alanwessman.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

NASA is being told to cancel 19 active missions to save $6B, which looks to be less than the ICE hiring/retention budget going forward. I need people to let that sentence sink into their bones for a minute.

submitted 8 hours ago • 43 comments

Bill being considered by Senate is even worse than House. Cuts are about 25% higher than House bill. Cuts more than $1 trillion from Medicaid, leads 11.8 million more to become UNINSURED. The cuts to MO are 1/5th of MO Medicaid budget, with disprortionate share hitting RURAL PEOPLE, esp. hospitals

submitted 5 hours ago • 0 comments

I find myself thinking about historian Robert Paxton’s 2004 definition of fascism far too often than I’d like these days. Note that these sentences were written back when Donald Trump was a NYC playboy libertine who donated to Democrats.

submitted 6 hours ago • 10 comments

Friends, I’m polling for your ideas. I will be presenting to a lay audience of older adults (empty nesters) in roughly a month, for about half an hour, on the topic of detecting and avoiding scams. What key points, core questions, or specific guidance do you think a good presentation would cover?

submitted 6 hours ago • 8 comments

This quiz is a good opportunity to emphasize again that all short-form video below 6 seconds without cuts has now been rendered fundamentally untrustworthy. That length of time will go up, likely quite soon.

submitted 7 hours ago • 8 comments

While this is catchy, I don’t think it’s a valid comparison. Yes, the lump sum ICE gets IS larger than one year of the Marine Corps’ budget, but ICE has 51 months (until Sept. 30, 2029) to spend it. Effectively, ICE’s annual budget for FY26-29 would go from 18% of the Marine Corps’ budget to 50%.

submitted 6 hours ago • 21 comments

I can not stress enough that ICE does not have the budget of the Marine Corps. They would have a large budget increase spread over multiple years. They are not going to be fielding a MAGTF with fixed wing assets.

submitted 7 hours ago • 33 comments

CBO cost estimate of the Senate GOP bill is out! But this is the version where they pretend $3.76 trillion of tax cuts are actually free. When you account for that CBO estimates that their bill will increase deficits by $3.3 trillion over the decade, much more expensive than the House.

submitted 20 hours ago • 11 comments

Lisa Murkowski cuts a last minute deal solely to benefit Alaska, exempting it from some of the more odious parts of the bill to secure her vote and sell out the rest of the US. Yeah this stuff sucks and hurts a lot of people, but I got Alaskans exempted so the hell with you.

submitted 11 hours ago • 1264 comments

🚨 ICE disappeared a woman on Wednesday night. She was grabbed by men in plainclothes and taken to an unidentified location. ICE is refusing to say where she is being held. It’s 72 hours later and not even a dedicated team of lawyers can find her. This is WRONG. We can’t let this be the new norm.

submitted 1 day ago • 350 comments

The Trump admin in a nutshell; in order to justify their own mistake, they’re going to release a violent felon with five deportations so he can testify against the guy with no criminal record they mistakenly deported. In other words, the story is always more important than the principle.

submitted 22 hours ago • 123 comments

The fact that the State Department is planning to open an Office of Remigration didn't get even anywhere close to the attention it deserved. Remigration is explicitly a European far-right/neo-Nazi word that in Europe refers quite explicitly to ethnic cleansing beyond simply immigration enforcement.

submitted 19 days ago • 40 comments

Thinking again about how the media turned Bill Clinton talking to AG Loretta Lynch for 15 minutes into a major scandal for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

submitted 1 day ago • 31 comments

“The Secretary has determined that it is not in the national interest to love thy neighbor as thyself.”

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

NEW: DHS's claim that TPS for Haiti was terminated because DHS thinks Haiti is now "safe for Haitian citizens to return to" is FALSE. According to the termination published in the Federal Register, the ONLY explanation Noem gave is that letting Haitians have TPS was "not in the national interest."

submitted 2 days ago • 19 comments

I was adopted via closed adoption, born in North Carolina. It was closed so I have no knowledge of or access to my biological mother’s details. It also means my biological mother isn’t on my birth certificate. So if birthright citizenship becomes a patchwork right, what’s someone like me to do?

submitted 2 days ago • 88 comments

The phrase "whatever you did for one of the least of these ..." has been used so often that it's become cliche. But look at the passage in the Bible where this comes from. Matthew 25:31-46 describes Jesus teaching the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. And He talks to two groups of people.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

Warning signs flashing red - increasing dehumanizing rhetoric from a fascist authoritarian leader and his partisan allies

submitted 2 days ago • 197 comments

In El Salvador, tens of thousands of people were jailed as part of President Nayib Bukele crackdown on gangs. Some police officers now admit they arrested people on flimsy or nonexistent evidence to meet quotas.

submitted 2 days ago • 37 comments

🚨NEW: The Trump admin moves to terminate Temporary Protected Status for HALF A MILLION Haitians, claiming despite all reality that Haiti is a safe country to return to — even though large portions of the country are ruled by vicious gangs and civil governance has collapsed.

submitted 2 days ago • 138 comments

Wow. Just wow. University of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure From Trump Administration www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/u...

submitted 2 days ago • 89 comments

The question is whether these people would accept this formulation if the dominant voice belonged to another religion. The answer is no, of course they would not.

submitted 2 days ago • 23 comments

The Republican vision of government being imposed on us is that of an abusive derelict parent: punishment without protection or support; upward allegiance and obedience without downward accountability or concern for their charges; authority without responsibility. In short, tyranny.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

The Supreme Court is setting up a de facto presidential dictatorship, in which the president is immune to the law, can openly defy courts with no consequences, and courts are not even empowered to order him to stop disobeying the Constitution.

submitted 2 days ago • 27 comments

Alito in Mahmoud: every other parents' religion now dictates what your kid's public school can do.

submitted 2 days ago • 19 comments

This Supreme Court is not a judicial court, but a royal court. They exist not to apply the laws of this nation fairly for all its citizens but rather to prop up the king and attend to his needs and his needs alone.

submitted 2 days ago • 87 comments

this court says that allowing EPA to regulate carbon emissions is a "major question" that demands congressional debate. but allowing the president to, with a flick of the wrist, end a straightforward constitutional right is something that must be allowed to stand?

submitted 2 days ago • 287 comments

The idea that your guaranteed constitutional rights only exist if you have the personal resources to have a lawyer enforce them is terrifying.

submitted 2 days ago • 11 comments

If the Supreme Court thinks universal injunctions are unconstitutional, to wait until now to say that, in this of all cases, with this of all presidents, is a devastating indictment of both its impartiality and its prudence.

submitted 2 days ago • 434 comments