"Biden issued a statement, saying: “Tonight, a bipartisan majority in the Senate joined the House to answer history’s call at this critical inflection point. Congress has passed my legislation to strengthen our national security and send a message to the world about the power of American leadership: we stand resolutely for democracy and freedom, and against tyranny and oppression.”

"As the trial grabs headlines, Trump’s power seems to be diminishing. He is demonstrably not in power in the courtroom, where he must do as the judge tells him and reporters say he has often fallen asleep, and none of his family members have shown up to support him.

Pennsylvania’s primary election today revealed Trump’s real electoral weakness. He won about 83.5% of the Republican votes, but Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race in early March and has not campaigned since, won 16.5%. In the suburbs of Philadelphia, the so-called “collar counties,” Haley won closer to 25% of the Republican vote."

"On Thursday, April 18, the Interior Department finalized a new rule for a balanced management of America’s public lands. Put together after a public hearing period that saw more than 200,000 comments from states, individuals, Tribal and local governments, industry groups, and advocacy organizations, the new rule prioritizes the health of the lands and waters the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management oversees. Those consist of about 245 million acres, primarily in 12 western states.

The new rule calls for protection of the land, restoration of the places that have been harmed in the past, and a promise to make informed decisions about future use based on “science, data, and Indigenous knowledge.” It “recognizes conservation as an essential component of public lands management, on equal footing with other multiple uses of these lands.” The Bureau of Land Management will now auction off leases not only for drilling, but also for conservation and restoration. "

Thanks to Democrats.

"a similar test carried out by Citizen Lab concluded "in comparison to other popular social media platforms, TikTok collects similar types of data to track user behaviour".

Similarly, a report by the Georgia Institute of Technology last year stated: "The key fact here is that most other social media and mobile apps do the same things."

The firm insists user data has never been stored in China and is building data centres in Texas for US user data, and at sites in Europe for data from its citizens.

In the EU the company has also gone much further than any other social network and enlisted an independent cyber-security company to oversee all use of data at its European sites. TikTok says "data of our European users is safeguarded in a specially designed protective environment, and can only be accessed by approved employees subject to strict independent oversight and verification."

"The platform does not enforce obvious post censorship," researchers said in 2021.

The overall picture, then, is one of theoretical fears - and theoretical risk."

Those trying to get aid to Ukraine believe its defense is central to U.S. national security. Today the Institute for the Study of War, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group, assessed that “[s]everal Russian financial, economic, and military indicators suggest that Russia is preparing for a large-scale conventional conflict with NATO, not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline than what some Western analysts have initially posited,” within a matter of years.   

Trump and Republicans refusing to help Ukraine are endangering us and Europe, too. Vote Democrat.

Trump is deranged and diminished.

“Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.  He won't.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it. 

Once this process begins, it is hard to stop.  At the present stage of the strongman fantasy, people imagine an exciting experiment.  If they don't like strongman rule, they think, they can just elect someone else the next time.  This misses the point.  If you help a strongman come to power, you are eliminating democracy.”

The old hippie phrase comes to mind:  what goes around comes around.  In the world of free-floating money and blank-check companies and outfits that describe themselves as implementing visions of love and social impact through “new age” technologies, one of the truths of this particular new age is that when it comes to Donald Trump, what goes around keeps coming around to Russian intelligence and fixer/criminals like Alexander Smirnoff.

Sharing from Facebook.

Too many people today don't understand these basics.

President Biden gave a muscular speech that directly challenged Trump, MAGA extremism, the denial of reproductive liberty to women, tax cuts for millionaires, and efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare. He challenged Republicans to stand up for Ukraine and condemn the insurrectionists of January 6. He touted the amazing economic record of the Biden administration. He called for legislation to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. He announced the construction of a pier on the Gaza coast to deliver emergency aid and called for a two-state solution for Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

"I hope that Biden’s extraordinary speech on Thursday will put to rest nagging reservations many of you harbor (or have expressed). Do not believe the lies being spread by the Republican disinformation complex.

Joe Biden is a good president with an exceptional track record of legislative achievement. He is a good and decent man who is plainly up to the task of a second term."

"voters don’t seem to know much about Trump’s statements attacking democracy. When informed of them, their opinion of Trump falls. Trump has called for mass deportations of immigrants and foreign-born U.S. citizens; on February 29, he said he would use local police as well as federal troops to round people up and move them to camps for deportation. Asked yesterday by a Newsmax host if he would “order mass deportations if you win the White House,” Trump answered: “Oh, day one."

"Foster says the U.S. has more poverty than almost any other rich nation and that its social safety net is one of the stingiest."

"If you look at so many other countries with similar economies, you understand that college is free," Foster says. "They ensure that health care is cheap and affordable. Oftentimes, child care is free. That is the type of life we could offer Americans and choose not to."

The most important lesson from Monday’s disqualification ruling is that the Supreme Court is broken beyond repair. The reactionary majority made that fact abundantly clear by unilaterally amending the Constitution to remove the Insurrection Clause from the 14th Amendment. Those sworn to protect the Constitution are dismantling it.  Feelings of anger and upset over Monday’s ruling are understandable and warranted. But the most appropriate response is to redouble our efforts to defeat Trump. Nothing else matters. If we achieve that goal, we can work to advance all other goals. If we do not, we will be at the mercy of a renegade majority on the Court and an out-of-control, aspiring dictator for four years.

when Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was Senate majority leader, he “realized you don’t need to win elections to enact Republican policy. You don’t need to change hearts and minds. You don’t need to push ballot initiatives or win over the views of the people. All you have to do is stack the courts. You only need 51 votes in the Senate to stack the courts with far-right partisan activists…[a]nd they will enact Republican policies under the guise of judicial review, policies that could never pass through the democratic process. And those policies will be bulletproof, because they will be called ‘law.’”

The federal courts are far more powerful now than the other two branches of government, and many of the judges and justices are bought and paid for by wealthy Republicans.

"based on Trump's speech, memory, recall, and other behavior, he appears to be “hypomanic” and cognitively deteriorating at a rapid rate:

I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It's a major issue that will affect some people's votes. Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public.

Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging.

By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing."