Lee Drake
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leedrake.bsky.social
Lee Drake
@leedrake.bsky.social
Reposted by Lee Drake
The CFPB was created. The Trump administration is seeking to eliminate it, despite the fact that Congress has passed no law enabling it to do so.
November 11, 2025 at 4:46 AM
Reposted by Lee Drake
so about last night…
Democrats were never going to win the shutdown fight
Yes, polls showed more people blaming Trump. But on their substantive demands, the party was drawing dead.
www.vox.com
November 10, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
“The President sent his lawyer to negotiate a settlement with a convicted sex trafficker to provide cushy accommodation in exchange for her silence on his participation in said sex trafficking” is a cold description of the facts of an insane story that the media doesn’t find worthy of scrutiny
November 10, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
Arianna Sofia Veraza and her parents were driving to Sam's Club for milk, eggs and diapers yesterday when they heard helicopters and horns blaring yesterday. They had turned around to leave when a federal agent pepper-sprayed them through a car window.
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/09/c...
Pepper-sprayed Berwyn family rattled after getting caught up in federal blitz
Southwest Side politicians condemned Saturday’s pepper spraying and the federal sweep of Little Village as “state-sponsored terrorism” at a news conference Sunday.
www.chicagotribune.com
November 9, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
While we're at it, why do we pay for a fire department when most houses don't even burn down.
Tell me you don’t understand risk pools without telling me you don’t understand risk pools
November 10, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
Though Trump’s pardons can’t extend to state crimes, I think it’s worth pointing out the message being conveyed:

Trump’s allies are alleged to have stolen data from state voting systems in an effort to help him overturn an election he lost.

Now he’s pardoning them for it.

bsky.app/profile/anna...
News coverage of this has focused on the pardon of those involved in the fake electors plot.

But the pardon also extends to key figures who participated in the unauthorized breach of voting systems in Coffee County, Georgia

My reporting on the breach: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what...
November 10, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
This is why this surrender isn't just about this narrow issue but is rather the whole constitutional ballgame:

Democrats are affirmatively signaling they do not want political power at the same time Trump is transitioning the political system into an autocratic one wherein they're denied it forever
Not that he didn’t already know, but now Trump knows for sure he can roll the Dems every time and there’s no need to negotiate for anything
November 10, 2025 at 3:10 AM
Reposted by Lee Drake
“We report two obsidian flakes recovered from a now submerged paleolandscape beneath Lake Huron that are conclusively attributed to the Wagontire obsidian source in central Oregon… dating to ~9,000 BP, represent the earliest and most distant reported occurrence of obsidian in eastern North America.”
Central Oregon obsidian from a submerged early Holocene archaeological site beneath Lake Huron
Obsidian, originating from the Rocky Mountains and the West, was an exotic exchange commodity in Eastern North America that was often deposited in elaborate caches and burials associated with Middle W...
journals.plos.org
November 9, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
Johnson hasn’t even promised to reconvene the House. They’ve been in recess since mid September.
Major concession from Democrats here is enhanced ACA funds aren’t extended. Preserving them was Dems’ central demand in this fight. They secured a promise of a vote (which Thune has been offering for weeks), but that could still fail. Even if it passes, Johnson has made no promise of a House vote.
Tentative Senate deal to end shutdown, multiple sources tell me & @frankthorp.bsky.social:

—CR through Jan 30
—Approps minibus
—Fully funds SNAP
—Reverses Trump’s shutdown RIFs
—Promise of Senate vote on ACA subsidies by Dec second week (details/outcome uncertain)
—Led by King/Shaheen/Hassan
November 10, 2025 at 1:51 AM
Reposted by Lee Drake
and since the expanded 2021 subsidies have become load-bearing in the marketplace, rugpulling them breaks the insurance market *as it currently exists* because you yank a few million people out of the pool ~overnight. (this is why you're seeing people get hit with the massive premium spikes)
November 10, 2025 at 1:46 AM
Reposted by Lee Drake
At some point we have to let pain hurt Trump instead of helping him. Every time we let pain help him, he’ll do more and bigger next time.

Each acquiescence means the next one will be *more* painful.
November 9, 2025 at 11:32 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
Here’s video of federal agents doing a drive by pepper spraying that hit a father and his one-year old on Saturday when the Feds were hitting Little Village and Cicero
November 9, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
The House would continue to pass anti-lynching legislation and the Senate would continue to not even both to bring it up for a vote FOR AN ENTIRE CENTURY. And then finally, in 2022 they caved and the Emmitt Till Anti-Lynching Act was signed into law. deathpenaltyinfo.org/more-than-a-...
More Than a Century After it Was First Proposed, President Biden Signs Historic Law Making Lynching a Federal Crime | Death Penalty Information Center
After more than a cen­tu­ry of efforts by civ­il rights lead­ers to make lynch­ing a fed­er­al crime, President Joe Biden on March 29,...
deathpenaltyinfo.org
November 9, 2025 at 10:13 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
the American Government is at war with America

they're trying to manufacture a crisis that they can resolve with force
Breaking News: The Trump administration told states to undo any steps to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, threatening financial penalties if the states do not comply. It was unclear how that would affect the program.
Trump Live Updates: Airport and SNAP Benefit Disruptions Amid Shutdown
nyti.ms
November 9, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
40 men Trump sent to CECOT tell the NYT they were beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted. The details are worse than you can imagine.

We can’t let them get away with this. Miller and the other architects of this sadism need to go to prison.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...
‘You Are All Terrorists’: Four Months in a Salvadoran Prison
www.nytimes.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Reposted by Lee Drake
How many serial killers do you think ICE and CBP have on the books, gleefully expanding the scope of victims far far beyond their wildest dreams.

Golden State Killers and Daniel Holtzclaws given absolute mountains of cash and complete legal impunity, etc
November 9, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Reposted by Lee Drake
November 9, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Reposted by Lee Drake
“woke” is when you acknowledge that black people have contributed to the united states
Two panels commemorating the contribution of Black American soldiers towards the liberation of the Netherlands in World War Two have been quietly removed from a cemetery in Limburg. It follows a complaint by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission.
nrc.nl NRC @nrc.nl · 4d
Op Margraten zijn twee panelen over zwarte Amerikaanse bevrijders van Nederland opeens weg. ‘Past bij beleid van de regering-Trump’
November 8, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
"When I picked up my granddaughter from the federal agents, she had a dirty diaper, a bruise on her face, and was developing a rash. She was exhausted and cried… My heart aches knowing this could happen to others, to my kids, or even me, despite being U.S. citizens.”
November 8, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
Chicago: That is insanely disturbing. ICE kidnaps workers in broad daylight, leaving their equipment on site.
November 8, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
Give the bathtub a pulitzer

www.thebanner.com/community/ho...
November 8, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
Went back to the history of the Sicilian Mafia to illustrate something obvious but worth stating explicitly: The Trump administration behaves like an organized crime syndicate running a protection racket, not a representative government www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
November 8, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Lee Drake
once again, he's trying to hurt people and create conditions that increase crime so that he can justify further authoritarian power grabs and deploy federal forces to American cities

he's trying to manufacture a crisis that he can resolve with force
HE'S APPEALING TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES THAT HE BE ALLOWED TO STARVE AMERICANS
#BREAKING: The Trump administration is asking #SCOTUS for an immediate “administrative” stay of a Rhode Island district judge’s order that is otherwise requiring it to resume the distribution of SNAP benefits from other funding sources no later than the end of today.
November 8, 2025 at 1:42 AM
Finally, after two millennia, an answer to Rome’s ancient question: what if we skipped bread and just did circuses?
November 8, 2025 at 5:48 AM