Kid Rio
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kid-rio.bsky.social
Kid Rio
@kid-rio.bsky.social
Historian
”It was an abortion, Charlie Brown, an abortion!”
November 25, 2025 at 2:51 AM
Now, a new generation of social scientists and archivists are working to figure out how to catalog, add to, preserve, and search this vast trove of information, the scale and volume of which is unprecedented.
cnn.com CNN @cnn.com · 11d
Archiving the web is more important and more challenging than ever before. https://cnn.it/4phKzlW
November 17, 2025 at 12:46 AM
And, I would argue, the unifying effect of focusing on how an unbalanced economy and the cross-cutting effects of inequality degrade civic and political participation, might nudge the Democratic Party far enough away from identity politics to win sustainable governing majorities.
Wrote about the election (at length). An excerpt:
www.pbump.net/o/democracy-...
November 5, 2025 at 8:49 PM
“SHOW YOUR FACE, PUSSY!” should be on shirts, signs, hats, billboards, memes, and ads (especially for those Democrats running in 2026).
"Man goes scorched earth on ICE agents kidnapping people in his hometown."

Source:
old.reddit.com/r/PublicFrea...
October 23, 2025 at 8:28 PM
There is a non-zero chance that this is being pursued as a means of *permanently* nullifying Congress’s ”power of the purse” and, even, eliminating the necessity of Congress convening at all. Subject, of course, to SCOTUS ratifying Trump’s definition of an “emergency.”
Lawless and unconstitutional, not "reprogramming"
October 22, 2025 at 4:48 AM
This has the stink of Russell Vought all over it.
October 21, 2025 at 11:11 PM
As the shutdown drags on, as Trump illegally raids funding to reward his supporters (and punish his opposition), the more alarming the Republicans‘ refusal to negotiate and return to regular session becomes. Is it a trial run of ruling without the consent of Congress pending SCOTUS endorsement?
October 21, 2025 at 10:58 PM
German SS and police “clearing” the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. These Jews were then transported to one of the extermination centers.
October 2, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Check this out — Narducy is in Bob Mould’s band (no higher recommendation needed), plays with Michael Shannon in their REM reconstruction project, and is an incredible musician and songwriter in his own right. He’s got stories.
September 13, 2025 at 2:24 AM
Reposted by Kid Rio
Update: Civil War cancelled due to shooter being demographically uncooperative
September 12, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Reposted by Kid Rio
It’s not that I fear Kirk’s murder will be a Reichstag Fire inflection point; Congress has already nullified itself if its own volition. Rather, I fear that Kirk’s assassination is probably closer to the murder of Kirov, which provided much of the impetus for Stalin’s “ Great Terror.”
September 11, 2025 at 7:46 PM
The scourge of political violence is that, as the widening gyre of retaliation accelerates, both sides become enmeshed in lies about who or what started it. And, soon, the original sin is forgotten and the only meaning that remains is in the acts of violence themselves.
September 10, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Roberts is methodically and deliberately resurrecting the jurisprudence of the Taney Court. However, if the reactionary conservative ideologues on SCOTUS have their way (and voters continue to allow Congress to nullify itself), there will be no Reconstruction and Jim Crow will be imposed nationally.
This formulation is popular: contrasting SCOTUS' intolerance of race as an admissions factor with SCOTUS' tolerance of race as a detention factor. There are, in fact, doctrinal, historical, and logical distinctions between the positions, that one could use to dismiss this comparison.

But...
/1
"Harvard can't use race as a factor in admissions, but ICE can use race as a factor in detentions" is a retrenchment essentially to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution. It's vanishingly few steps removed from "Latinos have no rights which the white man is bound to respect."
September 9, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Invoking Niemöller on the moral necessity of speaking out against tyranny ignores the fact that those speaking for the Jews, the Communists, and the trade unionists were stripped of their property and livelihoods, exiled, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The fascist has no conscience to appeal to.
August 28, 2025 at 2:23 AM
Reposted by Kid Rio
“We don’t erase history” says the sentient can of body spray who took Medgar Evers and Harvey Milk’s names off Navy ships
August 7, 2025 at 11:20 PM
Reposted by Kid Rio
The entire business model of R1 public universities rests on 4 revenue sources:

1. Federal grants
2. Private gifts/endowments
3. Tuition (esp. from foreign students)
4. State $

For decades, 📈 in 1-3 offset a secular 📉 in 4. Now, 1 & 3 are being decimated & 4 ain't coming back. The math is clear.
August 5, 2025 at 6:13 PM
By eliminating the representation of citizens in red states who vote for the Democratic Party, this strategy of partisan gerrymandering is, in effect, aiming at the incremental and de facto dissolution of the federal union. In short, secession.
Donald Trump won 56% of the vote in Texas in 2024.

Republicans currently control 25 of the 38 House seats, or 66%.

If this plan goes through they'll control 30 of 38 seats, or 79%.
Texas Lt Gov Dan Patrick: "We're a red state. We deserve more representation."
August 6, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Kid Rio
She's right. Once SCOTUS closed the door on constitutional challenges, unilateral disarmament on redistricting became political suicide.
REPORTER: Do you think the independent redistricting commission should be disbanded?

HOCHUL: Yes. I'm tired with fighting this fight w/ my hand tied behind my back. With all due respect to the good govt groups, politics is a political process. And to think we're gonna do this with a purity test ...
August 4, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Capital doesn’t care about Trump’s lies. The national economy is not a time-share condo in Orlando he’s trying to unload.
"Trump thinks that if he falsifies jobs numbers, bullies the Fed, and prevents all criticism, he can make Americans believe prices are low and jobs are plentiful. But no matter how much he threatens, people are going to notice when prices at the grocery store go up and when they lose their jobs."
The looming Trumpcession
Orange man bad (for the economy).
www.publicnotice.co
August 4, 2025 at 8:03 PM
This is quality work.
Much cowardice. Very insecurity.
July 31, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Allowing policies to be implemented without discussions and conclusions about their “merits” is authoritarianism plain and simple. It is the antithesis of rational self-government. It is a repudiation of the Enlightenment. It denies that improvement of the human condition is possible or desirable.
The Supreme Court is now insisting that even its unexplained (and thinly explained) grants of emergency relief to the Trump administration are precedents lower courts have to follow.

As today’s “One First” explains, there are two different (but equally problematic) flaws with such an understanding:
169. Emergency Orders as Precedents
Wednesday's ruling in Boyle isn't the first time the Court has given precedential effect to an unsigned order, but it's the first time it tried to explain *why,* for reasons that ... fail to persuade.
www.stevevladeck.com
July 28, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Kid Rio
The NIH’s 2024 budget of just under $37B generated $95B in economic activity in 2024 alone. 99.4% of new pharmaceuticals approved from 2010-2019 came from NIH-funded research. I’m hard pressed to think of anything that generates as much direct economic benefit as our NIH did before they destroyed it
TAPPER: 14 Republicans say you're risking undermining critical research by holding up NIH funding

VOUGHT: If they were a company, their stock price would in shambles. They in some respects caused the pandemic. You have an entire institute that does nothing more than DEI research at the NIH.
July 27, 2025 at 10:49 PM
Reposted by Kid Rio
/7 This administration, from top to bottom, is ABSOLUTELY capable of getting Maxwell to clear Trump and implicate Trump’s political enemies in exchange for some commutation or pardon of her sentence. If you say otherwise you’re a liar or a fool.
July 24, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Soon, the only Article in the Constitution left standing will be Article II. And the Second Amendment. The remainder of our laws will become so much toilet paper. Many thanks to all those who just couldn’t vote for a woman.
this is my favorite bit - dcts should ignore existing law in future cases, and instead divine SCt's intent from its opinion-less orders
July 23, 2025 at 10:21 PM
Reposted by Kid Rio
Hate's a math problem for the Trump regime. This remains underappreciated. These figures seem huge, but they will never even be sufficient to do more than provide a theater experience of vindictive racism.

Need to look at this more as finance and economics. Time will eat money. Failure is certain.
July 18, 2025 at 1:57 PM