Well… We all knew this was coming, right?
Trump urges GOP to override Senate parliamentarian
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“a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor”
Loved this phrasing:
«Lone star ticks are aggressive and can speedily follow a human target if they detect them. “They will hunt you, they are like a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor,” said Sharon Pitcairn Forsyth, a conservationist who lives in the Washington DC area.»
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/29/lone-star-ticks-increase-climate-crisis
(Also, the tick bombs: 😱)
…
Wait. Why would juvenile ticks have alpha-gal?
«”There is a current theory that ticks make alpha-gal themselves. Studies have shown that some ticks carry alpha-gal in their saliva and intestinal tract,” said Dr. Mozena. Though, this theory isn’t fully developed yet.
Why would insects produce a mammalian sugar? Because they have somehow ingested and incorporated a gene that does so.
I’m willing to believe that, because I’ve seen it before, or something like it (cf. Golgi bodies). But it’s still amazing. The connections in the biological world go beyond our common understanding.
Feels like we’re on our way to a Confederacy of liberal and illiberal regions
Today’s Supreme Court ruling feels like a setup for a confederacy. So, some states could bring back slavery and as long as the court doesn’t rule on it, lower courts can’t tell my state (for example), “no, slavery is illegal” (unless they’re courts in my circuit).
How do we navigate that? If Texas wants to imprison women as breeders, only a court in their region can tell them “no”?
Is this where we’re headed?
P.S. This particular case might be a little overblown, but, honestly, it seems like we’re headed in a direction where allowed behaviors can differ widely between different regions of the country. And that’s what I mean by “confederacy”.
If Everyone Had Voted, Kamala Harris Still Would Have Lost – The New York Times
«Nonetheless, Ms. Harris greatly underperformed how the same studies found Mr. Biden fared with the 2020-but-not-2024 group. She did not fare nearly well enough to prevail, even if these voters had returned to the electorate.
The voters the Democrats lost in 2024 may not be lost for good. Still, their willingness to support Mr. Trump may throw a wrench in Democratic strategies. Until now, Democrats mostly assumed that irregular young and nonwhite voters were so-called mobilization targets — voters who would back Democrats if they voted, but needed to be lured to the polls with more door knocks, more liberal voting laws or a more progressive candidate. At least for now, this assumption can’t be sustained.»
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/upshot/turnout-2024-election-trump-harris.html
I swear I’m not a progressive, but business as usual has to end. We might need more progressive candidates or a change in the door-knocking attitude and practice (or both). I’ve canvassed, and I don’t like being handed a script that asks strangers how they’re going to vote without being more relational and/or engaging.
Pay attention, mobilize.us/ngpvan.
Knocking the same door four weekends in a row, asking for the same college kid who’s in a different state or the same person who’s working a shift every time is not helpful.
Republicans Ask Donald Trump to Revoke Zohran Mamdani’s Citizenship – Newsweek
Of course they do.
I wonder at what point will they simply start flat-out calling for political violence?
Inside Congress Live
ours is a government of laws, not of men, and we submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules
I want this on a t-shirt.
In other news: DOG BITES MAN
Purple Heart veteran shot in action self-deports after old drug charge resurfaces: ‘Can’t believe this is happening in America’ | The Independent
«Sae Joon Park, 55, a green card holder who has lived in the U.S. since the age of seven, departed on Monday following a removal order stemming from drug possession and failure to appear in court charges from over 15 years ago.
Park attributes these past offenses to years of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which he developed after being wounded in action in Panama in 1989.
“I can’t believe that this is happening in America,” Park told NPR in an interview before his departure. “That blows me away, like a country that I fought for.”»
Here’s Matt Yglesias again:
«The self-deportation plan, by contrast, I think does more or less work. If you tell ICE not to worry too much about criminals and not to show any leniency to even the most sympathetic cases, then I think that does maximize the odds that people will leave voluntarily.
…
Democrats never want to acknowledge that precisely because most people who immigrate illegally do so for sympathetic reasons, if you want to deter people from doing it in huge numbers, you have to be mean to people whose cases are objectively sympathetic.
…
And from a progressive standpoint, if the number of sympathetic migrants is low, then you can just be nice to all of the people who deserve kindness, and there’s no problem.»
https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-rediscovers-comprehensive-immigration
This is why I said he was being semi-right (Trump rediscovers comprehensive immigration reform). I just can’t stand this chain of thought. “If we’re just as mean as we can be, it’ll work.”
No, it won’t, because then we’ll just be a nation of jerks. (Like: literally, we’ll all be going to hell. Who wants to have that exit interview with God? “Well, yeah, I did support that, but I was worried about my children!”) What’s “working” about that?
Why don’t we decide ahead of time what our criteria are and be ready to make exceptions, of which we expect relatively few? Maybe not have quotas for every part of the world we tried to colonize or had issues with between 1870 and 1930? (So-and-so many Samoans, so-and-so many Philippinos, so-and-so many Guatemalans, so-and-so many Chinese, etc.) Like… real immigration reform in spite of whatever racist fool picks up the phone and gets AN ENTIRE FRICKIN PARTY to torpedo a bipartisan bill?
C’mon, we’re a great nation (and our welcome of immigrants is part of what makes us great); we can handle this.
My fellow white brothers and sisters in Christ, you KNOW you don’t want to pick lettuce and clean hotel toilets. Otherwise, you’d be taking those jobs that immigrants are “stealing” from you.
The American Prospect: ICE Impersonations Proliferate Amid the Agency’s Undercover Tactics
Isn’t this the standard justification for secret police? That enough people don’t like what they’re doing that they need to protect themselves? Why do police need to be secret?
«“People are out there, taking photos of the names [ICE agents], their faces, and posting them online with death threats to their family and themselves. So, I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line and their family on the line because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is.”
ICE’s view appears to be that they have a higher duty to carry out actions that protect the public from people who have committed or have the potential to commit crimes.»
https://prospect.org/justice/2025-06-24-ice-impersonations-proliferate-agencys-undercover-tactics/
Here, Read This 