It's official: Beyoncé's eighth studio album "Cowboy Carter" has now dropped. It's the second album in her planned trilogy after 2022's "Renaissance."

For funsies, I'm gonna do a first listen review over the next several hours. 27 songs, 79:03 run time.

(thread) Like many, I have been waiting for this album for so damn long. I grew up on country music. I love Beyoncé. The fact that she's making Texas such a huge theme for this album delights my little Texan heart to no end.

Okay, let's do this! I'll be checking-in on each track.

Alright, friends, I shall be live-tweeting tonight's proceedings. President Biden's 2024 State of the Union, now hyped up to ludicrous levels of importance, the fate of democracy and free world hanging in the balance.

Delightful. Follow along. Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that the president shall, from time to time, essentially report on the State of the Union and make recommendations, but it wasn't until Woodrow Wilson that this started to become the very public event we see today.

I mean, if y'all really wanna talk about violently antisemitic beliefs in Congress, go ask the Speaker of the House what he believes will happen to Israel and all Jewish people during Christ's Second Coming.

That's a delightful conversation. Go ahead and ask him. Ask Mike Johnson if he's read "Left Behind" and what he thinks about those books. Ask him why he believes there are Jewish people who will be sacrificed in the End Times. Feels pretty goddamn antisemitic, I gotta say.

I just don't give a damn that Joe Biden is 80. It doesn't bother me. This will go down as one of the most critical presidencies in American history, and it's specifically due to his decades of his experience. I hate to think where we'd be without him. I don't care about his age. I mean, listen, folks... there's this weird obsession many Americans now have with pining for a John F. Kennedy kinda president -- youth and vitality in the White House and all that.

It's a bit silly to me. Know why? Because Kennedy was in notoriously poor health.

Hey friends, today is my birthday. I officially turned 37 very early this morning. There’s not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for how far I’ve come in life, and every year, on my birthday, I can’t help but reflect on the kid in Central Texas who dreamed big things.

(thread) When I was 13, there was nothing I wanted more than to participate in one of those programs where young people travel to D.C., meet Members of Congress, learn about politics, and receive support to start their journey into public service.

In the past 72 hours, it’s been incredibly disturbing to watch the attempted justification or rationalization for the terrorist group Hamas brutally murdering more than 900 people in Israel and taking 150 hostage in a coordinated attack that targeted civilians.

(thread) At best, it’s not that they so much condone the murder of civilians, such apologists claim, but that it’s understandable that Hamas resorted to violence out of desperation for the plight of the Palestinian people.

Quick guide to this Speaker vote:

Last night, Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL-01) filed a motion to vacate the Speaker of the House, or in other words: he moved for a vote to essentially fire Kevin McCarthy, the current Speaker, from that position.

Wait, can he do that?

(thread) Yes, because the rules package adopted by the House GOP when they took over this past January included a provision that allows any one member to call for a motion to vacate.

But why?

Because McCarthy had to concede this to the far-right just to get elected Speaker.

I'm 36 years old, and I can't imagine being the slightest bit invested in a high school homecoming queen contest. I was barely interested in my own homecoming. But this week, rightwing media are frothing at the mouth over a newly crowned homecoming queen in Kansas City.

(thread) Last week, Oak Park High School crowned a young trans woman as their 2023 homecoming queen. Tristan Young, a high school senior, is widely beloved among her peers and won the vote among five nominees, four of whom are not transgender. Can I emphasize something for a second?

You know, part of what bothers me about this whole cottage industry of former Trump staffers "seeing the light" is that they're very generously rewarded for eventually coming around--AFTER buying into his hateful vision--in a way that folks who warned us never will be. I don't know exactly what I want here, but an apology would be a great start.

"I was absolutely wrong to enable his hatred. I knew what I was doing, and I chose my own ambition over doing what's right."

But we never really hear that from these folks, do we?

Bisexuality doesn't mean you've kissed, dated, had sex with, or married someone of the same gender -- or done any of that with someone of another gender, either.

All it means is that you're attracted to two or more genders.

No action is required to be bisexual.

(thread) For example, a man who has only ever been involved with women, but is also attracted to men, is bisexual.

Same if he were only ever involved with other men but is also attracted to women. He's bisexual.

Same if that man hadn't been involved with anyone. Still bisexual.

Sir, since you seem to struggle with this basic concept, let me break it down for you:

Zelenskky's clothes are intentional symbolism. A country and its leader under immediate and existential threat from a tyrannical force have no time for suits and neckties.

(thread)

https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1704905884173037620

Notice, too, that he's not wearing a formal uniform or dress uniform.

He has no visible rank or medals or nametapes. He has no commander’s cap or mirror-shined shoes. He has no epaulets or brass buttons or starched creases. He isn’t even wearing patches.

@nytdavidbrooks There are 61 restaurants listed on the website for the Newark Liberty International Airport, from the Abruzzo Italian Steakhouse (Gate C70) to Zaro's Bakeshop (B Food Court). I began by trying to match the table, chairs, and floor to likely suspects w/ bar + burgers. @nytdavidbrooks This proved to be tedious because none of the available Yelp or TripAdvisor online images of any of the burger and bar restaurants that were listed had close matches. But I focused on one restaurant in particular and did a deep search: the Budweiser Brewhouse (B1 Pre-Security).

I think we all sense that Mr. Brooks claiming he paid $78 for a burger and fries meal at Newark Airport is quite misleading, but how can we prove it? I had the time this early Thursday morning and decided to investigate.

Here's what I found.

(thread)

https://twitter.com/nytdavidbrooks/status/1704668479259820413

There are 61 restaurants listed on the website for the Newark Liberty International Airport, from the Abruzzo Italian Steakhouse (Gate C70) to Zaro's Bakeshop (B Food Court). I began by trying to match the table, chairs, and floor to likely suspects w/ bar + burgers.

I don't know the last year this would have been true, but it wasn't long ago that a Member of Congress of either party caught being sexually explicit in a crowded theatre, in front of children, would have resigned within days.

So, how did political media over it?

(thread) The New York Times referred to it as "touching and carrying on with her date."

Carrying on.

The interview between Trump and Kristen Welker was largely underwhelming. The nicest thing I can say here is that Chuck Todd would have been a lot worse, and thus, Ms. Welker is an improvement over what was a very low bar to begin with.

(quick thread) At various points, Ms. Welker did some direct-to-camera fact checks from her studio in quick cuts and attempted to fact check Trump a few times during the interview, notably on his claim that Democrats support post-birth abortion (she did tell him that's false, several times).

So, Mitt Romney knew his Senate colleagues, including Mitch McConnell, were lying to the public about Trump's actions back in 2021 when they were actively telling those lies and he's just now telling us this in...

*checks calendar*

...September, 2023.

Okay then. It takes a special kind of arrogance to let your colleagues lie to the public about their awareness of a president's crimes and unconstitutional actions and then leak that knowledge to a reporter a few years later in an attempt to make yourself appear principled.

Three white male columnists who have never run for any office or run a campaign for any office or managed any staff want you to know that Vice President Kamala Harris should be dropped from the 2024 ticket and just happen to be publishing their takes at the same time. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, kinda like how I'm sure it's just a coincidence that every woman who has been competitive at a national level prior to Vice President Harris has been slammed and dismissed as not (insert favored adjective here) enough to be president.

I don’t remember the first time I saw Vivek Ramaswamy in one of the countless cable news hits he’s done since the announcement of his presidential campaign just over six months ago, but I remember the first time he held my attention.

(thread) It wasn’t a cable news hit. It was some random video in my timeline. Mr. Ramaswamy was at a campaign event six weeks ago in Ottumwa, Iowa, a town that has seen five presidential visits, most recently with Pres. Obama in 2010. This small town hall was hosted by the local GOP.

I was gonna write up a whole "guide" to the GOP debate tonight, but all you really need is a handful of tweets. Here goes: Trump, currently leading the rest of the field by 40+ points, still has a chokehold on the party. But he's not attending tonight.

(short thread) Everyone else attending is either hoping for a miracle (Trump somehow no longer being in the race) AND/OR auditioning to be his running mate.

Christie, Hutchison, Burgum and Pence will not be Trump's running mate. They're all hoping for a miracle.

On Monday, a photo of the Illinois State Fair Butter Cow — that is, a cow presented as “sculpted out of butter” — went viral after the shocking revelation that it’s a wire-and-steel-mesh frame sculpted in the likeness of a cow that's been covered in sculpted butter.

(thread) I got serious beef with this, but I will admit that I shared this image with the caption that it’s from the Iowa State Fair, which has been in the news a lot lately with the GOP primary and the fact that the two overlap. I was wrong. My apologies, Iowa. To err is bovine.

In a few hours, England’s women’s national football team—known affectionately as “The Lionesses”—will compete against Spain in the first World Cup Final that England has seen in six decades. No British Royals will be there.

This would never happen to the men's team.

(thread) For those unaware, football (known to us Americans as “soccer”) is massively popular in England. In fact, it’s where “association football” (as it’s formally termed) was born and popularized. In fact, even “massively popular” feels like a bit of an understatement.