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Joshua Henson

@the1henson.bsky.social
203 followers 546 following 85 posts

Proud husband. Critical thinker. Paranoid about China and tech. Man, I chose a bad time to start studying democracy.

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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
The point of college education is to challenge, not only beliefs, but the process by which you obtain them. If we are to be (even more so than now) a society in which the individual’s initial reactions to stimuli are unchallenged by rigor, I suspect we won’t like the long term consequences.
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Kind of his staff to transfer this to letterhead instead of sending the original drafted in crayon.
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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Let’s talk about abolishing ICE. Very few people who say “abolish ICE” mean “abandon all immigration enforcement.” Rather, they mean “the structure of immigration enforcement is irretrievably broken and needs to be reorganized, just like we did 23 years ago when we created ICE.” /1
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
This THREAD.
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
So they shut down the government for over a month, disrupting the entire country, just to ask for very little and voluntarily obtain nothing at all.
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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
The only explanation for this is that these people would disprove the administration’s narrative about the identity of the people we are murdering. I’m a little surprised they didn’t just straight-up murder these two in custody. That’s who the government is now.
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Harry Turtledove @hntdove.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Hell of a thing to put next to a statue of Joan of Arc. (h/t David Pilling)
Fire extinguisher next to a statue of Joan of Arc
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
See this is very sharp, but it's the kind of thing that should populate the budget bill. Any illegal impoundment should result in the immediate elimination of the presidential travel budget, for example.
 Alsobrooks, Van Hollen Introduce Department of Defense’s Cost of War Act

This legislation will require the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to pay the cost of changing the name of the Department of Defense to the “Department of War” from his travel budget. 

 

WASHINGTON, DC – As reported in Politico's Morning Defense, Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen (Both D-Md.) introduced S.2848, the Department of Defense’s Cost of War Act (DoD COW), which, if passed, will require the costs for the renaming of the Department of Defense to be deducted from the Secretary of Defense’s travel budget. 

 

The cost of changing the name from Department of Defense to Department of War in all internal and external communications could rise to hundreds of millions of dollars. Rather than appropriating millions of more dollars and wasting Americans’ taxpayer money, this bill would force the department to take the money from the Secretary’s travel budget first and then from the travel budgets of the military service secretaries.
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
For my military folks, this is the State Department equivalent of putting a (weird) junior lieutenant in command of Naval Personnel Command.
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Kevin Hell-iott @kjephd.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
In my view, the window to *forestall* autocratization of the US political system is basically closed. We're now in the consolidation phase of a new authoritarian constitutional settlement. The question is how far it'll get (will it achieve its apparent goal of fascism?) & at what pace. Here's why:
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
CBS/Paramount need to learn now that Trump knows the leverage he holds over them, the lucrative merger they have planned will be indefinitely delayed to prolong that leverage. That merger ain’t happening. It’s a tool now. A dangling carrot for fools. A tool for the president to erode a free press.
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The Onion @theonion.com · 01/07/2025
“It is this court’s opinion that apparently everyone has their own ideas about how this court should operate and is not shy about sharing their views—even when no one asks,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote theonion.com/supreme...
theonion.com
Supreme Court Rules 6-3 That Everyone A Damn Critic
WASHINGTON—In a provocative 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that everyone’s a damn critic these days. “It is this court’s opinion that apparently everyone has their own ideas about how this court should operate and is not shy about sharing their views—even when no one asks,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his 10-page […]
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Ruth Ben-Ghiat @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
So do we get why I was banned from speaking about Pinochet at the Naval Academy now?
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David Rothkopf @djrothkopf.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
The problem is not that there are too many Americans protesting in the streets. The problem is that there are not enough. Not by a long shot.
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Aram Shabanian @aramshabanian.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Weird they're showing Swan Lake on Fox right now
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David Nir @davidnir.com · 08/05/2025
The new pope is younger than 13 members of the Senate Democratic caucus
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John Castiglione @johncastiglione.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
There's a thousand physical, material, articulable reasons why this all has happened, but I absolutely believe the metaphysical truth is that America got rich and degenerate and almost no one believes that bad things can really, truly happen to us.
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Real talk. I’ve lost all belief in American exceptionalism. There is no secret Liberty Sauce that makes us inherently better. We’re just human beings (derogatory). But it also means we’re human beings (laudatory), so I refuse to believe Republicans won politics forever and can rule as god kings.
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Nina Jankowicz @ninajankowicz.com · 27/02/2025
A pro-Russia content aggregation network is churning out at least 3 MILLION pieces of propaganda per year, all on sites that are virtually unusable by humans. So what's the goal? We explore the idea that it might be to flood LLMs with pro-Russia content: static1.squarespace.com/static/6612c... 1/
Executive Summary
A pro-Russia content aggregation network, Pravda, appears to be set up to flood large-language models with pro-Kremlin content, The American Sunlight Project has found. 

Over the past several months, ASP researchers have investigated 108 new domains and subdomains belonging to the Pravda network, a previously-established ecosystem of largely identical, automated web pages that previously targeted many countries in Europe as well as Africa and Asia with pro-Russia narratives about the war in Ukraine. ASP’s research, in combination with that of other organizations, brings the total number of associated domains and subdomains to 182. The network’s older targets largely consisted of states belonging to or aligned with the West. 

Notably, this latest expansion includes many countries in Africa, the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and North America. It also includes entities other than countries as targets, specifically non-sovereign nations, international organizations, audiences for specific languages, and prominent heads of state. The top objective of the network appears to be duplicating as much pro-Russia content as widely as possible. With one click, a single article could be autotranslated and autoshared with dozens of other sites that appear to target hundreds of millions of people worldwide. 

ASP researchers also believe the network may have been custom-built to flood large language models (LLMs) with pro-Russia content. The network is unfriendly to human users; sites within the network boast no search function, poor formatting, and unreliable scrolling, among other usability issues. This final finding poses foundational implications for the intersection of disinformation and artificial intelligence (AI), which threaten to turbocharge highly automated, global information operations in the future.
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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
When you realize it is almost impossible to overcook chicken thighs
Neo stopping bullets in the Matrix
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Alexander S. Vindman @avindman.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
The Dark Age of American Intelligence: Allies Will Likely Stop Intel Sharing open.substack.com/pub/alexande...
open.substack.com
The Dark Age of American Intelligence
Tulsi Gabbard and the End of Intelligence Sharing
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Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
One of the greatest tricks that Donald Trump and Elon Musk ever pulled is to convince millions of people that DOGE is about government efficiency. It's about narcissistic, resentful destruction: The Death of Government Expertise. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
theatlantic.com
The Death of Government Expertise
Why Trump and Musk are on a firing spree
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
The United States is currently experiencing our version of Mao’s cultural revolution.
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
If the president has the power to change how the government spends money in ways congress hasn’t authorized, then he also has the power to raise your taxes without congress. Is that really what you want?
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
I do not entirely understand the point. But I have seen a pattern. They’re quickly dismantling every single functional unit of the government that helps people. It doesn’t matter if the people helped are here at home or overseas. If you help people, your job will be deemed wasteful.
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
This administration is like a bunch of monkeys gleefully pulling apart a boat that’s keeping them alive in the Atlantic.
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Pete Buttigieg @petebuttigieg.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Incompetence in Washington puts every American at risk, no matter how you voted. No one should be happy that the DOGE team - the same folks who randomly published classified U.S. security information online today - wants access to your bank account & Social Security numbers.
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Gravel Influencer @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
This comment on r/fednews really stood out to me. Trump and Musk want people to think they're firing do-nothing "bureaucrats," but they're really getting rid of people dedicated to serving this country and keeping it operational. I hope these stories get told.
I lost my job. USDA Forest Service.


My probation was up next week.


I did everything right. I took a GS-7 role with a master’s degree just to get my foot in the door. I spent years doing seasonal fieldwork for low pay, working in remote places, gaining experience, and building skills, just for a chance at a permanent position. I was about to be a GS-9. I wrote NEPA reports. I conducted field surveys. I worked fire support. I dedicated myself to this work because I believed in it.


Public lands don’t manage themselves. The wildlife, watersheds, and forests we protect don’t just stay protected without people on the ground making it happen. My coworkers and I took on that responsibility, often in places most people never think about but that matter more than they know.


And now? Just like that, I’m out.


Edit: I’ve consistently supported progressive policies and have voted Democrat in every national and local election since I was 18. I do appreciate folks asking, I have some coworker having a serious 'leopards ate my face' moment right now.
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 14/02/2025
"Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
theatlantic.com
There’s a Term for What Trump and Musk Are Doing
How regime change happens in America
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Wajahat Ali @wajali.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Most Americans still have no idea about how F'd this country is about to get. I think if they knew it would be too overwhelming to process so they prefer maintaining the delusion, "It won't be that bad." It'll be very bad, folks. Hold on to your butts.
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Elon’s vanity-named kid wiping a booger on the Resolute desk on live TV is too blunt to be a metaphor.
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Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Imagine you're just some 30-something guy who converts to one of the world's major religions and in less than a decade its spiritual leader is rebuking you in front of the entire world That's how big a loser JD Vance is apnews.com/article/pope...
apnews.com
Pope rebukes Trump administration over migrant deportations, and appears to take direct aim at Vance
Pope Francis has issued a major rebuke to the Trump administration’s mass deportation of migrants. He warned that the program to forcefully deport people purely because of their illegal status deprive...
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
The goal isn’t to dismantle the government. It’s to dismantle the middle class, because a prosperous, educated middle class is the only credible threat to the unchecked power of the tech lords.
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Pete Buttigieg @petebuttigieg.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Project 2025 was unpopular because of things like the plan for Trump to shut down the CFPB, which helps you get your money back if a bank cheats you.
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Norm Eisen @normeisen.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
We're seeing a level of executive overreach that is unprecedented in the US But other countries have defeated autocratic forces before—& Americans can learn from their successes We outlined a pro-democracy blueprint👇-TN www.brookings.edu/articles/dem...
brookings.edu
Democracy Playbook 2025
Norm Eisen and Jonathan Katz provide actionable steps for democratic actors in the U.S. and globally to strengthen democratic institutions and resist illiberal forces.
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Sam 🐈‍⬛ @sammakescoolstuff.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
In a sentence never before uttered by humans, I am delighted to share that an alligator stole my conservation instructor’s hat by jauntily walking into the water while wearing it 🐊
A middle aged man helplessly holds an alligator’s tail as it steals his hat
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
“Move fast and break things” is a style of business and technological innovation and disruption that only works when the consequences of breaking things are low or nonexistent. Otherwise it’s just recklessness. There’s a reason this style of disruption is used to improve consumer goods.
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
I would prefer to live in precedented times.
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Seems important
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Justin Levitt @justinlevitt.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Normal reporting won’t cut it in these times. The follow-up questions need to be: - Who’s acting - What position do they hold - Are they paid by the govt - What’s their legal authority to act What’s being described as govt policy is really just a combo of breaking and entering and grand larceny.
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Ruth Ben-Ghiat @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
This is a national emergency:
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
Stop repeating “DEI.” It’s becoming yet another shibboleth, a vague conjuring word to allow conservatives to say “eww.” Instead, make it crystal clear what they’re really saying: they blame every single problem in modern America on the fact we allow women and black people to be educated and work.
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
This is long but important. David is one of the foremost thinkers about the maladies infecting American democracy.
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Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett @crockett.house.gov · 30/01/2025
The government has no right to decide what name or nickname your child goes by in class. The government has no right to pick out what clothes your child wears to school. This is not just an attack on trans children. It's an attack on personal choice. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/u...
nytimes.com
With Sweeping Executive Orders, Trump Tests Local Control of Schools
The orders seek to encourage “patriotic education” and restrict discussions about racism and gender by threatening to withdraw federal funding. But schools are often resistant to change.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Yes, this administration is dangerous and cruel, but they are also shockingly dim and incompetent. Opportunities are everywhere. Make everything as hard as possible. Resist every demand. Refuse entry without a warrant. Don’t take the buyout. Their problem solving skills are 📉
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
The only thing that changed here was the agency’s leadership, who forced this assessment (made with a low confidence level).
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Anja Neundorf @anjaneundorf.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
How do autocrats stay in power? Our new research dives into the strategies of political control—repression, co-optation, and indoctrination—used across 229 autocracies from 1946 to 2010. What we found will change the way you think about authoritarian resilience. 🧵👇
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Joshua Henson @the1henson.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
“We obeyed the law, we told the truth, and we kept the peace.” - Vice President Mondale’s written eulogy of his governing partner, President Carter
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