[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...

This is the doubled edged nature of prosecutorial discretion.

So nada.

As Hobbes wrote so eloquently, we keep that compact because the alternative is "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"

We're currently exploring how many of those rules are really necessary, and, as a society, have decided to mostly shrug off that exploration.

That is the part that's changed. A willingness to ignore the rules by some, and a collective shrug by most.

Big difference.

I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid preservation of records.

> It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.

> It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

> It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.

> It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.

> For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.

* https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267

I think you know this, it's just that you probably want all those things because, ding ding, you're a fascist.

Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

I genuinely and in good faith do not believe Trump fits this definition. You can’t just call all your political opponents fascists. We’re kinda over that by now.

Or, less dramatic, a drive for national autarky. A very much dirigiste economy. (Cf. massive tariffs). A drive towards a one-party state without a rule of law - explicitly punishing people with dissenting viewpoints to the point of economic exclusion. (Columbia. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Garrison & Wharton. Jenner & Block).

Let's call a spade a spade, shall we?

https://www.keene.edu/academics/cchgs/resources/presentation...

>>forcible suppression of opposition

There's the revocation of citizenship, the deporting people to foreign jails without full due process, crackdowns on protestors generally, opposition to trans existence. Do you want links to where this has happened or can we agree these are actions and policy the state has taken recently?

>>subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation

"We need an economic reset, so don't worry about the inflation", DOGE cutting services, tariffs as a means to...whatever the fuck the tariffs are supposed to fix?

Otherwise, it's just political theater that's going to further discredit the idea of impeachment and give Trump and future Presidents more confidence that they can do anything they want and never be held to account.

Will it? If done correctly by the Democrats (and this is a big if), it can educate people on the current situation. A big problem right now is that a lot of people aren't fully aware how fucked up and how dangerous Trump and his cronies are.

It is such a horror that this government is operating off the books, that this administration will again leave behind only empty pages in the history book where normally the government would have ownership of what transpired.

It is such a horror that this government is operating off the books, that this administration will again leave behind only empty pages in the history book where normally the government would have ownership of what transpired.

The only thing left that stands a chance of stopping them is mass violence.

" In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition." "

https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created

For example, I feel that in the early 2000's, it would have been possible to get across the point that Breonna Taylor (Kenneth Walker) was really a 2nd amendment issue [0]. You may or may not care about 2A issues. I do care, although it's not a huge focus of mine. But they purport to care greatly, so it should be possible to engage on that, right? But now the reflexive emotional revulsion to the topic created by continual tribal priming (all day every day) is just too great.

[0] if a probable response to defending yourself in your home at night is government agents unleashing a state-sanctioned hail of bullets into your family, how has defending your home not been effectively prohibited?

To me, the one-sided right wing media bubble seems to be the root of how we got here in the first place. It allows politicians to avoid any and all accountability for their actions. Popular rule cannot function in this environment, and if it continues, nothing will stand in the way of this administration destroying what’s left of the country.

Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw commerce or messaging (deterrence) .

Edit: Seems like they are supposed to use Microsoft Teams https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-.... Also -

> When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component processes. The complete copy of the record includes the content of the message and required metadata, and the record must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD users are provided guidance on their Component's processes for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS texts.

Is Signal even FedRAMP? I don't think it is.

And what is?

I’ll just say one thing about this administration. It is often true that when one thing is wrong with a man, then it’s possible all things are wrong with the man. We keep adding to the list, but I’m suggesting the inductive proof here. All things may be wrong with these men, which is scary.

But Hegseth is such an average person. With charisma, he could aw-shucks his way past the media. Unlike McNamara, Hegseth is not charged with proving how important a competent SECDEF is. Maybe even demonstrating how arbitrary the standard can be given such an average person can just, well, phone it in.

While it's true that no sum of such average people will ever approach one John Von Neumann, it's not fair to blame an average person with some self-awareness for their every flaw. Which is why Hegseth's denials move the needle from "forgivable mistakes expected from Joe Blow" to "history-making example of Dunning-Kruger".

If they’re doing it so blatantly to plan for attacks that will eventually be public, contain no conspiracies or illegal activity, and will be used to dunk on Biden, then what else are they automatically deleting?

Plus, if China/Russia/Iran/NK weren’t targeting US officials phones and Signal, now they certainly are.

Likely everything they can. Rules are for fools in this admin.

My guess is that there is someone named Jeffrey Goldberg in the NatSec team (or high up, it seems like a common combination of first and last name at least), and likely that they meant to add him, rather than the EDITOR IN CHIEF of the Atlantic of all people. Could this be a UI/UX thing with Signal? (not differentiating between two Jeffrey Goldbergs on your contact list?).

Is that so shocking? I watch often some forums on reddit related to combat footage, not frequently but enough to see various patterns. Before houthis started attacking shipping lanes, there were tons of videos of them kicking ass of Saudi military but way more often some subsaharan African mercenaries in their uniforms. Like, really badly kicking ass, smart ambushes, devastating results even on heavy machinery. The opposite side had almost nothing.

Then with change of this, the tone and content turned 180 degrees. Almost always absolutely precise laser guided bomb strikes even if for 1-2 guys seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and a lot of them popping up all the time (to the tune of few every single day). Always titled cca 'Saudi air force doing XYZ'. Like sure, if you are clueless and don't know state of their army, their discipline, level of training and so on you can believe that.

I didn't believe this since the switch was sharp, US is simply flying there for quite some time, together with Saudi air force. TBH I don't care, just sharing observations. No way we can know hard facts obviously, but its easy to connect those very few dots. A bit of failure from opsec point of view - if you do this stuff, at least keep it secret and not broadcasting to whole world so politicians can keep big smiles and grand statements, at least for clueless civilians who barely know where Yemen lies on the map.

What others write it matches my observation - “Houthi PC small group”, seemingly short term group about specific attack. US attacks themselves are already happening for a year and something.

If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.

Or, he's got other channels that work better.

All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here, there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing.

Like, very clearly, these people are going to get service-members killed due to their idiocy

Counting on SCOTUS to respect precedent at this point is either extremely optimistic or extremely naive.

Neither were really political decisions. The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party lines all the time. It often splits in different ways, and often makes decisions on very politically heated topics unanimously. You should have more confidence in it. It is the least bad of your three major institutions of government by far.

To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world, the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous. It never made any sense. Its result was inevitable: a new government was elected and suddenly the law changed overnight because government departments all published their new "interpretations" of the law. That is just silly, it makes a mockery of the principles of the rule of law, and it gives too much power to the government. Law should be made by parliament (which you call congress, for some reason) and rulemaking powers should be explicitly delegated to executive agencies where appropriate. Vagueness in the law should be interpreted and resolved by the courts, not by the executive in a way that is subject to political whimsy.

That's really not true; just a couple of the other major decisions overturned in the last decade:

Apodaca v. Oregon, holding that while the 14th Amendment did incorporate the right to jury trial against the States, it did not incorporate the unanimity requirement that the Supreme Court has found against the federal government in the 6th Amendment against the states. (reversed in Ramos v. Louisiana, 2020.)

Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, holding that a certiied public-sector union could collect an “agency fee” attributable to representational activities but not other union functions to represented non-member employees. Reversed by Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 (2018).

My interpretation is difficult and complex domain specific regulation were handled by agency experts, and not lawyers. It is now up to congress to detail very specifically this potentially difficult regulation and to quickly adjust when research changes.

Is my interpretation incorrect? Since to me this current approach sounds terrible, inflexibly and set-up to fail.

This isn't accurate though. You're arguing these things could literally change day to day, but there were established procedures for rule changes. Those procedures required posting reasons for the change, a notice published in the register, the chance for people to comment on the change, etc. When regulations changed without notice and without any reason given they got blocked from making the change.

See the debates around net neutrality and FCC decisions. Took a lot of notices, a lot of back and forth, etc. They couldn't just arbitrarily change the rules from one day to the next.

Why describes mostly every law enacted by a parliament? They clearly have that power to change the laws they enacted at any time.

So where is the problem if parliament delegates this power to some executive entity?

Now, if delegation is not clearly defined, this is another issue I can understand. And I am not interested enough in the minutia of US legislation to have an opinion on that.

I don't get how this could ever be resolved though. You can complain about how "oppressive" is "interpreted" so they can add more words, they can say "people are harmed" and then it's up to interpretation about who is "people" and what is "harm" so then you add more words to define "people" as living homo-sapiens and then it's up to interpretation about what is "living" and on and on.

> If there is a vagueness

There is literally always vagueness. "I never said she took his money" can have 7 different interpretations just based on which word is emphasized.

It's a meaningless tautology that any English sentence has some amount of vagueness and that people will be interpreting its meaning.

First, a made up but illustrative one. The statute says something vague like "a term in a standard form consumer contract that is oppressive or unconscionable is void." In a common law system (anything derived from English law, including US, Australia, etc) the meaning of these terms, if they aren't defined elsewhere in the statute, is figured out based on decided cases. Someone will argue that it covers a particular clause, and the judge will decide if it does. The judge might give a detailed test for what constitutes "oppressive" or might reuse an existing one from a different context or whatever. The decision might be appealed and a panel of judges decide the meaning. But over time, and as cases are decided, the meaning becomes clear. You can point to half a dozen examples of clearly oppressive clauses and a dozen that clearly aren't, there is a legal test for what counts, etc. The law develops towards certainty and the doctrine of precedent also means it stabilises: it isn't going to change its meaning just because new judges are appointed, because they generally follow precedent pretty closely.

Under the Chevron doctrine, there is an extra step. If a government agency says that its interpretation is that "oppressive" means X, then if that interpretation is reasonable, if it is open on the wording of the statute, then the inquiry stops there. The court defers to the government agency. This has the benefit, admittedly, that the definition can change over time according to changing conditions. But it has downsides. It is giving the job of deciding what laws mean to the government, rather than the judiciary. The government is meant to act according to law, not to interpret it. That isn't the executive's proper function. But quite apart from the philosophical objections, it is no good for stability. A new government is elected and the official interpretation changes. This happens a lot. A new government is elected and it is decided that now "restraint of trade" clauses in employment contracts are legal. Four years later they're unenforceable. Four years layer they're enforceable again. No laws changed, no regulations are passed, a government agency just releases a new statement of its official interpretation of the law.

That is quite different to, e.g., there being a statute saying "terms in consumer contracts must accord with the regulations promulgated by the department of consumer protection as in force at the date of execution of the contract" because:

1. It is clear what is delegated to the executive and what is not.

2. It is clear that the definition applied is the definition at the time the contract was signed, and the "interpretation" is not retrospective.

3. It is still up to the court to give a clear, consistent, precedential ruling as to the meaning of the regulations themselves.

This example is real: Chevron itself. There, the EPA changed the definition of "source" of air pollution, without Congressional approval, so that "source" was much narrower (making pollution harder to regulate).

Nope. His authority as a journalist prevails. He published the article -- so his intent was to do his job as a journalist, and the public has a right to know.

National security or institutional trust was not damaged by the journalist -- only by the ignorance of the politicians now running our military.

The information was newsworthy and in the public interest.

Publication did not cause harm (and you might argue that dropping actual bombs caused much more harm).

The information was obtained legally and without foresight.

The journalist has an obligation to report the information if it serves the public interest, especially if it reveals systemic failures, endangers democracy, or impacts public policy.

> If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.

> Or, he's got other channels that work better.

The Signal chat group was called the “Houthi PC small group.” It appeared to be a short-term, mission-specific group rather than a long-term, open-ended group. Thus, it's unlikely that much more information would be gained in the future. Goldberg's inclusion in the chat was the main story here, not the specific details revealed to Goldberg, many of which he kept confidential.

And I agree with your assessment. Morons...

It is not even clear to me that preserving serviceman is one of the goals of these agencies, given they've marched them off to die in several needless wars. Sure maybe the agencies might have more information, that doesn't mean they're more likely to make decisions that preserve life. Deference to 'experts' in government has lead to much bloodshed.

I am more surprised that he did not save this incident for a future book

David Graham asks Jeffrey Goldberg about possible retaliation

Jeffrey: It's not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today—-we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries--there's too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs.

From historian Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny, chapter/lesson number one:

> Do not obey in advance.

* https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/558051/on-tyranny-by...

* https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny/

In many ways, being a public enemy of the Trump Admin is the safest enemy to be.

Very similar to this case in Australia.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/02/abc-agrees-to-...

The ABC had a public interest duty to publicise everything, instead they left 99% unread and returned the contents to the government.

Pathetic.

Why would he have been added to the group? For what purpose would the current National Security Advisor have to bring in an outsider to discussions that ended up involving almost certainly classified data?

> 2h is a lot but not that much time

He was added to the group two days (13 March) before the strikes (15 March), not two hours.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56918435

If what you're doing isn't wrong, why not record all of it for history?

I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.

Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.

All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information.

"Good enough for me!"

When you get a clearance, it is inculcated upon you that you absolutely do not leak cleared information. If you THINK something cleared, it's best to treat it like it is.

It's possible that there is some 10D chess happening here, but I wouldn't expect details like this to be approved for apps like Signal.

Marco Rubio absolutely knows due process is a right for all persons subject to U.S. law. It's not only a right for citizens, and having taken this right away from persons, in no meaningful way can it be said it's preserves for citizens.

The federal government is at best in abeyance. And an adversary at worst.

So, let me say the quiet part aloud, the presence of DNI & NSC heavies indicates to me that Signal is possibly not really a "3rd party".

„Among the topics the officials discussed in their conversation, conducted using standard commercial Cisco Webex video conferencing software, were the presence of UK and US military personnel in Ukraine and the potential use of Taurus missiles to blow up the Crimean Bridge.“

(Yes, it probably shouldn't have been an authorized channel, but it was.)

Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant country by Star War technology.

Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and awful and just so so so stupid.

Turns out US military strategy is the same as me and my mates setting up a bar date.

It's a disturbing leak in itself but i take issue with the journalist obsessing over the tool of choice whilst ignoring the actual strategizing.

The casual way in which a mass murder is planned. The emphasis on "messaging" and how to spin this on Biden and Europe. The teenage-like emojis to celebrate acts of war.

This administration looks bad from the outside but through this leak we can see that their shocking press moments are still the polished and spun versions of a reality that is far more sick.

Typically these positions are filled by highly qualified people with decades of experience.

This administration is not typical. They deliberately chose inexperienced people who would be loyal above all else.

Selecting for incompetence was part of the plan, and it’s been obvious from the start.

Hegseth was a Fox News host, not someone qualified for this position.

This story is stranger than fiction.

Agencies with no oversight are seen as competent? That's news to me. There's a definite waste of taxpayer dollars on propaganda to try to make this point publicly but I didn't think anyone was poorly educated enough to actually believe it.

I agree with your point on the spin, although I wonder if the Signal angle is the only thing even republicans can agree with to be kinda bad, given that even the most egregious reports on the current administration don’t really cause as much as a raised brow there. So to make it a story that doesn’t just resonate in the liberal echo chamber, include something despicable to both camps.

On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit.

> "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return."

So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European allies over it.

J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages. Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming meeting with Greenlandic separatists.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fcpa-anti-bribery-law-exe...

If you read the story, one of their concerns is that if they don't act, Israel was going to instead.

https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-officials-warn-egypts-m...

https://www.jns.org/israel-challenges-egypt-on-secret-sinai-...

Egypt is bleeding money because of loss of transit fees. However, this Muslim Brotherhood wary nation is not keen on the announced ethnic cleansing in Gaza (to Sinai). So this could be inducement to have them host an open air concentration camp with guarantees that navigation through the Suez Canal will resume.

This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for a nation-state actor to take into consideration, no? Is there any country on earth where the government altering timing of something for political convenience would be surprising?

The rest of this story is hilariously egregious. The part about the government discussing its own best interests and acting in them is the least abnormal thing here.

Yes, Europe benefits from the strait more than the US, but it isn't Europe's mess in the first place.

I predict that in the next decades Europe will cut ties with Israel completely but until then we reap what we sow.

> House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) dismissed questions about whether Waltz should face consequences for discussing the Yemen operation on an unclassified chat group that included a journalist. “Clearly I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake and they’ll tighten up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-us-war-...

> [National Security Council] statement: "At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security." - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes

And from the article, practical verification:

> According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.

And today, confirmation from Trump:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-stands-na...

> "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.

> When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

https://x.com/MattGertz/status/1904228588414464167

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-t...

* Signal isn't an approved communications method for national security information at all.

* Who is this extra person on this chat? (and Hegseth wasn't even the one who added him apparently.)

* Having the only record [1] of this be auto deleting definitively violates the Federal Records Act (even if signal were an approved platform).

This is about group malfeasance and normalization of deviance.

[1] I don't know that part for certain, but I do suspect it...

Tho i still find it kinda amusing that this is the finally proofs that the average security invested joe has a better opsec than the highest ranking us gov officials.

BUTTERY MALES indeed.

Trump routinely denies knowledge of things he doesn't want to talk about, even things that he has previously demonstrated knowledge about. It's a standard deflection that he never gets called out on or significant pushback on the implications of his claimed lack of knowledge, so he keeps doing it.

Those are distinct, though potentially overlapping, behavioral patterns.

It was almost a meme on his last presidency. If there’s a scandal involving someone from inner circle - trump’s replies often were “I barely know him/her”/“Never met him/her”, etc.

No, nothing in the Clinton email scandal comes close to cabinet secretaries accidentally real-time texting imminent war plans to journalists using a non-governmental system with auto-deleting messages.

As always, it's only a problem when a Democrat does it.

There are some things the democrats can do but it's mostly "spanner-in-the-works" slow-downs of the process, or mid-level judges. At the same time, the democrats are in disarray with no clear leader or message.

Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions his presidency.

No, they can't.

> And have it on the record who votes against it.

They cannot force a vote to actually occur on a proposed impeachment. They can file it and let it die, that's as close as they can come.

Protests happen in the summer mostly, and they always have a small amount of violence and property destruction (even when the protest is organized to be peaceful). Trump is just waiting around for that so he can have the military shut them down (at least, that's what he said).

Unless the protests are large enough (say, 1/4 the population of the US), and persistent, and affect business heavily. Maybe that would be enough to dispel the reality distortion/enforcement shield Trump has cast on the republicans.

Yes, the administration will try violence, but it’s a lot harder to justify when elected officials are on the firing line.

Also known as "strategy of Paul von Hindenburg".

There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically pro Wall Street and the party's dominant wing through 2016 to 2020).

The second and third used to be aligned. Then, briefly, the first and second. Currently, nobody is aligned. The financial crisis cost the third group its moral standing. The third group's affiliation with the second lost corporate America and Silicon Valley to the Republicans. Then the middle group's alignment with the first lost its base to the anti-woke pitch. The first group remains cohesive, but it's too small and uncoordinated (e.g. voting for Trump for Palestine) to move the policy needle on its own.

the second bloc is liberals, which are more center-right as they frequently side with conservative policies and are pro-capitalist. in recent years, this has come to include DSA (AOC) and other progressives like Bernie Sanders, who believe that the current system of politics under capitalism can be reformed instead of abolished. these people are very much for identity politics because they believe idpol will bring the leftmost bloc into the fold (it won't). this bloc sometimes supports leftmost causes but will abandon them when it is politically expedient (AOC, Bernie).

the third bloc is just right-wing. Bush Jr-era neocons. the party has always catered to these folks but more recently has come to embrace them as it moves rightward. this bloc will continue to grow as we see more of a rightward shift as more Democrats embrace the far right because they believe it will lead to electoral gains (Gavin Newsom, Chuck Shumer, etc) - once again, it won't.

the first bloc absolutely is not part of the Democratic party, and in fact despise the Democrats. they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics.

This is a very narrow slice of urban leftists. When it comes to electioneering, the messaging is almost always about identity politics and anti-corporatism more than class-struggle politics.

> they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics

Then it isn’t a bloc. Non-voter non-donors are politically irrelevant.