@breadandcircuses

Six billionaire families and their allies funded Project 2025 to get climate action ended.

Bradley, Coors, Koch, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein

https://www.desmog.com/2025/03/14/heritage-foundation-project-2025-allies-mcc-ordo-iuris-discuss-dismantling-the-eu-european-union/

https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/14/project-2025-billionaire-donor-heritage-foundation-donald-trump-jd-vance-charles-koch-peter-coors/

Yes, the moneyed are willing to risk global recession & wars to keep frying the planet.

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @pluralistic

Bradley, Coors, Koch, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein -- they bankroll Project 2025

Go after these dynasties' corporate interests

https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/14/project-2025-billionaire-donor-heritage-foundation-donald-trump-jd-vance-charles-koch-peter-coors/

Why?
They are targeting other democracies...
https://www.desmog.com/2025/03/14/heritage-foundation-project-2025-allies-mcc-ordo-iuris-discuss-dismantling-the-eu-european-union/

They're going to fry the planet if they aren't stopped
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2023/10/10/exclusive-charles-koch-koch-industries-has-given-more-than-5-billion-of-his-koch-industries-stock-to-two-nonprofits/

https://www.desmog.com/2024/10/25/project-2025-trump-mapped-how-6-billionaire-family-fortunes-fund-climate-denial/

#TaxTheRich
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/koch-americans-for-prosperity-trump-tax-breaks

https://popular.info/p/charles-kochs-5-billion-tax-loophole

@pvonhellermannn

The fossil fuel industry spent a lot of money trivializing wildfires in Australia, Colorado, Texas, California, and Canada to avoid lawsuits.
https://truthout.org/articles/big-oil-spent-445-million-to-influence-2024-elections/

https://www.commondreams.org/news/chris-wright-trump

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/11/los-angeles-fire-fossil-fuel-big-oil

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/02/fossil-fuel-companies-wildfire-liability/

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/australia-wildfires-unleash-millions-tons-carbon-dioxide-n1120186

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fires-doubled-australias-carbon-emissions-ecosystems-may-never-soak-it-back-up/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532643-200-australias-fires-are-a-wake-up-call-lets-reduce-fossil-fuel-use/

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/28/1103186/canada-wildfire-emissions/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07878-z

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/texas-is-on-fire-while-oil-companies-are-fueling-the-flames-of-climate-chaos/

https://www.cpr.org/2025/01/15/boulder-lawsuit-exxonmobil-suncor-energy-climate-change-scotus/

https://www.levernews.com/what-trumps-energy-secretary-pick-says-behind-closed-doors/

@knittingknots2

If American democracy manages to survive, lawsuits, discovery, legal settlements, and trials for crimes against humanity await.
https://www.splcenter.org/presscenter/settlement-forced-labor-case-against-private-prison-company-operating-immigration/

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-10-13/private-prison-operator-under-federal-scrutiny-spent-millions-settling-mistreatment-claims

https://fortune.com/2024/10/14/private-prison-corecivic-settle-mistreatment-complaints-tennessee-inmate-deaths/

Nazis saw their Nuremberg trials, including the industrialists IG Farben etc and it still taints their legacy decades later.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/hitler-oligarchs-hugenberg-nazi/681584/

https://jacobin.com/2022/10/nazi-billionaires-businesses-denazification-de-jong-interview

https://malwarwick-98471.medium.com/they-exploited-slave-labor-and-made-billions-a09d775a3024

@lin11c @Jackiemauro @sidereal @mkb @StillIRise1963

Ever read Octavia E. Butler's book on child kidnapping and forced adoptions?
https://www.octaviabutler.com/parableseries

It's supposed to be science fiction, not a game plan for a theocratic autocracy.

And yet,...
9 Republicans voted against the resolution condemning Putin's child kidnapping program in Ukraine.
https://www.businessinsider.com/house-republicans-vote-against-condemning-russian-abduction-ukrainian-children-2024-3

And a corrupt Supreme Court justice wanted abortion overturned to feed kids to an adoption system.

1/2

@exador23

Nazis always target the family & friends of dissidents

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/georgetown-university-graduate-student-detained-immigration-authoritie-rcna197206

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/us/politics/georgetown-suri-detained.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-deportation-georgetown-graduate-student-00239754

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-seeks-deport-pro-palestinian-georgetown-university-student-2025-03-20/

https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/meet-indian-scholar-badar-khan-suris-wife-mapheze-saleh-was-she-the-reason-behind-his-detention/3782628/

@lain_7 @kagan @tess

Be careful about the "Cost of Convenience"

1. AI is an energy hog. It's driving up electricity utility rates for everyone.

2. AI is insecure. Anything created by an LLM can be monitored & be sold to a competitor. Your IP isn't yours anymore.

3. AI robs junior programmers of growth and suppresses their wages.

4. AI is biased. Your ability to incorporate accessibility features etc are reduced.

@tzimmer_history

Anderson Cooper telling folks that they MUST listen to both sides is classic CNN bothsidism.

By this twisted logic, we are mandated, by a false sense of "fairness", to listen to the manifestos of mass shooters, consider the "good parts" of slavery, and weigh the pros & cons of an anti-democracy movement.

Hard pass.

Life is short, don't waste it listening to the ravings of a conman funded by Republican billionaire donors.

@noelreports

From Steve Carroll:

1/
Senator Jeff Merkley walked into the hearing room like a man who’d just been told his car got keyed and knew exactly who did it. On the other side of the table sat Christopher Landau, Trump’s nominee for Ambassador to Mexico, who looked like he hadn’t slept since Inauguration Day, and Matthew Whitaker, a former acting Attorney General who carries himself like a guy who still brags about his high school bench press record.

The setup was simple:...

@GottaLaff

Republican billionaires need to make room in the budget for the self-dealing & public corruption

@petergleick

Follow the money.

The Bradley Foundation was founded by a member of the John Birch Society. He pledged millions in 1965 & dedicated to ending the Voting Rights Act. John Roberts completed that task in 2013.

Charles Koch funded decades of climate denial and political & judicial public corruption. His nonprofits are dedicated to ending public education & health.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2023/10/10/exclusive-charles-koch-koch-industries-has-given-more-than-5-billion-of-his-koch-industries-stock-to-two-nonprofits/

Those are just two of the billionaires bent on the destruction of democracy.

@Strandjunker

From: Peter Bouckaert
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bouckaert

As I am in Ukraine at the moment, I would just like to correct a few lies from the Zelensky/Trump meeting based on my work here in Ukraine—Trump and Vance you are welcome to come visit although I doubt you have the courage to do so.

1) Zelensky showed up in military fatigues as he has done at every international meeting since day one of the 2022 Russian invasion—the second Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2014—to show ...

1/

2/
...to show his solidarity with the Ukrainian soldiers risking their lives to defend Ukraine, and to emphasize he is the leader of a country at war.

I didn’t see any similar objections to the non-elected immigrant racist white supremacist Elon Musk showing up repeatedly in the White House in a T-shirt and baseball cap which he didn’t even remove—it is a standard sign of respect to leadership to remove your hat—so don’t lecture Zelensky on how to dress.

2) Zelensky is not a dictator and...

3/
...he is not an unpopular leader who is unable to mobilize his people. I have spent many nights and days in the last few weeks with soldiers heading to the frontlines and talking to them, and none of them have tried to refuse to serve and they were heading into the battle with determination and courage—I salute them and respect them deeply.

3) Ukraine and Zelensky doesn’t have to thank the U.S. or Trump—the U.S. and Trump need to thank Ukraine and Zelensky. This is for two reasons.

4/
First of all, Ukraine gave up the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world voluntarily at the end of the USSR under the Budapest accords guaranteed by the U.S., France, UK, and Russia, giving up several trillion of dollars of nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees for its territorial integrity which Russia has violated and the U.S., UK and France vowed to protect. If Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons, it would have been one of the most nuclear armed countries in the world ...

5/
and Russia would have never invaded. We, the West, committed to defend Ukraine in exchange for its denuclearization so there is no need for Ukraine to thank the U.S. for keeping its promises. See https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/ukraine-nuclear-weapons-and-security-assurances-glance

Secondly, Ukraine is defending not just its own territorial integrity but the future of Europe. I have been interviewing people from the Russian-occupied territories the last few weeks and they really do live in a Stalinist prison camp that is unbelievably oppressive.

6/
This is what Putin wants to bring to much of Europe and we need to stop him in Ukraine to save our own democratic future, at any price (respecting human rights).

In was in Chechnya 25 years ago documenting the same Russian abuses, together at the same hotel with the murdered Anna Polikovskaya, the murdered Natalia Estemirova, and Memorial’s Oleg Orlov who was imprisoned in February 2024 for “discrediting the Russian military” and later released in a prisoner exchange.

The difference...

7/
...in 1999-2000 is that we could operate in Russia, under the watchful eye of the FSB (the current KGB). The FSB were staying at the same hotel as us, the ACCA in Ingushetia, and one night I found a few cigarette butts on the floor of my room just to let me know they were watching us. Buy we could go to Moscow, Human Rights Watch had a staff and office in Moscow, and do our work despite the dangers.

Since the Russian invasion of 2022 (and long before that), that limited space for...

8/

... for activism and civil society has closed down in Russia. There are no more independent journalists or human rights groups operating in Russia and the HRW office has long closed down, and Anna & Natalia & Nemtsov and so many others were simply murdered by Putin. Yet this is what Trump embraces instead of the freedom-loving Ukrainian people, and he has refrained of any criticism of the murderous dictator Putin, instead trying to humiliate the freedom-fighting Zelensky.

But Zelensky...

9/

... isn’t humiliated, he stands proud and strong because you cannot be humiliated by people you don’t respect.

Shame on you, you twice impeached and felon convicted orange wanna be. You and your republican supplicants do not deserve our respect—I won’t even spell republicans with a capital R because they don’t deserve that honorific. Shame on you betrayers of our American Values.

Peter Bouckaert, Senior Director at Fortify Rights

PS: many of you have asked how to help ...