waywardcats

Timeline cleanse 🧵

Briefing: New Medicaid timeline + more — Unbreaking This week, we introduce our new Medicaid timeline, showcase our new topic filters, and post updates from our Immigration, Federal Workforce, and Medical Research Funding teams.

This week, we’re introducing a timeline to accompany our longstanding narrative Medicaid explainer, which means that all our active pages have timelines up. Learn all about this and much more in our weekly briefing:

unbreaking.org/blog/briefin...

Also probably a mistake to deepen fear and mistrust of federal authorities among those who might otherwise report signs of planning

Please stop referring to the Voter Elimination Act by the Orwellian moniker MAGA gave it, which makes it sound good. We do not need to repeat their words (ahem, "Patriot Act," "Citizens United") but rather make clear exactly what's at stake.

This is the same roster of clowns and lunatics who slithered their way into the White House after 2020. They are conspiracy theorists and frauds all the way down. No serious country would ever allow Q promoter who calls himself "Juan O. Savin" to be within a time zone of power.

This whole episode, about the fractures in MAGAworld over Iran, and how they relate to existing faultlines around Israel, antisemitism, and liberal interventionism was really great.

Kindergarten

There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just complained that “you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Now it’s considered bigotry.” This is a standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism, the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress. And of course Alito is disingenuous; you can say that stuff against marriage equality (and he did). Then other people can call you a bigot, because they get to have opinions too, but in his scheme such dissent is intolerable, which is fun coming from a member of the party whose devotees wore “fuck your feelings” shirts at its rallies and popularized the term “snowflake.”

When you call misogyny misogyny, you're allying with the victims of it and maybe rendering the misogynists uncomfortable, and you're also telling the truth. Whose comfort matters? Matters more than truth? The Times and a lot of the mainstream has been telling us conservative white men come first.

This interview with the great @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social was a "wow" moment for me. Thanks, New York Times and David Marchese.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/m...

I couldn't help noticing the question that seemed the most Times-like to me.

That’s 3-4 days global supply/demand….

Timeline cleanse

full text for all screenshots is here, please let me know if you use Alt Text and find this helpful: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/foreign-hacker-2023-compromised-epstein-files-held-by-fbi-source-documents-show-2026-03-11/

NEW: foreign hacker compromised Epstein files held by #FBI

"included combing through certain files pertaining to the Epstein investigation”

Source describes it as cybercriminal.

Previously all we knew was: there was some sort of breach. 1/

By @raphae.li
www.reuters.com/world/us/for...

DOGE employee stole Social Security data and put it on a thumb drive, report says | TechCrunch A whistleblower is accusing a former DOGE member of stealing a large number of Americans’ personal data while he was working at the Social Security Administration, with the plan of using it at his new...

A new whistleblower report alleges that a former DOGE engineer told co-workers at his new job that that he “previously had unrestricted ‘God-level’ access to the SSA’s systems” & that he possessed copies of SSA’s “Numident” & “Master Death” files, which he planned to use at his new job. 3/10/26…1/

I'm concerned people see the contradictory messaging on Iran - it's not a war, it's a war, it's over, it'll last for a long time - and think "haha another disordered Trump policy"

the disorder and contradictory messaging is the policy!

I’m not surprised this was in Shasta county. What a shame!

She was arrested for holding a protest sign in small-town California: ‘This is a testing ground’ Jenny O’Connell-Nowain was put under house arrest and her husband, Benjamin, lost his job after they protested at board of supervisors meetings

I always thought of speaking out or holding signs at a board of supervisors meeting as a no risk, no drama way to engage in democracy - but even this can land you in jail in the US today.

We need more protest, not less.

Timothy Snyder said: if you protest now, you will be able to protest later.

Timeline cleanse

Authoritarians will stop at nothing to feel safe. Since they have no concept of public welfare and consider everyone an asset to be used and discarded, they will easily enter into a military conflict without a long-term strategy, regardless of the casualties it causes.

The guy pardoned from a 22 year sentence for sedition. The coup succeeded.

so at first I assumed that Fox would use the dodge that the December 2025 transfer was also on a Saturday and also at Dover so they hadn't purposely mislabeled anything with their little "Dover, DE Saturday" graphic, but no-- December 17 was a Wednesday

So so sorry.

“.. Then he said he heard an officer say ‘Dudes, you killed that dude.’”

@miamiherald.com
www.miamiherald.com/news/local/c...

Judge then highlights harms from lost ID, work permits, phones, bank cards, phones: “lost wages & hardships for their family”; “food insecurity”; “inability to ... contact family & loved ones”; “lost jobs”; “terrif[ying]” danger of re-arrest.
4/4-end

The slavery exhibits at the President’s House are starting to be restored by the National Park Service The restoration is the latest development in the city and community stakeholders’ fight to preserve the President’s House after President Donald Trump’s administration ordered the removal of exhibits.

In Archives & History news, a successful lawsuit by the City of Philadelphia has restored some panels depicting the history of slavery to the President’s House Site in Independence National Historical Park.
www.inquirer.com/politics/nat...

Infectious Disease Control & Prevention — Unbreaking How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.

The Infectious Disease Control & Prevention page added 12 new items to our timeline. Amid worrying increases in measles, TB, and whooping cough outbreaks, we are seeing further erosion and politicization of public health organizations and networks.
unbreaking.org/issues/infec...

Nathan Fillion is teasing a Firefly reunion in these cryptic video posts with the cast, but there's a catch If Fillion visits Joss Whedon next, the fandom will explode

“I hope you all recognize that most of your fan base is currently perimenopausal and hanging on by the threads of our pretty floral bonnets, if this is a tease, we will make [Firefly cannibal villains] reavers look like golden retriever puppies." LOL

www.polygon.com/nathan-filli...

Hmmm, I’m not so sure about this…. but the video is cute.

Kristi Noem like trump is not the disease but the symptom changing the dressing on the rot does not get rid of the rot it just covers it until it is spent and must be replaced again.

This orange cat thread was the timeline cleanse I needed this morning.