Not that useful in scenarios besides reading: if you curl your hands in front of your eye and leave a very tiny opening you can create a pinhole that’ll make a tiny bit of your view in focus

Photo from Minute Physics demonstrating what you need to do for that:

https://youtu.be/OydqR_7_DjI

I interpreted the word “this” in the original comment to mean at “New York, specifically” since that was the original topic for the reply. Maybe that’s not what you intended, but I think that’s how most people in this chain read it and understood it

Yes, it should be banned, but it should be banned nationally. Why focus on the people responding to an egregious behavior? Stop Texas from doing it, then it won’t spread. If they go through and dems don’t respond in kind, the voters will has already been subverted. What are we protecting really but republican power?

Texas dems have left the state to block quorum (Texas requires 2/3 legislature present to operate) so that Texas legislature can’t put the bill through. Keep the pressure on Text first and foremost instead of focusing rage at the people actually trying to fight back. It’s not a given that any of the response will be needed, but if that is needed, we must do it. If Republicans maximize gerrymandering of every state and there is no counterbalance, our republic will struggle to hold on. There will be no saving of the voter will if a party that wants to destroy it is left to continue holding the reigns

This is in response to Texas trying to doing it abruptly 5 years before redistricting. They will do every damn other state with Republican trifectas if dems don’t response in kind

Taking the high road doesn’t work. Unilateral disarmament is not the move here. It’s either banned for all or none. Republicans have been chipping away at any federal requirements against it for decades and using that to their advantage

Saw someone do a rough estimate mapped out all states with current trifectas and found that neither side could lock in a majority if that went to the max and could make maps that went 100% one side or another. Republicans in that scenario have a slight edge, but still 84 seats that wouldn’t be decided by gerrymandering alone (how much of a swing district it actually is may vary). It was a rough estimate so take it with a grain of salt. That also assumed that the states with independent legislative committees all remove said committees and that the Voting Rights Act becomes 100% gutted

State and local elections are going to matter a lot even if it doesn’t go to that extreme scenario. Make sure to always vote in them. Virginia and New Jersey have important statewide elections coming up this off-year in November

Good news doesn’t break through half as much as bad news does. State dems have often (though not always) shown much more resolve to do stuff like this than the national party has

Earlier this year in Maine, the governor challenged Trump to his face on his illegal attempts to cut school lunch money funding over a single digit number of trans athletes in the state. She won in court and Trump folded and gave the money back

Earlier this year in Minnesota, a judge ruled a dem wasn’t able to go to office on a technicality (that Republicans only brought up after he won). That seat changed the house from tied to 1 seat GOP, and so Dems then did not show up to deny quorum until after a special election took place. The republicans tried to force operations and operated without a quorum. Dems sued and got a judge to rule every single one of the republican’s actions was invalid because it was without quorum. They then won the special election and only then started back up state legislative operations

There are people willing to do the work. Show up to every damn primary and vote to make sure they are the dominant force in the party

Still happening for some portion of MAGA / republicans, just less focus on it from them at the moment. For a recent example

July 30th: Thomas Massie: ".@SpeakerJohnson has been promoting this non-binding resolution, hoping to give cover to those who don’t want a full release of the Epstein files.

Embarrassingly section 3 of his resolution refers to section 2, which doesn’t exist! Thank you @RepMcGovern for highlighting this."

https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1950626797990588518

And that drags out the discussion of it the entire time. Trump wants the story to go away because it’s splintering some of the base, that makes it louder at each step and makes more

So either the files do get release or the story continues to play out and become a bigger and bigger deal. Either way is not great for Trump

I’m not 100% sure he means from their redactions? I think the law only allows senators access to the files, so he might be meaning senators / senator staff releasing it after getting it then redacting victim names?

In either case, doing this still keeps it in the news which hurts Trump. Senate Dems can and should keep doing everything like this instead of Schumer’s previous strategy of stuff like caving on the CR for no reason. This is notable improvement from senate dems even compared to recently

Especially because house dems have shown more fight. They were far more aggressive in trying to force votes on releasing the files which lead to Republicans just shutting down the house instead of voting on it. Which both works to show Republicans are complicit and stops them from pushing through worse bills for an extra few weeks. Senate dems tried a couple of unanimous consent votes, but didn’t see it quite to the level of house dems forcing amendment votes in every committee on damn near everything

Do note that a lot of early reporting on Trump’s “deals” in the past have often been grossly misleading. Often counting existing agreements as new one or leaving critical details out

For instance, I recall a lot of people were questioning a deal with Mexico earlier as bending the knee that turned out to largely be just be puff agreements that they had already made before Trump

There’s a decent chance that this is continuing that pattern. Though I can’t say for certain of course

Indeed, factory farming is quite dominant globally. From one group’s estimate:

We estimate that over 90% of farmed animals globally are living in factory farms at present. This includes an estimated 74% of farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.[1] However, there is substantial uncertainty in these figures given the land animal estimates’ heavy reliance on information from Worldwatch Institute with unclear methodology[2] and limited data on fish farming.

https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates

Can’t find any other reporting on his account being temporarily blocked from anywhere else

Site is even more suspicious than just being really new. nycjournals.com/blog/ has a link in “First time to the site? Start here” that goes to a page on financialbureau.org which is a dead site. Pulling it up in archive.org shows an almost identical site layout also with no real information on who’s behind it

Needs to be asked: “What did the president speaker know and when did he know it”

I’d also accept the Watergate quote of “I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow”

Because his base isn’t upset about those as much as they are about Epstein. He’s underwater in polling on all those other things now, but his core base wasn’t upset about it

Right wing media talked about Epstein a lot over the past many years. Claimed that Trump would give them all the truth. It became an ingrained belief. Then he abruptly and very suddenly contradicted all that at once and can’t keep to a consistent narrative

He also directly insult his base in the back and forth. Calling them “weaklings”, stupid, etc. for caring which he normally avoids doing. Normally he pretends to care about their concerns when coming up with a BS excuse

Headline is misleading and actively harmful. This produces the apathy the right wants from us. That they are engaging in voter suppression does not declare the results ahead of time. It can make it more difficult to win but far, far from impossible

Don’t do their dirty work for them by claiming it cannot be overcome at all. That just makes their job a lot easier. If the GOP really thought Georgia was on lock, then governor Kemp wouldn’t have stated he doesn’t want to run. The same for Marjorie Taylor Greene. They’re super worried they’ll lose and hurt their career which is not how they’d be acting if it were impossible to win

Oh 100%, keeps it going and puts pressure on the representatives who are up for reelection. The base is already mad about this, and even those who may not abandon Trump on this may very well be willing to blame Republicans in congress

Plus dems for once are actually playing smart politics here. Over the past two weeks, they’ve been forcing votes on various versions of it. They’ve had 4 so far I believe. Some in various committees, some as amendments, etc. The Massie/Ro Khanna version of the bill would make it even harder to shoot down than those other votes because it would be fully stand alone and fairly well written to cover all the various other excuses raised earlier

They have enough votes (at the moment) to force this version to get through the house via a discharge petition (way of going around the speaker). All 212 dems + 10 republicans last I saw. We’ll see if the 10 republicans who’ve said they’d back it actually hold up on final vote since they keep folding under pressure from Trump

Even if they do, I don’t know if this has the votes in the Senate / nor is it a veto-proof majority. Though Trump vetoing it would likely rile up his base more on this

Exactly this. This should mean something like stopping rhetorical attacks on right wing followers and focusing in on leaders and ideas

And then extend that to “if you’ve been lied to on X maybe they also tricked you on Y”. Don’t give up Y to try to bring them in

This is the longest I’ve seen his base angry at Trump & Republicans for. He got ratioed on Truth Social for the first time ever. He’s also doing something he rarely does - telling his base directly that their concerns don’t matter to him. Republicans usually manufacture away around issues that still pretends to care about their concerns, but they are not doing that well here

I can’t fully predict the future think this leaves a wound that not all the base comes back from and that matters. If say 10-20% of MAGA people don’t return, that weakens his grip on power. Some percentage going away enables a permissions structure for future criticism on other issues. Wannabe authoritarians need zero criticism to be acceptable to their followers because the tiniest bit can snow ball

Trump has never been ratioed (more comments than likes) on Truth Social before - he just was here. There is something different going on here and an anger that’s lasted longer than normal. Can’t fully predict the future here, but this is not typical MAGA dissent. This seems like it will leave a wound

Even if most of the MAGA base goes back to forgetting about this, just 10-20% not doing the same would have a real impact