His tweets are always somewhere on the bonkers scale, but this one for me definitely ranks high up there. He's repeating lines from Russia's state media:

A lot of friends are telling me they're exhausted and demoralized today. So here's a quick thread of the good things I'm clinging to today.

1. More women are running for office than ever. Come January, we'll have a Congress that looks a lot more like the people it represents. 2. The thousands of people who reached out to each other yesterday to lift them up, empathize, mourn, and rage together. That kind of unity is powerful.

https://twitter.com/CindyOtis_/status/1045334327003942912

Today, I was driving on a small one-lane residential road without a shoulder. An unmarked white truck pulled onto the road & was coming toward me, so I pulled into an empty driveway to let them pass. But instead of passing, they pulled in behind me & parked, blocking me in. (1) Two men jumped out of the truck & started walking toward my car. My heart instantly began fluttering, and it got worse when the men suddenly split apart. The driver headed toward me, while the other man came around the back of my car toward the passenger side. (2)

Read this: "In two separate incidents, however, colleagues told me that a senior State official opposed candidates for leadership positions—myself and an African-American female officer—on the basis that we would not pass the “Breitbart test.”"

politico.com/magazine/story… "In 2017, as the media ran out of synonyms for “implosion” in describing Rex Tillerson’s tenure as secretary of state, a quieter trend unfolded in parallel: the exclusion of minorities from top leadership positions in the State Department and embassies abroad."

Like the rest of you, I've been thinking a lot about the op-ed & this Trump tweet encapsulates my biggest concern about it. The op-ed fans the flames of "the war" Trump believes he's waging against our institutions. Anyone who tries to hold him back now will be labeled a traitor. I'm speculating just like everyone else when I say this, but I don't think the op-ed was written by anyone in the inner circle. More likely a Assistant/Director of some such at the NSC. But this piece has made it infinitely more difficult for that inner circle to rein Trump in.

I'm going to start justifying everything on National Security purposes. You must buy me a coffee for National Security purposes.

Holy hell. "Many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office."

nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opi… "The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works w/ him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making. Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity" for conservative ideals.

Time to gush. As a kid, I never found a single book with a main character in a wheelchair like me. As an adult, I've found far more books w/ harmful disability rep than accurate/positive rep. Unbroken is made up of stories about disabled MCs & all are written by disabled authors. I wanted to work for the CIA after seeing my first James Bond movie, but I thought it was impossible. I'm certain I wouldn't have if I had read books/seen movies that showed otherwise. It's so important to show disabled people as heroes, spies, and every day people bc WE ARE.

Kavanaugh's hearing started. As a political scientist/former intel officer, it's hard to believe we're here after all the evidence of corruption under this amin. Cue the replies telling me this is how it is now in the US. And that's actually what I want tweet about this AM. (1/) There's a serious danger to simply accepting what's happening as the new normal. I can't overstate it. To be honest, I think it gives some a feeling of intellectual superiority. THEY see what we've really turned into whereas the rest of us are naive for being outraged. (2/)

Twitter tip for fighting fake news on the left. Watch out for people (non-journalists) who tweet BREAKING and then follow it with something that looks like a "news" headlines but don't actually link news articles. Here are three big reasons why: (1/4) 1. Often, these people are trying to make themselves look like the news to get more followers. They are NOT the news and they are not the source of that "breaking" update. What they offer is hot takes/commentary/ analysis. (I include myself in this - I too am not the news.) (2/4)

Before Trump came onto the scene, domestic politics was an off-limits topic for us at CIA. We might have discussed Congressional budget decisions that affected our spending or hiring, but that was really it. But I don’t recall having a single partisan discussion otherwise.(1/) When he became the nominee and through the election, people couldn’t stop talking about it. They were all whispered conversations, but they were happening and there was a reason for it. (2/)

The public outcry over the "Space Force" is a good example of why context matters & the importance of more than a headline. Space security is already an issue & the USAF has long worked to defend US space assets. The real issue from this former military analyst is this: (1/) Much like authoritarian leaders overseas who purchase shiny new military toys bc it looks impressive rather than to fill an actual capability gap, Trump is pushing to augment existing space capabilities bc it looks exciting, not bc he understands our threats or capabilities. (2/)

Here are today's 5 news stories that are not about Trump:

1. "Venezuelan officials say explosive drones went off as President Nicolás Maduro was giving a live televised speech in Caracas, but he is unharmed...Seven soldiers were injured."

bbc.com/news/world-lat… 2. "Iran’s currency, the rial, has lost nearly 80 percent of its value compared to a year ago." The first batch of restored US sanctions are also set to go into effect again on Monday.

nytimes.com/2018/08/04/wor…

Today's 5 news stories that are not about Trump:

1. "Assad has vowed to retake the province, and pro-government media promise the “mother of all battles. If it comes to an all-out assault, it could bring a humanitarian crisis."
apnews.com/d6995f7b273e4e… 2. Emmerson Mnangagwa...appealed for peace and promised an independent investigation into the military after six people were killed in post-election violence."

bbc.com/news/world-afr…

THREAD. Many don't know it, but it's legal to pay people w/ disabilities below minimum wage under the guise of "giving" them employment through sheltered workshops. Obama was pushing for integrated work, but lobbyists/Trump are now trying to roll it back.

nbcnews.com/think/opinion/… Much like how they tried to cloak the horrors of HR 620 (the rolling back of rights granted by the ADA) by naming the bill something positive, so too have they mislabeled this legislation the "Workplace Choice and Flexibility for Individuals with Disabilities Act".

Intelligence Community Assessment, 6 January 2017. Key Judgments:

"Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order..." (1/) "... but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations." (2/)

Wow. I woke up this morning to find my thread went viral & my inbox was full of messages from ppl. My biggest takeaway from it is that we're all struggling right now. So, I've got a few quick things you can do RIGHT NOW to help survive whatever news dump we'll get today: (1) 1. Read this article by @leeferran that includes tips from me on how to read the news like an intelligence analyst. It gets at my tip from earlier on doing research before panicking and talks about how to actually do that research. Knowledge = POWER. (2/)

realclearlife.com/media/6-rules-…

Today seems like the right time to do a thread I've been thinking about for a while on how to handle the seemingly never-ending deluge of depressing and disturbing news. My tips are based on my time as a CIA military analyst in which I dealt daily with disturbing content. (1/) There are several risks to being overloaded with disturbing/negative content.

✔️ Complacency - becoming so used to the deluge that it all starts to seem normal.
✔️ Paralysis - that is, being so overwhelmed, you can't figure out what to do/how to move forward.

(2/)

I used to be considered a government expert on border security. Now I'm just another person screaming into the Twitter void. Even so, let me say once again that a wall on our southern border is an antiquated "solution" to a complex problem requiring a modern solution. Here's why: 1. Walls are in no way impenetrable. You can go over, under, and through. We need only look at Hamas's tunneling operations from Gaza to see how easy they are to build and how difficult they are to detect.

I have a contact form on my website and most of the time, the emails I get are pretty ordinary--journalists looking for a comment, people looking for tips on applying for jobs at the CIA, a question about one of my articles, etc. But there have been some notable exceptions, like: 1. The man who offered to create a country exclusively for people w/ disabilities & the people who love people w/ disabilities. I'm not sure whether he's going to find some undiscovered territory or we're going to stage a takeover of an existing country, but color me intrigued!

Trump at the G-7: Trudeau: