iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

not only is he alive but he's on the air in Wichita Falls and San Angelo with this www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGIO91C_-PU

James Talarico saying "we can't afford Ken Paxton's corruption" in front of endless data centers

Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I asked DHS about an ICE recruiting poster that appears to echo a famous recruiting poster for the Rhodesian army. An anonymous spox responded by ranting about "western men." www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

DHS did not deny the connection when I reached out for comment on the provenance of the slogan.

“Western men have always been asked to stand between their homes and the forces that would overrun them,” an anonymous “DHS SPOX” responded in an email. “The people who find that sentence unforgivable are usually not the people standing the post. DHS will not outsource its vocabulary to communist activists who cannot distinguish a sovereign people from a hotel. We will not pretend that ‘Western civilization’ is a slur.”

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

"The reference—a one-off post with no accompanying context or follow-up—might have gone over the heads of most of Collins’ constituents. But the implications were obvious to plenty on the online right. A poster with the handle “X Wigger” responded: “We are all Rhodesia now.” Another user replied to Collins with a faded photo of three shirtless Rhodesian soldiers, and the words, “PATRIOTS IN CONTROL.”

“[W]e’ve got a sitting congressman rhodesia-posting now boys,” wrote a staffer at the right-wing outlet The Blaze. “[I]ncredible things are happening.”"

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

zach lahn has the perfect republican origin story (tried to debate the president)

zach lahn trying to debate on health care in colorado 17 years ago, when the earth was still young

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The subtext of 2026's hottest new workout trend (being a Democratic candidate) www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The “woke” part has probably consumed the most oxygen and engendered the most debate within the party. It has also been addressed, in a variety of ways, in a frenzy of TV ads and ill-advised Reels. But the “weak” part is straightforward: The solution is to not be weak. It’s to be strong, to stand up for yourself, to speak plainly, and when possible—and this really gets to the root of where things went wrong—not to be an octogenarian who walks at a shuffle and speaks at a whisper while voters go mad over inflation. There are many ways of doing that, but as a practical matter, if you want to show you have energy and can do real-person things and dispel misconceptions about Democrats Like You, well, you can always just try picking up something really heavy.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

this, from a Marcy Kaptur ad, is actually what it looks like in the room where they decide to raise your electric rates

bunch of people in a dark room with ominous computer screens plotting how to drive up your electric rates to pay for data centers

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

roger marshall may be the only Republican actively running on popular help-me-unleash-AI platform

Roger Marshall ad with an AI symbol next to guys building data centers and the words "creates jobs"

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

love this airy legalese in this document. these didn't all need to be bullet points

(C) An important preliminary point:
the Club’s criticisms of the PL and
its prosecution of the Charges
34) The Club was highly critical
a) Of the PL’s investigation of the Club
b) Of the PL’s decision to bring the Charges, and
c) Of a number of aspects of the manner of the PL’s prosecution of these Charges.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

One of the obvious questions when a candidate talks like this is whether they aren't just full of shit. In Sand's case, this really is just what he talks like. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

There was a part of me that wondered, as I watched every aspect of his life story become a parable for common ground, if Sand wasn’t laying it on a little thick. Iowa Republicans certainly think so. But flip over any rock and you find the same bugs. He used his college thesis to argue that public financing of elections could transcend ideological divides. At 22, he wrote a letter to The Gazette in Cedar Rapids making the case for “honest, straightforward discussion” to overcome polarization. And for one month in 2007, while building houses in post-Katrina New Orleans, Sand kept a blog.

It was in many ways a twentysomething’s chronicle of a twentysomething’s pursuits. But a familiar tone poked through. He was eager to answer questions, “even especially the antagonistic ones!” Sand pored over news reports and policy papers and concluded that the cure to the storm-wracked city’s ills lay in electing “problem-solvers instead of politicians.”

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Iowa may be the quintessential state for this midterm—a place that powered Obama's hope and Trump's carnage, and where a decade of one-party rule has done little to fix, and quite a fair bit to exacerbate, a worsening series of crises www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

When I tagged along for 10 campaign stops over three days just ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday, the subjects Sand was asked about most often were toxic water, cancer, data centers, and a succession of healthcare horrors. Iowa is No. 2 for cancer-rate growth and 48th in economic growth. It has been teetering on the edge of a recession for more than a year, battered by a trade war with the world and a not-a-war with Iran. Its public schools, once memorialized on the state quarter, are sliding down national rankings, as teachers battle book bans and legislators drain the budget to pay private school tuition for kids who already attend one. Farmer bankruptcies are rising. The population in much of the state is shrinking. Iowa is dead last in OB-GYNs per capita, and one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws is keeping it that way. For these reasons and many more, 49 governors had a higher approval rating last year than Iowa’s retiring Republican, Kim Reynolds. The state was once synonymous with participatory democracy. Now its politics is stagnant and beginning to stink—an algae bloom where a reflecting pool once stood.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

?? www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

“If we don’t defeat it?” Biden asked, unconvinced. The answer was regional war. Israel had already prepared a counterattack in the event that Iran’s missiles caused Israeli casualties. “Great,” Biden said.

The Situation Room connected the call. Biden jumped in. “Bibi, man, what the fuck are you doing?” He gripped the phone tight. “You think I’m Santa Claus? No Santa in Israel, pal.” When Netanyahu asked what he meant, Biden said he could cut off military aid to Israel with the snap of a finger, leaving the country on its own. Netanyahu retorted that Israel would defend itself even without the United States. (We later learned that he concluded from this call that we were cutting military supplies.)

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

too much noise here, this is like a Liga MX jersey

Tom Kean debating in front of an extremely cluttered background of different sponsors. But hey, he showed up!

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

shoutout to Tom Kean, "send American forces to Israel" is certainly not poll-tested politics www.politico.com/news/2026/09...

And with voters increasingly pessimistic about the Trump-initiated war in Iran, Kean pushed for staying the course, saying it’s “focused on getting real, positive results” and that he “assume[s] it will be over” in the coming months. He also positioned himself as an ardent defender of Israel, at one point saying that he would support sending American troops to defend it if necessary.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

i don't trust any polls but i do trust the ashley-hinson-ometer x.com/hinsonashley...

The House should return to DC immediately to work to pause diesel exports, suspend the gas tax, fully unleash E15 and biodiesel, and work on a diesel relief program for truckers and farmers.

Americans need relief and I’ll work with anyone to deliver.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

it's not the most germane to collins but my favorite part of the navatek story is their attempt to deliberately monetize mediocrity like this www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...

"While some projects involved potentially meaningful research, Navatek’s bread and butter was R&D that went nowhere. As a slideshow prepared by an executive explained, “We thrive in the valley of death,” the term for the bureaucratic gap where research languishes without being developed into a product. The slideshow noted that none of the technology had ever actually been deployed."

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

it's a midterm election so let's see what the Brooklyn Democratic Party is up to!

brooklyn democratic party doing nothing but emailing me about updates to their attempted coup

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

in 2026 this is called "the median Republican origin story" www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Over the next few years, Constantino began spending most of his time in Mexico training as a boxer. His campaign biography boasts of the “chiseled physique” he developed after taking up the sport professionally, when, at the age of 39, he won a 2022 bout against an opponent who, according to boxing records, never fought professionally before or since. His final—and only third—professional match was a loss the following year to another fighter making his pro debut, a recovering drug addict and candy vendor who has said he was meant to be “carne de cañón” (cannon fodder).

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

lots of hand-wringing about the New York primaries this year but weirdly only in one direction. Here's who's probably replacing Elise Stefanik: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

As he pursued boxing, Constantino was also trying to launch what he marketed as a “happy” social media company where users were required to verify their identities before posting. On the site, called Stimulus, his persona was lighthearted, if juvenile; he made at least three posts about eating soups containing animal penis. That was tame compared to a 2024 attempt at stand-up in a Manhattan bar where Constantino described a scenario in which women supporting Kamala Harris vomited before and after he put his penis in their mouths. “I had the consent forms,” Constantino joked.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

there's always money in the grenade facto— oh. oooh. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

"According to a Florida court filing, Pacem ended up owing a Canadian lender more than $66 million. In another case, Pacem is subject to an order under which it is obligated to pay $8 million to an arms company that bought grenades from Pacem but never received them. A status update submitted in federal court on Wednesday states that Pacem has still not “paid any portion of the judgment amount.”"

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

forget the fake-shocked statements over the weekend from people pretending not to know exactly who French is—this is the crux of it: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

That French could be vulnerable in a race Republicans have long taken for granted speaks to both his party’s weak standing and his own. But the fact that he’s made it this far tells a troubling story. The state’s Republican leaders have mostly not renounced French. Gov. Greg Abbott has endorsed him. Paxton has campaigned with him. The defeated incumbent—who once slammed French for his “ignorant bigotry” and “hateful attacks on the Jewish people”—has offered his congratulations. Because while French might say some things that others in his party won’t, or use language and imagery that many of them might avoid, the forces that increasingly power their movement are ones he embodies—Christian nationalism, internet-addled white supremacy, and a slow-building and then frighteningly sudden frenzy of state-sponsored Islamophobia. For a long time, much of the Texas GOP seemed to exist to serve oil and gas. Now the industry is a means to a culture-war end.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

worked on this story and he just tweeted it etc. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

When he heard rumors French was running, Rosenthal assumed it was a prank. And while Rosenthal is well aware of his opponent’s oeuvre, when I asked about French’s assertion that “We need to be Rhodesia,” Rosenthal did a double take.

“We need to what?” he asked. “‘Be Rhodesia?’ I don’t even—that’s…I…I haven’t heard that.”

“So Rhodesia is now, oh gosh…Zimbabwe?” he sighed, working it out. “He’s talking about apartheid and white minority rule—that’s just wild.”

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

not enough appreciation for Tim Scott's insistence that the Senate's big crypto bill would be good for single moms

Tim Scott: Growing up with a single mom in South Carolina, I learned that every dollar matters.

The Clarity Act will protect hard-earned money, keep jobs and innovation in the United States, and strengthen national security. This final text further empowers law enforcement and gives the Treasury Secretary the tools to protect community banks, farmers, and rural Americans.

It’s time to pass the Clarity Act.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

they're trying to one-up JMart, you can't one-up JMart

Gavin Newsom and Jake Tapper fly-fishing for some reason. Newsom tells Tapper he won't run if Kamala does.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

we have adapted the clever "shoot yourself in the dick" strategy, from the famous book, "shoot your enemy in the dick" www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

"n one captured document, bin Laden argues that a better strategy would be a financial hit that affected the “income of every American citizen.” He suggests that al-Qaeda consider attacking shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. He was developing that plan (clever, come to think of it) around the time SEAL Team 6 shot him in the face."

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

it's bad out there www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

"Some of this is the result of Republican Party’s brain drain over the course of the Trump era, as rank-and-file normies were gradually replaced by a group of fake-it-til-you-make-it sycophants. Even an entry-level nativist ought to understand that swapping the Steak ‘n Shake in a Capitol Hill cafeteria with a halal fast-food shop famous for its “zinger burger” is not “equivalent to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the 7th century,” but Georgia Rep. Mike Collins is—and I hope this is not the way he finds out—not a very smart person. Gill is a nepo-baby who got his job because his father-in-law is Dinesh D’Souza. Ogles was basically the Music Man of the Mid-South. Tuberville once lost to Vanderbilt. But it is also preeminent now in part because as Muslims become more visible at higher levels in American politics, the locus of the debate on the right has shifted from whether the wrong people might come over without vetting to whether the national fabric is dirtied by their very presence."

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

this was a John Cornyn ad this year, arguing that Ken Paxton was weak on Islam

Ken Paxton next to a scary Muslim-looking woman in black-and-white, with a warning that Paxton is failing to stop Islam. it's from a John Cornyn ad

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

had no idea this was his position in september 2015 tbh

Politico: Trump calls for taking in Syrian refugees

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

they just gave $70 billion in new funding to ICE, an agency *invented* after 9/11, but for people being slowly killed by 9/11 they had to pull out a street map to get anything nymag.com/intelligence...

"Many have argued that the boundaries that were set made little sense. The dust did not suddenly stop at Canal or Houston Street. “When we drafted the bill, we had to make arbitrary decisions,” Nadler admits. “We could have said 14th Street. And what about the people in Brooklyn? The cloud didn’t stop there. So we arbitrarily chose Canal Street.” He said the decision was purely a financial calculation. “The Congressional Budget Office would tell us, ‘If you make the boundary 14th Street, it’s going to cost $10 billion. If you make it Tenth Street, it’s going to cost $5 billion. It’s too many people,” he said. “Charlie Rangel, the head of the Ways and Means Committee, said, ‘You get $4.3 billion; that’s all you’re going to get. Make it work.’”

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

yaakov roth saying the government could just destroy the statue of liberty is really the "john yoo says no treaty can stop the president from crushing the testicles of a person's child" for our current era nymag.com/intelligence...

"If the government decided to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, Millett asked, and if they moved quickly, could nothing be done about that? “I think that’s right, yes,” Yaakov Roth, a Justice Department lawyer, replied. "

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

the Zach Lahn plane game, on the other hand, is wholesome entertainment for the whole family www.zachplahn.com

the Zach Lahn plane game, from the Iowa Democrats, where you try to navigate Zach Lahn's plane back to Wichita

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

there were going to be "hundreds of arrests." people really thought this! x.com/ZachLahn/sta...

Zach Lahn: "Elected Officials supporting USAID: this house of deep state cards is about to collapse and if even 1/10th of what we’ve heard is accurate there will be hundreds of arrests. This is the time to distance yourself, let it fall, and pray you’re not in the emails."

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

going back into the archives. DOGE was wild. the Republican nominee for governor of Iowa really thought they were gonna end up prosecuting Amy Klobuchar

Zach Lahn: "Are you saying that all of the previous government employees with access to this information were elected? You do know that government employees are not elected, right? This is outrage theater as you and your friends are on the verge of facing prosecutions."

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

why does this go so hard www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/m...

"Deer are not themselves hosts for the Lyme-causing agent, but they are integral to the Lyme epidemic and other tick-borne health problems, because they provide deer ticks and lone stars with their mating grounds and their final, largest blood meal, the one that enables them to lay their vile blobs of tick caviar and multiply en masse. "

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

here at Mother Jones, when a *conservative firebrand* uses *charged rhetoric* that has *drawn criticism* it is legal and in fact encouraged to actually quote it www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

"In an article about Herrera’s excesses and his successes, the New York Times declined to print some of his most profane viral statements “because this is a family newspaper.” I suspect Mother Jones readers may prefer the unabridged edition, so here goes: In a 2023 video, Herrera referred to children as “cum trophies.” Of mothers’ views on current events, he said, “Just because you let somebody creampie you doesn’t mean I have to give a shit about your political opinions.” When Austin-American-Statesman reporter Faith Bugenhagen asked the Herrera campaign about those remarks, the team replied with a photo of a cream pie (the baked good, to be clear)."

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Florida primaries are just a truly impressive level of weird and grim and other things

Madison Cawthorn and Chris Collins both doing single-digit numbers in their attempt to return to Congress from a seat in southwest Florida they've both only recently moved to. Weird people.

Alan Grayson polling a distant third in his weird comeback bid against Cory Mills, who is also losing

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick coming in a distant fourth, just ahead of the guy from 2 Live Crew, after resigning from Congress and then inexplicably running again

Randy Fine, one of the worst dudes in Congress in my lifetime, just managing a majority in a primary with Dan Bilzerian, a genuinely revolting dude. we've got to shut Florida down for a while

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

what about the one where Cory Mills, the subject of one of the best ledes I read this year, is maybe possibly on the ropes www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

"Over the past few months, I have spoken to over a dozen people who know Rep. Cory Mills. Nearly everyone, I found, dislikes him. Some outright despise him: 'repulsive and vile,' 'schmuck,' 'little bitch.' Others were more formal. 'I have no use for people with no honor,' an Idaho firearms instructor who worked with Mills in the Middle East told me. The most blunt was a veteran who once reported to Mills in the Army. He told me of the congressman from Florida: 'I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.'”

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

i'm not putting a lot of stock in a PPP poll for Senate Majority PAC but how many more of those would you have to get before having to address the question, is this man the future of the Democratic party

Adam Hamilton, the minister and ex-Republican-turned-Democratic nominee against Roger Marshall. But you knew that, of course. He is a gray-haired white guy with clear-rimmed glasses and a blazer, a candidate straight out of central casting, if the role you were casting for was a midwestern methodist minister.

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

they're gonna do the isaiah meme for him

the Department of Defense, self-styled as the "Department of War," posting a photo of a guy waiting for a helicopter with the words "Send Me" overlaid, a reference to Isaiah 6:8 that I don't think they understand but love to use

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

these people, man www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/u...

"As a sign of how skittish the firm had become, an email exchange reviewed by The Times documents a heated discussion among partners about how — or whether — to alter a website that recounted the firm’s work against white supremacists and the rioters of Jan. 6, 2021. Some even proposed checking with the administration to see whether the website would anger the White House. Another partner warned that “there likely won’t be a next time” for Paul Weiss “if we get hit by the administration again.”"

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

a glitch in the AI apartment listing

big ol' oven right in the middle of the bedroom, perfect for cooking meals and also sleeping

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

wonderfully revealing little detail. but good luck trying to eat at olive garden, buddy. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/m...

"On Jan. 21, 2025 — the first full day of the second Trump administration — Larry Ellison woke up in his 33-bedroom, 34-bathroom oceanfront mansion in Florida, got into his Gulfstream jet and headed up to Washington. Ellison, who was 80 and worth in the neighborhood of $200 billion, had an appointment at the White House. He didn’t bother to take a driver’s license — he needed to call someone on the president’s staff to vouch for him at the gate"

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Tim Murphy @timothypmurphy.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

very cool, my state assemblyman says we can bulldoze the existing neighborhood and replace it with yuppie brownstones and containerized trash collection, and he's going to do it by [flips mailer over] regulating e-bikes

official office-side, not-at-all-campaign mailer from assemblyman lester chang with a picture of a beautiful brownstone block with the text "what your neighborhood could look like," next to a trash-laden completely-different street with the label "your neighborhood right now." on further review, Lester Chang's only identified pathway to getting this is banning e-bikes and making it harder to build shelters.

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