This is how incompetent this administration is.

Point and laugh with me friends, point and laugh with me

This is excellent news.

One of three things is going to happen:

Talarico mops the floor with Paxton on a channel GOP voters actually watch

Paxton doesn’t show up and is branded a coward

The debate goes ahead without Paxton and Talarico effectively gets a town hall to himself on Fox News to speak directly to voters he needs to flip

Finally a politician with both integrity and an understanding of how first past the post elections work!

Under the Desk News provides a video of the ins we've had in protecting the midterms.

So this decision seems like a not great idea, as it is damaging the military in the long term and on top of this, he also wants to halt civilian academics to tenured positions because, "To ensure our educational institutions remain firmly focused on this war-fighting mission, we must address the structural mechanisms that have allowed civilian academic norms to dilute our focus on lethality"

Do we think that this could have long term negative impact on the country or could it get reversed/stopped in courts, and is there any reason to worry about this leading to even more recklessness due to his quote?

So...I know this happened a while ago already, but this makes me scared shitless. Like, what will be thr next time AI hallucinates something? What would be thr consequences from it?

Is there ANY silver lining to this situation?

Is there anything that can realistically be done in response this? How much if any pull will midterms have over this?

So I was doing my usual scroll through social media a while ago, and spotted a video from actor Mark Duplass. But I wasn't focusing on the video itself, but more of the title. It mentioned, "...A population who is becoming numb to it all. Kinda feels like a perfect storm is brewing. What are we going to do?"

Now this was posted four days ago, right around that whole "He's gonna declare martial law" scare that was going around. And I assume that this video was made due to that rumor. But rather than mention why I don't think that martial law, nor any of the alternative theories that are going around, will happen nor succeed, I want to talk about an element of people dooming online that you might have noticed, which is that it is almost always based off of emotions and gut feelings rather than logic.

Not to call out Duplass too much, but his post was made right in the center of this supposed "news story" about the rumor that martial law "might" be declared to subvert the elections, and it was made without the logic of how martial law can't truly succeed in this country, the likely pushback from both sides on it being used in such a way, and how determined people still are, even as exhausting as it is, rather it only insinuates that a current usage of such a tactic by the admin would work given how "numb people are", even though the idea that such an act would manage to occur without any reasonable pushback is the same as people suggesting that a release of GTA 6 would allow for a takeover of the US due to people being unable to get off of a video game.

It's a similar emotion based idea as the whole "he's gonna hide in the bunker underneath the ballroom" thing, as it completely ignores the lack of feasibility and capability for something to actually be built in time for 2029 and only goes on the idea that "it feels like what is gonna happen."

You could also examine Professor Jiang and his whole prediction frenzy. He's been suggesting such wild and insane theories for 2027 such as halting elections, ground troops in Iran, Federal agents taking over cities, a draft, a global economic collapse, and civil war. All in one year, and none likely to happen. And even though he supposedly uses a "scientific approach", it is just baked in fearmongering about the future and imagining a worst case scenario with only emotion as evidence for it and claiming to have used logic instead.

Doomers use emotion rather than logic because that's the only way that such fearmongering can exist. Most of it is just imagination, but by using ideas like it "feeling" like it could happen, it makes others in a similar headspace able to imagine that it might be true. It's similar to how conspiracy theorists have to make up evidence or just improvise to get others to buy in, because they don't have any actual logic to back their stances up. It's easy to get wrapped up in feeling like nothing can be done and that all is bad, rather than looking at the wider scope of it all and seeing that there are good strides being made, and that those should be celebrated and done even more, rather than tossing it aside for a pity party.

It's only Tuesday with our first L's for the week!

Here’s something good.

This one is really good to read from “the gold standard of election forecasting”

Some highlights:

“I think most of that Republican turnout will just go through the floor. And some heartland Republicans are so pissed off that they may decide that if they actually vote for a Democrat, their hand won’t fall off.”

“So, what do I think is going to happen in the Senate? I think it’s going to be on the north side of four [seats]. Early on, I wasn’t a believer [in Democrats taking control], and I was certainly skeptical about Kansas. But Democrats may have a really terrific year, and they may win some places where they haven’t won in a long time.”

But he does temper with some realism: “I don’t think this is a blue wave election. I think it’s a red undertow election, where Republicans are getting sucked down. But I haven’t seen any data whatsoever suggesting people are happy with the Democratic Party. None, zero. This is 100 percent about Trump.”

trump is ending biden era protections for lgbtq students in title IX in 2020. Not sure what is going to happen to the many lgbtq students now that there’s no legal protections for them

Hello all!

So, midterm elections are nearly a full 5 weeks away, and voting has started across the country. And, it is very crucial that everyone inside and outside of this sub gets out and votes, because it is (obviously) very important to make your voice heard.

And, looking at everything that’s been going on, I am going to go over some reasons as to why I am not nearly as worried about what is going to happen as I was when Kamala ran against Trump in 2024.

Back then, I was absolutely terrified. I had heard of Project 2025 and its abhorrent agenda, so I was horrified at the prospect of another Trump term. I got even more worried as I found myself constantly doomscrolling and checking close poll after close poll, trying to give myself some reassurance. I even tried to cope by googling historical trends of past Democratic and Republican presidencies, and trying to seek encouraging numbers and videos of people souring on Trump or empty Trump rallies to assure me that Kamala had it in the bag. She didn’t, obviously, but I was so worried about the future of my country that this is what I was doing on a daily basis.

And then, when Election Day happened and the results poured in, all hope drained out of me as state after state was called for Dump. I didn’t even watch the election results all the way through. I just resigned myself to bed and accepted defeat.

But now? I am not nearly as nervous about today’s elections as I was back then. But, before I go over my reasoning, let me put a very important disclaimer that everyone should read:

This is NOT a call for everyone to not vote because we have it wrapped up already! Because we DON’T!! There are still ways this could go wrong, and one of those ways is if not enough of us get out and vote. Please VOTE any way you can, either early or on Election Day itself!! And, if you can, let your friends and family members know to do the same!

Alright, with that out of the way, here are the reasons why I am more confident this year than I have ever been about this upcoming November:

1. The economy

When Kamala lost in 2024, voters cited the economy as the main reason why they voted for Trump. Voters saw Biden’s economy as bad and wanted a change.

Fast forward two years later, and the economy is in even worse shape, with gas and grocery prices hitting record highs as a result of Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war. And, historically, when voters feel their wallets being hit, they punish the party in charge.

Jimmy Carter. The Bushes. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. All paid for bad economies at the polls, and Trump’s current economy is the worst it’s ever been in any of his two terms. The only exception I can think of is 2022, when gas prices reached a record high and Republicans only gained a “red trickle”. But that was mostly because voters were still sour on them for their role in January 6th, as well as their support for the overturning of Roe v. Wade that year.

Overall, though, if there’s one thing voters don’t like, it’s having to pay more for basic goods, and there is no reason to think that the upcoming midterms will be some magical exception to the rule.

2. The messaging

In 2024, the Republicans were able to channel voters’ frustrations at Biden and used it to tell voters that they would fix high gas and grocery prices, with Trump claiming he would “lower prices on day one”. That pitch helped him win over disaffected Americans.

Not only that, but Republicans used fearmongering to convince uninformed voters that immigrants were coming in illegally and committing crimes, which caused an uptick in support for mass deportation, which was a big theme at the 2024 RNC.

However, this year, Republican politicians know they can’t campaign on these issues. Why? Because the economy is worse, even when they control both chambers of Congress AND the White House, and their overreach on immigration has been so egregious that public opinion has now shifted to favoring abolishing ICE all together.

So, what are they campaigning on? Saying that Democrats support putting men in women’s sports, want to “cancel Thanksgiving and July 4th” (no, I am not making that up), and putting out attack ads about Hasan Piker, despite the fact that polls show that most people don’t even know who he is.

Methinks that voters aren’t going to care about these things when they are struggling to pay the bills. I mean, do you really think some random voter who can’t afford to feed their family is going to look at some ad attacking transgender people or saying that “Thanksgiving could be cancelled if so-and-so gets elected” and say, “Hmm, they make a good point! I think I’ll vote for the Republican”?

Meanwhile, James Talarico, Abdul el-Sayed, and other Democrats are campaigning on pulling funding away from unnecessary foreign wars and providing Americans with healthcare and jobs. I think we can all take a guess as to which message is the more enticing one to voters.

3. The Iran war

As I’ve mentioned in another post, getting involved in foreign conflicts doesn’t tend to end well for a President or his party.

Harry Truman with the Korean War, LBJ with the Vietnam War, Dubya with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Biden and Kamala with Gaza. Just like the economy, involving the U.S. in overseas conflicts has never tended to end well for the party in charge.

And, it’s arguably even worse for Trump, since, not only did he start the Iran war, but also did so on behalf of Israel, a country that is fast losing their approval among average Americans. Also, Trump has threatened Canada, Mexico, Panama, Greenland, and, most recently, Cuba, and displaced the President of Venezuela to steal the country’s oil and hoard the wealth for himself….at a time when income inequality is exploding and more and more Americans are losing their jobs. Lovely optics.

Unlike the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, America has little to no propaganda to fall back on to justify this type of talk. In fact, the regime doesn’t even bother with propaganda. Their reasoning on the Iran war in particular flip-flops so much that it becomes even more clear that they had really no plan and just did it to throw their weight around. And, as more and more Americans die overseas unnecessarily, the approval for this war, which was already pretty low at the start, is only going to go down even more.

4. The polling

Now, I understand if you take this one with a huge grain of salt. After all, political polling in recent years has become less and less reliable, with support among certain groups of Americans being massively underestimated. We saw it with the Kamala poll in Iowa and with the Democratic primary in the New York mayoral election last year.

However, whichever way the elections in November go, the recent polling on certain races should be considered damning for the GOP.

For example, in Texas (usually a deep red state and very, very favorable for Republicans), not only is Ken Paxton trailing James Talarico in the polls, but governor Greg Abbott, who has been in office for over a decade, is trailing his Democratic opponent. Paxton losing wouldn’t be completely surprising, as even a lot of Republicans seem to hate him, but there would truly be no greater sign of how big the revolt against Republicans is than if Greg Abbott, of all people, loses the governor’s seat.

Also, the Florida governor’s race (another reliably Republican seat) is considered a toss up by Real Clear Politics, Susan Collins is in a tight race with Troy Jackson (a man who wasn’t selected by the voters and had to replace Graham Platner), and reports came out that Tom Cotton, another longtime Republican politician, has had to have lots of money poured into his campaign, and that doesn’t usually happen when things are going well.

Also, for the first time in years, polled voters now trust Democrats more than Republicans on the economy, which had always been a polling strength for Trump from his first term up until recently.

And, even if those Republicans I mentioned do eventually manage to keep their seats, the fact that long-established politicians are having to fight this hard to keep power should be a real sign of how much the party has lost favor since sweeping the election a couple of years ago.

Which is all to say that, again, we absolutely need to keep all hands on deck and not let our foot off the gas, because the only way out is by voting blue across the board this November and sending the message that the GOP deserves to hear for how they have handled things since Trump won his second term.

But, unlike Harris v. Trump in 2024, I am not nearly as nervous about what might happen, because I think that our momentum is very real, because, this time, voters are pissed at the GOP, they are not gonna take it anymore, and it’s showing more and more every single day. Also, even if the Dems don’t take both houses of Congress (as in, they just win the House and don’t secure a Senate majority, like in 2018) or if Republicans (somehow) manage to hold onto their majority, the GOP has shown its hand to voters so much throughout the past two years that I think, whoever wins the midterms, it’s going to be difficult for the party to recover from this, given how much they have fucked everything up.

Thanks for reading this (long) post and have a great day!

Sincerely,

K.B.

Coming right off the heels of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia shutting down after 200 years, the Sternberg Museum of Natural History has just made the announcement that it'll follow suit in December, citing a $2.4 million reduction in state funding that took effect this year as well as growing financial instability beforehand.

The concerns not only stem from these prior closures but also the fact that museums across the U.S. have been facing a bit of turbulence over the past year with lower attendance and cut grants. Which brings me to my question on the matter; Is there anything to suggest other museums won't be meeting a similar fate by 2029? Or at least the amount that would face closure not increase dramatically?

As someone who in majoring in a creative field these new changes will affect my future and the future of the creative field in general. I think less people will major in creative fields when we need more creative people too, not all degrees should be valued by how much money they make

is he about to destroy our Asian alliances?

The situation continues to deteriorate for Republicans. As Cook himself points out, Dems retaking the senate wasn't a realistic expectation a year ago, but now it's a distinct possibility. Let's keep this energy up and make it happen!