NY for Mitt

2025-05-09T12:55:00.004-04:00

This is what I told a New York Times reporter last night: “Donald Trump bestrides the world as the ugly American, and now we have another prominent American who is able to confront him.” open.substack.com/pub/charlies...

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— Charlie Sykes (@sykescharlie.bsky.social) May 9, 2025 at 12:05 PM

“History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme”
— Seamus Heaney

On hearing the news of the first American pope, my first thought was of the election of the first Polish pope.
In 1978, Poland — and all of Europe — was on the brink when the cardinals selected Karol Józef Wojtyła, who became John Paul II.
It’s 2025 and America is on the brink, and the Church has chosen Leo XIV.
In 1978, Poland was facing an aggressive, if declining, Soviet Union, and it is hard to overstate the importance the Polish pope played in the fall of that empire. His selection was one of the great pivot points of history; a reminder of the power of moral authority and courage.
So I thought about the rhyming of history.
Happy Friday.
...
We can’t know everything that went into their deliberations, but it seems as if — in this moment — they decided that the Americas were the epicenter of the world’s moral crisis. Surveying the spiritual, social, economic, and political challenges facing the world, they decided that this was the moment to select an American pope, who could confront the humanitarian and moral challenges posed by the United States and its president.¹
So this is a potentially pivotal moment in our history.
...
The new pope, of course, faces different challenges than his Polish predecessor. Trump/Vance and MAGA have wrapped themselves in the cloak of Christianity and preen upon the stage as defenders of Christendom. But now they have a formidable counterweight, and maybe, just maybe, this new American pope can call Christians back to the roots of their faith and their humanity.²

😉

2025-05-09T12:51:00.000-04:00

The world has been blessed by the voice and example of Pope Francis. May Pope Leo XIV likewise draw upon the best of humankind and lead toward the Savior, Jesus Christ.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) May 8, 2025

2025-05-03T15:53:00.002-04:00

2025-04-18T11:22:00.003-04:00

Meet MAGA’s Favorite Communist https://t.co/8yLtxYIBLJ
— WSJ Politics (@WSJPolitics) April 17, 2025

For the past year, Rufo has been working on a book called “How the Regime Rules,” which he describes as a “manifesto for the New Right.” At its core is a surprising inspiration: the Italian Communist thinker Antonio Gramsci, a longtime boogeyman of American conservatives. “Gramsci, in a sense, provides the diagram of how politics works and the relationship between all of the various component parts: intellectuals, institutions, laws, culture, folklore,” said Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

look who are the communists now...

2025-04-18T10:50:00.000-04:00

Inside Trump’s Upstate NY migrant hunt: Border Patrol’s meaner tactics snare workers and families https://t.co/rxqrUUuolg
— NYup.com (@newyorkupstate) April 17, 2025

President Donald Trump’s administration is targeting, shackling and shipping out immigrants who have lived, worked and started families in the U.S. without permission — but also without getting into trouble.

Lawyers, advocates and people who have been pulled over say Oswego County sheriff’s deputies are cooperating with Border Patrol agents in a way that smacks of racial profiling. Videos and court records support that theory.
Deputies are stopping Hispanic drivers for minor, unprovable traffic violations like veering left of center, then handing them over to Border Patrol agents who are sometimes already at the scene, the Syracuse.com investigation shows.
In other cases, immigration agents act on anonymous tips and stake out homes. They follow migrant workers from work sites to restaurants.
Undercover officers in ski masks show up at dairy farms in unmarked cars.
They split up families. They take children from schools, even when they turn out to be U.S. citizens.
Before January, some Hispanic immigrants say, they were pulled over for traffic violations. But police issued a ticket and sent them along, like they did with anyone else.
But the days of that “catch and release” policy are over. Border Patrol told Syracuse.com it’s on a mission to prosecute and deport every person who crosses the border illegally, not just those who pose a threat. They said they will take every reasonable step to place people in detention and will work with every state and local agency to do it.

Vicious

2025-04-17T15:02:00.002-04:00

"Krebs said he understood why some have kept a low profile and tried not to further anger the president. But he said he disagreed with that approach. 'I don’t think this lay-low-and-hope-this-blows-over approach is the right one for the moment we’re in,' he said..." www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

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— Rachel Maddow (@maddow.msnbc.com) April 17, 2025 at 2:02 PM

2025-04-17T15:01:00.000-04:00

Steve Kerr wore a Harvard basketball shirt after the Warriors’ win tonight: “Yes, this is me supporting Harvard. Way to go. Way to stand up to the bully.”

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— Ben Ross (@benross.bsky.social) April 16, 2025 at 3:09 AM

2025-04-11T14:48:00.005-04:00

Must-read story on how Trump is weakening our cyberdefenses by @sangernyt.bsky.social and Nick Corasaniti www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/u...

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— Mike Forsythe 傅才德 (@pekingmikenyt.bsky.social) April 6, 2025 at 5:19 AM

👀 ICYMI

2025-04-11T14:45:00.001-04:00

The world economy is gyrating wildly, war rages in Ukraine and Gaza and the president of the United States just signed an executive ordered titled: "MAINTAINING ACCEPTABLE WATER PRESSURE IN SHOWERHEADS."
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 5:27 PM

2025-04-10T11:59:00.004-04:00

Recession is now 'a likely outcome' : Jamie Dimon pic.twitter.com/t0rBszb1jP
— Mornings with Maria (@MorningsMaria) April 9, 2025

ICYMI

2025-04-10T10:18:00.003-04:00

I was on with @nicollewallace.bsky.social today when news broke that Trump was targeting Kris Krebs for investigation simply for saying the 2020 election wasn’t stolen. It’s insane.

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— Sarah Longwell (@sarahlongwell25.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 9:30 PM

2025-04-10T10:17:00.002-04:00

Trump is a fake businessman.... a game show host...

what's insane is that just before he shuffled out to the Rose Garden to announce these lunatic tariffs he was meeting with Laura Loomer about national security in the Oval Office - that's what's insane about the Trump administration... we have grifters and lunatics and conspiracy theorists advising the president...

Video: Oren Cass - Understanding Trump Tariffs Through the Lens of “The New Conservatives” | The Daily Show

2025-04-09T14:52:00.000-04:00

Mar 31, 2025
Oren Cass, chief economist at American Compass, who writes the “Understanding America” newsletter, sits down with Jon Stewart to discuss conservative economic policies of the New Right, which will be outlined in his forthcoming book, “The New Conservatives.” Cass describes a conservative shift from faith in markets, using tariffs as incentives to pursue profit that supports society, how livable wages are the key to a strong economy, and the U.S.’s ideal economic and security alliance that includes balanced trade, owning defense burdens, and keeping China out

2025-04-08T08:47:00.000-04:00

Meanwhile.... Russia’s killing of nine children in a missile strike has brought into focus the failure of President Trump to fulfill his campaign pledge of a swift end to the war. https://t.co/yfYJZbEfvF via @WSJ
— Andrew Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ (@Revkin) April 7, 2025

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian aerial strikes against Ukraine have increased. He said more than 2,000 missiles, guided bombs and explosive drones hit Ukrainian cities last week.

…

Anastasia Shustova, a neighbor who knew some of the children, said, “I will never forget the screams of the wounded and the despair of parents on that playground.” She added, “I want the whole world to hear: Russia is a terrorist.”

2025-04-07T13:32:00.002-04:00

“isn’t he a huge business success? Doesn’t he know what he’s talking about? No, he isn’t and no he doesn’t.”

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— Republicans Against Trumpism (@rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social) April 7, 2025 at 9:55 AM

2025-04-07T13:16:00.000-04:00

The decline in work among young men is a far bigger problem for the nation’s economic and cultural vitality than the decline in manufacturing jobs. It can’t and won’t be solved with tariffs, writes Allysia Finley https://t.co/Low7cHsVUe
— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) April 7, 2025

President Trump proclaims his tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. Good luck finding workers to fill them.

...

Forty percent of small business owners in March reported job openings they couldn’t fill, with larger shares in construction (56%), transportation (53%) and manufacturing (47%), according to last week’s National Federation of Independent Business survey. The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey of businesses tells a similar story. There are twice as many job openings in manufacturing than in the mid-2000s as a share of employment. Save for during the pandemic, America’s worker shortage is the worst in 50 years.

2025-04-05T13:24:00.003-04:00

Reagan, Romney, and Bush Go Viral For Past Tariff Takedowns: ‘Why Trump’s Economic Policies Will Hurt America’

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— Mediaite (@mediaitenews.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 6:14 PM

2025-04-05T11:06:00.000-04:00

Conservatives have long denounced the meddlesome Nanny State. Trump is inventing something new—an intrusive, paternalistic Daddy State, writes Gerald F. Seib.

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— The Wall Street Journal (@wsj.com) April 4, 2025 at 1:00 PM

Now President Donald Trump has arrived for a second term, and he is indeed attacking the Nanny State. But rather than eliminate it, he is turning the idea in a populist, even authoritarian direction. He is replacing the meddlesome Nanny State with an aggressive, paternalistic Daddy State, based on the deference and devotion of his underlings.
Trump is cutting down the size of the bureaucracy with a vengeance. But he isn’t dispersing power; he is consolidating it in the Oval Office and using the considerable weapons at his disposal—tariffs, government grants and contracts, the power of law-enforcement agencies—to pursue the goals he believes he was elected to achieve.
Far from withdrawing federal power from American society, Trump is asserting it in a raw, unpredictable and often unprecedented way. The difference is that the president personally, rather than government agencies, or Congress, or the courts, is its driving force.
Trump supporter Tucker Carlson previewed this philosophy at a pre-election rally last October, when he likened the excesses of American society to the actions of unruly children and then declared: “There has to be a point at which Dad comes home.”

2025-04-04T17:29:00.004-04:00

Mortified 🥲😢

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— Natrice Rese (@natrese.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 11:10 AM

He.Does Not.Care.

2025-04-04T11:53:00.000-04:00

Friday newsletter: Radical Arrogance open.substack.com/pub/charlies...

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— Charlie Sykes (@sykescharlie.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 10:44 AM

But why are we surprised?
Trump is a true-believer who’s had a fetish for tariffs for decades — and his ignorance of global trade is profoundly 19th century. But the bizarre tariffs still came as a shock, especially to those in the business community who told themselves that surely Trump was merely bluffing; surely this pro-business president would not trash the economy; surely, he would listen to reason.
Once again, though, they misread the man and the moment. They deluded themselves that they were dealing with a simulacrum of a conservative Republican.
But Trump is not governing as a conservative; he is not pursuing incremental or coherent change. By now it should be obvious that on one issue after another — race, gender, deportations, DOGE, universities, law firms, pardons, foreign policy — his agenda is profoundly radical, driven more by his id than any ideology or plan.
So once again, he turned the world upside down. This Republican president — the same one who switched sides in the Russia-Ukraine war last month — unilaterally imposed $6 trillion in new taxes — the largest tax increase in American history. As CNN notes: “Even when adjusting for inflation, that amount would be triple the tax increase put in place in 1942 to pay the cost of fighting World War II.”
The formula Trump used was a model of pure fuckery...

2025-04-03T09:57:00.002-04:00

I don’t do this often and promise not to make a habit of it, but just this once: WE TRIED TO WARN YOU!!!!!
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) April 2, 2025 at 4:51 PM

Live: Speaking on Trump, Musk, and America’s Moral Moment on the Senate ...

2025-04-01T16:38:00.003-04:00

Go Cory! ICYMI

2025-03-30T13:20:00.001-04:00

President Trump did not rule out the possibility of seeking a third term in the White House, which is prohibited by the Constitution under the 22nd Amendment, saying in an exclusive interview with NBC News that there were methods for doing so and clarifying that he was “not joking.”

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— NBC News (@nbcnews.com) March 30, 2025 at 12:30 PM

Putinistic

2025-03-27T15:46:00.000-04:00

Poor Elise Stefanik - Bitter is the pill swallowed as a Trump loyalist, since you know 💯 for sure he will eventually let you down or throw you under the bus. #MomSky www.dailynews.com/2025/03/27/t...

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— Gloria Pan (@glopan.bsky.social) March 27, 2025 at 2:43 PM

🤣🤣🤣

2025-03-24T20:41:00.004-04:00

American war planning usually takes place in highly secure facilities. But the Trump administration planned its strikes on the Houthis using a group chat—and accidentally included The Atlantic’s editor in chief, @JeffreyGoldberg. https://t.co/vLTDk2wRet pic.twitter.com/VTFrAAzSfv
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) March 24, 2025

tip of the iceberg