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

Idk man but when the administration that tried to reject humanitarian aid for Los Angeles when it was burning tries to justify their illegal military occupation by saying they aren’t going to let LA burn it kinda sounds like bullshit

submitted 2 hours ago • 96 comments

NEW: After firing expert scientists on the CDC's vaccine advisory committee, RFK Jr. has named their replacements. The new committee contains many figures known for spreading disinformation about vaccines and COVID including Robert Malone and Martin Kulldorff. This is bad.

submitted 1 hour ago • 37 comments

Yes. Folks, this is not a distraction. Any action that hurts millions of people can never be a distraction. Trump covers up crime with scandal. Deploying military forces on US soil to hurt innocent people isn’t a scandal. It’s a crime. Focus on the people getting hurt. That’s who matters most.

submitted 11 hours ago • 16 comments

Cuomo already sounds defeated by Trump's authoritarianism. I will stand up for our city of immigrants because I'm not funded by the very same MAGA billionaires who put Trump back in the White House.

submitted 10 hours ago • 39 comments

There’s a pretty consistent pattern to what the admin does with the law. 1. Find the biggest grant of power to the exec in sight 2. Go waayyy beyond its outer bounds 3. Say they’re staying within those bounds 4. Dare others to stop them, by which time they hope it’ll be too late

submitted 21 hours ago • 4 comments

this is good

submitted 1 day ago • 447 comments

Not true. I see you're a luxury watch dealer. I'm also interested in watches. Let me show you how free and easy migration has allowed you to earn a living. 🧵

submitted 23 hours ago • 291 comments

Amazing how hard it is to write: “Police shoot at journalists.”

submitted 21 hours ago • 81 comments

Even in "move fast and break things" mode this is a short window to name a new advisory group: "HHS on Monday... in a release said ACIP will still hold a planned meeting from June 25 to 27. A source familiar with the matter told CNBC on Monday that entirely new members will run that meeting."

submitted 1 day ago • 12 comments

Candidly, as a civ-mil watcher, this scene at Bragg is freaking me out more than anything else that's happened so far. Just an absolute collapse of professional military norms.

submitted 1 day ago • 261 comments

this is one of those moments where the national governors assn needs to step up and express solidarity with @governor.ca.gov and say clearly: ‘this is lawless. this is beyond trump’s authority. we oppose.’ they won’t because too many are captures. but they should.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

there was a whole media cycle about "who's paying for the Columbia tents." I still remember a reporter texting me about this apologetically like, 'I know this is BS but my editor is making me write this story' (spoiler alert: Ivy League students can afford cheap tents)

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

More disturbing to me than the Trump admin's 'this illegal shit is legal actually' arguments are its 'legal, illegal, who cares, no one can tell me what to do' arguments

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

Over 5000 people lost their homes in wildfires, and it’s all a joke to him. Remember that the next time he refuses to send aid to your city when you need it, and instead sends an occupying force to terrorize the citizens.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Unfortunately, I think we have to considerTrump truly is just to figure head for the larger pan right fascist movement that has taken over our government and if that is the case, this is going to accelerate and expand, even if Trump does get bored and wander off to a golf course.

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments

This seems flatly indistinguishable from having them perform ordinary law-enforcement functions, which is (wait for it) illegal. Absent an invocation of the Insurrection Act, military cannot enforce domestic law against civilians.

submitted 1 day ago • 17 comments

Tfw fascism is interfering with your summer research on (checks notes) fascism

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

ICE appears to confirm that California National Guard are being used to provide security to ICE officers during immigration arrest operations.

submitted 1 day ago • 328 comments

welp this is not legal this is just the national guard acting as police definitely not legal

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

BREAKING: Gov. Newsom is asking for a restraining order on Trump/Hegseth's use of the military in Los Angeles, saying they are preparing to go on immigration raids with ICE. He wants a ruling within two hours. "They must be stopped immediately." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

submitted 1 day ago • 99 comments

One thing that has become super apparent for me is that we need Congress to pass a law creating a default enforcement mechanism that would apply to any statute or regulation that mandates or prohibits specific conduct but doesn’t have an explicit enforcement mechanism

submitted 1 day ago • 15 comments

This is the thing I’ve been trying to explain to people. Just people AGI is return right answers doesn’t mean it’s reasoning. The biggest flaw in how we think about intelligence is rooted in how we’re taught (literally in schools) to value answers over showing the work (reasoning) behind it.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

BREAKING: Federal agents in plain clothes and unmarked cars tried to snatch 1st graders from LA elementary schools—told staff they had “parental consent.” They lied. When pressed, they HID THEIR IDS. DHS admits they sent them. This wasn’t a welfare check. It was a test run for a police state.

submitted 1 day ago • 1458 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 1 day ago • 34 comments

Bhattacharya is damaged heading into this hearing. He’s facing an open rebellion inside NIH and low confidence in his leadership.

submitted 1 day ago • 9 comments

YES. I’ve been saying this for weeks now. The reason that there is civil unrest in multiple cities throughout the country is because the Trump administration ordered ICE to engage in near-indiscriminate arrests, rounding up otherwise law-abiding people with no criminal records.

submitted 1 day ago • 23 comments

At this point I have nothing to say to or about protestors. The executive should not be sending active duty military to a major city with a vague mandate, in violation of the only statute that he has cited, while his lawyers draft rules of engagement on the fly. Period.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Cassidy still holds extraordinary leverage if he chooses to use it. But no. It's highly unusual for nominees to make major commitments to Senators and then just ignore them. But that's because Senators can inflict pain on those who would do it, and Cassidy has made it pretty clear that he won't.

submitted 2 days ago • 8 comments

he and his people are already acting as if they have invoked the insurrection act, is the thing. I think it is a mistake to assume that there will be some big moment when he does so, or that he thinks he needs one. As things stand, he’s way beyond the bounds of the statute he cited.

submitted 2 days ago • 9 comments

Oops.

submitted 2 days ago • 116 comments

I'd like to be extremely concerned about the marines being deployed to an American city and the scientific committee that determines vaccine schedules being disbanded, but I'm gonna hold off until the Distraction Knowers give the okay

submitted 2 days ago • 92 comments

third amendment continues to pull its weight as the secret funniest load bearing cog in america's stupid machine

submitted 2 days ago • 52 comments

Arguably 300,000 wholly preventable, gratuitous deaths already from gutting USAID. If this ends up basically banning vaccines, how many thousands more preventable gratuitous deaths? And almost all of children. Death of children, simply everywhere.

submitted 2 days ago • 6 comments

JUST IN: A federal judge in New York has ruled that the Trump administraiton's rush to send federal employee data to DOGE was a "breach of law and trust" that violated the Privacy Act and cybersecurity protections. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

submitted 2 days ago • 79 comments

I really don’t think this is widely enough understood. The president did not invoke the insurrection act. He invoked a different statute. The differences matter, a lot. The one he invoked confers much less power and requires a role for the governor. And he has totally ignored the governor.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

the reframing of bluesky as some sort of bubble for one viewpoint conveniently ignores the fact many of us left X because our work was obviously being censored for its viewpoints. i wrote about tesla and climate and trans people and was significantly throttled. that’s why i left!

submitted 2 days ago • 54 comments

It is completely unlawful for ICE to turn away members of Congress like this. The law could not be more clear; no member of Congress may be denied access to a facility where ICE is detaining someone, and they cannot be required to schedule in advance. Surprise inspections must be surprise.

submitted 2 days ago • 234 comments

Lot of liberals out here saying - we should just accept martial law or he might declare martial law.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

LAPD, DHS, and California National Guard working together to kettle and brutalize peaceful protesters. @mayor.lacity.gov is nowhere to be seen or heard from.

submitted 3 days ago • 6 comments

California National Guard with riot shields pushed the protesters into the streets. Tear gas deployed and pellets exploded on the street. Didn’t see any arrests, though there was some shoving back and forth with the shields.

submitted 3 days ago • 12 comments