Ari Kohen
@kohenari
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Political theory prof, husband, dad, native Detroiter, MSU & Duke alum. I publish on heroism, human rights & Holocaust education. Tweets are from me, not the U.
Lincoln, Nebraska
Joined June 2008
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If you enjoy any of my tweets, you might also be interested to know that I’ve published a couple of books and a bunch of articles on topics like human rights, heroism, and restorative justice.
You can find links to that stuff here:
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Oh.
'I don't believe in welfare' — Nebraska Gov. Pillen maintains he won't seek federal grocery aid
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Wow, this article about Nebraska’s combined anti-trans and abortion ban bill.
Hat tip to Senator Armendariz, who says she doesn’t know anything about the issue, doesn’t pay attention to current events, and wishes the bill she voted for hadn’t been introduced.
It passed by 1 vote.
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Look at all these coastal elites that turned up in Nebraska to protest Trump's unconstitutional
#MuslimBan
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I know a lot of people won’t be happy to hear this, but that’s Joe Biden. He knows a whole lot about a whole lot of important stuff, he seems to be a good and serious person, he wants to make life better for average people, and he sometimes flubs his words.
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On the one hand, Donald Trump accidentally left some nuclear secrets sitting by the room temperature all you can eat shrimp bar in his hotel’s dining room. On the other hand, Joe Biden pointed out that it was bad that he did that. So, you see, both sides.
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"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." 1984. Orwell.
Spicer says this is the largest inaugural crowd ever, period.
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These are the people who devoted an entire legislative session to taking away people’s rights in the face of massive opposition from experts and ordinary citizens. They openly admit that none of their constituents mentioned this issue to them and they don’t know much about it. 🤷♂️
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I’ve been extremely surprised by the whole university presidents Congressional hearing debacle. First, I’m surprised by the number of people who think Rep. Stefanik was somehow acting in good faith or is some sort of friend of Jewish people. She wasn’t and she isn’t.
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I’ve always said, if you need to fire up a crowd you need Leon Panetta to talk about foreign policy for 5-7 minutes.
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In an hour or two, I’m going to be attacked by a right-wing mob. It’s source will be Turning Point USA and Breitbart. If you’re interested in seeing how these folks weaponize the internet against college professors, here’s some information:
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So the Omaha police don’t mind one bit when *some* people stop traffic for a Trump parade, but when *other* people stop traffic to march for racial justice it’s tear gas and riot gear and hundreds of arrests. Huh. I wonder what the reason for the difference in treatment could be?
I just happen to come across a big
#ProTrump
car parade heading down Dodge street in Omaha today. Here’s a look. Motorcycles were blocking some of the side streets from entering the intersection while the cars drove by.
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Read the article. It’s amazing. We have a handful of legislators who care enough to listen and learn. And then we have the majority, who seem not to know or care what they’re doing as long as it feels right to them and they have the votes to do it. Awful.
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I keep saying Nebraska has a very serious extremism problem. There was an event for a candidate for legislature yesterday. And everyone’s sharing their photos with a guy *wearing a Hitler t-shirt.*
If I walk into a room and there’s a guy in a Hitler shirt, I’m in the wrong room.
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Nebraskan here. Nothing makes me crazier than the Ben Sasse hagiography that happens every few months. It’s the best indication we have of the way that mediated versions of people have replaced who they actually *are*. You want to know who Sasse is? Come to Nebraska & ask around.
Sasse is one of the most impressive public officials I have met. He has the inspirational intensity of the best coach you ever had, and the knowledge and enthusiasm of the best college professor you ever had. Someone with this level of talent needs to find further ways to serve.
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Huh. What a crazy idea.
Almost like they’re uniting the states. I wonder what you’d call something like that.
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Will *any* Republican elected officials condemn their colleague? I assume not, but I’d sure love to be surprised.
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@RaySuarezNews
I don’t think most state senators here would say it out loud but it seems pretty clear that they get their news from Facebook and from church.
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Missing in ALL of this is why these people took this photo. This hand gesture has a clear message, one that people use to signal to one another. The guy who worked for TPUSA got fired for racism. They’re having fun winking at white nationalism/white supremacy.
That’s the story.
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Last Friday, I received a threatening phone call from Congressman Jeff Fortenberry’s Chief of Staff, Reyn Archer.
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Congratulations on our new made-up problem, America. Thanks to another super duper astroturfing campaign, it’s officially a real problem now.
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The Russia scandal is so all-encompassing that Trump is tweeting crazily about the Russia scandal to try to distract from the Russia scandal
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Does anyone else think it’s weird that Nebraska’s biggest city experienced serious flooding this weekend and the mayor, the district’s congressman, members of the city council, and the governor haven’t said a single word about it publicly? We *really* need better representation.
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We deserve a lot better from our elected officials than this reprehensible garbage.
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It really is astonishing what a handful of right wing extremists can do if you empower them. A long thread.
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OK. I want to talk about this tweet because a *lot* of people are telling Hannah that she’s wrong. She is right.
Saving Jewish children was righteous and heroic. Converting them to Christianity was not.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
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Let’s give a big hand to Nebraska’s own Ebenezer Scrooge. It only took literally everyone in the entire state telling him that he was being a monster—and probably being haunted by some ghosts—for him to do the absolute easiest thing and feed hungry kids with someone else’s money.
In a reversal, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen says the state will opt into the federal Summer EBT program that his administration had previously said the state wouldn’t participate in.
#neleg
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It’s from *Pence’s* religious perspective that my murdered family members might be resurrected. But they—and I—forcefully reject that cosmology. We don’t believe what he believes. Believe what you want, man, but I’d appreciate it if you could leave 6 million dead Jews out of it.
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While everyone is worried about the 20 year olds chanting “Free Palestine” at Harvard, these Christofascists are straightforwardly telling us that they will “annihilate” the Jews when they take power. Eye on the ball, people.
Antisemitic white nationalist Christian fascist Nick Fuentes says that when his America First movement takes power, all non-Christians will be executed: "When we take power, they need to be given the death penalty ... They must be absolutely annihilated when we take power."
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As Nebraska prepares to enact a ban on abortion, I keep seeing state senators say, “I believe life begins at conception” in explaining the vote they intend to cast. I understand that they believe this. What I want someone to explain is why I should be governed by their beliefs.
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Archer and Fortenberry know perfectly well that I don’t “like vandalism.” But they wanted to intimidate me, with both the power of their office and with a specific threat to unleash a mob against me. And that’s why I’ve filed a report with the Office of Congressional Ethics.
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I sat through a full Ben Sasse townhall once. It was like watching an American politics lecture given by an MA student who wasn’t actually studying American politics but was talking to an elementary school music class and he’d read parts of two books on Jefferson so he’d be fine.
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This is really a perfect encapsulation of Pence’s unique (and, to me, kinda gross) evangelical worldview. What he’s trying to say is some variant of “עם ישראל חי” but he can’t figure out how to do it without the Christian rhetoric of resurrection that Jews don’t buy into at all.
A few days ago, Karen & I paid our respects at Yad Vashem to honor the 6 million Jewish martyrs of the Holocaust who 3 years after walking beneath the shadow of death, rose up from the ashes to resurrect themselves to reclaim a Jewish future.
#HolocaustRemembranceDay
#NeverAgain
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[taps microphone]
Hello. I live in Nebraska.
[feedback]
I have a question regarding the $12B Trump plans to give to huge corporate farms near where I live to blunt the fallout from his tariffs: What if we just don’t do the tariffs and use the $12B to fund, like, rural schools?
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Remember, the people who just decided that hungry children in Nebraska shouldn’t get enough food to eat are the very same people who insist that we call them “pro-life” and “pro-family.”
“With a state investment of around $300,000 in administrative costs, Nebraska would gain an estimated $18 million in federal dollars to provide for approximately 150,000 Nebraska children caught in the vicious cycle of food insecurity.”
Unconscionable NOT to do this,
@TeamPillen
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Nebraska really did a number on itself, surprising exactly nobody I know.
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It’s fun that members of the majority are so aggrieved that they can’t get anything done in this legislative session, when *they* prioritized anti-trans bills. “My constituents want tax reform and a whole lot of other things.” OK, sure. So why did you prioritize anti-trans bills?
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For a tax exempt organization, this church sure seems deeply involved in partisan political organizing.
I’m waiting for Charlie Kirk’s rally to start at Lords of Hosts Church in Omaha. He’s advocating for the winner-take-all electoral vote system in Nebraska. Already a long line forming for the 7 p.m. event. I’ll post any updates in this thread.
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But I recorded our entire 53 minute conversation and you can listen to his specific threat and the few minutes that preceded it right here:
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That distortion matters. Because that’s the story they need to sell. They also need to sell that these are students. They aren’t students of mine, of course, and never have been. But they must emphasize that *1* attends UNL. Otherwise the nasty liberal professor narrative fails.
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I didn’t say “conservative students share the same ideology as the New Zealand terrorist.” I asked Bacon “why are some of your former staffers and interns the kind of people who take photos in which they are flashing the same White Power symbol as the New Zealand mass murderer?”
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It’s extremely difficult not to conclude that things like this are desired outcomes. Why do I say something so awful? Simple: because everyone knew exactly this sort of thing would happen and the people pushing total bans pushed them anyway. None of this was in doubt at any point
This is barbaric. Fallout from the end of Roe has, predictably, been catastrophic.
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We need an actual Senator. Like, on the Agriculture Committee. Because he represents Nebraska. Corn and beef and soybeans. But he wanted the fancy facetime you get on Judiciary. So he furrowed his brow and voted for Kavanaugh while his constituents’ soybean crop didn’t sell.
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Some Nebraska extremists are so riled up about books that they want to criminally punish librarians whose libraries have books they don’t like. It’s gotten so out of hand that the legislature is actually debating such a bill and book-haters are gaslighting their way to victory.🧵
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But don’t expect him to actually work out some grand bargain on health insurance or immigration reform. He talks a lot about those issues but his ideas never seem to materialize when it comes time to get to work. He just ends up voting for whatever garbage his party trots out.
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Pete Ricketts using his parents’ fortune to select his own replacement in the Governor’s mansion who will then select him for our newly-vacant Senate seat is so brazenly out-in-the-open in its corruption.
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The Omaha police are letting you know that they literally work for the Republican Party. Not a great look.
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So a former student of mine works (worked?) for
@GovRicketts
& is a white nationalist. He has lots to say about Jews in these messages, including specifically about me.
I try not to let this stuff get to me but maybe the
@NEGOP
could make clear they’re not going to get me killed?
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It’s incredibly weird to think that one political party “stole” things like faith and patriotism from the other. These things aren’t zero sum. My faith doesn’t negate yours. My love of country isn’t your lack of it. But it’s so indicative of how that other political party thinks.
Peggy Noonan: “They stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own. Also impressive was the degree to which they cast a magic conjuring sorcery spell in which viewers got the feeling the whole purpose of the Democratic Party is to break away
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An Executive Order, issued for whatever stupid reason, that declares American Jews to hold a “Jewish nationality” is incredibly dangerous.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is an antisemite or a fool.
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@charliekirk11
And nothing ever changed after that, which is why the Republicans are well-known today as the party of civil rights and minority protections. Amen.
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I’ve seen several tweets from people who are angry at Joe Biden because he promised them $2,000 checks and they’re only getting a $600 check followed by a $1,400 check.
So that’s how this is going to be?
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@LindseyGrahamSC
I recommend that you talk to my grandmother, Senator. She’s 93 and a survivor of Auschwitz. DM me and I’ll pass along her phone number. Ask her what she thinks about tear-gassing people who are trying to reach our border to make an asylum claim.
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The inescapable fact about Sasse is he’s putting everyone on, acting at all times. Sometimes he’s acting like he’s got big ideas. Sometimes he’s a patient professor explaining civics to people who’d be better of watching Schoolhouse Rock, sometimes driving Uber or hocking Runzas
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Like, there are people in my state who could use some *actual representation*, like the farmers, for example, who have been fantastically screwed by this ridiculous administration. And where’s Sasse on that issue? Writing books about the virtues of detassling corn for our youth.
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Today’s the day when a university IT professional searches my hard drives to capture any documents that respond to five search terms demanded by a local lawyer under Nebraska’s Public Records Act.
I’m going to live tweet it now. Enjoy.
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Here it is, Nebraska. The absolute least he could do.
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The Republicans are telling you—very straightforwardly—that they plan to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and other “entitlement programs.”
Vote. Them. Out.
(Bloomberg) -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the U.S. budget deficit is "disturbing" and spending on entitlement programs must be addressed by both Republicans and Democrats.
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So, as I said earlier, people who are impressed with Sasse: come to Nebraska and ask around. Greatness shines here because we’re a small state, population-wise. The truly talented stand out. And if you ask people about Sasse here, you won’t hear what you hear about him elsewhere.
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We need our public schools, from the local elementary to the University of Nebraska, because they educate the citizenry of this state. The exact same reason why opponents of those schools want them marginalized or gutted. A democracy without universal public education? No chance.
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@charliekirk11
Honestly, man, how did you manage to scam so many people into giving you money? Is it just that you’re a reasonably tall white guy who says demonstrably false things that other white guys desperately want to hear? Or was there some other important element that explains all this?
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How do you have time to write TWO books, my dude?! Is the Senate not a job that keeps you busy at all?! Because it’s not just the books. It’s the late night tv shows and the magazine interviews and the funny tweets (until Uncle Mitch told you to knock those off for a while).
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As I sit in my car on a completely unmoving parking lot of an interstate and ponder how late I’ll be to teach my class this morning, it strikes me that light rail between Lincoln and Omaha is something that maybe someone should have constructed 50 years ago.
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I’ve lived in a fair number of places in my life and I don’t recall living in a place with as regressive a legislature as the one we have here in Nebraska in 2023.
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And don’t get me started on his civics lectures. If you’ve been paying attention at all for 4 years, you know he talks a big game about what’s wrong with our country...and he’s got plenty of blame for everyone but himself.
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He’s all about the importance to our country of civility and bipartisanship and norms and institutions...but ask him how his meeting with America Garland went. When Uncle Mitch told him to get in line and help torpedo some major norms, you know exactly what he did.
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This is monstrous. I can’t think of some other word to describe the ideas of the people who make decisions in my state. Monstrous.
CNN's Dana Bash: "Do you think that the state of Nebraska should require a young girl who was raped to carry that pregnancy to term?"
Gov. Pete Ricketts: "Those are babies, too."
Bash: "Including in the case of rape or incest?"
Ricketts: "Yes, they’re still babies."
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And you can't reason with them. At the university we believe that truth wins out in a free and open exchange of ideas. But they aren't interested in truth, just power. You can't reason with someone who will say and do anything so long as it gets them what they want.
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My state senator—who is brand new in the legislature and is already one of its most extreme members—is very worked up that he’s been called hateful when all he’s done is work every day to strip rights away from marginalized people. He’s been nearly in tears. So much gaslighting.
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I don’t mean to go on and on but we all know he’s been positioning himself to run for the next big thing ever since the GOP decided to follow Trump off a cliff. So instead of legislating or doing anything difficult, he’s written TWO books bemoaning the sorry state of our country.
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I get what Pence wants to say, the sentiment of it. But he’s SO bad at this because his feelings about Jews are so transparently disingenuous. For him, Jews are either a political prop or a kind of transit point on the way to paradise for him. So it just grates on me.
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Like any halfway decent actor, he’s charming, and a little goofy and boyish, so you end up inexplicably rooting for him to do...something. But his big ideas a) are bad and b) he seemingly has no clue how to carry them out. So buy a Runza from him next season at Memorial Stadium.
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Let’s be really, really clear: Nebraska’s Governor and Attorney General stopped the Douglas County Health Department from saving people’s lives in the most populous county in the state. More people will get sick and more people will die. They should be impeached.
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Last week, while on Spring Break, I was alerted to the fact that several Turning Point USA staff & volunteers posed making the “a-ok” gesture that’s favored by white nationalists because it’s a way to troll liberals and because it’s double nature gives them plausible deniability.
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You can make some nice statement about “Never Forget” and just leave it at that. I wouldn’t say anything if he did that. But the state of Israel didn’t resurrect the murdered Jews of Europe. Nothing can do that, at least not from the Jewish perspective.
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Multiple Democratic Members of Congress now have COVID as a result of being locked down with their Republican colleagues who refused to wear masks. Just awful.
I just received a positive COVID-19 test result after being locked down in a secured room at the Capitol where several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but recklessly mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one.
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Those who voted to strip rights from Nebraskans because they don’t like their private medical decisions should be ashamed by the way they had to repeatedly change the legislature’s rules, silence citizen testimony, ignore their colleagues, and slink away from a massive protest.
This came after M. Cavanaugh tried to raise several points of order that went unrecognized by Kelly.
Hunt yelled: "You're cheating!"
Senators are being ushered out of the chamber.
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Just about everything in this country feels deeply, deeply broken.
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Good thing he wasn’t a kid holding a toy gun in a park. Or an immigrant reaching for his wallet. Or a guy selling loose cigarettes. Or a woman sitting at home in her apartment.
The man pictured in Nancy Pelosi’s office took a piece of her mail, made it out safely, then posed for a pic
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As many of you know, our 4 year old has been in the Moderna Covid vaccine trial since last Fall. He turned 5 today (!) so he was unblinded (since he’s now eligible for the Pfizer shot). Turns out: he’s fully vaccinated! He’s super excited and we’re all very grateful for science!
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As someone who has watched Ben Sasse’s actions for more than six years in addition to listening to his words, let me offer the following counterpoint: no, he isn’t.
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse tells CBS he's open to impeachment.
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I have a whole lot of neighbors I’d like to sue for their personal health care choice of not being vaccinated, not vaccinating their children, and passing along dangerous misinformation about vaccines. Do we have a law for that yet, Nebraska?
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The person who posted the “a-ok” Turning Point photo was later fired for public racist tweets. Some of the other people in the photo went on to intern for Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon. Given that Governor Ricketts employed a white supremacist all year last year I was concerned.
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It's wild that Congress spends its time debating whether or not this behavior is appropriate for its members. The message contained in Gosar's tweet would be a massive red flag if it was posted by a high school kid and everyone knows it.
AOC: "What I believe is unprecedented is for a member of House leadership of either party to be unable to condemn incitement of violence against a member of this body ... what is so hard about saying that this is wrong?"
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@nytimes
Maybe next you could sit down with some little kids who were separated from their parents and tossed into detention, ask them what that’s like. Or some kids in Puerto Rico who didn’t have electricity for a year thanks to Trump’s indifference. I bet they have some stories.
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It will never not be weird and sad to me that there are tens of thousands of people all around me who are very pleased to dismantle our state’s educational system because someone on Facebook told them teachers are making kids dress as cats and go to the bathroom in litter boxes.
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This is the kind of thing you’d never hear at the other party’s convention, spoken so powerfully by the kind of person—someone who is sincere, who really believes this message—you wouldn’t see there.
Warnock: "I need my neighbor's children to be okay so that my children will be okay. I need all of my neighbor's children to be okay ... the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza ... those in Ukraine ... I need American children on both side of the track to be ok"
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The university hasn't changed. The people haven't changed. What happened was a coordinated campaign against higher education and against public education in general. Pete Ricketts, Steve Erdman, Steve Halloran, and Mike Groene are the face of it in Nebraska.
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I’m soliciting suggestions for activities to do with small children when it’s the fourth day of a five day weekend, in the middle of a year long enforced isolation due to a pandemic, and also it’s -26 degrees outside.
The answer is 14 hours of tv, right?
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I’m so very fortunate to be able to spend Shabbat with my beloved grandmother, a survivor of Auschwitz and several other Nazi concentration camps. Still baking *the best* challah at 97 years old!
#HolocaustMemorialDay
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Keep in mind that absolutely no one wanted this even 3 days ago and absolutely no one was even discussing it. And now the entire legislature has ground to a halt because Charlie Kirk’s white nationalist podcast brought Nebraska electoral college split to Donald Trump’s attention.
State Senator Julie Slama is arguing that the germaneness of an amendment to a bill is whatever the legislature says. The Chair just ruled that her winner-take-all amendment isn’t germane because it isn’t so she argument is “who cares because we’re the GOP and we want it.”
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And that’s why, before contacting me, Breitbart tried to go to the university communications office to see if they could get a quote about disciplining me. And why they encouraged people on Facebook to call the Chancellor.
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Here’s how they built the narrative, on Facebook, wrapping a bunch of my colleagues into it and attempting to make it about the university.
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