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Don Zeko

@donzeko.bsky.social
5.4K followers 322 following 8.2K posts

Public defender in the South, politics obsessive, nerd stuff enthusiast. Also a dad, although I'm trying to respect the privacy of my increasingly feral children.

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Reposted by Don Zeko
Jonathan Bernstein @jonathanbernstein.bsky.social · 1h
I'll say it again: It doesn't matter what Democrats say now, or intend now. They will impeach Trump, because he won't give them any choice. So I hope they're preparing themselves for it.
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Cait @caitesq.bsky.social · 4h
It turns out that cross-examination is hard, and a lot of it comes down to preparation and knowing your record
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CJ Ciaramella @cjciaramella.bsky.social · 3h
I mean, yeah, the book and mail bans are a two-bird-one-stone thing for prisons, because they're "doing something" about contraband and also further degrading incarcerated people. Three birds, actually, because mail and books are replaced with third-party tablets and kiosks they can monetize.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 13h
One thing that’s interesting about this is that it shows that despite insisting the wokes overinterpet everything, conservatives are actually aware of and agree with their critics about how coded racist appeals work, they just like them bsky.app/profile/newr...
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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 29/09/2026
Fact that within a midterm cycle much of the Republican Party and the political apparatus around it dove into repealing segregation orders and debating the role of Indian people in public life is a huge indictment of the “woke went too far” idea but again acknowledging that means self reflection.
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Ben Prunty @benprunty.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I don't love dunking on folks but it's so fucking funny to me that Trump was convicted of 34 felonies 2 years ago, faced no punishment, and went on to win the presidency a second time and journalists are still like, "hmm, I have an inkling that maybe he believes he's above the law for some reason."
Post from NYT reporter Eric Lipton 

"What an odd moment in United States history.

A U.S. president is running an overtly political campaign advertisement, right before midterm elections, paid for by the U.S. government.

Trump appears to believe he is immune from any kind of legal limit."
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I like that in becoming a nazi, you get glowing coverage as a brave iconoclast, and then when you stop being a nazi, you’re get glowing coverage as a brave dissident. Money coming and going. Only way you lose is having normal opinions like “racism bad” bsky.app/profile/trac...
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
There's a reason d&d makes intelligence and wisdom separate attributes
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Roger Parloff @rparloff.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Inhumane civil confinement violates Due Process if officials manifest “deliberate indifference” or the conditions are “punitive.” Judge Kaplan found both. Evidence suggested that “harsh conditions” were “a deliberate feature” to incentivize self-deportation. 5/5
Asthis Court explained when it issued the PI, the administration's actions with respect
to noncitizens illegally present in the country and the conduct by ICE staff and contractors at 26 Fed
"suggest that harsh conditions of confinement are a deliberate feature" of the administration's massdeportation program 49 That conclusion has been reinforced by passage of time and the full development of the record. Since this Court issued the PI, the administration has continued to
attempt to detain and deport as many noncitizens illegally present in the country as possible, as fast
as possible, and with as little procedure as possible. Part of that program has been its self-deportation
project, which, as the administration has described it, "offers illegal aliens a choice: leave voluntarily with [flederal support and financial assistance or face strict enforcement and penalties. '500 That the
harsh conditions of confinement at 26 Fed are one aspect of this "strict enforcement and penalties" is supported by the fact that ICE has papered walls and windows on the fifth, ninth, and tenth floors with flyers asking detainees, "Do You want to Return Home?" and incentivizing them with money to "[a]sk[] to return home now." These flyers serve as an ever-present visual reminder of the
Hobbesian choice posed to detainees and described by an ICE officer at 26 Fed: self-deport or
"remain detained" for years.
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Patrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
There need to be penalties for the companies and individuals who bribed Trump, not just the Trump family for taking bribes.
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
i am simply asking democrats to treat the supreme court as the ideological political opponent that it is
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Once again, the Supreme Court prioritizes imaginary harms done to Trump by not allowing him to indulge in his conspiracy theories, as opposed to the very real harm done to citizens who may lose the ability to vote in this case.
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I am so tired of watching these vile bigots get blessed by the federal judiciary. www.newsobserver.com/news/local/e...
newsobserver.com
Can religious freedom override equal protection in a Wake school classroom?
Lawyers disagree on whether families have a legal right to opt out of classes taught by a transgender teacher due to their religious beliefs.
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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
”Frodo did not offer her tea.”
static.klipy.com
Kendrick Lamar Singing at Super Bowl Halftime Show
Alt: Kendrick Lamar Singing at Super Bowl Halftime Show
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Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Taught the Fugitive Slave Act for the first time in a few years. Man, my head was spinning as I uttered my familiar refrain about how the FSA radicalized Northerners who maybe never thought much about slavery until they saw people being snatched off the street right in front of them...
static.klipy.com
Euphoria Wait Is This Fucking Play About Us
Alt: Euphoria Wait Is This Fucking Play About Us
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22/09/2026
whenever i hear some variation on "but what if trump does X or Y or Z" i think of this ulysses s. grant remark to a subordinate during the wilderness campaign.
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Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Hanania overtly says what you can tell a bunch of elite media and tech people believe, and his posts basically divide into three categories: 1) sexual assault isn't real and sex with teenagers is OK, 2) racial group aren't equal and Black people in particular are dumber, and 3) technocracy is
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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
On Sep 11 in Alamo, Texas, Luis Ochoa and another teen stopped to film ICE agents during a vehicle stop near a school. Agents pulled one from their car, struck him, used pepper spray, and detained them for 8 hrs even after they proved their citizenship, one ICE agent stating, 'I don’t give a damn.'
krgv.com
Mother of teen detained in viral Alamo ICE arrest video deported
The mother of a 17-year-old detained by ICE in a viral Alamo, Texas incident has been deported to Mexico, raising concerns among legal experts about potential retaliation for speaking out.
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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
By the by, this is where the malapportionment of the Senate manifests The Democratic Party as such can compete for the chamber, but the version of the party that can win the chamber has to moderate a lot to win the tiny rural states
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
It's election season and football season, so that means I get to watch several Willie Horton ads every Sunday.
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Cards on the table because we keep litigating this. 1) trans rights are human rights and trans people are being horribly persecuted across the country. Defending them needs to be part of the Dem platform 2) moderates selling them out is bad policy and bad politics, with limited exceptions for...
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The question we have to ask in 2029 is if we want that to be 5-6 justices out of 9 or 5-6 justices out of 13.
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Quick, somebody get Stancil to post about the transporters in star trek
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I'm also thinking about this in my professional life because I have a very high stakes trial coming up. It's a weird inversion of the principle where I'm the general but the guys doing the dying get to make the biggest decisions.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 18/09/2026
i am genuinely bewildered by people who say that the rise of white nationalism in the republican party is a response to the "woke left." like, did the woke left cause pat buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign? is the woke left why steve king had a long career in congress?
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I found this essay persuasive and very widely applicable www.liberalcurrents.com/clausewitz-a...
liberalcurrents.com
Clausewitz and the Supreme Court
To forgo any effort at protecting American democracy or the rights of its people in the name of norms is mere moral cowardice.
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 18/09/2026
it's funny but also a reminder that the fundamental premise here is that a Black man can't be objective when talking about race while a white man can because Black people do identity politics and white people do facts and this my friends is what I have named "white empiricism"
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 18/09/2026
but again, genuinely hilarious (derogatory) for a guy whose father was a klansman to say "the presence of nazis in the republican party is because black people wouldn't shut up." oh, is that why nazis immediately began organizing in the wake of donald trump's 2016 victory too?
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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Shouldn’t be wading into Discourse this early but man, there’s a huge difference between saying “the laws of war permit a lot of war, even a lot of the stuff you think is really bad about war” and “it’s neutral to positive that this specific awful thing happened,” and people are pretending otherwise
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
our sincerely held moral beliefs and principles that we are willing to sacrifice on principle for. their cynical lies, excuses for seemingly irrational behavior that are surely explicable by some hidden opportunistic greed.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 15/09/2026
“trump will destroy everything he cannot own in perpetuity” is one reason i am filled with dread over 2028
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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
There are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of stories like this from the past couple of years: stone-faced, banal, unnecessary cruelty with the full weight of the federal government behind it
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I probably shouldn't engage in this particular discourse but the screen grab here is someone either totally ignorant of how government works or someone deliberately misleading people for clout.
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
W/o getting drawn into the "seriously or literally" / "it'll never happen" trap, we need to stomp *hard* on the continuing effort to undermine Article 1 power of the purse by saying that this or that revenue stream makes something outside the normal budget process. 1/ www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...
nbcnews.com
Lutnick says Trump’s $5,000 checks for Americans wouldn’t rely on taxpayer funds
A top White House official suggested Congress would use a budget process to fund them. Vice President JD Vance had said tariff revenues.
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Cait @caitesq.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Hard to put it more clearly than Andy does here: “Having constitutional government and leaving the Roberts Court in place are mutually exclusive options.”
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
When people who voted for trump in 2024 to make them rich send their kids to college in 15 years and wonder why their flagship state school is so much shittier and more expensive than they remember, they won't put two and two together. They should.
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
The US Senate had a Republican majority in 2016. That was due to the results of the elections in 2010, 2012, and 2014. If the Dems had a majority in 2016 the supreme Court would have a 5-4 Dem majority today. Every election has effects which echo decades into the future.
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In practical terms, the closest the US has ever gotten to Medicare for All is when the ACA extended Medicaid eligibility to tens of millions of people, and it is genuinely bizarre how many M4A fans want to either pretend the Medicaid expansion never happened or downplay its significance.
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
We (and especially the news media) seem to be once again falling into the trap of analyzing Trump's behavior under the "could he definitely be convicted of a federal crime for doing this" standard rather than asking whether it's a good or appropriate thing for an elected official to do.
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Jessica Valenti @jessicavalenti.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Horrific though unsurprising report from @propublica.org: Ectopic pregnancy deaths have basically doubled since the end of Roe
propublica.org
Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths Have Nearly Doubled. It’s Worse in States With Abortion Bans.
With prompt and appropriate medical care, experts say, people shouldn’t die from an ectopic pregnancy. Women in Texas and Oklahoma have sued over delays in care, which, coupled with our new analysis, ...
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Ian Rennie @theangelremiel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes doing the "we're just normal men" meme
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Horatio Pornviewer @stuntbirdarmy.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Well,
My old post that says “you think crime is down? I SAW black people.”
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Seth Trueger @mdaware.org · 08/09/2026
we can do better! better things are possible!
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Kung Hei FYat Choy!-Gigan @gigansprogress.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
You could hit PR's listening to this
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The bird in blue feathers fled across the desert, and the coyote followed
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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
It’s out of season. Intra coalition conflict season goes from Jan 21, odd years to September 1 in even years. But September 1 even years to Jan 20 odd years is strictly conflict with reactionaries season. This may require not fighting anyone in Bsky for some time
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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Symbols matter. They matter *deeply*. I’m not saying we should have a flag burning amendment, but people *care* about the flag and what they believe it stands for and we should recognize and work with that fact.
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Don Zeko @donzeko.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
It's all downhill from here, I guess
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McJulie @mcjulie.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I believe this as well. As egalitarian marriage increasingly became the norm for male-female couples, it seemed increasingly ridiculous to not have same sex marriage
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