Ball of Thread

The shutdown debate over healthcare has ignored one significant healthcare cost: What taxpayers are paying for the damage Kristi Noem's goons have done to people rounded up in their raids.   Read the post: https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/05/400000-the-free-medical-care-kristi-noems-goons-made-taxpayers-pay/   Support emptywheel: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/

Stephen Miller is trying hard to criminalize the Democratic Party. But the biggest crime scene in DC is the White House.   Find out more: https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/06/the-crime-wave-is-coming-from-inside-the-white-house/   Support emptywheel: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/

The same journalists who normalized Trump's past politicized prosecutions are shocked that Trump did it again with Jim Comey. Read the post: https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/26/mainstream-press-confesses-they-missed-the-other-politicized-prosecutions/  Watch: https://youtu.be/KBEgfIU8Oyg?si=j1tifL_zlEZqF9RY Support emptywheel: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/

Given the looming shutdown, it's time for all the lefty pundits who demanded a shutdown to actually do something to win it.   Read more: https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/22/time-to-win-the-shutdown/   Support the government: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/

The 2016 attack by Russia on the 2016 election helped US abandon rational discourse, created deep polarization, and continues to harm the US Deep State. Get the whole story: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzj-nJwdjvbfutHZdsNfOEou7UXvHm_SH  Support emptywheel: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/ 

While much of the left is pushing for a shutdown later this month, almost none are talking about how a shutdown ties to any articulable strategy to fight fascism. Indeed, the hope it will be an "attentional" event simply outsources the agency of fixing the Democrats' attentional problems generally.   Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/GH7kzWO2c1s?si=4QVJ4DX1Fvi2MU9H   Read more: https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/09/the-education-of-ezra-klein/   Support emptywheel: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/

JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom both gave press conferences showing that Trump's attempts to invade their states is about authoritarianism, not law enforcement. But Newsom's effort more successfully exposed Trump's authoritarian spectacle.   Read more: https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/02/a-tale-of-two-governors-confronting-versus-dick-wagging/   Support emptywheel: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/

In June, Republicans on the Supreme Court lifted a stay, giving DOGE access to all Americans' Social Security records. Then, DOGE gave Ed "Big Balls" Coristine -- a guy with ties to criminal hackers -- access to that.   Read more:  https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/08/26/amid-hunt-for-crime-in-dc-whistleblower-implicates-ed-big-balls-coristine-and-john-roberts/   Support emptywheel: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/

Tulsi Gabbard just stripped the security clearances of 37 intelligence officials, including one of the NSA's top math whizzes. Her excuse for doing so stems from conspiracy theories invented by a disgruntled whistleblower. Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbdY69KYf3U    Read more: https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/08/21/quantum-leaps-the-so-called-whistleblower-that-got-nsas-top-mathematician-fired/   Support emptywheel: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/

We know why Vladimir Putin has leverage over Trump, and it's not the goddamned pee tape. Trump has survived for the last eight years--not just the Russian investigation, but his first impeachment, his second impeachment, January 6, stealing classified documents--by claiming every push for accountability was just a hoax by Hillary Clinton. Russia Russia Russia. But Putin has proof that Trump knows Hillary didn't frame him--instead, Russian spies framed her. And if he released that, it would destroy the very means by which Trump has avoided accountability for eight years.