It is a Fire Code requirement that the hose connection is in the interior exit stair, on the main floor landing. San Jose has a unique requirement that the hose connection be on the intermediate landing.

Mary in a red white and blue print. She is standing on a snake that says I.C.E and above her the words Hail Mary full of grace kick ice out of this place

By artist Libby Kercher

via #thecatholicworker

Curious if the aerial access alternate could still be used.

Trump’s Lies About Portland: An Excuse to Create a Police State The disturbances in Portland are basically limited to a single block about two miles from the city center. And Trump says the city is burning. Why?

Trump’s Lies About Portland: An Excuse to Createa Police State newrepublic.com/article/2016... via @newrepublic.com

The rise of end times fascism The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

THE RISE OF END TIMES FASCISM

My first major piece of the new Trump era, co-written with @astra.bsky.social.

The governing ideology of the far right has become a
monstrous, supremacist survivalism.

Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Loathe thy neighbor: Elon Musk and the Christian right are waging war on empathy Trump’s actions are irreconcilable with Christian compassion. But an unholy alliance seeks to cast empathy as a parasitic plague

Loathe thy neighbor: Elon Musk and the Christian right are waging war on empathy

I have tariffed
the penguins
that are on
Heard Island

and which
you were probably
assuming
did not export goods

forgive me
they were taking advantage of us
so cunning
and so cold

Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic There’s a fundamental problem with Donald Trump’s new trade policy: it fails a test that actual 5th graders can pass. I know this because I tried explaining his “Liberation Day&#8…

I wrote a bunch of words trying to explain how economically incomprehensible the tariff stuff is. It explains how a 5th grader understands basic econ better than Trump and his economic advisors.

www.techdirt.com/2025/04/03/t...

White House says no one will be fired over the Signal scandal because no one involved was trying to cure cancer.

This continues to be the biggest story in the country: DOGE has already squandered half a trillion dollars in 6 weeks. Not billion. half a trillion, $500 billion talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/irs-p...

The most obvious thing about this is it is evil and sociopathic. But there’s another element: speaking as someone who has both prosecuted fraudsters and defended people very wrongfully accused of being fraudsters, it’s absolute bullshit.

/1

A friend of my compared gutting of federal agencies to a wrecking a car: if you remove 30% of the parts of the car, it does not go 30% slower. It stops working.

A Movement to Destroy Democracy Journalist Katherine Stewart on the Christian Right’s long march towards authoritarianism.

Read @paulrosenberg.bsky.social's conversation with @katherinestewart.bsky.social about her new book, Money, Lies, and God, and the Christian Right's long march towards authoritarianism.

If your words give comfort or cover to people supportive of fascism or genocide, you are laundering and enabling that fascism and genocide EVEN if you don't support it outright.

It is morally indefensible to say "I just don't know about that" or lean on privately-held nuance

The Law’s Trump-Size Hole Is Suddenly Exposed The judicial system has started to rule against the administration’s decimation of the civil service. If only it could actually enforce its rulings.

If the president defies the courts and Congress does not impeach him for it, the Constitution simply ceases to exist.

The War Trump Chooses That wasn't Trump against Zelens'kyi. It was Americans against reason

The attempted mugging of a visiting president was about the world war that Musk, Trump, and Vance have chosen. If we attend to what Vance and Trump said yesterday, we can work our way to the unreason of American policy, and to the chaos that will follow.
snyder.substack.com/p/the-war-tr...

it's going to be amazing if reversing the global far right takeover starts with the united states having hired two of the most unpleasant and incompetent dipshits imaginable to co-lead the vanguard

Something is shifting. They are still breaking things and stealing things. And they will keep trying to break and to steal. But the propaganda magic around the oligarchical coup is fading. (1/2)

the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president

DOGE IS PROCUREMENT CAPTURE www.anildash.com/2025/01/04/D...

The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified Four IT professionals lay out just how destructive Elon Musk’s incursion into the U.S. government could be.

New: We spoke to government IT employees/contractors about DOGE. Their warnings were dire. The people who maintain the systems that keep the country working are terrified. "This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history—at least that’s publicly known."

Most people didn't vote for them - they voted for Harris or someone else, or skipped voting, or weren't eligible.

Most of his voters were not voting for most of what they're doing. The most vocal MAGA/White Christian Nationalist folks are a small portion of the country.

This is beatable.

It's The Fascism, Stupid Five directional thoughts to align ourselves for the fight ahead. Notice direction, fight upward, ladders downward, look inward, grow outward.

I wrote about the fascist nightmare of recent weeks, the entirely insufficient response by those who should be in opposition, and how I think we can be our own leaders. Embracing a diversity of oppositional method to face down a gang of thugs who hate all diversity. www.the-reframe.com/its/

A quote from the writer AR Moxon from 2017. He wrote: "Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed. That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore. They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?" A.R. Moxon

This.

Trump and Musk Are Strangling the Government HIV prevention is hampered. The social safety net is falling apart. Federal employees fear for their safety. And it’s only week three.

"Federal workers said they believed that Trump and Musk were trying deliberately not just to sever foreign aid and parts of the domestic social safety net, but also to create a climate in which the government itself fell apart." New from @samsteindc.bsky.social: www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-and-...

February 4, 2025 Edward R. Martin, Jr. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Patrick Henry Building 601 D Street NW Washington, D.C. 20530 Transmitted via email Re: Threats to prosecute critics of DOGE Dear Interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Edward R. Martin, Jr.: We write to raise serious concerns about your recent public statements threatening to prosecute those who "target" or "impede" Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) within the Executive Office of the President. We request that you publicly commit to abide by the First Amendment, which your office is sworn to uphold and Musk himself claims to champion, in any DOGE-related investigations or prosecutions you may pursue. On Monday, you tweeted a letter to Musk asking him to use the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to protect DOGE staff and their work and directing him to refer "any questionable conduct or details that [Musk] find[s] or notice[s]" to your office.' In the letter, you assert that "actions in any way that impact [DOGE's] work may break numerous laws," and that you commit to the pursuit of "all legal action against anyone who impedes [Musk's) work or threatens [Musk's] people." You also state that you will "protect DOGE and other workers no matter what," citing past protests in Washington, D.C., which you refer to as riots. As you know, DOGE, or the United States DOGE Service as it is formally known, is a government entity established within the Executive Office of the President; by executive order, DOGE is supposed to access only "unclassified agency records." The day before your letter, WIRED reported about and named six young engineers working for DOGE — Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. The experience and qualifications of public employees is of significant public interest. Following this news report, a user on X — the social media platform owned by Mr. Musk — made a post also naming th…

X has since suspended the account of the user who posted the names. As an experienced attorney holding such an important public position, you must be aware that it is not a crime for anyone — whether WIRED journalists, X posters, or otherwise — to identify individuals openly conducting government work that is of the utmost public concern. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment protects the right to publish newsworthy information that the publisher lawfully obtains, including names far more sensitive than those of government personnel.' Musk himself has publicly touted DOGE's engineers while citing "media reports" regarding them. Nor is it a crime to harshly criticize government employees and officials, even if transparency and criticism "impede" their work? Moreover, while certain true threats are unprotected and may be criminally punished, they are limited to serious expression[s]' conveying that a speaker means to 'commit an act of unlawful violence."$ Hyperbolic speech, even using threatening language, is entitled to full First Amendment protection.' You must also surely be aware that the First Amendment protects Americans' right to peaceably assemble, especially to protest government actions.' The First Amendment severely constrains the government's ability to limit protests in public forums, such as the public streets of Washington, D.C." The government also cannot ban or restrict future protests based on unlawful conduct alleged to have occurred at past protests. 2 Threatening to prosecute First Amendment speech and activity is not only at odds with the U.S. Constitution, it is also entirely inconsistent with Musk's own stated principles and the right of the American people to know what the government is up to. Musk describes himself as a free speech absolutist and has proposed a massive declassification of government records, opining that all government records should be public by default. '3 Just three months ago, Musk publicly posted…

government employees with whom he disagrees on X.' If it is Musk's intention for the U.S. Attorney's Office to censor the press and public from identifying and discussing those conducting DOGE's work on his behalf, that would be incredibly hypocritical. It is also vital that the U.S. Attorney's Office maintain the highest ethical standards and avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Rule 3.1 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for the Washington, D.C. Bar, of which you are a member, states: "A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous."Is Under Rule 3.8, prosecutors are additionally prohibited from filing in court or maintaining a charge "that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause."l6 The same rule provides that "[i]n exercising discretion to investigate or to prosecute," prosecutors shall not "improperly favor or invidiously discriminate against any person."17 Threatening to file frivolous charges against Americans and vaguely insinuating that wide swaths of constitutionally-protected speech and activity could invite criminal investigations and prosecutions may already violate these and other rules of professional conduct. Actually doing so almost certainly would. Additionally, publicly offering the Office of the U.S. Attorney's services to Musk in the context of his asserting that protected expression is a criminal act is unbecoming of your public office and your duties as a public servant. Your oath is to the U.S. Constitution - including the First Amendment - not to President Donald Trump, Musk, or DOGE's desire to operate in secrecy and without criticism. We request that you immediately (a) identify the specific "targeting" of DOGE staff your letter to Musk was referring to and what specific laws you contend it violated, (b) publicly commit to not investigate or prosecute journalists or others for reporting on or publish…

Common Cause Courage Foundation Defending Rights & Dissent Demand Progress Education Fund Democracy Matters First Amendment Coalition First Amendment Foundation Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Freedom of the Press Foundation Government Information Watch GovTrack.us Greenpeace USA Muslims for Just Futures Partnership for Civil Justice Fund PEN America Project On Government Oversight Radio Television Digital News Association Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Revolving Door Project RootsAction.org Social Security Works Society of Environmental Journalists Society of Professional Journalists The Authors Guild The Freedom BLOC Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts Woodhull Freedom Foundation CC: All House, All Senate Senate Majority Leader John Thune Speaker of the House Mike Johnson House Majority Leader Steve Scalise Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin 4

“…you must be aware that it is not a
crime for anyone — whether WIRED journalists, X posters, or otherwise — to identify individuals openly conducting government work that is of the utmost public concern.”

You say: they shutdown USAID.

You mean: they illegally broke in to a secure facility over a weekend, hijacked sensitive data on vulnerable people and US businesses, destroyed property Americans paid for, cut off resources for sick and hungry families, and fired Americans across the country.

Of course it’s a coup Miss the obvious, lose your republic

Of course it’s a coup. Miss the obvious, lose your republic.
open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...