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

Presidential budget is out. Here's NSF. Biggest cut, by amount, is $1 billion, or 66.8%, from MPS (Physics & Math directorate). nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

submitted 6 days ago • 31 comments

Despite that worry, I cannot stop standing up for what is right. I cannot turn a blind eye to injustice. I cannot ignore what Trump is doing to our democracy and our country. Or more precisely, I will not. www.democracydocket.com/opinion/i-wo...

submitted 6 days ago • 119 comments

It’s time for Israel to halt its war of devastation in Gaza | Ehud Olmert

submitted 7 days ago • 58 comments

The White House just dropped an executive order significantly shaking up operations at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the government’s nuclear safety regulator widely regarded as the “gold standard” for global nuclear power safety operations. I used to cover NRC closely. Here are some notes🧵

submitted 13 days ago • 107 comments

They did just fine afterward, but it’s worth noting the Clintons were in major debt when they left the White House. Cash in after the fact, motherfuckers, by all means. It’s a free country. But not while you’re doing the people’s business.

submitted 13 days ago • 12 comments

"Trump is unique among the nation’s presidents in having no interest in presiding over a functioning govt, let alone building institutions that will survive his term in office. That's why the analogies pundits have tried to draw between the early periods of other presidencies fall entirely flat."

submitted 13 days ago • 137 comments

Trump told us these people were so dangerous they couldn't afford due process to prove how dangerous they were. They had to go straight to the foreign concentration camp. Turns out at least one in five of them didn't even break US immigration law

submitted 15 days ago • 59 comments

Frost: Tonight the people stealing are not folks with tattoos and hoodies but people wearing suits and ties and congressional pins sitting in the capitol now, not in some alley wrapped in darkness but the United States congress wrapped in the flag. It is disgusting and we will never forget this.

submitted 15 days ago • 614 comments

These are deeply, profoundly, tragically abnormal times riven by cruel, hateful, reckless and ignorant people bent on dismantling our government, strengthening Putin, stoking fear, breaking our spirit, enriching themselves and ruling over the ashes of public liberty. We won’t let them succeed.

submitted 16 days ago • 278 comments

The very definition of evil is incarcerating for life in one of the worst hellholes on Earth men who did everything right. But it’s beyond evil—beyond demonic—to then not try to do anything to save the men you consigned to Hell, and to in fact libel and slander them daily when they cannot reply.

submitted 16 days ago • 439 comments

A judge in an order tonight said the Trump administration must "maintain custody and control" of immigrants "being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country" in case he finds such removals were unlawful.

submitted 16 days ago • 13 comments

They better turn that plane around after it refuels in Ireland.

submitted 16 days ago • 27 comments

McGovern: "This is not a governing philosophy. It is a scam. I wasn't sent here to vote for trash. I can't understand why you'd choose a career of public service to do this -- to rip away the healthcare & food assistance of working & middle class Americans. Is that really what you came here to do?"

submitted 16 days ago • 617 comments

NEWS: Because we fought for it, Trump just finally lifted his stop-work order for Equinor’s Empire Wind off Long Island. Many thousands of good-paying jobs Billions of dollars already invested Clean and affordable power for Long Island homeowners and businesses

submitted 17 days ago • 24 comments

MUST WATCH: Holy hell. Brendan Boyle just obliterated the GOP’s Reconciliation scam live on the floor, calling out every crooked clause and profiteer-friendly loophole like a prosecutor in a murder trial. This isn’t political theater — this is war.

submitted 20 days ago • 66 comments

The fascist spectacle is the point.

submitted 19 days ago • 152 comments

This is fucking insane. Kudos to this Target employee for showing the American people just how much prices are going up due to Trump's tariff dumbfuckery.

submitted 19 days ago • 14 comments

When we get through this despicable period in America—and we will get through it—Americans will have learned why and how important government is to making life better.

submitted 19 days ago • 834 comments

The problem here is that this is now indistinguishable from the real thing

submitted 19 days ago • 123 comments

Trump threatens to sue ABC News if they report the truth that the “wonderful” and “highly respected” country of Qatar plans to gift him a $400M luxury jet.

submitted 19 days ago • 110 comments

“In case after case, a legal bottom line is emerging: Immigrants should at least be given the opportunity to challenge their deportations, especially as Trump officials have claimed novel and extraordinary powers to remove them.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/u...

submitted 19 days ago • 23 comments

Back the blue? Your followers BEAT the blue on Jan. 6 and then you pardoned them. Shameful.

submitted 19 days ago • 957 comments

We’re living through Trump’s conversion of the presidency into a global business operation—one in which family enrichment drives national policy. Foreign influence. Secret deals. Cryptocurrency grifts. Worse than just corruption, this is a blueprint for authoritarian kleptocracy.

submitted 19 days ago • 80 comments

“The distinction between public & private has no meaning to the House of Saud. Their country is literally named after them. At least in theory, US ethics laws put Washington on the other end of the spectrum. In reality, federal ethics rules are now decorative.” My column. www.ft.com/content/f1cf...

submitted 24 days ago • 40 comments

Bernie Sanders' office has put out a report this morning on Trump's NIH cuts: "Trump officials effectively cut $2.7 billion in [NIH] funding in the first three months of 2025 – including a 31 percent cut to cancer research through March, compared to the same timeframe last year."

submitted 24 days ago • 20 comments

Brutal from the Wall Street Journal editorial board on Trump: “Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.”

submitted 24 days ago • 13 comments

Trump lies as he breathes. We’ve NEVER had a public figure who lies like this. And the media has never known how to deal with this. So they let him get away with lying. Why didn’t the media ask him, “WHERE are these massive car factories?” Never asked. Shame on the media for normalizing his lying.

submitted 24 days ago • 52 comments

Well I did it. I created my first Substack post. open.substack.com/pub/bobspenc...

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Trump in August: "Kamala will implement SOVIET Style Price Controls. She will abolish private health care."

submitted 25 days ago • 47 comments

Putin has no ideology; he is, in fact, an intellectually unsophisticated person. His entire political worldview rests on two very simple narratives. 1/9

submitted 26 days ago • 54 comments

"We now have a president ditching essential scientific data at a fast clip, sending 'move fast and break things' saboteurs to collect other data—private, personal data—at an equally fast clip." ICYMI @jilldlawrence.bsky.social:

submitted 26 days ago • 9 comments

AOC: We need to be talking about ICE agents and the cowardly policy of covering their faces — and, in many cases, their identification… The idea that we’re going to allow a paramilitary force to bloom, one that isn’t accountable to the Constitution… we’ve got another thing coming.

submitted 26 days ago • 891 comments

Escalate and intimidate. That is exactly the playbook. And it concerns me greatly: You know the Stephen Miller types in this administration are just itching for violence - searching, longing for something they can use as pretext for a drastic escalation so they can finally ditch all restraint.

submitted 26 days ago • 62 comments

The Constitution's Emoluments Clause prohibits federal officials, including the president, from accepting gifts, titles, or emoluments from foreign states without congressional consent. A luxury jet from Qatar qualifies as a gift or emolument, so Donald Trump shouldn’t be allowed to keep it.

submitted 26 days ago • 103 comments

A group of Quakers are marching more than 300 miles to demonstrate against the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants. Organizers of the march say their protest seeks to show solidarity with migrants and other groups that are being targeted by the administration.

submitted 26 days ago • 150 comments

Our trade deal so far is no tariffs on Rolls Royces and Bentleys and our refugee policy is white South Africans only.

submitted 26 days ago • 755 comments

Tariff exemptions aren’t trade deals, they’re shakedowns.

submitted 26 days ago • 284 comments

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submitted 26 days ago • 1009 comments

"Under the annual appropriations act, lawmakers are permitted to enter 'any facility operated by or for DHS used to detain or otherwise house aliens.' The law is clear that members of Congress are not required 'to provide prior notice of intent to enter a facility'..." www.cnn.com/2025/05/10/p...

submitted 26 days ago • 732 comments

"I’d put even money that Trump picks a fight with him, because he can’t help himself. To Trump, an American pope who is not openly on the side of MAGA is a provocation."

submitted 26 days ago • 50 comments

If you’ve ever taken the oath to uphold the Constitution, this is the time to live up to it.

submitted 110 days ago • 1101 comments