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In Nov 2024, this district voted for a Republican with a 21.5% lead. Now in Dec 2025, they voted in a Republican but with an 8.9% margin.

That 12.6% swing to the left in TN has to be making a bunch of Republicans planning to run for the 2026 midterms feel a bit nervous.

Thanks, Steve

That's a truck tail light...

The messaging on this note could use some refinements.

How can something that is very much a burden to you not be a burden for the people around you? Are they somehow that much stronger than you? There's a hint of cognitive dissonance to accept the message as written.

I prefer the mentality of acknowledging that people who care will eagerly help carry the burdens of others if the relationship is treated with love, respect, and reciprosity.

You might have problems that feel very bursensome to yourself, but to others it is an opportunity to show their support. A hard situation can strengthen relationships instead of being isolating. So having burdens doesn't make you undesirable, it just means you need good collaborators to help carry and maybe eventually resolve them with you.

Ah yes we should all hand over our free agency to the machines built and controlled by broligarchs. It'll be great, they'll tell us what to think and feel so we don't have to be anything but mindless consumers.

I don't know what this guy is smoking, but I'll pass and I hope most everyone else does as well.

Body Odor

What an insultingly low settlement amount.

The solution to that is for a third return line to be run during a new build or remodel, but that's definitely not a weekend project for most homes.

I also don't trust a toilet paper with a low gsm.

Maybe we need both a gsm and total weight labeling.

It's reasonably common for showers to have a mixing valve and a flow rate valve on separate handles. That accomplishes what you want. You just have to remember which is which and only use the flow rate valve to turn on and off.

More importantly, hot water circulation systems should be more common. It's the waiting for the cold water in the line to flush out that really makes setting temperature a hassle.

Which matters more total kg or mm^2^ ?

I'll start by saying I have all the same concerms as everyone else, and don't fundamentally disagree.

I do think we should try to look at this in a a balance of power point of view.

More legislative specificity isn't going to stop a corrupt DOJ. Who is going to bring charges against a corrupt attorney general? Congressional impeachment is the only avenue to remove Bondi et al.

An ironclad bill would be more likely to be challenged and struck down in the supreme court. The AG's office has all sorts of precedence on witholding files for active investigations and preserving victim/witness identity. Pushing this risks the whole thing being thrown out.

I think there's reason to indulge in the "this time feels different" optimism. I truly believe that most of congress including republicans hate being under Trumps thumb. Congress critters are almost always power hungry creatures and all want to be top dog, so they have to have compelling motivations to fall in line. So far, the Trump brand has monopolized power on the right. Anyone who has spoken out against MAGA has ended up like Liz Cheney. So individuals can't go against the group without getting punished. The group has been satisfied to go along with Trump because he's a fantastic lightning rod and bully who before now was increasing their power. Congress was able to cut ACA benefits and pass tax cuts for the ultra rich and the MAGA base enthusiastically supported them for it because of Fox News OANN propaganda around Trumpism. Trump also seemed to be making huge strides in permanently securing Republican control in the House through gerrymandering. That's something that House members can't push for themselves because they will righlty be called out for grabbing power.

So as humiliating as it is to kow tow to Trump all the time, he was more of an asset than a liability. The recent elections showed that the political calculus has changed. Trump is now a big liability that turns out opposition voters in large numbers and if he's not on the ballot he won't turn out the MAGA faithful in sufficient numbers to counter the opposition. This didn't show up in just a couple places, but all over the country. Add in Trump's obvious mental decline, and the GOP needs an exit plan.

Congress still can't just discard Trump though. His rabid base is still needed if they ever want a chance at winning another election. So the GOP is stuck between needing move on from Trump and still needing his loyal devotees. Here's where the epstein files come in. Q'anon was a huge part of converting evangelicals into devoted fanatics. Conspiracy theorists turned voting for a gross con man into a moral imperative. So what better way to try to peel off supporters than to keep reminding them that Trump at the least knew about the pedophile class and chose to associate with them anyway. The true belivers will cry that Trump was an informant, but even heavily doctored Epstein files will greatly discredit that narrative.

Not even congress can directly go for the king. The dems don't have the votes, and republican dissenters get punished and lack the moral fortitude to do it out of principle despite the personal cost. So any strategy has to be at a party wide level. Hence this taking so long and the near unanimous votes.

The american people view this bill as beung about pursuing justice, but for congress that's at the bottom of their list of goals. Primarily, they don't want Q'anon anger turned toward themselves. Voting for this is a pretty good cover. But the bigger play is to start giving congress more leverage again. This whole year, evryone on the left has been asking why congress has stood by and ceded so much of their power to the corrupt executive. I think it's because most of what Trump was doing seemed to entrench GOP power, and they assumed they could just take back control at any time.

This bill lays the groundwork for congress to start taking back power. It gives Bondi and Patel enough rope to hang themselves, and congress would have the backing of both the left AND Q'Anon to impeach DOJ members who collude in a cover up. So to congress, trying to make a more ironclad bill doesn't make impeachment easier, it doesn't stop a corrupt DOJ, and it makes Supreme Court challenges more likely.

I see this as putting the Trump loyalists embedded throughout the judiciary and executive branches on notice that congress is considering taking the wheel back. They are sending the message that protecting Trump is no longer the safe play, and the careers of loyalists can be ended if they don't work with congress instead.

Where this goes from here is anyone's guess. We are now fully reliant on congress to achieve any measure of justice because the DOJ is fully compromised. I hope that this bill gives congress both the motivation and political backing to start cleaning up the DOJ, but that's a delusionally optimistic take at this point.

I do expect to see candidates in both parties start to run on a reform/anticorruption platform going into the midterms.