Director, defendingdemocracytogether.o…. Editor at large & Morning Shots co-author, thebulwark.com. Host, conversationswithbillkristol…
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On Trump’s desperate push to save Republicans two weeks before the midterms, and his racist attacks, religious bigotry, and bizarre defenses of vulnerable Republicans. Plus, Trump continues to side with Putin as Russia escalates its attacks on Ukraine.
piped.video/live/GSzppDbnb64…
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"If 2028 is a red-letter date in the history books, it will be due in part to groundwork laid this year. So if future historians write of a No Kings era beginning in 2028, those of us who are still around can quietly interject to say: Don’t forget 2026."
thebulwark.com/p/fasten-your…
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Tim and I agree: No Kings, No Trump, No Putin, No JD, No tech oligarchs, No holding back the wave.
And Tim also mocks (most unjustly, I assure you) my pronunciation of 'tofu.'
piped.video/SX9J6RbUwY8?si=R6Bi…
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Bill Kristol retweeted
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) & Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have alarming readout of their conversation with Vlodymyr Zelenskyy:
“Pres. Zelenskyy confirmed that critical Starlink services remain degraded, including on systems traveling at speeds above 100 miles per hour, impeding Ukraine’s ability to intercept Russian drones. He also reported disruptions to U.S. intelligence sharing concerning early warning of Russian ballistic missile launches. As a result of these disruptions, civilians – children – are dying"
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Bill Kristol retweeted
Corruption is a subplot to the 2026 midterms.
72% of Independents believe that Donald Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself. And even one-third of Republican votes feel that way.
And you see it defining races in TX & IA. @jamestalarico and @turek4iowa are defining their opponents -- Ken Paxton and Ashley Hinson on ethics and corruption.
More from the @washingtonpost poll here: bit.ly/4i26Dif
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Bill Kristol retweeted
When the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 came before the Rules Committee, I offered Rep. Meeks’s amendment to block President Trump from waiving Russian sanctions. My Republican colleagues voted against it.
On Friday, President Trump did exactly that: issuing an EO that exempts Russia from the new sanctions passed by Congress last month, a dangerous decision that puts our allies at risk.
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"Democratic candidates can acknowledge voters don’t have to love everything about their party. But they can bring home to voters that they need, this once, to walk away from the Republican party in order to check Trump for the rest of his time in office."
thebulwark.com/p/happy-birth…
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Bill Kristol retweeted
Woah woah woah. The lead is buried in paragraph four.
Anthropic quietly pitches its own AI safety bill to lawmakers politi.co/4zxDFhl
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"Trump, fully in his own imperial era, has jettisoned such provincial thinking. He just argues, openly and explicitly, that it’s better for the United States to be allied with Russia."
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"Over and over again, Trump has made his new position on the war clear: Nothing but incentives and wheedling praise for Russia, the war’s imperial aggressor, and nothing but threats and insults for Ukraine, the war’s blameless defender."
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A good summary of how much Meta is in the tank for Trump. And a reminder that the authoritarian threat comes not just from within the Trump administration but from its oligarchic allies. Oligarchic power is now a clear and present threat to our democracy.
open.substack.com/pub/popula…
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What can I say?
On this, @SenSanders is right.
This is what billionaire ownership of the media means:
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta shut down the No Kings account for hours during the height of their protests.
Meta suppressed accounts supporting Brazil President Lula da Silva in the recent election.
Larry Ellison’s TikTok blocked advertising for a documentary criticizing Elon Musk.
Fight back. Defeat oligarchy. Preserve democracy.
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Bill Kristol retweeted
Let’s assume this is true. It’s still a total indictment of Meta’s outsized influence on our culture and politics.
How were they not ready for the biggest day of anti-Trump protest of the campaign? If it wasn’t malevolence, it was likely a natural consequence of a company that is desperate to get as close to Trump as possible (and thus has a disincentive to do the basic, proactive work to be ready to support users on No Kings Day).
Further, Meta desires to have a monstrously large market share of political communications. They resist attempts to shrink their reach. What comes with that market power is a responsibility to see major moments of political action coming (and how could they not see it this one coming!?) and be ready. The No Kings IG was down for 4 hours.
An investigation is warranted, at the very least, to understand why Meta (which effectively functions these days as a private government) was unable to protect protest against Trump, while it spends so much time trying to get close to Trump.
We have continued to dig into the root cause here and would like to offer an update.
Our engineering team discovered that the spike that triggered the incorrect enforcement was primarily in the account’s “reading” behavior. Specifically, our network security systems detected the use of a Claude tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags, the rate of which sharply increased (~4x volume) in intense bursts on October 17.
These abrupt, high-volume, sequential requests in a short period resembled automated bot traffic rather than an ordinary human browsing our systems. This activity caused our automated protections to incorrectly take the No Kings Instagram account offline. An automated re-review of the removal action an hour later recognized that shouldn’t have happened and restored the account. It unfortunately took additional time for us to straighten out the situation with admin access to the IG account.
We want to reiterate our sincere apology for the error.
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So the original explanation—“When accounts post, share or comment at very high frequencies it can trigger automated systems. That's what happened with the No Kings IG account””—was simply wrong. Why this mistaken explanation?
And the new explanation raises still more questions.
We have continued to dig into the root cause here and would like to offer an update.
Our engineering team discovered that the spike that triggered the incorrect enforcement was primarily in the account’s “reading” behavior. Specifically, our network security systems detected the use of a Claude tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags, the rate of which sharply increased (~4x volume) in intense bursts on October 17.
These abrupt, high-volume, sequential requests in a short period resembled automated bot traffic rather than an ordinary human browsing our systems. This activity caused our automated protections to incorrectly take the No Kings Instagram account offline. An automated re-review of the removal action an hour later recognized that shouldn’t have happened and restored the account. It unfortunately took additional time for us to straighten out the situation with admin access to the IG account.
We want to reiterate our sincere apology for the error.
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Bill Kristol retweeted
Republicans know they have a real chance to lose in Texas. That’s why in Tarrant County, Republicans voted to close 92 Election Day polling places. But that’s where Democrat James Talarico stood Wednesday night at a CNN town hall & Ken Paxton refused to show up. 92 is nearly ⬇️
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Bill Kristol retweeted
With all due respect to the US President, the chances for Israel’s destruction are rising in a scenario Netanyahu gets elected again.
I’ve never been sure of anything as I’m sure in that.
The internal rupture in Israel will widen. Israel’s isolation will expand to more countries sanctioning us.
Iran and our enemies will see a divided, sanctioned, weaker Israel, and all of that will happen because of our corrupt PM and his thirst for power
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Bill Kristol retweeted
Trump is UNDERWATER in two states he won by double digits.
Texas (won by 14)
🟢Approve - 47%
🔴Disapprove - 51%
Ohio (won by 11)
🟢Approve - 45%
🔴Disapprove - 54%
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Bill Kristol retweeted
Having failed to win on battlefield, #Russia's military is now focusing its attacks on #Ukraine's cities and civilians.
And Trump is aligning US on side with Russia.
Deplorable.
The potential goals of the Russian campaign, according to the document seen by the Guardian, go from “degrading [Ukrainians’] quality of life” to fully shutting off water supply, causing the “deterioration of sanitary conditions and the forced outflow of residents from cities.”
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“The Broligarchs are all in for MAGA, spending ungodly sums of money this cycle to dominate American politics and attempt to ensure that elected officials’ agenda is their own.”
open.substack.com/pub/ctrlal…
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