permission to hold a parade in Moscow, but in a way that protects human lives. People must be valued, not parades. There is a need to establish peace, rather than running around the world’s capitals begging for a pause on May 9. We need peace. Thank you to everyone helping bring Russia to this realization.

[Gary Koepnick @garykoepnick]

Debt just surpassed our economy.

It’s official.

He managed to bankrupt the United States. Morally and literally

[Neil deGrasse Tyson @neiltyson]

This checks out...

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

Deny Ukraine membership in NATO, cut aid to Ukraine, promise Putin Donbas, praise Putin after he helps Iran, and now consider pulling troops out of Germany. How many gifts can Trump give Putin?

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

Here is what is documented and on the record.

The pay-to-play system exists. It runs through Republican consulting firms. It uses coordination chats on X. Influencers receive talking points and post them as their own.

The proof of one specific transaction would require subpoenaed records. The pattern, however, is visible to anyone scrolling X tonight.

Now here is the part I want you to sit with.

If you saw sixteen left-wing accounts post identical talking points within an hour of a national tragedy, you would call it a propaganda operation.

When sixteen right-wing accounts do it, the press calls it grassroots energy.

It is not grassroots energy. Ashley St. Clair told you what it is. Politico's December 2024 reporting confirmed it. The contracts exist. The chats exist. The platforms exist. The Campaign Legal Center has petitioned the FEC to require disclosure.

The FEC has not closed the loophole.

So tonight, after a man with multiple weapons charged a security checkpoint at an event with the President and most of the Cabinet, the first synchronized response from the largest MAGA voices on the platform was not concern.

It was a marketing campaign for a ballroom.

That is the pattern. The pattern is documented. The pattern is visible.

Never stop connecting the dots.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

Republican consulting firms run online portals where right-wing influencers can log in, see active campaigns, and get paid to post specific messages. The campaigns are tied to bills, scandals, cabinet picks, lawsuits.

Compensation is per click or per flat fee. She said 99 percent of the largest MAGA influencers receive some form of payment or perk. They sign asymmetric non-disclosure agreements.

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

"I stand by every single word of this report...I have been inundated by additional sourcing going up to the highest levels of the government, thanking us for doing the work, providing additional corroborating information."

Sarah Fitzpatrick on Kash Patel:
https://t.co/zYbVTk8Kjc

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

We knew this was coming. Fuck no. We must not allow this to happen. As citizens, it is our duty to fight back against what this government is doing here. We must be prepared to do whatever it takes to stop this from happening. It’s time to fight back. It’s way past time.

[The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent]

⚡️Prince Harry arrives in Kyiv 'to remind people what Ukraine is up against'.

Britain's Prince Harry made a surprise visit to Kyiv on April 23, Chris Ship, a journalist at the British channel ITV News, wrote on X.

He told ITV News that he wanted "to remind people back home and around the world what Ukraine is up against and to support the people and partners doing extraordinary work every hour of every day in incredibly tough conditions."

https://t.co/5otgdiTKCB

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

In a world wounded by arrogance, people hunger and thirst for justice. We must encourage those who believe in peace and dare to engage in “countercurrent” politics, which focus on the common good. What is urgently needed is the courage of new visions and an educational pact that gives young people space and trust. #ApostolicJourney #EquatorialGuinea https://t.co/81zzJos7Ij