Counterpoint: they can always use their drippy mouth acid to melt the pedals.

Just as vaccine-skeptic Americans might still listen to their personal doctor's advice, it seems that hearing actual scientists talk about their values and commitment to public health (and not the right's caricature of them) can be key to reviving and fortifying public trust in medical science. /fin

2/ One implicit point that stood out for me: as horrifying as MAGA's war on science has so far been, the solidaristic actions of the scientific community, alongside a growing public backlash, may yet turn Trump's vandalism of key public agencies into a mere Pyrrhic victory. 2/

Good point here too - Dems have ability to maximize the damage: "All this gives Dems a potent line of attack on incumbent Republicans: that they’ve done nothing to resist the tariffs, even though the levies constitute a huge usurpation of their own power—that is, of Congress’s power to tax."

Our politics and our society need to catch up with this reality, not the comforting one that would have us believe there is a deeper method in the madness. More here: /fin
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It is far likelier that we are seeing what happens when broken men are given control over the most powerful military in the world, and choose to deploy it for their own psychological and political aggrandizement. 12/x

There remains a too-common presumption that this administration is somehow advancing U.S. interests, in however misguided a fashion: but we are well past the point where this presumption of good intentions should be granted. 11/x

It is as if the Trump administration had looked at all the interventions committed by the U.S. over the last century, and determined that the lesson offered by history is that we need more killing, more murder, more counterproductive interventions in sovereign nations. 10/x

Equally, it should raise all manner of alarm bells given prior U.S. involvement in Latin American affairs, a litany of offenses that include complicity in genocide in Guatemala and the operations of death squads in El Salvador. 9/x

The prospect of non-military involvement suggests a homicidal metastasizing of the Latin American maritime killings. Where Operation Southern Spear advertises its bloodlust and lawlessness, this CIA program should chill us with its secrecy, murderousness, and incompetence. 8/x

Survivors of the attacks say their attackers spoke English, with at least some wearing uniforms with US flags and “USA” stitched on. Whether they are military personnel, CIA employees, or mercenaries is at this point not publicly known. 7/x

As with the larger-scale campaign conducted by the military, the CIA effort (at least what we know of it) seems to specialize in murdering innocents and blowing up their boats. But unlike Southern Spear, the American people don’t know who’s doing the killing in their name. 6/x

So not only is the administration ostentatiously killing hundreds of sailors via Operation Southern Spear in order to make Trump and his allies feel like modern-day gods, but has established a separate, secret program that is killing still more innocent sailors. 5/x

This included drones striking their vessels, and armed men speaking English and wearing uniforms with American flags detaining them before releasing them to authorities in El Salvador. In at least one attack, injured sailors were denied medical attention by their captors. 4/x

A crew of 8 disappeared without a trace, save for a plume of smoke seen by a couple of sailors who had been out on one of its smaller boats. But with the two other vessels, all aboard survived, and they were able to recount the dire events that had befallen them. 3/x

Over nearly a year, the U.S. military has attacked more than 60 boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. At least 200 souls have perished in the strikes. Now the Washington Post has reported on a separate CIA program that has sunk 3 fishing vessels. 2/x
www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

Though Trump and his minions have done far worse, the WH's creation of a fictional narrative to target and potentially imprison an innocent American FOR UP TO A DECADE to cover up Trump's incompetence distills the president's malevolence into a particularly pure form. /fin