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Hayes Brown

@hayesbrown.bsky.social
60K followers 880 following 2.4K posts

Writer &c.

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Reposted by Hayes Brown
Mike Hixenbaugh @mikehixenbaugh.com · 02/10/2026
We’ve got the inside story of how Trump’s displeasure with seeing homeless people in D.C. became the first domino in a series of actions that culminated in the administration’s stunning decision to weaken the rights of millions of disabled Americans to live in their homes and communities.
nbcnews.com
How Trump’s homelessness crackdown became a sweeping retreat from disability rights
After issuing a memo making it easier to institutionalize homeless people, the Justice Department began abandoning cases protecting disabled people’s right to live in the community.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
My “bond markets functioning” t-shirt, etc.
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
this is apparently at a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration which makes this both more and less bizarre. Just casually making up new xenophilic (I guess?) stereotypes on a Wednesday afternoon.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
like...did nobody at the White House click the links? it feels like nobody clicked the links. www.ms.now/opinion/whit...
From the WH press release:

Administrations of both parties have used public service announcements to explain policy and make the case for the nation’s direction:
[...]

It’s not just modern Administrations. President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information used posters, films, and speakers to rally the country. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Office of War Information produced films, radio, and posters to promote the war effort.A headline from Smithsonian Magazine from the first link of the final section in the previous screenshot: How Woodrow Wilson’s Propaganda Machine Changed American Journalism

Subheadline: “The media are still feeling the impact of an executive order signed in 1917 that created ‘the nation’s first ministry of information’”From the National WWI Museum and Memorial’s website, the second link in the final section of the WH’s press release: 

“To influence public opinion in favor of the war, the U.S produced films, commissioned colorful posters, published pamphlets and recruited everyday Americans to “sell the war.” These efforts helped create both modern American wartime propaganda and spurred the 20th century advertising industry.”The final link in the press release from the first screenshot, this time from the George C. Marshall Foundation’s website:

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt named CBS newsman and journalist Elmer Davis as the director of the OWI. Davis was charged with creating and carrying out through the newspaper, radio, motion pictures and other facilities, information programs designed to inform and create an understanding for the U.S. citizens home and abroad.

According to Elmer Davis, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”
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Reposted by Hayes Brown
Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
new from me: i dug into the White House’s “uh these are just public service announcements” defense for the taxpayer-funded propaganda ads. it’s all bad but the wildest part is them using LITERAL WARTIME PROPAGANDA as a historical precedent to say this is all fine
ms.now
Opinion | The White House says these propaganda ads are PSAs. They’re not.
Government-funded ads praising President Trump are the opposite of “educational.”
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Reposted by Hayes Brown
Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Aaron is not underrating this. It's cinema. The sly smirk when Schmitt thinks he's gotten Smith to perjure himself. The hasty vanishing of the sign. Klobuchar getting Kennedy to hold it up. Schmitt getting LOUD and ANGRY when Klobuchar points out he mixed up the Hawks and Hawkeyes.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
new from me: i dug into the White House’s “uh these are just public service announcements” defense for the taxpayer-funded propaganda ads. it’s all bad but the wildest part is them using LITERAL WARTIME PROPAGANDA as a historical precedent to say this is all fine
ms.now
Opinion | The White House says these propaganda ads are PSAs. They’re not.
Government-funded ads praising President Trump are the opposite of “educational.”
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
i got one of my favorite kickers in ages published this weekend www.ms.now/opinion/trum...
Given the difficulties Trump has had, there’s no telling when or how the Iran war will end. But the longer the conflict persists and oil shipments remain hindered, the more likely the shifts in oil demand we’re seeing are to become permanent.

This administration doing anything to purposefully encourage that outcome is deeply unlikely. But if I had a nickel for every time Trump accidentally drove down global carbon emissions through a terrible policy decision, I’d have two nickels. Which, as a fictional mad scientist once said, “isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?”
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
i got one of my favorite kickers in ages published this weekend www.ms.now/opinion/trum...
Given the difficulties Trump has had, there’s no telling when or how the Iran war will end. But the longer the conflict persists and oil shipments remain hindered, the more likely the shifts in oil demand we’re seeing are to become permanent.

This administration doing anything to purposefully encourage that outcome is deeply unlikely. But if I had a nickel for every time Trump accidentally drove down global carbon emissions through a terrible policy decision, I’d have two nickels. Which, as a fictional mad scientist once said, “isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?”
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 23/09/2026
To quote @hayesbrown.bsky.social (again), this is the dumbest dystopia
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Adam Rogers @jetjocko.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
A lot of things make me feel kind of dumb, including how to take at face value the logic of “we are a multibillion dollar transnational industry building a vengeful elder god, and we definitely won’t stop unless you regulate us the way we want, which is a secret.”
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Laura Barrón-López @lbarronlopez.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
EXCLUSIVE @ms.now: Trump administration officials have discussed attaching the president’s name to Ford’s Theatre, the playhouse where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 Officials are circulating a list of government sites that could carry the president’s name www.ms.now/news/trump-f...
ms.now
Trump aides explore attaching president’s name to Ford’s Theatre
The playhouse where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated has been mentioned among federal properties that could carry the president’s name, people familiar with the effort told MS NOW.
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Ryan Teague Beckwith @ryanbeckwith.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Even off the record, they can't bring themselves to blame Trump. They are going to lose their jobs and insist it was because of the high price of ground beef. www.ms.now/news/crushed...
ms.now
‘We’re gonna get crushed’: Republicans privately say they’re doomed in the midterms
As the elections get closer and the political environment gets worse, Republicans are freaking out that their losses in November could be much worse than GOP leaders are acknowledging.
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Seth D. Michaels @sethdmichaels.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“Trump demands something different, which is personal ownership of public institutions.”
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Tim O’Brien @timobrien.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“Kao laid out in devastating detail how his operation worked. He gave agents a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers and members of Congress who he said helped him trade cash for contracts.” www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...
propublica.org
The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way
After the FBI caught a defense contractor’s CEO making illegal campaign contributions, it sought to launch a sweeping political bribery probe involving Collins and others. Then the second Trump admini...
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
man I miss shitty photoshop sometimes. it was much funnier to imagine future archaeologists hunched over an image trying to count the pixels as the ancient texts warned them to seek out falsehood
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Patrick Andelic @pkandelic.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The Muppets have to put on a show to save the Kennedy Center. There you go, Disney, that's your premise.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I don’t know a perception filter dropped or something but walking around today I clocked no fewer than five businesses with signage that was clearly AI-generated when before I’d seen zero
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Louis @louisevans.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
HALLUCINATED COMMUNITIES, by benedict ainderson
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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Well done to the picture editor who captioned this delightful snap of a black pig swimming off the west coast of Greece “swine-dark sea” www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Swine-dark sea ... Mediterranean black pigs swim at a beach on the private island of Atokos, in the lonian Sea off the west coast of Greece. The island, which is uninhabited by humans, is owned by a shipping magnate
Photograph: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
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Margarita @margarita.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
71% seems low
gizmodo.com
71% of Americans Say They're Completely Exhausted
A CDC report shows that people are not feeling relaxed and restful in the United States.
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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
@thebulwark.com did a supercut of all the prior times Trump said he was going to give Americans a $5000 check or whatever. It is glorious
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Supreme 13 @supreme13.org · 02/09/2026
Thank you @hayesbrown.bsky.social for this excellent piece at @ms.now. www.ms.now/opinion/hous... It is now posted here, along with other opinion pieces on Supreme Court expansion: supreme13.org/resources/op...
ms.now
Opinion | The GOP’s major concession about expanding the Supreme Court
There’s no way to call for amending the Constitution to lock in nine justices without admitting that Congress can now make the court whatever size it wants.
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Helen Rosner @hels.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
icymi I wrote a little ode to “Jupiter Ascending,” a very important film, in Saturday’s @newyorker.com Daily newsletter
"Jupiter Ascending" (2015)
There's just so much more nonsense than sense in the Wachowskis' magnificently insane space epic. The story, I guess, is about a beautiful Earthling toilet-scrubber catapulted into interplanetary political intrigue because she's a perfect DNA match for a recently-deceased galactic oligarch—but you're doomed if you go looking for coherent plot. Better to absorb this masterpiece as a high-production-value tone poem: Channing Tatum as a canine-spliced rollerblading bodyguard; something involving really hot siblings in a regeneration hot tub; Eddie Redmayne doing oh, so much ACTING; and something happens with bees? Whatever. It's all enormous and gorgeous-looking.—Helen Rosner, staff writer
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I completely agree. In pushing for this change they have to admit that it was always in Congress’s power to shape the Court as it sees fit
ms.now
Opinion | The GOP’s major concession about expanding the Supreme Court
There’s no way to call for amending the Constitution to lock in nine justices without admitting that Congress can now make the court whatever size it wants.
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Jaya Saxena @jayasaxena.com · 26/08/2026
The best way to honor the two who have left us recently, imo, is to keep being as gay as possible
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Paul F. Tompkins @pftompkins.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
youtu.be/j8bmjDoziaQ?...
youtu.be
The Rocky Horror Picture Show - I'm Going Home
YouTube video by THIRDPROJECT
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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Both Dolly Parton and Tim Curry had such a genuine enthusiasm for performing that it was impossible not to love them for it, there were things more highly and lowly regarded in their bodies of work but both of them threw themselves into everything because it was pure joy for them and that rules
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James Downie @jamescdownie.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
"Vought has claimed sweeping authority to withhold money from projects that go against President Donald Trump’s policies. But...lawmakers, even Republicans, are finally growing tired of Vought’s incessant incursions into their power of the purse." – @hayesbrown.bsky.social
ms.now
Opinion | Congress is finally getting mad about money
Even Republican lawmakers are getting tired of OMB Director Russ Vought going rogue on federal spending.
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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 23/08/2026
Fun fact: So convinced were white officials in 1963 that the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on the national mall would bring lawless and violent hordes of Black people that they imposed an emergency ban on alcohol sales in all of DC and neighboring Montgomery and PG counties.
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Asha Rangappa @asharangappa.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
He basically used journalists as…human shields?
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Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
People are criticizing me unfairly, such as for my actions and their inevitable consequences
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laura olin @lauraolin.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Abdul El-Sayed on capitalism: “I’m capitalist who just knows about capitalism. I have a bad habit of reading, I’m so sorry.”
We’ve spoken about capitalism versus socialism.

Do you want to talk about capitalism? Let’s talk about capitalism. Are you recording? Capitalism is about leveraging the laws of supply and demand to efficiently allocate capital expenditure to maximize value. When capitalism works, it’s because you have free entry and exit into markets. So if you believe in capitalism, you have to believe in government regulation to protect markets. In fact, right now, we have exactly the opposite. You don’t have to be a socialist to believe that you should be taxing billionaires their wealth. In fact, if you are a capitalist, you should believe in that. So, I’m capitalist who just knows about capitalism. I have a bad habit of reading, I’m so sorry.
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Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
“This would arguably be America’s most blatant loss in war ever, especially for a war the U.S. started.”
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Ana Marie Cox @anamariecox.com · 01/08/2026
Are you saying the DOJ withdrew that pool vandalism indictment… upon reflection?
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Ryan Teague Beckwith @ryanbeckwith.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The threat from AI is the same as the threat from a genie: Improper parsing of an instruction with disastrous consequences.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
new from me: frankly embarrassing that Fetterman couldn’t even be bothered to find new ways to be wrong about the filibuster. instead he just reheated the same cowardice we saw five years ago from Manchin and Sinema
ms.now
Opinion | Fetterman flipped on the filibuster. He was right the first time.
The junior senator from Pennsylvania now thinks the filibuster is a vital part of the Senate despite every bit of evidence to the contrary.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
i’m going to go ahead and leave this here
ms.now
Opinion | The White House doesn’t want history at the Smithsonian. It wants fandom.
A report attacking the National Museum of American History would prefer Americans feel a shallow patriotic crush than truly love this country.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
I said what I said.
ms.now
Opinion | Russell Vought should be impeached
The two-time director of the Office of Management and Budget has been two-timing Congress, making spending cuts that lawmakers rejected.
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David Kaye @davidakaye.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
fascinating that he would go there, not only b/c of what it says about his knowledge of how the world perceives trump admin crimes but also the assumption of blanket impunity within the united states.
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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Lawyers working for Harmeet Dhillion refuse to act like lawyers by putting things in writing for fear doing so will be used against them. 👀 This is WILDLY suspect behavior from the people trying to seize voting records from every state. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
This correspondence memorializes where things stand on the issues raised in
our June 30, 2026 letter, based on our call with Ned Hedley and John Arboleda on
July 1. We understand from Mr. Hedley the government does not intend to respond
to our correspondence in writing, out of the concern expressed on the call that what
it represents to us could be put before the Court and/or otherwise used against it.
Thus, to the extent we have misunderstood the government’s position conveyed on
the call, please respond to this email in writing to clarify things from your perspective;
otherwise, we will assume this accurately captures the parties’ discussion.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
How does this not constitute a monopoly shutting down its competition
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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
"They also made him the beneficiary of an unprecedented expansion of White House clemency power, a move tracing back to England’s King Charles II." www.ocregister.com/2026/07/21/t...
ocregister.com
Trump extends pardons to companies, echoing a 17th century king
Trump has become the first modern US president to issue pardons for companies, from a Middle America auto supplier to a crypto platform and a media startup.
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
I said what I said.
ms.now
Opinion | Russell Vought should be impeached
The two-time director of the Office of Management and Budget has been two-timing Congress, making spending cuts that lawmakers rejected.
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Murshed Zaheed @murshedz.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
“Absent his willingness to accept congressional supremacy on this front, Vought could — and should — serve as an example for what happens to bureaucrats who try to place themselves above elected lawmakers.” @hayesbrown.bsky.social
ms.now
Opinion | Russell Vought should be impeached
The two-time director of the Office of Management and Budget has been two-timing Congress, making spending cuts that lawmakers rejected.
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Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Maine Senator @senangusking.bsky.social: There is a serious threat to our elections in 2026 — and to democracy itself — but it’s not the Chinese, Venezuela, noncitizens voting or mail-in ballots. It’s Donald J. Trump. www.ms.now/opinion/trum...
ms.now
Opinion | What Americans should take away from Trump’s speech on election interference
Sen. Angus King: Since Trump returned to office last year, his administration has set about deliberately sabotaging the capacity of the federal government to protect our election infrastructure.
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Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
If you want to feel old, the videogame 'Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey' came out in 1996.
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Paul F. Tompkins @pftompkins.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
I saw an Instagram reel where people had installed a movie theatre-type soda machine in their home and they walked you through the cost which was thousands of dollars and the only two sodas it dispensed was Diet Coke and Diet Doctor Pepper so I think their assets should be seized
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Hayes Brown @hayesbrown.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Ohio knows what it did (exist)
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