FASCISM6

ESTB 11 24

SEE SEVEN 6 25

MERRI OK

see checks balance JUDICIARY

see retaliation bondi kash SEE LAWFARE TRUMP2 attack judges ARREST 4 25

SEE RULE OF LAW CONCEPT ABREGO GARCIA

SEE Bannon KIRK MILLER RULE OF LAW HABEUS CORPUS //FASCISM

SEE OLIGARCH KLEPTO KAKI BROLIGARCHY ZUCK MUSK INAUG

SEE DOGE COUP CRUELTY --> FEAR XIAN NATL VOUGHT

see press suppression, humor DEFAM orban

see DICTATORS

see ACAD SUPPRESS 2 student suppression academic ~ expert empir data

see reductionism conspiracy fear anger

SEE VIOLENCE 5 POLITICAL DEATH THREATS TRUMP BASE SOCIAL MEDIA FUNNEL ECHO

SEE MILITARIZATION MARTIAL LAW

SEE OFFENSIVE

see cruelty

see lie earth2 disinfo soc med ~ expert, press

see manosphere militia proud 3%RHODES

see culture capture

(DIGITAL) AUTHORITARIAN 71% OF WORLD see alt rt eur MANAFORT

Bak CAPT 11 25

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.. end times fasc

Naomi Klein: AI is a fascist idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEf-MNsyUiE

35 jerry rig methane genni Nashville

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AN 6 25

Salon Senior writer Chauncey Devega warns the authoritarian tide is “rising very quickly in America,” with President Donald Trump threatening to use his "big beautiful bill" as a weapon or revenge against his enemies, namely the Democratic Party.

During a recent trip to Capitol Hill to whip up support for his “big beautiful” budget bill, the president admitted to reporters that “We're going to make a couple of tweaks….I mean, we don't want to benefit Democrat governors.”

“… We want to help all the states, but we have governors that are from the Democrat [sic] party, let's say New York, Illinois, big ones, and let's say Gavin 'Newscum,' who's done a horrible job in California. We want to benefit Republicans. They are the ones that are going to make America great again….The Democrats are destroying our country," Trump said.

Devega points out presidents didn’t do this before Trump because a two-party system is essential to democracy. But last week Trump escalated threats to terminate federal funding from the state of California, forgetting that “Democrat-led blue states contribute more money to the federal government in terms of tax dollars and other resources than Republican-led red parts of the country,” as Devega explains.

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When Governor Gavin Newsom responded by suggesting California could retaliate by cutting off tax payments from the state to the federal government, Trump’s administration went ballistic. United States Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent warned Newsom that he would be guilty of “criminal tax evasion” over such a move.

But this escalation is just the beginning for our “first elected autocrat and aspiring dictator,” Devega says. In addition to series of “Truth Social propaganda platform” posts where Devega says :{Trump shared conspiracy theories and menacing images of retaliation against judges who stymied his immigration policies, the administration is also harassing Democratic members of Congress with arrest.}:

Department of Homeland Security police recently handcuffed an aide to U.S. Rep. Representative Jerry Nadler, (D-N.Y.), which makes the second time in less than a month the Trump administration has used law enforcement to directly target Congress. And for the second time in less than a month, Congress doesn’t have the desire or ability to defend itself.

Atlantic columnist David Graham writes: “The Constitution’s checks and balances are premised on each branch wantingto protect its powers. What happens if that’s not the case?”

Republicans are largely unwilling to stand up to Trump, Graham argues, while Democrats are incapable of exerting formal or informal political power.

With Trump announcing he was federalizing the California National Guard—against the wishes of Gov. Newsom—after ICE raids over the weekend, the authoritarian tide is rising, Devega warns. But the American people and their leaders “had numerous opportunities to ‘drown-proof’ their democracy at the ballot box.”

They also had ample time to deal with the problem through the rule of law and by addressing the deep societal problems that birthed Trumpism, MAGA, authoritarian populism and the larger antidemocracy movement. Instead, he says they put “a man who announced he would be a ‘dictator on day one’ back” in the White House.

READ MORE:How this horrid show ends

Read the full Salon report at this link.

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AN 6 25

President Donald Trump’s critics often accuse him of harboring authoritarian ambitions. Journalists and scholars have drawn parallels between his leadership style and that of strongmen abroad. Some Democrats warn that the U.S. is sliding toward autocracy – a system in which one leader holds unchecked power.

Others counter that labeling Trump an autocrat is alarmist. After all, he hasn’t suspended the Constitution, forced school children to memorize his sayings or executed his rivals, as dictators such as Augusto Pinochet, Mao Zedong and Saddam Hussein once did.

But modern autocrats don’t always resemble their 20th-century predecessors.

Instead, they project a polished image, avoid overt violence and speak the language of democracy. They wear suits, hold elections and talk about the will of the people. Rather than terrorizing citizens, many use media control and messaging to shape public opinion and promote nationalist narratives. Many gain power not through military coups but at the ballot box.

The softer power of today’s autocrats

In the early 2000s, political scientist Andreas Schedler coined the term “electoral authoritarianism” to describe regimes that hold elections without real competition. Scholars Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way use another phrase, “competitive authoritarianism,” for systems in which opposition parties exist but leaders undermine them through censorship, electoral fraud or legal manipulation.

In my own work with economist Sergei Guriev, we explore a broader strategy that modern autocrats use to gain and maintain power. We call this “informational autocracy” or “spin dictatorship.”

These leaders don’t rely on violent repression. Instead, they craft the illusion that they are competent, democratic defenders of the nation – protecting it from foreign threats or internal enemies who seek to undermine its culture or steal its wealth.

Hungary’s democratic facade

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán exemplifies this approach. He first served from 1998 to 2002, returned to power in 2010 and has since won three more elections – in 2014, 2018 and 2022 – after campaigns that international observers criticized as “intimidating and xenophobic.”

Orbán has preserved the formal structures of democracy – courts, a parliament and regular elections – but has systematically hollowed them out.

In his first two years he packed Hungary’s constitutional court, which reviews laws for constitutionality, with loyalists, forced judges off the bench by mandating a lower retirement age and rewrote the constitution to limit judicial review of his actions. He also tightened government control over independent media.

To boost his image, Orbán funneled state advertising funds to friendly news outlets. In 2016, an ally bought Hungary’s largest opposition newspaper – then shut it down.

Orbán has also targeted advocacy groups and universities. The Central European University, which was registered in both Budapest and the U.S., was once a symbol of the new democratic Hungary. But a law penalizing foreign-accredited institutions forced it to relocate to Vienna in 2020.

Yet Orbán has mostly avoided violence. Journalists are harassed rather than jailed or killed. Critics are discredited for their beliefs but not abducted. His appeal rests on a narrative that Hungary is under siege – by immigrants, liberal elites and foreign influences – and that only he can defend its sovereignty and Christian identity. That message resonates with older, rural, conservative voters, even as it alienates younger, urban populations.

A global shift in autocrats

In recent decades, variants of spin dictatorship have appeared in Singapore, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Leaders such as Hugo Chávez and the early Vladimir Putin consolidated power and marginalized opposition with minimal violence.

Data confirm this trend. Drawing from human rights reports, historical records and local media, my colleague Sergei Guriev and I found that the global incidence of political killings and imprisonments by autocrats dropped significantly from the 1980s to the 2010s.

Why? In an interconnected world, overt repression has costs. Attacking journalists and dissidents can prompt foreign governments to impose economic sanctions and discourage international companies from investing. Curbing free expression risks stifling scientific and technological innovation – something even autocrats need in modern, knowledge-based economies.

Still, when crises erupt, even spin dictators often revert to more traditional tactics. Russia’s Putin has cracked down violently on protesters and jailed opposition leaders. Meanwhile, more brutal regimes such as those in North Korea and China continue to rule by spreading fear, combining mass incarceration with advanced surveillance technologies.

But overall, spin is replacing terror.

America too?

Most experts, myself included, agree that the U.S. remains a democracy.

Yet some of Trump’s tactics resemble those of informational autocrats. He has attacked the press, defied court rulings and pressured universities to curtail academic independence and limit international admissions. His admiration for strongmen such as Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele alarms observers. At the same time, Trump routinely denigrates democratic allies and international institutions such as the United Nations and NATO.

Some experts say democracy depends on politicians’ self restraint. But a system that survives only if leaders choose to respect its limits is not much of a system at all. What matters more is whether the press, judiciary, nonprofit organizations, professional associations, churches, unions, universities and citizens have the power – and the will – to hold leaders accountable.

Preserving democracy in the US

Wealthy democracies such as the U.S., Canada and many Western European countries benefit from robust institutions such as newspapers, universities, courts and advocacy groups that act as checks on government.

Such institutions help explain why populists such as Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi or Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, although accused of bending electoral rules and threatening judicial independence, have not dismantled democracy outright in their countries.

In the U.S., the Constitution provides another layer of protection. Amending it requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states – a far steeper hurdle than in Hungary, where Orbán needed only a two-thirds parliamentary majority to rewrite the constitution.

Of course, even the U.S. Constitution can be undermined if a president defies the Supreme Court. But doing so risks igniting a constitutional crisis and alienating key supporters.

That doesn’t mean American democracy is safe from erosion. But its institutional foundations are older, deeper and more decentralized than those of many newer democracies. Its federal structure, with overlapping jurisdictions and multiple veto points, makes it harder for any one leader to dominate.

Still, the global rise of spin dictatorships should sharpen awareness of what is happening in the U.S. Around the world, autocrats have learned to control their citizens by faking democracy. Understanding their techniques may help Americans to preserve the real thing.

Daniel Treisman, Professor of Political Science, *University of California, Los Angeles

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AN 6 25

“Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be,” political scientists Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt tell the New York Times, primarily because “most 21st-century autocrats are elected.”

Unlike the regimes of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and U.S.-backed Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, authoritarianism comes in a new flavor called competitive authoritarianism — “a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an incumbent’s power tilts the playing field against” the ruler’s opposition. This is how autocrats rule in contemporary Hungary, India, Serbia, Turkey and now Venezuela.

The disguise is that modern authoritarians attack their rivals through a nominally legal system originally created by a democratically-elected government. This includes defamation suits, tax audits and politically targeted investigations that make citizens slow to realize they are succumbing to authoritarian rule.

“More than a decade into Mr. Chávez’s rule, most Venezuelans still believed they lived in a democracy,” they write. “Politicians may be investigated and prosecuted on baseless or petty charges, media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.

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But if citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy.

The signs are obvious in the administration of President Donald Trump. Just look to the Department of Justice opening investigations into former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency operator Christopher Krebs who called out Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020. You can also see it in the administration targeting major law firms like Perkins Coie by prohibiting them federal contracts for being perceived as friendly to Democrats.

Look also for Democratic Party donors and other progressive causes facing political retribution, such as Trump directing the attorney general to investigate the fund-raising practices of progressive fundraising platform ActBlue.

“Like many autocratic governments, the Trump administration has targeted the media,” they say, referring to Trump suing ABC News, CBS News, Meta, Simon & Schuster and TheDes Moines Register. He’s also “deployed” the Federal Communications Commission to open an investigation of fund-raising practices by PBS and NPR, and reinstating complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC for anti-Trump bias while ignoring complaints against Fox News for promoting lies about the 2020 election.

The writers say “there are signs of an awakening” to the threat in the U.S., particularly with Harvard refusing to install Trump’s commissar to direct school business. It’s also visible in Microsoft recent move to dump the services of a law firm that agreed to do pro bono work for Trump in favor of one that defied the White House.

America’s slide into authoritarianism is reversible, they say, “but no one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines.”

Read the full New York Times article here.

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AHA NOT PM WHEN POL OR TECH LORD BECOMES ISOLATED FROM PPL AND REALITY BY YES MEN THEY DEGRADE

AN 5 25

Since the start of his second term in office, US president Donald Trump has cultivated a political atmosphere that discourages freedom of thought. He also actively villainises and punishes any dissenting opinion. Worryingly, this atmosphere looks like it is spreading across other democracies.

Commentators have described Trump as both narcissistic and authoritarian. Yet, running parallel to these factors, one character trait is glaringly common among Trump supporters: sycophancy.

You just have to examine the pre-election rhetoric of Trump loyalists. One backer, Stephen Miller, declared him “the most stylish president … in our lifetimes”. Miller is now deputy White House chief of staff.

And South Dakota governor Kristi Noem gifted Trump a four-foot Mount Rushmore replica – with Trump’s face added alongside the original four presidents. Noem, who is now secretary of homeland security, epitomises the elevation of loyal sycophants over those with arguably better credentials.

Research has examined the dangers of sycophantic behaviour in the workplace, finding it reduces peer respect and morale, and leads to dissonance and lower productivity.

Other research has shown that someone who chooses to employ these tactics can enjoy improved promotion prospects, rewards such as the first refusal on business trips, easier access to company resources and a higher salary compared to their peers. But studies have also shown sycophants often suffer emotional exhaustion from the dual stresses of manipulation and responsibility.

Ongoing research I (Neil) am doing on workplace sycophancy reveals similar patterns. Interviews, spanning from junior staff to CEOs, show reduced motivation, falling team morale and declining respect for sycophants.

One participant highlighted the effect on teamwork that sycophantic behaviour can have within the workplace.

Sycophancy means raising yourself in somebody’s esteem, at the expense of somebody else, on the ladder. And so… it’s going to impact upon on the ability to be part of a team.

Another participant offered a comparison to a different deviant workplace behaviour – intimidation.

I’d say that sycophantic behaviour is coming into the same category as bullying. And it’s hard sometimes, especially with bullying and sycophantic behaviour, you are dealing with a lot of people that are manipulative, and manipulating people are quite charismatic. And when you’re charismatic, you’re more believable because you’re a storyteller.

One solution that emerges from the research is workforce education – teaching employees to recognise and mitigate a culture of ingratiation.

As an employee, many people might find it difficult not to bow to peer pressure. If the senior colleague encourages and rewards those who suck up, how do other colleagues, who do not choose to utilise such tactics, compete?

Dangerous ideas take root

Another factor to consider is the tendency for some workers to “kiss up and kick down”. What this means is that staff who are lower down the hierarchical ladder suffer detrimental treatment from the colleagues who are trying to suck their way up the same ladder.

If workforces were educated on what these tactics looked and felt like, perhaps included in corporate codes of conduct, HR departments and management could identify potential issues and deal with them.

But this is not merely an HR concern. Previous research also shows a link between ingratiation, high turnover rates and poorer performance by the organisation as a whole.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of sycophancy is the push for conformity when it comes to opinions. If leadership hears nothing but agreement, dangerous ideas can be reinforced. Things like the leader’s own skills or the competence of the organisation as a whole can become wildly exaggerated – with disastrous consequences.

When leaders are surrounded by “yes-men”, they’re deprived of critical input that could challenge assumptions or highlight potential flaws. This can lead to cognitive entrenchment where decision-makers become overconfident and resistant to change. Bad decisions then proceed unchecked, often escalating into systemic failures.

In return, this can lead to groupthink, a phenomenon where a desire for harmony overrides rational evaluation. Environments that suffer from groupthink often ignore red flags, silence whistleblowers and overvalue consensus. All of these things are damaging to an organisation’s ability to remain agile and competitive.

Which brings us back to Trump. In his case this isn’t a corporate crisis. It’s a geopolitical one. At stake is not shareholder value but national security and global stability.

With sycophants backing poor decisions, the risk ranges from damaged diplomacy to outright conflict. If loyalty replaces truth, the cost could be catastrophic. Trump’s regime may ultimately collapse under the weight of its own delusions – but the collateral damage could be profound.

Neil Beasley, PhD Candidate in Business and Law, Liverpool John Moores University and Madeleine Pickles, Reader in Organisational Transformation and Teaching Innovation, *Liverpool John Moores University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AN 6 25

During his first presidency, Donald Trump spent a lot of time fighting with conservative appointees who resisted parts of his agenda — from John Bolton (national security adviser) to Jeff Sessions (U.S. attorney general) to Rex Tillerson (secretary of state) to Gen. John F. Kelly (White House chief of staff). Trump's third White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, even ended up endorsing presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

But Trump's second presidency is much different. This time, he made a point of surrounding himself with hardcore MAGA loyalists—who, the Washington Post's Philip Bump argues in his June 2 column, are making a concerted effort to bully and intimidate opponents and create a climate of fear.

Trump, Bump warns, has a "range of dishonest actors" at his disposal. And they range from White House adviser Stephen Miller to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to immigration czar Tom Homan.

"What President Donald Trump wants is to put big deportation numbers on the scoreboard," Bump explains. "Recent reporting suggests that senior administration officials, including adviser Stephen Miller, are leaning on DHS to remove more people, faster. Trump’s 2024 campaign promised to focus on removing the massive population of criminal undocumented immigrants in the U.S. But, in part because his claims about the scale of the problem have consistently been hyperbolic, the (Trump) Administration is instead resorting to deporting just about anyone it can conceivably fit into the system."

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Bump notes that the intimidation tactics of Trump and his allies range from the arrests of Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-New Jersey) and Judge Hannah Dugan to DHS agents accusing Rep. Jerry Nadler's (D-New York) staff of "harboring rioters" and even handcuffing a Nadler staffer.

"In San Diego," Bump observes, "heavily armed immigration officers conducted a raid at a restaurant. When observers attempted to halt the arrests, the federal agents allegedly used a stun grenade against the crowd. That incident was perhaps the most extreme of a number of tense, aggressive encounters between immigration officials and the public over the past four months…. It also seems clear that some agents understand they won’t be held accountable for their actions."

Bump adds, "Detaining a staffer in member of Congress' office in search of 'rioters' from a nonexistent riot doesn't comport with a liberal democracy."

Nadler told the New York Times, "The Trump Administration is really using totalitarian or even authoritarian practices. We have to fight them. We don't want to be a fascist country."

Bump laments, "This is the reality. Immigrants are cast as dangerous when they aren't. Governmental power is abused without accountability. All of it at Trump’s whim — very much to Nadler's 'authoritarian' point."

*Philip Bump's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required)

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nyt

Public and cultural institutions

Presidio Trust

Mr. Trump ordered the government to “eliminate to the maximum extent” the functions of the Presidio Trust, which oversees a San Francisco park and was one of Representative Nancy Pelosi’s proudest accomplishments.

The Smithsonian Institution

Mr. Trump issued an executive order claiming that the Smithsonian Institution had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” The order stipulated, among other things, that future appropriations to the Smithsonian “prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values.”

The Kennedy Center

The center has been in flux since Mr. Trump purged its previously bipartisan board of Biden appointees and had himself elected chairman.

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AN 5 25

During President Donald Trump’s first three months in office, his administration has targeted dozens of former officials who criticized him or opposed his agenda.

In April 2025, Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate two men who served in his first administration, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, because they spoke out against his policies and corrected his false claims about the 2020 election that he lost.

Further, Trump revoked the security clearances for advisers and retired generals who publicly criticized him during the 2024 election campaign.

On their face, such moves appear to be a coordinated campaign of personal retribution. But as political science scholars who study the origins of elected strongmen, we believe Trump’s use of the Justice Department to attack former officials who stood up to him isn’t just about revenge. It also deters current officials from defying Trump.

More than revenge

Like all presidents, Trump needs allies who will faithfully implement his policy agenda. For most presidents, this means surrounding themselves with longtime friends.

For example, Don Evans, George W. Bush’s commerce secretary and close confidant, worked with Bush for decades before becoming a fixture in his White House.

But to carry out a power grab, incumbent leaders also need allies who will stay silent or, better yet, endorse their attempts to consolidate control.

In El Salvador, for example, President Nayib Bukele’s legislative allies gave him free rein in 2023 to run for president a second time despite constitutional provisions banning reelection.

Recall that Trump only left office in January 2021 because key Republican officials defied his attempts to overturn an election he lost.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, facing violent threats from a Trump-fueled mob, refused Trump’s request to overturn the election he lost. And Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused Trump’s entreaties to stuff the ballot boxes in Georgia with another 11,000 votes for Trump.Images

Notably, both men first won political office on their own, without an endorsement from Trump. This means they were less reliant on Trump for access to political power. Therefore, they were more likely to prioritize their loyalty to the Constitution over their loyalty to Trump.

Attacks enforce loyalty

In authoritarian contexts, loyalty is not an intrinsic quality. Authoritarian leaders do not necessarily select those with whom they have long work experience that leads to mutual trust.

For instance, during Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961, the head of intelligence, Johnny Abbes, was plucked from obscurity in Mexico and in 1958 began to lead the dictator’s repression machine.

Instead, the challenge for authoritarian leaders is finding people to do their bidding. And the best people for this job are those who never would have earned their position in politics without the leader’s influence.

Unqualified appointees who can’t ascend to political power based on their merits have little choice but to stick with the leader. These people appear loyal, but only because their careers are tied to the leader staying in power.

A litany of failed politicians

This logic, where people with few career prospects outside of the leader express the most loyalty, explains why Trump has appointed a number of political candidates who have lost elections.

The head of the Small Business Administration, Kelly Loeffler, though briefly appointed as a U.S. senator from Georgia, lost her first Senate election to Raphael Warnock in 2021.

Doug Collins, Trump’s secretary of Veterans Affairs, lost to Loeffler in a Georgia Senate primary during the same election cycle.

Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, lost a 2016 primary contest for a congressional seat in a heavily Republican district in Florida.

And don’t forget Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s nominee to head a politically crucial federal judicial office. Her political career derailed 20 years ago when she came under federal investigation for “scheming to catch a cheating spouse in the act.” She lost an attorney general race in New York in 2006 to Andrew Cuomo.

Trump also picked two politicians who had failed presidential runs as Democrats – Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – to act as director of national intelligence and secretary of Health and Human Services.

For appointees who can’t win elections, the only shot at power is steadfast alignment with the leader. This dynamic, in turn, provides a strong incentive for these officials to remain loyal, even when the leader breaks the law or orders them to do the same.

When leaders place loyalists in charge of federal law enforcement, attempts to conjure votes for the president out of thin air or to seize ballot boxes in opposition districts are more likely to succeed.

The Trump administration’s attacks on former Republican officials who criticized him, such as Taylor and Krebs, reinforces this dynamic. It sends a signal of future punishment to current Justice Department officials should they speak out against Trump or refuse to carry out illegal orders.

Attacks also target opposition power

Of course, the Trump administration’s political attacks haven’t stopped with officials in his previous administration who have fallen out of favor.

They have expanded to include independent institutions such as universities, not-for-profit media and law firms.

As research on authoritarian regimes shows, the goal of attacking independent institutions this way is to sap their capacity to resist the incumbent government’s attempts to cheat in future elections.

After Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orban, had rewritten his country’s Constitution and reined in the courts, he changed the electoral rules to ensure he won reelection in 2022. Along the way, Orban forced an entire university into exile after failing to subdue it.

In these ways, incumbents’ acts of retribution toward people and organizations that oppose their agenda reinforce loyalty among their allies. They also undermine and weaken their opponents and ultimately facilitate incumbents’ efforts to consolidate power.

Joe Wright, Professor of Political Science, Penn State and Erica Frantz, Associate Professor of Political Science, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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an 5 25

When President Donald Trump met with his Cabinet the day after reaching the 100-day milestone last month, members took turns excessively praising him — prompting many commentators to describe his apparent need for constant approval as “cult-like” behavior.

However, in a Sunday article for*Salon*, journalist and podcast host Jonathan Hirsch offered a different take, drawing on his own childhood experience growing up in a cult.

Hirsch recalled growing up in a Northern California commune devoted to Franklin Jones, a self-proclaimed divine guru who led the group Adidam and claimed, “I alone am the way.” Immersed in the cult from childhood — his parents were even part of Jones’ inner circle. The author experienced its teachings and inner workings firsthand.

He said he heard Trump use the same words, "I alone," which reminded him of the years he "spent as a child under the specter of an authoritarian spiritual figure."

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"As a child, I was led to believe that one man — in our case, an ordinary-looking guy from Jamaica, Queens, New York, exactly the same neighborhood where Donald Trump was born and raised — was in fact … God. The startling parallel between these two men, and that phrase in particular, remains intensely resonant for me," Hirsch wrote.

He argued that the word "cult” now means "so many things that I’m no longer sure it means anything at all."

"And no modern public figure is more often described as a cult leader than our duly elected president. A few months into his chaotic second term, the question of whether or not the movement that he has started is effectively a cult has become a live one once again. To appreciate how we got here, we need to understand the word itself, and how it caught fire in popular culture," the author wrote.

Hirsch argued that while Trump craves loyalty and thrives on the devotion of his supporters, his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement has not fully crossed into cult territory. He added that a true cult is led by a narcissistic leader who demands total control, but the public still retains some power.

"For now, we still have a choice," he said.

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snyder on prof g pod: feels good man, gonna do it eventually

Steve Bannon Nazi Salute

C-SPAN

https://www.c-span.org › video › user-clip-steve-banno...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5154286/user-clip-steve-bannon-nazi-salute)

Feb 20, 2025 — Steve Bannon throws a Nazi salute on stage at CPAC 2025. The crowd loves it.

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an 525

President Donald Trump's critics, both left and right, often use the word "unprecedented" to describe his actions. No previous president in U.S. history — not even Richard Nixon — contemplated deporting U.S. citizens to foreign prisons or took aggressive action against law firms for having clients he didn't like.

They typically mean "unprecedented" in the United States, not unprecedented elsewhere.

In an article published by The Atlantic on May 14, Andrew O'Donohue — a political scientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts — warns that Trump is employing a legal strategy used by despots in other countries.

"Donald Trump’s attacks on the courts lack recent precedent in the United States," O'Donohue explains, "but they follow a clear pattern seen in backsliding democracies around the world. In many countries, when political leaders challenge the courts, the end result isn't merely a win in a single policy dispute. These attacks have a deeper, more destructive effect: They systematically weaken the courts as a check on the executive's power — opening the door for governments to abuse that power to target opponents and endanger democracy."

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The Harvard political science expert continues, "This fight takes place both inside and, importantly, outside the courtroom, in the arena of the public’s opinion. Even though citizens generally agree that governments should obey court orders, several would-be authoritarians — such as those in Turkey, Mexico, and El Salvador — have managed to defy the courts, while keeping the public on their side.

O'Donohue describes the "pattern" he has "studied" in "democratic backsliding globally" as "court-baiting."

"To understand this dynamic, consider a textbook example from Turkey," O'Donohue writes. "When Turkey’s long-serving leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, first rose to power in 2003, he initially faced powerful constraints from the judiciary. Whereas Erdoğan's party was religiously conservative, Turkey's courts were staunchly secular and issued dozens of decisions during Erdoğan’s first term to limit the government's sway over historically secular state institutions. To take down the judiciary, Erdoğan used the court-baiting playbook."

O'Donohue continues, "He proposed a constitutional amendment perfectly designed to galvanize public support — and trigger a showdown with the judiciary. In Turkey, the courts had repeatedly upheld a ban that prevented Muslim women from wearing the Islamic headscarf at universities in the name of upholding the constitution’s strict commitment to secularism."

Trump, O'Donohue argues, is using the "court-baiting playbook" in a similar fashion to Erdoğan in Turkey — and the goal is an "erosion of checks and balances."

"The experiences of other democracies offer a warning: Court-baiting starts by expanding executive power on a popular issue," O'Donohue writes, "but it can end with an unconstrained executive who destroys the cherished institutions of a free society."

*Andrew O'Donohue's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).

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an 5 25

Never Trump conservatives often attack President Donald Trump and the far-right MAGA movement as a toxic departure from the conservatism of the past and a betrayal of what President Ronald Reagan and Arizona Senators Barry Goldwater and John McCain represented. And they will applaud National Review founder William F. Buckley for distancing himself from the far-right conspiracy theorists of the John Birch Society.

But in an opinion column published on May 14, liberal New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie argues that Trumpism didn't really start with Donald Trump and his MAGA movement — and that the right's dark side was there all along.

Bouie takes a close look at the second Trump Administration, stressing that its policies aren't new ideas for the American right.

:{"Of the endless torrent of illegal, unconstitutional — and anti-constitutional — actions flowing from the Trump Administration," Bouie observes, "there are three that stand out for their contempt for the rule of law. There is the president’s ongoing assault on the right to due process, seen in his administration's refusal to facilitate the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was arrested in Baltimore in March and removed to a prison in El Salvador…. The second incident is the suggestion, by the White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, that the president might suspend habeas corpus to keep federal courts from releasing the (Trump) Administration's detainees — thus blocking its efforts to remove, among others, some lawful residents from the country….

The last, and by comparison relatively minor, instance of constitutional subversion by this administration is the president's plan to accept a $400 million luxury aircraft to temporarily replace Air Force One, provided to the United States by the royal family of Qatar."}:

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But no matter how many dangerous lines Trump crosses, Bouie argues, much of the American right refuses to stand up to him.

"The Republican Party is, with only a few quibbles and some occasionally timid disagreement, united in support of Donald Trump," Bouie warns. "Conservative intellectuals have spent the last decade spinning endless excuses for the president and his allies. They treat his tyrannical aspirations as little more than a curiosity, or even a justified response to some imagined revolutionary movement of the political and cultural left. }:}:

Both the MAGA cheerleaders of the Claremont Institute and the Trump rationalizers in the nation’s premier publications agree: Nothing Trump has done, or wants to do, is beyond the pale…. This attitude, while shocking in its moral and ethical decadence, is not all that surprising. As the writer and editor Jacob Heilbrunn shows in 'America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators,' the conservative movement has always had a soft spot for despots of various stripes."}:

Bouie continues, "The political and intellectual antecedents of the Trump movement, stretching all the way back to the early 20th Century, have often had nothing but praise for those despotic rulers who extinguished the freedom of the many for the liberty of the few, from Gen. Francisco Franco in Spain and Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile to, at this moment, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orban in Hungary…. There is no 'Trumpified' conservative movement. There never was. There is only the conservative movement that was, we can see now, waiting for its Donald Trump."

*Jamelle Bouie's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).

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MMA

“It needs to stop.” Ben Shapiro calls out Trump's “skeezy stuff” like the crypto scheme and accepting a plane from Qatar.

05/12/25

Charlie Kirk: “These are members of Congress that stormed into a federal ICE facility despite warnings. They should absolutely be charged for this.”}:

05/12/25

May 12, 2025, edition ofThe Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): This is a very easy one for my friend, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. Very easy. They went after American patriots for peacefully walking into the United States Capitol building, nonviolently, while being invited, while doors were opened, and they stayed within the lanes, the little rope lines. These are members of Congress that stormed into a federal ICE facility despite warnings. They should absolutely be charged for this, without a doubt. No one is above the law, is what we've always been saying. No one is above the law.

...

KIRK: And that's exactly what should happen. You see, the Democrats have a big problem with Immigration Customs and Enforcement. But if you assault ICE, you get consequences. If you storm an ICE facility, there will be consequences. Rob Menendez complained that they had put their hands on a member of Congress. Oh, I must have missed the memo that he was an untouchable. He thinks they should be invulnerable, that he is royalty. And by the way, his dad is literally a traitor. Bob Menendez sold our country out to Egypt for gold bars while on the Senate foreign intelligence committee, selling out American secrets for cash. And did — he also had multiple instances of near misses with the law. This guy was a disgusting person.

...

KIRK: Throw the book at them. Kash and Pam, you got all the details you need — charge these members of Congress. The facts are there. They stormed the facility. They assaulted our ICE officers. They think they are above the law. They tried to put President Trump in jail for 700 years for something he did not do. They are begging you to indict them and do it. Don't make a big show of it. Indite them. Charge them. The only way that we end the lawfare chapter in this country is reciprocity. They came after us, they assaulted ICE officers, and we will go after them.

### Fox’s comically pathetic spin for a foreign government gifting Trump a $400 million plane

05/12/25

### Steve Bannon: “Certain members of Congress should be arrested this afternoon for their activities on this situation up in Newark”

:{:{05/12/25}:

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1st q to dc draino

an 4 25

With the Trump administration making space in the press briefing room for right-wing podcasters and other conservative "new media" content creators, viewers of briefings since President Donald Trump took office have seen his press secretary field questions about the Ukrainian president's clothing during an Oval Office meeting, compliments about Trump's "fitness plan," and attacks on reporters who have long reported from the White House.

On Monday, the first question of the briefing was derided by one Democratic politician as "absolute insanity," as right-wing commentator and influencer Rogan O'Handley—also known by the handle "DC Draino"—was given the floor to ask whether Trump will suspend the writ of habeas corpus in order to circumvent several judges' rulings and "start shipping out" undocumented immigrants without due process.

"Can you please let us know if and when the Trump administration is planning to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to circumvent these radical judges?" asked O'Handley after accusing federal judges of "thwarting [Trump's] agenda with an unprecedented number of national injunctions."

O'Handley shared some familiar right-wing talking points—saying federal judges have provided "more due process to violent MS-13 and Tren de Aragua illegal aliens than they did for U.S. citizens who peacefully protested on January 6"—as he suggested the administration should abandon the legal principle under which people who are detained are permitted to challenge their imprisonment in court.

"You have got to be kidding me," wrote Sara McGee, a Democrat running for the Texas House of Representatives.

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His question came amid escalating attacks by Republicans and the administration on judges who have ruled against the White House. A Republican congressman said last month that Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. should be impeached for issuing an order against Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to expel hundreds of undocumented immigrants to El Salvador. Last week, the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping a migrant evade arrest by escorting him out of her courtroom.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, noted that O'Handley and press secretary Karoline Leavitt also repeatedly cited at least one statistic that was "completely made up"—that the Biden administration allowed 15 million undocumented immigrants into the United States—as they suggested Trump should take legal steps to force all of them out of the country without the input of the judicial system.

The undocumented population in the U.S. in 2023 was 11.7 million, according to the Center for Migration Studies, down from the peak of 12 million, which was reached in 2008.

"They've been pushing this on the right for about a week now," said Reichlin-Melnick of the push to suspend habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants. "Anyone advocating for suspending the writ of habeas corpus because they don't like due process is spitting on the legacy of those who fought and died for this country and our Constitution."

Leavitt responded to O'Handley's question by saying while she has "not heard such discussions take place... the president and the entire administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies" to continue expelling people from the United States.

Several cases of undocumented immigrants who have been sent to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center have made national headlines in recent weeks, including that of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia; Merwil Gutiérrez, a 19-year-old who federal agents acknowledged was not who they were looking for during a raid; and Andry Hernandez Romero, a makeup artist who was accused of being a gang member solely because he had tattoos.

O'Handley's suggestion that the bedrock legal principle be suspended for undocumented immigrants—hundreds of whom have already been forced out of the country without due process—came ahead of Trump's scheduled signing of two new immigration-related executive orders.

One would direct the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to publish a list of sanctuary cities and states—those where local law enforcement are directed not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it seeks to arrest undocumented immigrants.

The other, Leavitt said, would "unleash America's law enforcement to pursue criminals." The New York Postreported that the order would be related to providing local police agencies with military equipment and legal support for officers accused of wrongdoing.

Watch the segment below or at this link:

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an 5 25

More than 100 days into his return to the White House, the conclusion is stark: Donald Trump is no longer the same president he was during his first term. His familiar nationalist and populist rhetoric is now openly paired with an authoritarian turn – one without precedent in US history. He has adopted a neo-imperial view of the economy, treating the global order as a zero-sum contest of winners and losers. In this worldview, cooperation gives way to domination: what matters is power and the accumulation of wealth.

Having withstood two impeachment procedures, numerous lawsuits and at least one assassination attempt, Trump now governs with what can appear to be unchecked authority. To his followers, he has become a hero, a martyr – almost a messianic figure. He no longer sees democracy as a framework to be honoured, but as a tool to legitimize his hold on power. His decisive electoral victory now serves as a mandate to cast aside institutional limits.

Three key features define his style of governance: a radical centralization of executive power grounded in the theory of the “unitary executive”; the politicization of the Department of Justice, used as a weapon against rivals; and the manipulation of federal authority to target cultural, media and educational institutions. His playbook is chaos: unsettle opponents, dominate the media narrative and blur the boundaries of democratic norms. Impulsive and reactionary, Trump often governs in response to Fox News segments or trending posts on Truth Social. Instability has become a strategic tool.

But Trump is not a historical anomaly. While his 2016 victory may have seemed unlikely, his re-election reflects a deeper, long-term transformation rooted in the post-Cold War era.

From an external to an internal enemy

The collapse of the USSR – a structuring external enemy – redirected political confrontation toward the designation of an internal enemy. The culture war has become the dominant ideological battleground, driven by two closely linked forces. On one side, a religious radicalization led by nationalist Christian movements – such as the New Apostolic Reformation – seeks to roll back social progress and promote the vision of an outright theocracy. On the other, growing racial anxiety is fueled by fears of white demographic decline and resistance to civil rights gains.

The commentator Pat Buchanan saw it coming as early as the 1990s., he warned: “There is a cultural war going on for the soul of America… as critical as the Cold War itself.” Too radical for his time, Buchanan championed a white, Christian, conservative US hostile to cosmopolitan elites. Though marginalized then, his ideas laid the groundwork for what would become Trumpism.

Newt Gingrich, who served as Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, played a pivotal role in reshaping both the Republican party and US politics. A Republican group he chaired famously distributed a pamphlet to Republican candidates titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”, advising them to use uplifting language to describe themselves, and inflammatory terms like “corrupt”, “immoral” and “traitor” to describe their opponents. This aggressive rhetoric redefined political rivals as enemies to be defeated – helping pave the way for a right-wing politics in which winning trumps democratic norms.

At the same time, the rise of a new conservative media ecosystem intensified polarization. The launch of Fox News in 1996, the growth of right-wing talk radio shows like Rush Limbaugh’s and the later explosion of social media gave the US right powerful tools to shape and radicalize public opinion. Today, algorithm-driven information bubbles trap citizens in alternate realities, where misinformation and outrage drown out reasoned debate. This has deepened polarization and fractured society as a whole.

Channeling anger

This ideological and media realignment has unfolded alongside a broader crisis: the unraveling of the post-Cold War neoliberal consensus. Promises of shared prosperity have been replaced by deindustrialization, deepening inequality and widespread resentment. Successive traumas – from 9/11 and the 2008 financial crash to the Covid-19 pandemic – and foreign wars without real victories have eroded public trust in the establishment.

Trump channels this anger. He offers a vision of a restored and idealized America, a rollback of recent social gains, and a reassertion of national identity grounded in religion and race. His populism is not a coherent ideology but an emotional response – born of perceived injustice, humiliation and loss.

Trump is more than a symptom of America’s democratic crisis: he is its most vivid manifestation. He embodies the legacy of the 1990s – a foundational decade of identity grievance, culture wars and media deregulation. Viewed as a political outsider, he has never been judged as a traditional politician, but rather embraced, by some, as the archetypal “self-made man” – a successful businessman and reality TV celebrity.

His rhetoric – transgressive, provocative and often cruel – gives voice to what had been repressed. The humiliation of opponents becomes part of the performance. For his supporters, it’s exhilarating. It breaks taboos, flouts political correctness and feeds the fantasy of reclaiming a lost America.

And he’s no longer alone. With the vocal support of economic and tech elites like Elon Musk – now a central figure in the radicalized right on X – Trumpism has entered a new phase. Together, they’ve outlined a new kind of authoritarian, cultural and digital power, where influence matters more than institutions.

The US re-elected not just a man, but a style, an era and a worldview built on dominance, disruption and disdain for rules. Still, history is unwritten: intoxicated by hubris and undermined by incompetence, Trumpism may yet crash into the wall of reality – with consequences far beyond America’s borders.

Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, Spécialiste de la politique américaine, Sciences Po

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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PRESS SUPPRESS

AN NO LNX

Trump just issued a threat to all of us

Donald Trump gestures at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024. REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo

Thom Hartmann May 06, 2025

In the dark corners of America’s halls of power, something sinister is unfolding. Attorney General Pam Bondi has launched an assault on one of the most sacred pillars of our democracy: the freedom of the press. And make no mistake, this isn’t just another policy change. It’s a deliberate strategy straight from the dictator’s playbook.

Late last month, Bondi quietly issued a memo rescinding vital protections for journalists that had prevented the government from forcing reporters to reveal their sources or surrender their notes during leak investigations. This wasn’t just any memo; it was a declaration of war against the very foundation of press freedom in America.

Bondi’s memo, released late on a Friday afternoon (a classic timing choice to minimize media attention), rescinded policies that had limited when and how Justice Department attorneys could pursue records or testimony from journalists, including in cases involving the unauthorized disclosure of government secrets to the press. The implications are chilling and immediate.

The Justice Department will now allow federal investigators to pursue communications from media outlets in government leak investigations, marking a complete reversal of Biden-era (and previous administrations’) policies that protected journalists from becoming targets of government intimidation.

Bondi’s justification? The Justice Department “will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people.”

Did you catch that? Not disclosures that threaten national security, but those that “undermine President Trump’s policies.” Since when did the President’s policies become sacred and beyond scrutiny? Since when did exposing wrongdoing by our government become a crime against “the American people”?

Throughout our history, ethical government officials who leaked information to the press have been essential to maintaining our democracy. They’ve exposed corruption, illegal wars, and unconstitutional surveillance, and in many cases they’ve paid a heavy price for their courage.

Take my old friend and correspondent Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps America’s most famous whistleblower. In 1971, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing how multiple presidents had systematically lied to the American people about the Vietnam War. He believed the documents contained “evidence of a quarter century of aggression, broken treaties, deceptions, stolen elections, lies and murder.” His brave act helped change public opinion and ultimately contributed to ending that disastrous war.

When Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon administration tried to block their publication. The Supreme Court ruling in New York Times Co. v. United States upholding the press’s right to publish has been called one of the “modern pillars” of First Amendment rights with respect to freedom of the press.

That same Nixon administration that tried to silence Ellsberg created the infamous “White House Plumbers” unit to stop leaks, which later led directly to the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s downfall.

History shows that when presidents attack whistleblowers and the press, they’re usually trying to hide their own misdeeds. And it sure feels like that’s exactly what Bondi and Trump are now up to.

In more recent history, we’ve seen Edward Snowden expose the NSA’s mass surveillance programs and Chelsea Manning reveal troubling military actions, including the killing of civilians. Both were driven by their conviction that the American people deserved to know about government overreach and misconduct.

The Founders understood that a democracy cannot function without an informed citizenry, and citizens cannot be informed without a free press that can hold the powerful accountable. That’s why they enshrined press freedom in the First Amendment; they knew from bitter experience that power corrupts, and that the powerful will always seek to hide their corruption.

A free press serves as our early warning system against government overreach and abuse. When journalists can protect their sources, those inside the government who witness wrongdoing can come forward without fear of retribution. This critical flow of information is what Bondi is now trying to shut down.

Bondi’s actions come in the midst of an aggressive campaign against unauthorized leaking in Trump’s second administration. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has already referred “two intelligence community leakers” to the Justice Department for potential prosecutions, with a third referral on the way.

What we’re witnessing is step one in the dictator’s playbook: silence those who tell the truth about your regime. We’ve seen this pattern in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and countless other countries where democracy has withered into authoritarianism. First, attack the press. Then, criminalize dissent. Intimidate lawmakers, lawyers, and judges. Finally, consolidate power in the hands of a single leader.

Bondi’s memo added that there will be procedures in place before members of the media are compelled to testify or their records are seized, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Justice Department is now prepared to compel journalists to testify, and their records will be subject to seizure.

But the most alarming part of all is what Bondi reportedly wants to do next. According to sources close to the Justice Department, she has argued that leakers — or even reporters — who provide information that she doesn’t like could be prosecuted for treason, a crime that carries the death penalty.

Let that sink in: the Attorney General of the United States believes that journalists doing their constitutionally protected job could be subject to execution.

I’ve been covering American politics for five decades, and just to be very clear: This is not normal. This is not just another partisan policy dispute. This is an existential threat to our constitutional system of government.

When a government official can decide that reporting unflattering information is “treason,” we’re no longer living in a democracy. We’re living in an authoritarian state where power flows from the top down, not from the people up.

Bondi’s actions reveal the Trump administration’s true nature. They have no interest in our democratic traditions or constitutional liberties. Their only goal is to consolidate power and silence dissent.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which documents threats to press freedom, has condemned Bondi’s decision and criticized Republicans in Congress who killed a federal shield law in 2024 that would have protected journalists from such subpoenas.

We’ve seen this before. Nixon’s attacks on the press were a precursor to his abuses of power. The Bush administration’s aggressive prosecutions of leakers after 9/11 helped enable his unconstitutional torture program and illegal surveillance. And Trump’s first term was marked by constant rhetorical attacks on the press as “enemies of the people.”

But this move by Bondi takes things to a new and dangerous level. By institutionalizing the persecution of journalists and their sources, she’s laying the groundwork for a full-scale assault on press freedom.

She claims that “subpoenaed news outlets are to be given advanced notice” and that the subpoenas will be “narrowly drawn,” but these are empty promises from an administration that has repeatedly shown contempt for democratic norms and the rule of law.

The time for polite disagreement or “strongly worded letters” is over. The time for waiting to see what happens next is over. We must act now to protect our democracy before it’s too late.

First, demand that Congress pass a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to reveal their sources. This is not a partisan issue; it’s about preserving the basic functioning of our democracy.

Second, support independent journalism with your dollars and your attention. Subscribe to newspapers, donate to nonprofit news organizations like ProPublica, and share important stories with your networks. A robust press is our best defense against tyranny.

Third, contact your representatives and tell them that protecting press freedom must be a top priority. Remind them that their oath is to the Constitution, not to any president or party. The phone number for the congressional switchboard, which can connect you to both your senators and your member of the House, is 202-224-3121.

Fourth, prepare to take to the streets if Bondi follows through on her threat to prosecute journalists for treason. That would be a red line from which there is no return to normal democratic governance.

Finally, remember that the press isn’t perfect — no human institution is — but it’s essential. When governments attack journalists, it’s rarely because they’re telling lies. It’s almost always because they’re telling truths that the powerful don’t want heard.

We stand at a crossroads in American history. Down one path lies a renewed commitment to our democratic values, including a free press that can hold the powerful accountable. Down the other lies authoritarianism, where “truth” is whatever the leader says it is, and those who disagree face persecution or worse.

The choice should be obvious. But making the right choice requires courage, from journalists who continue to do their jobs despite threats, from whistleblowers who risk everything to expose wrongdoing, and from citizens who refuse to be silent in the face of growing tyranny.

Pam Bondi and Donald Trump have shown their true colors. They’ve revealed their contempt for the Constitution and their fear of the truth. They’re trying to create a country where no one can challenge their power or expose their corruption.

We cannot — we must not — let them succeed. Our democracy depends on it.

NOW READ: Democrats need to draw 'political blood': Expert lays out strategy for defeating MAGA

The time to act is now.

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INTERESTING // TO CONSPIRACY // ALT FACT EARTH 2? HYPE FEAR ANGER

AN 5 25

London-based journalist Phil Tinline, who spent 20 years as a BBC reporter and authored the 2023 book "The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares," is known for his expertise on authoritarian movements. And he doesn't exclude the United States and the MAGA movement from his scrutiny.

During a Q&A interview with Salon's Chauncey DeVega published on May 7, Tinline discussed President Donald Trump's second term and where he believes it fits in with anti-democracy movements around the world.

"Trying to keep up with the new Trump Administration and the implications of its actions is disorientating and exhausting," Tinline told DeVega. "I've spent a lot of time over the last 20 years researching the history of the fear that democracy is about to die, mainly in the U.K., but also, in the U.S. Historically, we have worried about this many times without our nightmares coming to life. This led me to be very wary of people airily predicting that democracy was finished, and made me alive to the way that, paradoxically, such nightmares can actually damage democracy."

Tinline continued, "But since Trump’s speech at the airport in Waco, Texas, two years ago, and especially since January this year, I've been forced to the conclusion — as many others have — that constitutional democracy in America really is now under severe threat. I hope that, as has happened before, this crisis will force politicians to break free from old taboos and find more effective ways to restore ordinary Americans' trust that democracy can make their lives better — and then to actually deliver on that."

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During the interview, Tinline discussed the role that conspiracy theories play in far-right movements. According to Tinline, conspiracy theories are "one of the warning lights on the dashboard of democracy."

"They express how people feel about power," Tinline told DeVega. "More people who care about democracy should have seen those lights flashing red and acted accordingly much earlier. But now here we are. The only way that I can see America recovering from this situation is for democratically elected politicians to show that they can and do make ordinary people’s lives better."

Tinline added, "The problem is that, meanwhile, conspiracy theories are a very useful way for other politicians to stoke distrust and division in pursuit of power."

*Chauncey's DeVega's full interview with Phil Tinline for Salon is available at this link.

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an 5 25 the conv

In the most non-controversial and basic sense, the rule of law means formal legality. The law binds citizens and governments. When it comes to nation states, law is enacted by democratically elected legislatures; legal statutes are openly available and sufficiently clear to follow. State actions can be judicially reviewed for compliance with a constitution.

In its more ambitious conceptualization, the rule of law can also be understood to include substantive human rights and equity. In Canada, The Constitution Act of 1982 references the rule of law in its preamble.

The modern Canadian iteration of the rule of law — which includes substantive ideas about human rights as well as Indigenous treaty rights — is based on liberal ideas shared by many countries, including, historically, the United States. What distinguishes a rule-of-law state from an authoritarian one to a large extent is whether state actions can be judicially reviewed for compliance with a constitution.

Although rule of law scholars debate the parameters of the concept of the rule of law, few would debate that what is happening during U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term presents anything other than a wholesale attack on the rule of law both domestically in the U.S and internationally.

I am a rule of law researcher, educator and lawyer. Since Trump was elected to his first term in 2016, I’ve relied on American scholars, from a variety of disciplines, to understand what is happening.

These include two prominent Yale professors, philosopher Jason Stanley and historian Timothy Snynder, both of whom have recently announced they’re moving to the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

Authoritarian impulse

In their scholarship, Stanley and Snyder have sought to explain the authoritarian impulses of the first Trump administration and how to resist it.

Stanley’s father, a German Jew who fled Germany for America in 1939, carries the remembrance of fascism.

Both Stanley and Snyder explore the similarities between what is occurring in Trump’s America, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China and, equally chillingly, between Trump’s America and Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Even prior to the first Trump presidency, Stanley already asked in his 2015 book, How Propoganda Works, whether the U.S., “the world’s oldest liberal democracy,” might already have become a liberal democracy “in name only?”

Examination of propaganda, rhetoric

In his 2018 book, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Snyder described Trump as a “sado-populist, whose policies were designed to hurt the most vulnerable people of his own electorate.”

Stanley’s focus on propaganda and rhetoric were especially useful for framing the politics of Trump.

Similarly, Snyder’s focus on the similarities between Trump and other authoritarian leaders, through their attachment to extreme illiberal ideologies, helped frame public discourse in the U.S. during the first Trump presidency. “Illiberal” does not imply conservative in opposition to “being liberal” (with the resonance of “leftist”); rather, it denotes a repudiation of liberal democracy, in the words of political scientist Thomas J. Main.

Both Stanley and Snyder are on the public record explaining their decision to immigrate to Canada, on the basis that they can no longer continue their scholarly activities in an American university, even a premier one like Yale.Jason Stanley speaks with Amanpour and Company.

Improper interference

This is an admission by important thinkers that civil society, intellectuals and critical scholars, in particular, are under assault.

It comes as no surprise given other developments. Trump’s executive orders, threats to some university funding and crackdowns on activists and academics — as well as the attempted deportations of those without U.S. citizenship — have used the idea of combatting campus antisemitism as cover for an attack on free expression, academic independence and student activism.

From my perspective as a Jewish person, a post-secondary teacher and as someone with a legal education, all of these developments have hit hard, especially alongside accounts of some of America’s most prestigious law firms caving to improper interference by the Trump administration.

What ‘fascism’ means

In the introduction to his bestselling 2020 book, How Fascism Works, Stanley wrote: “In recent years, multiple countries across the world have been overtaken by a certain kind of far-right nationalism; the list includes Russia, Hungary, Poland, India, Turkey and the United States.”

He explains the choice of the word “fascism” to speak about each of these countries, despite their differences of degree and context:

“I have chosen the label ‘fascism’ for ultra nationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural), with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf. As Donald Trump declared in his Republican National Convention speech in July 2016, ‘I am your voice.’”

In his similarly bestselling book, On Tyranny, published in 2017, Snyder wrote: “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is not basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”

Now that Trump is back in office, Stanley and Snyder, as well as Snyder’s Yale colleague and spouse, Marie Shore, the celebrated author of The Ukrainian Night, are leaving Yale for Canada with good reason.Author Timothy Snyder speaks about Democracy and the Risk of Tyranny with Public Policy Forum.

Shared mutual concern

While the departure of a handful of prominent academics is hardly a trend, it raises questions about whether there will be an accelerated academic “brain drain”, or more American students in Canada.

As a Canadian, I would like to say America’s loss is our gain, and I wish these scholars well. I am also aware that narratives of flight to Canada as refuge have historically bolstered national myths while obscuring Canadian inequities. My hope is that Canadians will not observe the arrival of U.S. scholars with smugness, but instead with shared concern.

We should not be blind to this unique moment in which Canada is called to revisit why we care about Canada and keep watch on the rule of law. Yet, we must also recognize our own profound historical blind spots.

For example, while an overt threat to sovereignty is new for some Canadians, it is nothing new for Canada’s Indigenous Peoples. Today it’s important to understand the distinctively Canadian importance of Indigenous law to any reaffirmation of the rule of law tradition in Canada in the 21st century.

Too much cynicism might prevent us from acknowledging the importance of these three scholars’ decisions to leave their country and come to ours at this particular time in history. However, my hope is also that we are also inspired by their considerable truth-telling skills to demand Canada also do better.

Jeffrey B. Meyers, Instructor, Legal Studies and Criminology, *Kwantlen Polytechnic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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an 525

acting Undersecretary of State Darren Beattie is looking to assemble a “Twitter files”-style document trove to “build a blacklist of people who should be frozen out or even targeted by the administration as enemies,” says Atlantic columnist Tom Nichols, who added the move could also “chill any contact between [the government] and people or organizations who have not passed the administration’s political purity tests.”

Beattie, a “self-styled ideological commissar,” left Trump’s first administration in 2018 after CNN revealed he’d attended a conference featuring prominent white nationalists. In 2019, he worked for then-Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) where he argued FBI agents were in the crowd as provocateurs during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” he posted a few months ago on X.

But now Beattie is demanding all “staff emails and other records with or about a host of individuals and organizations that track or write about foreign disinformation,” and “all staff communications that merely reference Trump or people in his orbit, like Alex Jones, Glenn Greenwald, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”

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In addition, he is requesting a search of communications for keywords, including ‘Pepe the Frog,’ ‘incel,’ ‘q-anon,’ ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘great replacement theory,’ ‘far-right,’ and ‘infodemic,’” according to MIT Technology Review.

Daniel Fried, a career State Department official and former US ambassador to Poland, told MIT the request “approaches the compilation of an enemies list.”

“This should be a scandal, but instead it will likely be filed away by many Americans … as just the clumsy zealotry of a minor official rather than yet another assault by one of Trump’s servants on American constitutional freedoms,” Nichols writes. “Unfortunately, Trump’s mania for loyalty above all else almost guarantees that Beattie’s disgraceful attempt will not be the last such effort at Soviet-style political policing in the United States government."

Read the full Atlantic report here.

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AN 4 25

Smart, progressive women pose a serious threat to MAGA supremacy. Just ask Elon Musk, who wasted millions of dollars in Wisconsin trying to win a seat on the state Supreme Court for MAGA candidate Brad Schimel, only to watch Susan Crawford clean Schimel’s clock.

From his first presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016, “Lock her up!” has been Donald Trump’s battle cry. Restoring the greatness of a white, male-dominated America apparently requires menacing displays of dominance over women in positions of authority. Who can forget Trump acting like a stalker, invading Clinton’s personal space and looming behind her during a 2016 debate?

On Friday, a few weeks after MAGA lost its bid to disempower the progressive female majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Trump administration sent federal agents to arrest Hannah Dugan at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Trump’s attorney general and the man he chose to lead the FBI gleefully posted pictures of Dugan’s “perp walk” in handcuffs, crowing about this unprecedented assault on the dignity and authority of a judge and the sovereignty of local courts.

On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Dugan. “In order to uphold the public’s confidence in the courts of this state during the pendency of the criminal proceeding against Judge Dugan, we conclude, on our own motion, that it is in the public interest that she be temporarily relieved of her official duties,” the state’s highest court said in a two-page letter ordering Judge Dugan “temporarily prohibited from exercising the powers of a circuit court judge.”

It’s a perplexing decision. It didn’t arise from any complaint; the Court acted on its own. And Dugan had already been relieved of her duties while she focuses on her defense by the chief judge in Milwaukee, who assigned her calendar to other judges to cover.

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Worse, the suspension gives the impression that the federal charges against Dugan are indeed serious. But that impression is not supported by the only evidence the government has produced.

The justification for Dugan’s arrest, laid out in a federal criminal complaint, is that she impeded federal law enforcement agents when she objected to ICE disrupting her court’s proceedings and ushered the man they came to arrest out a side door. The defendant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who was appearing before Dugan on a misdemeanor battery charge unrelated to his immigration status, exited into the public hallway where the agents were waiting for him. Then they followed him outside and made their arrest — unimpeded.

Fox News claimed Dugan concealed Flores-Ruiz in a jury room. But that assertion is contradicted by the sworn testimony in the government’s own criminal complaint.

The complaint features breathlessly sexist descriptions of Dugan appearing “visibly angry” and “walking quickly,” as if that were evidence of wrongdoing. But any actual wrongdoing is hard to pinpoint.

“Whatever you think of the actual conduct the complaint alleges,” says Dean Strang, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a long-time Wisconsin criminal defense lawyer, “there is a real question about whether there’s even arguably any federal crime here.”

The government’s behavior, meanwhile, is “extraordinarily atypical,” for a nonviolent, nondrug charge involving someone who is not a flight risk, says Strang.

The handcuffs, the public arrest at Dugan’s workplace, the media circus — none of it was normal, or justified. Then Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel began posting pictures of Dugan in handcuffs on social media to brag about it.

“So what is it they are trying to do?” asks Strang. His conclusion: “Humiliate and terrify, not just her but every other judge in the country.”

The bigger issue here, beyond an unprecedented, public display of dominance and intimidation by the Trump administration, is that, in turning federal law enforcement into an arm of his personal, vengeance-themed reality show, Trump is running roughshod over the constitutional principle of federalism, which respects the sovereignty of the states, the integrity of the courts and public safety. Scaring defendants, witnesses and victims away from making court appearances makes it harder to administer justice and makes all of us less safe.

But you’d never know that to listen to Republican state officials, who are championing federal agents barging into courts, schools and churches, forgetting everything they ever said about local control and states’ rights. In a letter released Tuesday, Assembly Republicans led by Speaker Robin Vos sent a letter to Gov. Tony Evers, declaring “our caucus believes it is imperative that our laws reflect the need for local law enforcement to comply with these efforts.”

Republicans accuse Evers of issuing guidance to state officials that impedes federal ICE raids.

“Unfortunately, recent events in Milwaukee have underscored the importance for our state to legislate and enforce compliance with federal immigration law,” their letter declares, citing Dugan’s arrest.

The Republicans demand that Evers rescind guidance telling state agencies that they need not answer questions, hand over files, or allow ICE to enter non-public areas without a warrant.

Capitulating to an administration that has admitted to deporting U.S. citizens and defied court orders to effect the return of a man it admits was mistakenly sent to a Salvadoran prison is a terrible idea. Big law firms that agreed to drop clients and offer free legal work to appease the Trump administration have eroded trust in the law. Authoritarian undermining of our legal system is a grave danger.

The least the most timid among us can do is insist that the federal government follow the law before caving in. That’s what Dugan did, when she asked if the agents who came to her courtroom to arrest Flores-Ruiz had a judicial warrant. They did not. Nor do they have proof that Dugan herself broke any laws.

The last thing we need right now is more capitulation to MAGA bullying. Stand strong.

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Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com.

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an 4 25

The fascism unleashed upon Germany beginning in January 1933 with the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor, the youngest ever, and that which unfolded within America with the second inauguration of Trump in January 2025 as President, the oldest ever, exhibited many sinister similarities, but also definite differences during their first 100 days of respective repressive rule. By May 1933 democracy in Germany was dead and buried; but American democracy—one in reality never fully identical with American ideals—still remained alive, though deeply wounded and increasingly afflicted, after just over three months of incessant blows from the Trump regime. The difference offers the antifascist resistance in the United States an opportunity for victory if a viable broad-based united front can be resolutely developed and firmly maintained.

Day One

In the evening of January 30, a bitterly cold winter day, the victorious Nazis staged a massive torchlight parade through Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate which lasted over four hours and included some 30,000 uniformed Storm Troopers (SA). Perhaps as many as 1 million Berliners, around one-fourth of the city population, turned out to witness the Nazi spectacle. Among them were a few protestors who were summarily beaten up by the SA, a small taste of what was in store for dissenters. The march ended at the Presidential Palace and Reich Chancellory where Hitler and President Hindenburg stood together as a symbol of national reconciliation in what was portrayed as the “rebirth of the nation.” Among the songs echoing from the massive crowd was the Song of Germany with its infamous opening refrain of “Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles.” Several other large pro-Nazi rallies were held across Germany in subsequent days, as were a few sporadic counter-demonstrations organized by Social Democrats and Communists.

By contrast, the parade celebrating Trump’s second inauguration, also on a bitterly cold day, was held indoors at the Capital One Arena. The inauguration ceremony itself was also held indoors, at the Capitol Rotunda, the site of a violent Trump-inspired putsch attempt four years earlier. Several major corporations and individual billionaires donated $1 million each to help fund the extravaganza attended by a number of authoritarian foreign leaders, including the co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Similar to the nationalistic themes sounded at Hitler’s installment, Trump claimed his presidency marked the “beginning of a Golden Age for America.” As was also the case for the Führer, Trump gave voice that day to the Messiah myth claiming that his life was spared from an assassin’s bullet because he “was saved by God to make America great again.”

Fascist Laws and Orders

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Within a week after he moved into the Reich Chancellory, Hitler reportedly declared “I’m never leaving here,” and then promulgated a series of anti-democratic orders to ensure fascist rule in perpetuity. The first major one came on the day after the convenient burning of the Reichstag on February 27, which provoked Hitler to declare at the scene of the crime, “We will show no mercy anymore; whoever gets in our way will be slaughtered.” The “Reichstag Fire Decree for the Protection of the People and State” nullified many civil liberties; expanded protective custody; and sanctioned removal of state governments. It was used to imprison anyone considered an opponent of Nazism and suppress publications deemed unfriendly to the Nazi cause. Significantly extending the repression was the “Malicious Practices Act” of March 21 and the “Enabling Act” of March 23. On April 7, six days after a nationwide boycott of businesses owned by Jews, the Hitler regime enacted the “Law for Restoration of Professional Civil Service,” which purged all Jews as well as those German citizens considered disloyal from civil service and teaching positions. Thousands of Germans immediately lost their jobs and others lost government contracts, as the mythical “peoples community” (Volksgemeinschaft) was systemically converted into a racist Aryan “community of blood” (Blutgemeinschaft), exemplified by the “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Damaged Offspring” enacted in mid-July.

May Day 1933 in Nazi Germany was anything but a celebration of labor militancy and liberation from capitalist class rule. The Hitler regime declared this “Day of National Labor” to be a grand celebration of a rejuvenated nation, one which attracted the active participation of millions throughout the country. On the next day, the Nazis outlawed all free trade unions and integrated all German workers into a newly created German Labor Front led by a rabid anti-communist. By May 9, day 100 of the Hitler dictatorship there was no democracy or viable open opposition left in Germany; any resistance was driven underground or in exile. The fascist regime of terror proceeded triumphantly with a massive book burning on its 101st day in power.

Similar to Hitler’s stated intent to protect the German people from “criminals” with the draconian Reichstag Fire Decree and Enabling Act, Trump resorted to the 18th century Alien Enemies Act to protect the American people from allegedly vicious criminal gangs of foreigners, particularly Venezuelans. With the approval of SCOTUS, despite due process violations and cases of mistaken identity, those rounded up under provisions of the AEA were sent to the notorious concentration camp, CECOT, in El Salvador, likely never to return. Trump’s intense antagonism toward immigrants manifested itself on his first day in office when he announced his intent to end birthright citizenship; declared a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexican border; and barred asylum for people arriving through the southern border.

In mid-February, he fired 18 immigration judges; eliminated federal funds for undocumented immigrants; and proposed using U.S. military bases to detain targeted immigrants. In early March, he designated English as the official U.S. language, and announced plans to send an additional 3,000 troops to the southwestern border. Underscoring the racist nature of his immigration policies, he offered White South African farmers expedited U.S. citizenship, but expelled the Black South African ambassador after his government criticized Trump’s policies. In late March, Homeland Security revoked temporary protected status (TPS) for 532,000 people of color (Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans) and ordered their exit by late April. In early April, he revoked visas held by South Sudanese passport holders. Especially harshly targeted for deportation were pro-Palestinian students, activists whom Trump’s Attorney General Bondi ominously called “domestic terrorists.”

Purging the federal government of employees deemed disloyal was a nearly daily occurrence during Trump’s first 100 days, as was seeking retribution from law firms and officials critical of Trump’s actions. In late January, Trump fired the NLRB general counselor, a Democratic board member; fired dozens of Inspector Generals; and removed Democratic EEOC members. In early February, he fired 60 State Department contractors; fired the Director of CFPB; ordered AG Bondi to lead a task force designed to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” in the federal government; fired the head of the FEC; appointed loyalists as members of an independent advisory board on espionage; fired the inspector general for USAID; fired several workers at FEMA; directed that all Biden-era U.S. Attorneys be terminated. In mid-March, he fired 19 workers at NASA; replaced the top lawyer for the IRS; and fired two Democratic managers at the FTC. In early April, he fired the Vice Admiral in Greenland who was critical of Vice President JD Vance; and he removed a DOJ lawyer who questioned the decision to unlawfully deport a Maryland man to El Salvador. After a meeting with far-right activist Laura Loomer, who claimed the head of NSA was disloyal, he fired him. In March, Trump targeted a series of law firms perceived as foes, including the one at which Kamala Harris’ husband worked.

Project 2025, euphemistically called “Mandate for Leadership” by its misanthropic composers, the far-right Heritage Foundation, is a handbook for dismantling democracy and undermining social welfare in America, and its notorious recommendations have been largely followed by the Trump regime during its first 100 days. On January 24, Trump reinstated an anti-abortion policy and revoked two Biden directives designed to improve access to abortion. On February 13, he asked RFK Jr. to study the safety of the abortion pill, mifepristone. Project 2025 calls for ending medication abortion, and the Nazis considered abortion (by Aryan women) to be murder. Also in accordance with Project 2025, Trump signed an executive order to abolish the Department of Education (which he identified as a “big con job”) on March 20, and sharply reduced staffing at NOAA in late February. On the chopping block erected by the Heritage Foundation were also the Head Start program; federal student loans; climate change protection; child labor protection; the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice; and food assistance programs.

Adding to the long list of draconian measures to be enacted were the anti-democratic recommendations of the Capital Research Center, a right-wing think tank with access to Trump’s White House. Founded during the Reagan years by a former Vice President of the Heritage Foundation and funded in large measure by the far-right Koch family, CRC drew up a hit list of 150 groups it considered “pro-terrorist” and recommended their dissolution. Exclusively included in its cross hairs are a good section of the American Left, such as National Lawyers Guild; Democratic Socialists of America; CAIR; Jewish Voice for Peace; Code Pink; Black Alliance for Peace; and Center for Constitutional Rights. Especially singled out for deportation are members of Students for Justice in Palestine, “the group by far most responsible for the current anti-Israel protest movement,” according to the CRC. After providing testimony before several Congressional hearings in 2024, CRC president Scott Walter briefed White House officials about his research findings and deportation recommendations in late March 2025. Shortly afterwards, several pro-Palestinian activists were arrested and deported.

Whitewashing History

The Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy necessarily denigrated other racial and ethnic groups as inferior, even subhuman, and also devalued the role of liberating ideals and revolutionary movements, such as The Enlightenment and the 1789 French Revolution. In April 1933, Hitler’s newly appointed Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels, declared that the whole aim of the new regime was “to erase 1789 from memory.” To accomplish this monumental scrubbing of history and culture, books antithetical to Nazi ideology were routinely burned; non-Aryan educators banned; pedagogy restructured; and scholastic texts rewritten. Within its first year, the Hitler regime enacted a series of discriminatory laws directed against non-Aryans. On April 25, the “Law Against Overcrowding Schools and Institutions in Higher Education” severely restricted academic admission of non-Aryans. A few weeks later, an “Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy,” a conglomeration of prominent Nazi white supremacists under Heinrich Himmler established the framework for marginalization of non-Aryans and implementation of eugenics. Within a month, the sterilization law was passed.

To accomplish this monumental scrubbing of history and culture, books antithetical to Nazi ideology were routinely burned; non-Aryan educators banned; pedagogy restructured; and scholastic texts rewritten.

On his first day in office, Trump issued an order “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness” designed “to promote the extraordinary heritage of our Nation and ensure that future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of American heroes”; he then proceeded to rename the highest mountain in Alaska Mt. McKinley and declared that the Gulf of Mexico be called the Gulf of America. A week later, he issued an order “Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday,” which established Task Force 250, housed in the Department of Defense, to take “actions to honor the history of our great Nation, including the naming of 250 Americans to he honored in the National Garden of American Heroes. With the executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” enacted in early April, Trump ironically asserts that over the past decade there has been “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” and then proceeds to do exactly that. “It is the policy of my Administration,” the order states, “to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.” To begin to accomplish this whitewashing of American history he ordered that all “improper ideology” be removed from the Smithsonian museums and National Zoo, and that funding for any exhibit or programs which “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race” be prohibited.

Restricting Sexuality

Nazi ideology regarded homosexuality as a disease on the national community and homosexuals as “enemies of the State.” Transgender and other gender-affirming identities were regarded as mental illnesses. In a 1928 survey, the Nazi Party (NSDAP) officially stated that “anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy.” Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, adopted in 1871, criminalized sexual relations between males; in 1935, the Hitler regime broadened the law to include any “lewd act” (e.g. mutual masturbation) and sharply increased penalties for violations. In February 1933, the Prussian Ministry of Interior ordered Berlin police to shut down all establishments catering to “persons who indulge in unnatural sexual practices,” an order which quickly spread to many other cities. On May 6, the SA raided and destroyed the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. Persecution of homosexuals and transgender persons sharply escalated in subsequent years. In 1936, Himmler established the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion. In the years between 1937 and 1939, some 95,000 German men were arrested for homosexuality and imprisoned, many in concentration camps to die.

On the first day of his second presidency, Trump announced recognition of only two sexes, male and female, and then repeatedly targeted the transgender community in the following weeks. In rapid succession, he required transgender women to be housed in prisons for men; ordered removal of third gender options on IDs; moved toward pushing transgender people out of the military; ordered federal agencies to end programs that recognize transgender people; aimed to prevent transgender students from participating in women sports; removed reference to transgender people from National Park Service websites; ordered the CDC to review gender ideology; denied student loans relief to workers aiding transgender youth; and moved to phase out gender-affirming medical treatment for veterans. In mid-April, Trump sued the State of Maine for allowing transgender people to participate in women’s sports. In late January, he rolled back protections for LGBTQ students and required federal workers to remove pronouns from their email signatures.

Celebrating Racism

Racism in Nazi Germany, much of it inspired by Jim Crow laws in America, directly or indirectly infested every action of the Hitler regime. Nazism had absolutely no tolerance for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Neither does the Trump regime. Unleashing his rancid racism with a vengeance, Trump took over 20 separate actions against DEI programs in the first 100 days of his reign. Terminating all DEI programs across the federal government was among his numerous orders on Day One. Ten days, later he even blamed DEI policies for a deadly midair crash between an Army helicopter and a commercial airline over the Potomac River. In his lengthy bombastic speech to Congress on March 4, Trump boasted that his regime “ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and, indeed, the private sector and our military” and “we removed the poison of critical race theory from our public schools”.

Suppressing Dissent

Even before the 1933 passage of the Editor’s Law, which permitted only journalists who refrained from criticizing the Nazi regime to continue to work in their profession, the German press was systematically forced to conform to Hitler’s views. After the rigged election on March 5 and passage of the Civil Service Law on April 17, German newspapers increasingly self-censored themselves and remained silent about the unfolding atrocities. On March 9, a prominent anti-fascist journalist, Fritz Gerlich, was arrested and eventually ended up in the Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered in late June.

America’s mainstream press, routinely identified by Trump as an “enemy of the people,” increasingly came under scrutiny and suppression in his second reign. Echoing the censorship sentiment of the Nazi Editor Law, Trump restricted the White House press pool to only those journalists hand-picked by him. In early February, he called for CBS to lose its broadcasting license, a charge he repeated two months later after the network aired a “60 Minutes” broadcast he disliked. On February 23, he called MSNBC a “threat to democracy,” and in mid-March he cancelled all contracts held by key news wire services (AP, Reuters, Agence France-Presse) with Voice of America. In late March, a manager of Trump’s re-election campaign sued The Daily Beast for defamation.

Echoing the censorship sentiment of the Nazi Editor Law, Trump restricted the White House press pool to only those journalists hand-picked by him.

In addition to a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News, Trump has sued the Des Moines Register, CNN, and the Pulitzer Prize Board. In late January, Trump’s FCC Chairman ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS, public news outlets which a Trump devotee, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, labeled “communist.” In mid-April Trump asked Congress to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by $1.1 billion. To make sure another liberal institution, The Kennedy Center, came under his far-right ideological control, he appointed himself as Chair and named two Fox News members to its Board. The National Endowment for Humanities had most of its grant programs cancelled, and its chair was forced to resign.

Trump’s repression of dissent and criticism extended beyond the media to include judges, prosecutors, and law firms. After calling federal judge James Boasberg a “radical Left lunatic” for blocking his unlawful deportation scheme, Trump said he should be disbarred and impeached. He also suggested federal judges be removed from cases reviewing his policies. In late February, he fired prosecutors involved in cases against him or the January 6 rioters. In late March, he fired two longtime career prosecutors in Los Angeles and Memphis, and in mid-February he directed all Biden-era U.S. Attorneys be terminated. He also fired the directors of the Office of Special Counsel and Office of Government Ethics. Sebastian Gorka, a Hungarian-American fascist serving as Trump’s counterterrorism czar, considers anyone who even criticizes his boss a terrorist.

Militarization

Nazi Germany increased its military spending faster than any other state in peacetime, with the share of military spending rising from 1% to 10% of national income in the first two years of the Hitler regime alone. Just after his first 100 days, Hitler approved a financial budget for his growing war machine of 35 billion Reichmarks over eight years; the entire national income of Germany in 1933 was 43 billion Reichmarks. Military spending for his first year in office was budgeted three times larger than spending on all civilian work creation measures in 1932 and 1933 combined.

Within the first week of his second presidency, Trump issued militaristic orders for “Restoring America’s Fighting Force”; “The Iron Dome for America”; and “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.” That third order identified the U.S. military as the world’s “most lethal and effective fighting force,” and called for a “singular force on developing a warrior ethos” throughout the military. On March 21, he unveiled a new stealth bomber, the F-47. On April 10, he bragged that “we have a weapon that no one has a clue what it is, and this is the most powerful weapon in the world, which is more powerful than anyone even close.” Three days earlier, he announced a $1 trillion Pentagon budget for FY 2026, a 12% increase ($107 billion) over FT 2025. In its publication of all military-related expenditures, the War Resisters League claims Trump’s 2026 military budget constitutes 24% ($1.3 trillion) of all federal spending, and past military expenditures account for 26% ($1.4 trillion) of the federal budget. Accordingly, Trump’s real military spending accounts for 50% of the entire federal budget, a colossal military expenditure despite the fact that the Pentagon failed a 2024 audit, the seventh consecutive failure.

On June 14, the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and his 79th birthday, Trump is reportedly planning to hold a massive 4-mile-long military parade in the nation’s capital. On February 4, he drafted instructions to obliterate Iran if the Islamic Republic assassinated him; the same day he proposed a U.S. takeover of Gaza. A month later, he issued an ultimatum to Hamas: “either free all hostages or die.”

Privatization

Despite its nominal commitment to socialism, an economic system based upon public ownership of means of production, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), aka the Nazi Party, introduced a radical program of privatization of steel, banks, mining, shipping, railroads, and welfare organizations. Among the industries privatized within the early years of Hitler’s dictatorship were five major commercial banks; the United Steelworks, the nation’s second largest enterprise; German Railways; Upper Silesian coalminers; and the German Shipbuilding and Engineering Company. Privatization generated significant revenue for the Nazi war machine and also helped solidify political support from the super-rich.

Trump’s enthusiasm for privatization echoes the Nazi goals.

Trump’s enthusiasm for privatization echoes the Nazi goals. Following the Project 2025 playbook, he explored the possibility of privatizing the USPS, the Social Security Administration, and Medicare. With the confirmation of Dr. Oz, a fervent supporter of Medicare Advantage private alternative to traditional Medicare, as head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services on April 4, the effort to privatize Medicare was significantly accelerated. Similarly, privatizing health services for veterans received a big boost with the appointment of a new Department of Defense chief, Pete Hegseth, who publicly promoted shifting more vets to VA-funded private care. Social Security remains in the crosshairs of privatization advocates in the Trump regime. DOGE cancelled leases for 45 Social Security offices and reduced its ten regional offices to four. In early April, the head of the Social Security Administration asserted that to streamline operations it would be necessary to “outsource nonessential functions to industry experts.” In early February, Trump fired more than 100 workers at Fannie Mae, and announced plans to privatize both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A month later he proposed the privatization of Amtrak, the Transportation Security Administration, and the federal student loan program. Also on the auction block are public lands targeted for massive sell-offs to wealthy private investors and developers.

Synchronization

In a major push to consolidate more power, the Hitler regime enacted laws introducing a national policy of Gleichschlatung, coordination of all government operations and social organizations under Nazi control. As a result, state parliaments not under Nazi control were dissolved; every public expression of pluralism was disallowed; political parties critical of Nazism were abolished; all Jewish and Social Democratic officials were fired; and all cultural and judicial institutions were aligned with Nazi ideology or disbanded.

The real purpose of DOGE is to consolidate power, synchronize government operations, and privatize government services as well as dismantle agencies long hated by the Far Right.

Trump announced the formation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on his first day in office with the ostensible purpose of saving American taxpayers around a total of $2 trillion by rooting out alleged massive fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government. Its purported purpose is itself a fraud. At most, only 15% of that savings goal is within its grasp. The real purpose of DOGE is to consolidate power, synchronize government operations, and privatize government services as well as dismantle agencies long hated by the Far Right.

Nine of the government agencies targeted by DOGE are highlighted in Project 2025. Its former co-chair, Vivek Ramaswamy, explicitly used the term “synchronizing” government operations when announcing a key purpose of DOGE. Elon Musk, the Nazi-saluting Chair of DOGE, revealingly used the same term in a bizarre podcast with Trump disciple Senator Ted Cruz. The Nazi policy of Gleichschlatung is commonly translated as synchronization. The executive order establishing DOGE directed its administrators to “work with Agency Heads to promote inter-operability between agency networks…and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization.” Technological synchronization appears to be a prelude to sociological synchronization, i.e. Gleichschlatung.

Militant Protectionism

Although protectionism through tariffs had been an official policy of Germany since the late 19th century, Hitler’s regime escalated militant foreign trade relations to a new level in an attempt to achieve autarky, economic self-sufficiency. The seeds for this new economic policy, formally adopted in mid-1934, were laid during Hitler’s first 100 days. In a February 11 New York Times article entitled “Danes See Hitler Waging Tariff War,” a German official is quoted as saying “Tariffs are the only emergency defense of my country.” That “emergency defense” received a major boost a month later with the appointment of Hjalmar Schacht as President of the Central Bank; Schacht was widely credited with saving Germany from devastating hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic.

The aggressive use of tariffs by Hitler pales in comparison to what Trump unilaterally imposed on so-called Liberation Day.

Through various financial manipulations to generate funds without adding to the budget deficit and implementation of favorable trade agreements with countries in South America and southeastern Europe, this banking wizard set Nazi Germany in 1933 on the path toward self-sufficiency in a war economy. Further progress, however, depended upon conquest of other countries, something the Nazis with their stated need for Lebensraum viciously accomplished in subsequent years.

The aggressive use of tariffs by Hitler pales in comparison to what Trump unilaterally imposed on so-called Liberation Day, April 2. Virtually all US imports were smacked with a 10% tariff, and 57 countries were saddled with reciprocal tariffs between 17% to 49% in Trump’s tariff blackmail scheme. Singled out for especially harsh measures was Communist China. What started with a reciprocal tariff of 34% escalated to 125% and then, in the wake of China’s countermeasures, rose up to 245% by late April. By contrast, increased tariffs imposed upon all other nations were paused for 90 days, as Trump claimed many were “kissing my ass” to cut deals.

As was the case for Nazi Germany, trade wars initiated by tariff escalations relied upon expansion of national borders in order for the economic aggressor to achieve success. This may explain Trump’s persistent determination to acquire Greenland, and his repeated wish to make Canada the 51st state.

Disappearing People

Disappearing people deemed outside the Aryan Volksgemeinschaft, and later massively exterminating them, was a barbaric speciality of the Hitler dictatorship. The pernicious practice began in earnest in wake of the February 27 Reichstag fire, which was blamed on a foreign communist but, in fact, represented a false flag operation staged by the Nazis themselves. In the aftermath, tens of thousands of communists were rounded up and incarcerated without trial in makeshift concentration camps under great cruelty. The first official concentration camp, Dachau, opened on March 23 and it was designated by Himmler as “the first concentration camp for political prisoners” to be used to restore calm to Germany. Many of its political prisoners, which also included Social Democrats and “intellectual instigators,” were murdered shortly after arrival. Mass incarceration and execution of political prisoners during Hitler’s first 100 days was a harbinger of an institutionalized barbarism to come which collectively consumed the lives of millions of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, “asocials,” “professional criminals,” “Rhineland bastards,” and other “Untermenschen.”

The concentration camps of choice for Trump’s ruthless deportation actions are the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) in El Salvador. On February 12, over 50 Venezuelans labeled “high-threat illegal aliens” were deported to Guantanamo Bay and imprisoned in Camp 6. Since January, some 250 Venezuelan “gang members” have been sent to El Salvador under the auspices of the Alien Enemies Act; the bulk of these men, allegedly all members of the Tren de Aragua gang, were sent there on March 16 in defiance of a federal judge’s court order to halt the deportations. A day earlier, ICE deported Abrego Garcia, falsely claimed by Vice President Vance to be a “convicted member of the MS-13 gang” to CECOT where he remains, despite a unanimous ruling by SCOTUS that his deportation was illegal. The mass deportations in March have been denounced by the Venezuelan government as a “crime against humanity” reminiscent of Nazi behavior.

The mass deportations in March have been denounced by the Venezuelan government as a “crime against humanity” reminiscent of Nazi behavior.

Incarceration and/or deportation of political prisoners, specifically Palestinians or pro-Palestinian activists, have become routine under Trump’s reign. As of late March, the visas of over 800 international students have been revoked by the Trump regime’s policy of “catch and revoke.” Though reasons for this repressive action are often not given, participating in pro-Palestinian protests seems to be a common denominator.

The case of Mahmoud Khalid illustrates the extreme measures employed by ICE to rid the country of one legal resident deemed a threat. Khalid, a Palestinian student leader of protests at Columbia University against genocide in Gaza, was arrested by ICE agents on April 8 and sent off to a prison in Louisiana. No criminal charges were ever leveled against him; instead the Trump regime invoked a McCarthy-era law, Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which provides for deportation of aliens if their presence is deemed potentially harmful to US foreign policy. The same law has also been used to set up many others for deportation. Instrumental in Khalid’s arrest was Betar, a far-right Zionist group hell-bent upon disappearing anyone it considers a Hamas supporter. Its executive director, Ross Glick, met in March with several senior government officials, including Senator Ted Cruz, and urged them to take action against Khalid and other “terror supporters.” Khalid, who has Algerian citizenship and was a green card holder in the U.S., is married to an American citizen who gave birth to their first child on April 21. Reflecting the callousness of current immigration policy, Khalid was not permitted to be present at his son’s birth. If the Trump regime has its way, Khalid and all others in his predicament will be disappeared.

Resistance

The parallels between the first 100 days of both tyrannical regimes are striking and chilling, with one big exception: the Resistance. The ferocity and velocity of Hitler’s NSDAP fascism had all but ended any open opposition by early May 1933. By sharp contrast, resistance to Trump’s MAGA machine tyranny slowly but steadily grew over the course of its turbulent first 100 days. The first significant outbreak of antifascist Resistance came in February, President’s Day, renamed “No Kings Day” and “Not My Presidents Day” by protestors who numbered in the hundreds of thousands and appeared in all 50 states.

The ferocity and velocity of Hitler’s NSDAP fascism had all but ended any open opposition by early May 1933. By sharp contrast, resistance to Trump’s MAGA machine tyranny slowly but steadily grew over the course of its turbulent first 100 days.

On April 5, which may eventually mark the beginning of the end of the Trump regime, an estimated 4 million protestors filled the streets at 1500 public sites throughout the nation in a massive display of resistance. Driven by outrage at Trump’s many repressive actions, they demanded “Hands Off” government agencies and services targeted for termination. Indicative of the stirrings of a sleeping giant at this historic protest is the fact that for many outraged participants, especially seniors, this was their first public protest. April 19, dubbed National Day of Protest and “We (the People) Dissent,” witnessed another massive demonstration. Over 800 local protests took place nationwide. Among the explicitly antifascist slogans displayed on a forest of signs were “Resist Fascism, Fight Oligarchy”; “Stop the Turd Reich”; and “The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go.” Capturing the sentiment of the growing Resistance was the popular sign present at all of these demonstrations: “We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.”

That refusal also made its appearance at the ballot box as well as on the streets. Despite pouring in over $25 million to elect a MAGA candidate to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Musk’s chosen one lost by a 10-point margin (55% to 45%) to a liberal candidate, Susan Crawford, on April 1. On the same day, Republican candidates for Congress in a special election in Florida prevailed, but by a much narrower margin than previously for the same seat, portending problems on the horizon for Trump’s MAGA machine in the midterm elections.

However, those crucial elections are 18 months away, a period fraught with danger as well as opportunity. For Trump’s MAGA march to full-fledged fascism to triumph, executive orders and laws far more pernicious than enacted in the past 100 days will be required. Still available in his arsenal of repression are the Insurrection Act and a declaration of Martial Law. Either requires a qualitative shift in the status quo. A false flag operation, the functional equivalent of the Reichstag Fire, would suffice. So would a declaration of war against Iran or China. Alternately, any significant domestic escalation of violence by the Resistance (or agent provocateurs) may also provide the excuse for mass incarceration of dissenters and cancellation of midterm elections.

It is imperative that the growing resistance movement remains strictly nonviolent, for as the wise counsel of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. informs us: “The aftermath of non-violence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.” Beloved community built on love, not a Volksgemeinschaftor MAGA dystopia built on hate, is within our reach beyond the present evil.

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AN 4 25

On Monday, President Donald Trump issued a new executive order just shy of the 100th day of his second term that has some experts and academics sounding the alarm.

Trump's new order, which is entitled "Strengthening and Unleashing America's Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens," makes various declarations about the administration's commitment to supporting law enforcement professionals in the opening paragraphs. However, one section further down specifically mentions the U.S. military and the administration's intent to have enlisted service members participate in civilian law enforcement actions.

"Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, shall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist State and local law enforcement ... [and] shall determine how military and national security assets, training, non-lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be utilized to prevent crime."

"The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall utilize the Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTFs) formed in accordance with Executive Order 14159 of January 20, 2025 (Protecting the American People Against Invasion) to coordinate and advance the objectives of this order," the order continued.

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That section in particular prompted Lead Matthew Noe, who is the lead collection & knowledge management librarian at Harvard Medical School, to call the order "legitimately frightening." Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based writer Susan Keiser posted to Bluesky: "Serious Question: Is this martial law[?]" Former criminal defense investigator Andrew H. Sowards responded to the order by simply declaring: "Not good."

"We're already a police state," Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf skeeted (the accepted term for Bluesky posts). "But now, thanks to this EO, moreso."

Deploying the U.S. military within American borders to act as a police force would be a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which is a 143 year-old law prohibiting the president from ordering the military to double as law enforcement. As the Brennan Center for Justice explained in 2021, Congress passed the law during Reconstruction in order to prevent the military from being used to enforce Jim Crow laws in former Confederate states after the Civil War. Additionally, deploying the military to conduct law enforcement activity violates parts of the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution — which were ratified in direct response to the British military's abuse of colonists prior to the Revolutionary War.

Click here to read the full executive order.

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mma 4 25

President Donald Trump is ramping up his assault on the press, opening new avenues for federal retribution against outlets which displease him as his administration prepares to mark 100 days in office.

Trump has long railed against journalists as the “enemy of the people,” used the power of the state as a cudgel against the industry in his first term, and promised more of the same in his second.

His return to office brought what Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop described as a “sharp, often contemptuous rupture” between the federal government and the press, with the White House seeking over the last few months to dominate reporters, place new restrictions on critical outlets, and lift up right-wing propagandists in their place.

The president’s threats against news outlets have been so extreme for so many years that by contrast, such moves struck some observers as “small beer” or “trivial nonsense.”

But Trump’s talk is cheap until it isn’t — at any time, on a whim, he or the assortment of ideologues and shills he’s appointed can set the gears of government grinding against his foes. And this weekend brought a sharp escalation and worrying signs for the future.

Justice Department ends restrictions protecting journalists}:

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday laid the groundwork for the imprisonment of journalists who produce reporting that damages the president’s interests.

In an internal Justice Department memo, Bondi rescinded Biden-era protections which restricted prosecutors “from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media,” stating this was necessary “in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks” by individuals whose conduct she described as “treasonous.”

Notably, her memo targets not just the leaking of classified information but also “disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people.”

Trump regularly rails against reporting based on anonymous sources. Bondi’s move raises the prospect of the Trump administration responding to such reports by forcing reporters to choose between revealing their sources and going to jail.

Bondi, a Trump loyalist who previously parlayed frequent Fox appearances defending Trump into a post on his first impeachment legal defense team, will apparently be making the call over when the Justice Department uses that legal tool.

Other top prosecutors and investigators who might weigh in include her deputy, Emil Bove, who previously represented Trump in state and federal prosecutions; Ed Martin, the lawyer for January 6 defendant who now serves as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia; FBI Director Kash Patel, who has called for the federal targeting of journalists; and his extremely online deputy, the former Fox host Dan Bongino.

How far will they go? Trump wants them to go very far indeed.

### Trump calls for investigations of media pollsters

Trump responded on Monday to new surveys which show his approval ratings plunging in light of his catastrophic tariff rollout by calling for investigations into the pollsters and the media outlets which conduct them.

Trump claimed in an early morning post on Truth Social that results from New York Times/Siena and ABC/Washington Post polls were due to the surveys “looking for a negative result.”

“These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it,” he wrote. “They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse.”

Trump regularly accuses his media foes of breaking the law, and in a March speech at the Justice Department headquarters he instructed its employees to “watch for” their “totally illegal” behavior.

The president is currently suing Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer over the results of one of her presidential campaign surveys.

Trump has personally dictated Justice Department investigations into two former officials from his first administration who became critics, as well as into ActBlue, the hub for Democratic campaign fundraising — and he could launch a similar legal assault on any news outlet which displeases him at any time.

### A cry of desperation from CBS News

60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley Sunday’s broadcast with a blunt explanation for the resignation last week of Bill Owens, a journalist with decades of experience at CBS News and the show’s longtime executive producer.

“Our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger,” he said. “The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he had lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”

Trump and his administration had targeted CBS News for retribution following a 60 Minutesinterview of Kamala Harris, the editing of which the president alleged had been unfair to him.

Trump launched a lawsuit seeking $10 billion in damages from the network, which First Amendment attorneys described as “ridiculous junk” and “a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.” Brendan Carr, his handpicked chair of the Federal Communications Commission, is conducting an investigation into the editing that former FCC commissioners have denounced.

Rather than stand firmly behind the company’s journalists, Paramount Chair Shari Redstone is reportedly seeking a settlement with Trump and an agreement with Carr that will allow the company’s merger to go through.

### Trump gloats about media owners bowing to his will

Trump thinks he’s winning his battle against the press, as The Atlantic reported in a recent interview with the president:

“Tell the people at The Atlantic, if they’d write good stories and truthful stories, the magazine would be hot,” he said. Perhaps the magazine can risk forgoing hotness, he suggested, because it is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, which buffers it, he implied, from commercial imperatives. But that doesn’t guarantee anything, he warned. “You know at some point, they give up,” he said, referring to media owners generally and—we suspected—[Washington Post owner Jeff] Bezos specifically. “At some point they say, No más, no más.” He laughed quietly.

Trump understands that many of the news outlets whose work he decries are owned by multinational corporations or wealthy magnates whose business interests make them vulnerable to federal retaliation.

After only a few months in office, he’s seen the pressure he’s exerted on CBS News push it to the breaking point, while the resolve of major newspaper owners is seemingly crumbling. And he has years more time in office to try to break them to his will.

### Trump is trying to throttle the free press — and U.S. moguls are going along with it

02/04/25 9:00 AM EST

### Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook to crush the free press in a second term

10/29/24 9:09 AM EDT

### Trump is threatening to use the government to “come down hard” on the free press. Believe him.

11/30/23

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NO LNX

Only one thing is going to stand in Trump's way — and he knows it

Thom Hartmann April 28, 2025

It didn’t happen in some shadowy back alley or under the cover of night.

It happened in broad daylight — in the heart of an American courthouse.

Federal agents, acting without even the decency of a signed warrant, stormed into Judge Hannah Dugan’s courtroom on Friday morning and dragged her away like a common criminal. No warning. No legal process. No respect for the law she had spent a lifetime upholding.

But they made sure the cameras were there, so America could see what they were doing. Because this was not about justice. This was about terror.

This was a warning shot aimed directly at the beating heart of America’s judiciary:

“Fall in line — or you’re next.”

In that moment, the world’s oldest democracy lurched closer to the edge of authoritarian rule. In that moment, America became a little less free — and a lot more like the nightmare Vladimir Putin always hoped we’d become.

The FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan last Friday without even having a legal arrest warrant; this is as outrageous and police-state illegal as an administration can get.

And Pam Bondi’s performance Friday — after her federal agents swarm-raided this county judge — wasn’t staged for the general public.

The real audience was a very small, select group: America’s judges.

Their message is very simple: “P--- us off, judges, and you could end up in prison, too.”

Trump has already pacified the Article I branch of government — Congress — and now he’s in the process of pacifying the Article III branch, the Judiciary.

There are only 3 branches to our government: cowing both Congress and the nation’s Judiciary will leave only the president in charge of the entire country under all circumstances in all ways.

Nothing and nobody else will be able to stop him, short of a military coup (and he’s already decapitated the senior leadership of the military) or unending demonstrations in the streets (demonstrators who may soon face live ammunition).

That is called dictatorship. Real dictatorship. Vladimir Putin-style dictatorship where you are punished for the smallest deviation from orthodoxy and can find yourself in prison or sued into bankruptcy if you dare speak out in public.

It appears more and more every day that Putin is Trump’s mentor, if not his handler. Trump is doing everything he can, with help from a South African billionaire, to destroy the historic American infrastructure (which has been an example for the world for 250 years) and turn us into the newest member of the dictators club, joining Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Hungary, North Korea, and the rest of the fascist and authoritarian world.

To get there, now that they’ve pacified every single Republican member of Congress (most recently, Don Bacon criticized Trump’s schizophrenic tariffs; a day later he started talking about retiring), they only have to seize control of the Judiciary, and then nothing except We The People will stand in their way.

Nothing. Will. Stand. In. Trump’s. Way. Except We The People. And he knows it.

Look at the striking parallels between Putin’s strategies and Trump’s actions:

From installing Trump’s loyalists in the military and the federal police agencies of the Department of Justice and FBI, to his open threats against freedom of the press, to the GOP’s efforts to rig elections and purge voters, Trump’s subversion of US democracy looks eerily familiar.

He’s taking pages directly from the autocrat’s handbook.

Trump has openly quoted and praised autocrats like Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, who has presented his leadership in speeches to the GOP and CPAC as a model of an “illiberal” state.

Trump’s not hiding his admiration for dictators; he’s flaunting it. And now he’s putting the final stages of their script into action.

Trump’s movement toward authoritarianism follows “a known playbook. It’s unfolded in many other countries,” as journalist Anne Applebaum notes. “These are democratically elected leaders who characterize themselves or describe themselves as deserving of no opposition. So I am the true Hungarian, or I am the only real American.”

In a mere matter of weeks into his presidency, Applebaum says, Trump and his allies “have managed to push America into that space somewhere between (no longer) democracy and full-scale autocracy.”

The speed is shocking, but it shouldn’t be surprising. It only took Hitler 53 days to completely end democracy in Germany. Others, like Lukashenko, Orbán, Putin, Mussolini, Duterte, El-Sisi, and Erdoğan took longer (none longer than two years), but you could argue that Trump has been working at this project for 9 years now.

Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, who studies how democracies slip into authoritarianism, warns that we’re heading toward what experts call “competitive authoritarianism”: regimes that “constitutionally continue to be democracies” with regular elections and legal opposition, but where “systematic abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition.”

Make no mistake about what’s happening: Trump and his allies are methodically working through a four-step process to establish complete autocratic control, which will turn America into a one-man dictatorship.

Terrorize Congress: Trump’s already largely succeeded here. Republican lawmakers now march in lockstep with his agenda, afraid to oppose him even when their consciences scream otherwise. The V-Dem Institute already warns that Trump’s actions are “extremely worrying” for American democracy.

Terrorize the Media: Trump has, as The Washington Post writes, “relentlessly attacked the free press, another pillar that allows democracies to stand above authoritarian regimes,” as political scientists have noted. “He has echoed the worst dictators in history, calling journalists the ‘enemy of the people.’” With help from Elon Musk and other billionaires, he’s creating a media and social media environment where truth itself is under assault. And last week his administration threatened to arrest journalists and charge them with treason, an offense for which they could be executed.

Terrorize Judges and Lawyers: What we witnessed Friday with the raid on a county judge and the arrest of a retired judge earlier in the week is just the beginning. The final step in this process will be intimidating the Supreme Court, and if Trump’s minions can first terrorize the entire federal judiciary, it will be much easier to terrorize members of the Court itself, just like Putin and Orbán have done. This follows dangerous cracks in democracy’s pillars that experts have been warning about.

Terrorize Citizens: Once the above institutions are captured and there’s no more Constitutional opposition to Trump, the final phase begins: crushing individual dissent through fear, persecution, and potentially violence. This is the playbook Malcolm Nance detailed in his work analyzing Putin’s strategies to undermine American democracy and has already started against immigrants and student visa holders. If history tells us anything, American citizens will be next.

Most of this is already in place; time is running out fast.

Trump and his fellow fascists know their time is running out because elections are coming in a handful of months and their popularity is already crashing. They are at maximum power right now, and it is already beginning to decline.

This is another reason why they are pushing so hard to frighten judges, so they can implement the final destruction of any Constitutionally-based opposition to Trump’s one-man rule.

If Trump can consolidate authoritarian rule as quickly as some other historical dictators did, the complete (albeit hopefully temporary) end of American democracy could happen very rapidly, possibly even in the next few weeks or months. The window for action is closing fast.

But there’s still hope, because we’re still We The People. As long as our protest movement continues to grow and demand a stop to the damage Trump and Musk are doing to our democratic republic, we may be able to slow or even stop this anti-American cabal and reclaim our republic.

Our protesting in the streets and reaching out to legislators may encourage resistance within the media and courts, and might even inspire a handful of Republicans to stand against this wannabe dictator.

When democratic institutions fail, the last line of defense has always been citizens willing to take to the streets. Ukraine provides the most powerful recent example of how a determined populace can rescue democracy from Russian-inspired authoritarianism.

During Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests in 2014, over half a million people joined demonstrations in Kyiv to defend democracy against creeping authoritarianism. Those protests ultimately ended Viktor Yanukovych’s Russia-backed puppet regime (and kicked out its Russian-funded American advisor, Paul Manafort, who later became Trump’s 2016 campaign manager) and became known as the Revolution of Dignity.

Ukrainians stood firm in the streets despite violence and intimidation, and their courage changed history.

Ukraine’s later Orange Revolution similarly empowered ordinary citizens to engage in mass protests, with some lasting continously more than two weeks. This peaceful revolution successfully defended Ukraine’s democratic aspirations against Russian influence and showed the world that people power can overcome autocratic manipulation.

Putin fears democracy, particularly at his doorstep like in Ukraine and the Baltic states. He knows that democracy is contagious, and any spread near Russia, he believes, poses an existential threat to his autocratic rule. That’s why he invaded Ukraine, and that’s why he spent millions on social media trolls to support Trump’s election and his assault on our democratic institutions.

As Ukrainian historian Hanna Perekhoda warns, “If we let Russian authoritarians win, it will mean that the authoritarian forces also in our countries, in the U.S., for example, will grow stronger.”

If this assault on the Courts (and the implied intimidation of all judges including those on the Supreme Court) succeeds, and the media continues to bow down, the only thing left will be us in the streets.

The time for half-measures, “very strong letters,” and polite political disagreement has passed. We are watching in real-time as our 250-year experiment in democracy is being dismantled by a would-be dictator taking his cues from — or, at least, modeling his presidency on — Vladimir Putin.

This is not hyperbole. This is not partisan exaggeration. This is the stark reality facing our nation today. Fascism and dictatorship are at our doorstep.

Just last week, it was reported that Trump has now deported three American citizens, including a child taking cancer therapy.

Not content to just pull student visas and ask them to leave the country, Trump’s goons have been imprisoning students for writing OpEd articles for weeks. And now they’re show-arresting judges.

The arrest of Judge Dugan is not an isolated incident; it’s part a broader strategy to intimidate the judiciary and consolidate power.

When judges are arrested for upholding the principles of due process, the very foundation of democracy is at risk. This moment demands vigilance and action from all who value the rule of law.

The preservation of our democratic institutions depends on our collective response to such unprecedented challenges.

Buckle up, America. Democracy itself is on the line, and if the courts fall, we’ll be its last defenders.

NOW READ: Behind the 60-year Republican plot to destroy American democracy

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OMFG

On Friday, April 25, far-right FBI Director Kash Patel announced that Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan has been arrested on federal obstruction charges for allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant "evade arrest."

On X, formerly Twitter, Patel posted, "We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest…. Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public."

A law enforcement official told ABC News that Dugan was arrested at the courthouse.

According to MSNBC, Patel's tweet on Dugan was removed from X.

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During an MSNBC appearance, attorney Temidayo Aganga-Williams told host José Díaz-Balart that the arrest of a judge was "unusual" but added, "I think it's going to be a pattern going forward…. I think it's only going to pick up."

Dugan's arrest is receiving plenty of reactions on X, formerly Twitter.

Some MAGA Republicans are applauding the arrest.

John Fabbricatore, a former field officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), tweeted, "Judge Hannah Dugan arrested by FBI for allegedly helping illegal alien 'evade arrest' by ICE. 'Lawfare' by these judges has to stop. This is a good start!"

Far-right MAGA radio host Benny Johnson posted, "Another rogue judge down. FAFO."

But others see Dugan's arrest as MAGA ramping up its authoritarian disdain for the rule of law.

Journalist Kristian Ramos tweeted, "I see we are now at 'arresting judges' on our path to autocracy.

"On Democracy" host Fred Wellman noted, "Marshalls appear to be confirming she was arrested and other news outlets are picking it up now."

X user Iron Goodman wrote, "This is a chilling escalation of federal overreach and raises serious questions about the scope of executive power versus judicial independence."

Another X user, Laura Okazaki, posted, "We must not look away while the feds take us another step into authoritarianism."

X user Hannah Martinez tweeted, "This is a deeply unsettling development with huge implications for the rule of law and potential abuses of power. The optics are disastrous."

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NO LNX

Time's up for the GOP

Thom Hartmann April 25, 2025

We’ve spent years watching Donald Trump attack our democratic institutions, inflame divisions, and corrupt the public discourse.

But focusing solely on Trump misses the larger, more disturbing reality: Trump isn’t acting alone. He’s a dangerous pathogen that found the perfect host in today’s Republican Party, an organism already compromised and eager to be infected.

The evidence of this dangerous symbiosis is alarming and immediate. Just days ago, America crossed a threshold that should chill every citizen who still believes in the rule of law.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a young man living peacefully in Maryland with no criminal record, was ripped from his home and deported to El Salvador — not by rogue agents, not by mistake, but in deliberate defiance of multiple federal court orders.

A judge had explicitly ordered that Garcia not be deported. The U.S. Supreme Court had intervened. And still, the Trump-controlled Department of Justice — under Attorney General Pam Bondi — refused to comply.

Garcia vanished from U.S. soil like a political dissident in a dictatorship. Senator Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador to find him yesterday, only to be denied access. The Salvadoran government wouldn’t even confirm his location. Garcia now sits detained, alone in a foreign country, denied lawyers, family, or recourse.

He’s not a criminal — he’s a political hostage. His only crime was existing under an administration that believes it is above the law.

This isn’t abstract. This is what the death of democracy feels like. A court order ignored. A life uprooted. A senator stonewalled.

And it’s a precedent set: if the executive branch can disappear a legal US resident despite Supreme Court orders, democracy is already bleeding out right in front of our eyes.

To fully comprehend the gravity of our situation, we must recognize that Trump is both a symptom and a disease. Like any opportunistic virus, he didn’t invent the weakness — he exploited it. The Republican Party, drifting toward authoritarianism since Nixon, became the perfect host.

From the backlash to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, to Nixon's Southern Strategy, to the Tea Party’s billionaire-funded anti-government rage against our first Black president, the GOP built a party on grievance and fear. It corroded democratic norms for decades. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, union busting, judicial stacking, demonizing immigrants and queer people, rightwing propaganda media — all laid the groundwork.

Trump didn’t create this environment. He walked into it, flipped the switches, and set it ablaze. He didn’t poison the well. He found it already poisoned and drank deeply.

What’s particularly chilling is how methodical Trump’s attack on democracy has been.

He’s spent years convincing millions that elections are fraudulent — despite no credible evidence. This isn’t just the tantrum of a defeated candidate. It’s a calculated attempt to destroy the one institution that makes a republic function: trust in the vote. When citizens no longer believe their ballots count, democracy dies.

That was the goal. Undermine faith in the system so completely that only Trump — and those who pledge loyalty to him — are seen as legitimate.

His authoritarian instincts were never hidden. He praised dictators like Putin, Orbán, MBS, and Kim Jong Un. He demanded personal loyalty from government officials, attacked the judiciary, and labeled the free press “the enemy of the people.” Every move was pulled straight from the autocrat’s playbook, designed to erode checks on his power.

The insurrection on January 6 was not an outlier, but rather the inevitable outcome of years of lies, hate, and democratic erosion. Trump didn’t just incite a mob; he sat and watched — gleefully — as it ransacked the Capitol, hunted lawmakers, and shattered windows in the temple of democracy. He delayed help. He wanted it to succeed.

And the Republican Party? It shrugged. Which is the key to both understanding and stopping Trump.

None of this destruction would be possible without the Republican Party’s active complicity. They are not passive bystanders; they are eager enablers. Leaders who once called Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” now parrot his lies and excuse his crimes.

Why? Because they’ve traded principle for power. The “party of family values” excused porn star hush money because it helped rig the 2016 election. The “party of fiscal responsibility” celebrated massive tax cuts for billionaires that exploded our nation’s deficit. The “party of national security” turned a blind eye as Trump aligned with America's adversaries and vilified NATO.

They sold their souls. And for what? Judges? Tax cuts? A fleeting grip on power?

At the core of this transformation is the deliberate cultivation of cruelty as political strategy. Trump’s policies were never just misguided: they were purposefully cruel.

The separation of children at the border wasn’t a failure; it was a feature. Designed to cause pain. Designed to deter. Designed to send a message that America no longer welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, at least when their skin is not white.

His refusal to return Kilmar Garcia to his family and community (and over 200 others) is not an outlier. It’s the same cruelty repackaged. The same contempt for legal restraint. The same hunger for domination. And if he’s not stopped by Republicans on the Supreme Court or Republicans in Congress, history and his own words tell us he’ll be coming for you and me next.

Beyond policy, Trump has waged a relentless war on truth itself. He didn’t just lie; he declared war on the very idea of truth. He called climate change a hoax. He politicized a deadly pandemic. He turned science into a partisan enemy and transformed medical expertise into a battleground.

The result? Hundreds of thousands of unnecessary Covid (and now measles) deaths. A public so divided they couldn’t agree on masks or medicine. That wasn’t an accident. It was the point: destroy our shared reality, and you can then more easily destroy democracy.

Perhaps most destructive of all, Trump didn’t merely inherit America’s divisions: he weaponized them. He didn’t unify urban and rural, rich and poor, Black and white: he pitted them against each other for personal gain. Rage was his currency. Fear his strategy. When people are busy hating each other, he knows, they don’t notice who’s robbing them blind.

What we now face is no longer a political party but a vicious, cruel cult of personality. Today’s GOP isn’t defined by principles or policies: Disagree and you’re exiled — just ask Liz Cheney. Ask Adam Kinzinger. Ask Mitt Romney.

Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t represent a fringe any longer; she is the mainstream now. Her recent town hall — where dissenters were tased — wasn’t an aberration. It’s the new GOP, where violence is celebrated as a tool, not a last resort, and elected officials revel in their own cruelty, brutality, and ability to ignore the needs of their constituents while taking millions from their donors.

She’s the perfect reflection of Trump: His pathological narcissism drives much of his destructive behavior. A man who cannot tolerate criticism, admit fault, or share the spotlight will burn down democracy itself to protect his fragile ego.

When faced with a choice between national interest and personal gratification, Trump invariably chooses the latter. His demand for absolute loyalty — to him personally, not to the nation or the Constitution — reveals a man who sees America not as a nation to serve but as a stage for his own aggrandizement.

There’s also method in Trump’s chaos. By keeping the country in a constant state of outrage and crisis, he prevents organized resistance and meaningful accountability. The chaos isn’t accidental; it’s strategic, designed to exhaust opponents and normalize previously unthinkable behavior. Each new outrage makes the previous one seem quaint by comparison, creating a downward spiral of degraded expectations.

Trump has weaponized division for political gain. He doesn’t simply observe American divisions; he actively creates and exploits them. By turning Americans against each other — urban versus rural, white versus non-white, native-born versus immigrant — he creates tribal loyalties that override ethical concerns or policy considerations. A divided America is easier to manipulate and control than a united one.

What’s most terrifying about this transformation is that Trump has created a blueprint for future authoritarians. He’s shown how to destroy a developed, advanced democracy from within — legally, slowly, under the guise of patriotism.

And the Republican Party? It’s not just following the map. It’s paving the road.

The critical question before us isn’t whether Trump has damaged America. He has. The question is whether that damage is reversible.

— Can we still rebuild?

— Can Republican elders return to principle?

— Can billionaire donors withdraw their support and allow democratic values to reassert themselves?

— Will it take a second Republican Great Depression to shock the party awake?

Americans don’t yet know any of the answers here, but we do know this: inaction is surrender.

Our democratic survival depends on recognizing that Trump is the virus, but the Republican Party is the host. And if we don’t treat the host, the next authoritarian will be worse. Smarter. More effective. More dangerous.

What happened to Kilmar Garcia could happen again. It will happen again, in fact, if we let it. Our democratic immune system — the press, the courts, business and the legal profession, the voters — must fight back. Because we are running out of time.

Rebuilding what they’ve destroyed will require more than simply removing Trump from power; it will demand a fundamental recommitment to democratic values and institutions by the GOP.

Republicans: Wake up!

You are the last firewall. This is your reckoning. Your move.

NOW READ: Farmers in deep-red state spell trouble for Trump as he mocks the Constitution

===

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mma

RULE OF LAW

As Trump ignores order to return Abrego Garcia, right-wing media falsely claim undocumented immigrants have no due process rights

Sean Hannity: “If you're in the country illegally, you don't get due process”

Written by Payton Armstrong & Jack Wheatley

Published 04/23/25

Right-wing media personalities have dismissed the importance of due process rights in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a Maryland resident with protected legal status who the government has admitted was wrongfully deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error” — claiming that “it would literally take 1,000 years to give 10 million illegal immigrants one hour each of ‘due process,’” and lamenting that “if every MS-13 member goes through their own hearing, we'll never get these guys out of here.” Others have claimed that “if you're in the country illegally, you don't get due process,” and said that noncitizens “do not have due process under the law like U.S. citizens do.”

The Trump administration has removed hundreds of immigrants without due process including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the government admitted was deported due to “administrative error”

President Donald Trump has flown hundreds of undocumented immigrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act without court hearings and due process. After the administration sent 238 immigrants to CECOT, a Salvadoran megaprison that is notorious for human rights abuses, the White House and right-wing media repeatedly painted the migrants as dangerous “criminals.” A CBS News investigation “found that an overwhelming majority have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges.” ABC News, [3/26/25; CBS News, 4/6/25; Media Matters, 4/1/25]

- The Department of Justice admitted in court filings that Abrego Garcia was wrongfully deported and subsequently imprisoned in El Salvador due to an “administrative error,” but the Trump administration has been resisting a court order requiring the government “facilitate” his return.U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has ordered at least four officials to give sworn testimony about the administration’s refusal to comply with her order that it facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. The New York Times, [4/1/25; Politico, 4/15/25]

- Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) met with Abrego Garcia last week after initially being denied, and he has since “accused the Trump administration of ‘outright defying’ court orders” to return him to the United States. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has backtracked from initial government admissions that Abrego Garcia was erroneously deported, asserting on Fox News that “we did not make a mistake.” A report that described him as an MS-13 member — based in part on wearing a “Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie” that police claimed was “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture” — was later revealed to have been authored by a now-fired Maryland officer who was suspended for misconduct “just days after the March 2019 encounter at a Home Depot in Hyattsville where Abrego Garcia was flagged as a potential MS-13 gang member.” The New York Times, [4/20/25; BBC, 4/20/25; Twitter/X, 4/21/25; BBC, 4/17/25; USA Today, 4/17/25]

- Due process is a fundamental right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution for both citizens and noncitizens to ensure people in America are given fair legal proceedings and protected from arbitrary government decisions.Conservative and liberal Supreme Court justices alike have affirmed this right for noncitizens. When asked in 2014 whether undocumented people have rights guaranteed under the Constitution, the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said, “Anybody who’s present in the United States has protections under the United States Constitution.” CNN, [4/1/25; PBS, 6/25/18]

- Right-wing media figures have previously praised Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for creating CECOT and urged the creation of similar prisons in the United States.American conservative media personalities have showered praise on Bukele’s imprisonment of alleged drug dealers in CECOT. The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles declared, “We need to learn from El Salvador, never thought I would say that sentence, but we in the United States need to follow the lead of the government of El Salvador.” Media Matters, [3/7/23]

### Right-wing media have dismissed Abrego Garcia’s right to due process, including by claiming that it would take too long

Fox News host Jesse Watters said that it’s “common sense” to deny due process to Abrego Garcia and other people being sent to the Salvadoran prison.He claimed that “if every MS-13 member goes through their own hearing, we'll never get these guys out of here.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [4/16/25]

- Referencing Abrego Garcia, Fox’s Jeanine Pirro dismissed the need for due process.Pirro said that there were “legitimate reasons to get this guy out of here,” adding, “It's not about due process. It's about them being incapable of empathizing for American citizens.” Fox News, *The Five*, [4/16/25]

- Right-wing pundit Kurt Schlichter claimed that Democrats “don’t want due process. They want the criminals here.”Schlichter referred to Garcia as a “criminal scumbag” who “had already been found by a judge to be a member of MS 13, a holding that was up held on appeal.” Twitter/X, [4/16/25]

- In response to a post suggesting that Abrego Garcia “should have been deported, just not in defiance of a judge’s order and not to a prison in El Salvador,” Fox News digital columnist David Marcus posted, “It would literally take 1,000 years to give 10 million illegal immigrants one hour each of ‘due process.’” Twitter/X, [4/16/25]

- Right-wing host Vince Conglianese read a statement about Abrego Garcia’s due process rights being denied and declared, “Is this not infuriating to listen to this garbage — these lectures, from these liars? People are lying directly to your face about what is going on.” Rumble, *Vince*, [4/21/25]

### Right-wing media have made broad claims that undocumented immigrants do not have the same due process rights as American citizens

Fox’s Liz Peek: “I'm so sick of hearing about due process for people who are in our country illegally. They're not citizens. They do not have the due process afforded American citizens.”Guest Kenny Polcari added, “The whole due process thing goes -- for me -- goes right out the window. You're not an American citizen, so you're not entitled to due process when you've come here illegally and you've broken our laws and you've — as violent as he is.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [4/21/25]

- On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity claimed, “If you're in the country illegally, you don't get due process.” Premiere Radio Network, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [4/10/25]

- Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty stated that undocumented immigrants “do not have the same rights as U.S. citizens. They do not have due process under the law like U.S. citizens do.”Echoing the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, Finnerty then complained to viewers that Democrats “have decided that these people who have nothing to do with America because they are not American are more important than you, to the point that the White House under Joe Biden tried to replace you and your vote with them.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [4/10/25; Media Matters, 1/12/24]

- The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo wrote that due process is “used as a legalistic motte for the open borders/pathological empathy bailey.” He added that Abrego Garcia “is a criminal who should not be in America, whatever process is required to get him out.” Twitter/X, [4/16/25]

- Right-wing commentator Mike Crispi claimed that “there’s no ‘due process’ when you’re an ILLEGAL ALIEN.” He added, “Stepping on our land does not afford you constitutional rights. You’re found. You get kicked out. Period.” Twitter/X, [4/15/25]

- Fox & Friendsco-host Brian Kilmeade suggested that due process rights for undocumented immigrants be done away with because “it’s not practical.”Kilmeade said that “it's not practical to think that we can do due process on 8 million people. … There's 22 million people here at minimum, illegal already, just in the last three administrations. And there are some people that got through with Trump's administration.” He added, “If we are going to give ever these guys a day in court and a lawyer, we can't do it, they don't deserve it. Our system doesn't need to be double-burdened.” The Independent, [3/24/25]

- Far-right influencer Jack Posobiec wrote: “Yeah I support due process. Illegals are all due to be processed by ICE.”Twitter/X, [4/15/25]

- Right-wing figure Mike Cernovich: “The due process illegal immigrants are entitled to is to be removed in one piece, uninjured, and that’s historical generosity without precedent in all of humanity.” Twitter/X, [4/20/25]

- Radio host Bill Mitchell: “I've never understood why if you are in this country illegally, you are afforded due process in our system.”He continued, “You're here illegally. You violated our constitution coming here and clearly have no respect for it. So why should that same Constitution protect you?” Twitter/X, [4/19/25]

- Conservative commentator Julie Kelly claimed, “This is not about due process or habeas—this is a coordinated effort to keep illegals in this country and sabotaging the will of the American people who elected the president to solve the illegal immigration crisis.” Twitter/X, [4/18/25]

- On Fox News’Gutfeld!, podcaster Michael Malice said “the issue that they’re trying to talk about due process — are we going to pretend that there aren’t plenty of American citizens who shouldn’t be deported to El Salvador as well?” He added: “If you watch the corporate press, you would think that any of us at any moment are at an option of being deported from the country. But we’re forgetting that everyone was just imprisoned in their own homes for quite some time four years ago, and there was no due process there.” Fox News, *Gutfeld!*, [4/19/25]

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AN 4 25

Premiering this week, the second and final season of Star Wars streaming show Andor seems destined to be one of the pop culture defining moments of the second Trump presidency.

Andor, which began airing in 2022, tells the story of the early days of the Rebel Alliance before the adventures of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. The series is the most politically articulate of the Star Wars franchise.

Where older Star Wars entries focused on lightsaber battles and dogfights in space, Andor shows a world of political manifestos, fractious alliances between rebel groups, and surreptitious fundraising for revolution.

Season one of the show followed the political awakening of the titular Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), who progresses from troubled thief to total ideological commitment to fighting the Empire. The show also follows a covert revolutionary leader (Stellan Skarsgård), an ineffective politician who secretly finances the rebellion (Genevieve O'Reilly), and two Imperials manoeuvring for power (Denise Gough and Kyle Soller).

Showrunner Tony Gilroy has so far taken inspiration for Andor from a variety of real historical revolutionary events, from Stalin’s bank robbery in Tiflis of 1907 to the Baader-Meinhof group in West Germany.

Aesthetically, Andor has more in common with the political filmmaking of the likes of The Battle of Algiers (1966), the films of Costa-Gavras, or than the central Flash Gordon-inspired Star Wars saga.

As authoritarian governments and conflicts loom large globally, the final season of Andor in 2025 is perfectly timed to articulate anxieties much closer to home than the galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars has always been political

Andor is far from the first time that Star Wars has captured the political zeitgeist. In fact, much of the franchise’s success stems from the way it provides us with a pop culture language to talk about politics.

In 2016, Trump’s first election win coincided with the release of Rogue One, the Star Wars precursor to Andor.

Within days, two Star Wars creatives made public comparisons between Trump and Rogue One’s villains, with writer Chris Weitz posting on Twitter “the Empire is a white supremacist (human) organization”. Writer Gary Whitta replied: “Opposed by a multi-cultural group led by brave women”.

They were officially reprimanded by the studio. “This is a film that the world should enjoy,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger at the time. “It is not a film that is, in any way, a political film.”

Under the ownership of a risk averse corporation like Disney, Star Wars is supposed to be family friendly, apolitical entertainment.

However, since its very conception, Star Wars has been political.

Inspired by anti-Vietnam war protests, director George Lucas described Darth Vader and the Empire as “Nixonian gangsters” in early drafts of the original film’s script. Lucas, who had developed Apocalypse Now before Francis Ford Coppola ultimately directed the film, has consistently claimed to have thought of the Rebel Alliance as similar to North Vietnamese fighters resisting United States forces.

When it came time for the prequel trilogy in the 2000s, Lucas told a story of democracy willingly falling to dictatorship (beginning with a trade war, something not lost on contemporary observers). In 2005, Lucas even had Darth Vader paraphrase George W. Bush.

It has also shaped politics. Scholars and critics like Andrew Britton and Robin Wood argued Star Wars was so escapist and disconnected from politics here on earth that it set the scene for Ronald Reagan’s good-versus-evil rhetoric.

A galaxy not so far away

It is precisely Star Wars’ apolitical image that gives it so much political utility. A series with such strong heroes and villains inevitably invites comparison.

Almost immediately after its release in 1977, Star Wars became a pop culture language for understanding politics.

When Maggie Thatcher won government in the United Kingdom on May 4 1979, the Conservative Party took out an advertisement in the London Evening News congratulating her with the words “May the Fourth Be With You”.

When Ronald Reagan proposed a “Strategic Defense Initiative” missile system in 1983, critics immediately and famously labelled it “Star Wars” (something Lucas tried unsuccessfully to stop). Reagan himself eventually joined in, too, claiming in a speech in 1985 that “the Force is with us”.

It is easy to find examples of politicians of all stripes being likened to Star Wars villains like Darth Vader (most enduring was Dick Cheney who claimed to not mind the comparison).

Composer John Williams’ Imperial March has even been played at protests as a way to antagonise opponents.

The enduring currency of the political language of Star Wars is in part due to its generalities. In any political conflict it helps to have a way to describe an archetypal evil puppet master (the Emperor), his henchman (Darth Vader), and the soulful heroes putting their lives on the line (the Jedi).

The real trick to Star Wars’ ongoing relevance, however, lies in its very real inspirations. Whether it is George W. Bush, the Viet Cong, or the Bolsheviks, Star Wars has time and again turned the specifics of political history into mythology.

At a time where many see global politics as having set the stage for the Empire to Strike Back, the final season of Andor may give many a language to articulate A New Hope.

Dan Golding, Professor and Chair of the Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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4 25

The Trump administration has found itself embroiled in a number of scandals, which critics say are affecting governance as well as the United States' relations with its key allies.

But CNN's Stephen Collinson wrote in an article published on Wednesday that even the chaos currently at display will not stop some supporters of President Donald Trump for backing him. Collinson argued that his supporters don't judge the president's performance by a traditional yardstick.

He said despite America’s reputation abroad being impacted by Trump’s dismantling of USAID, his stance on the Russia-Ukraine crisis and abandonment of Africa, Trump and his supporters are not concerned about their allies. "He’d rather be feared than liked," Collinson wrote.

"By conventional measures, Donald Trump’s second presidency is already descending into disarray amid a legal morass, self-inflicted errors, and a vast gap between its massive ambition and its capacity to enact that vision," said Collinson, who covers the White House for CNN.

ALSO READ:Incompetence and chaos as Trump 2.0 crashes and burns

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"Yet Trump’s tens of millions of supporters didn’t send a conventional president back to the White House – and don’t judge their hero’s performance by traditional yardsticks."

The writer noted that several crises on multiple fronts indicate a potentially failed administration, but this chaos means he is succeeding. "But as Trump attempts to destroy governing structures at home and abroad, chaos is itself a marker of success," Collinson wrote.

"A sense of disorder is mounting," Collinson added, pointing to the "backbiting and organizational chaos at the Pentagon" following the controversy surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared sensitive information about military strikes in Yemen on two Signal chats.

"Trump’s belief in almost absolute presidential power horrifies his critics. But millions of Americans voted for this. He made no secret on the campaign trail of his intention to weaponize presidential power and the Justice Department to pursue his enemies," the reporter said.

ALSO READ:'Need for chaos' powers Trump voters support for destroying government: psychologists

Collinson added that Trump enjoys this confrontation.

"But the White House loves the fight. It’s failed to prove Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a gang member. But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stoked the fire again on Tuesday. 'We were always right. The president was always on the right side of this issue to deport this illegal criminal from our community.' When Trump said last week that he’d like to deport US citizen criminals to El Salvador, he knew his audience," the article notes.

"And on this immigration issue, he has some genuine results to show for his efforts. Border crossings are down significantly compared with the days of the Biden administration."

This contentious presidency, argues Collinson, may appear to be a significant failure to one half of the nation, but the other half sees it as a remarkable success.

ALSO READ: Alarm sounded as 4,100 factory workers laid off amid Trump policy chaos

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4 25

The Trump administration has found itself embroiled in a number of scandals, which critics say are affecting governance as well as the United States' relations with its key allies.

ALSO READ:Incompetence and chaos as Trump 2.0 crashes and burns

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"Yet Trump’s tens of millions of supporters didn’t send a conventional president back to the White House – and don’t judge their hero’s performance by traditional yardsticks."

ALSO READ:'Need for chaos' powers Trump voters support for destroying government: psychologists

Collinson added that Trump enjoys this confrontation.

"And on this immigration issue, he has some genuine results to show for his efforts. Border crossings are down significantly compared with the days of the Biden administration."

This contentious presidency, argues Collinson, may appear to be a significant failure to one half of the nation, but the other half sees it as a remarkable success.

ALSO READ: Alarm sounded as 4,100 factory workers laid off amid Trump policy chaos

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//retaliATION?

AN 4 265

White House columnist Brian Karem wrote in an article published in Salon Thursday that not even former President Donald Trump's closest supporters think he is doing a satisfactory job as president.

"Many believe that Trump is one of his biggest fans, and while Trump fancies himself 'cool,' not even his closest supporters say that of him. The best I’ve heard regarding Trump is he says what he thinks," he wrote.

The author quoted a former member of Congress from the Republican Party, whose name he did not disclose, as saying that Trump was as dangerous as “a monster."

ALSO READ:['Groceries are already outrageous': What Trump voters in South Dakota think of his economic policy

"I was literally sick to my stomach when he said ‘we’ may put homegrown Americans in El Salvadoran jails. Because that statement on top of his refusal to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia has me truly scared of what he and his toadies will do," the lawmaker reportedly said.

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The article further said, "Does it matter if he is a crazy person in the White House trying to convince you he is not, or is a sane person trying to convince you he is crazy? What matters are the results. Look around. Donald Trump has thumbed his nose at the judiciary, owns Congress, rules by Executive Order, employs DOGE and Elon Musk as hatchet men to destroy the government while ignoring due process and openly, bald-faced lying about what he is doing. Bill Maher said he wouldn’t back off from future criticism of the president, but to those in Trump’s inner circle, it doesn’t matter."

Some other Republicans have expressed similar remarks. Earlier this week, veteran GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) delivered candid responsesto leaders of nonprofit groups in her state, expressing concern over the cuts to federal agencies, programs, and the federal workforce.

“We are all afraid,” she said.

ALSO READ:'They will not cower': Robert Reich cites 3 institutions defying Trump’s 'threats and demands'

“It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right. But that’s what you’ve asked me to do. And so, I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability," the Alaska lawmaker said.

ALSO READ:'Bullied into submission': Trump’s 'naked economic incompetence' is now GOP’s greatest liability

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SORTA REF AN 4 25

As some of President Donald Trump's more outspoken critics see it, way too many people are going out of their way to placate him — from law firms to universities to tech CEOs to non-MAGA Republicans. Those people are often accused of going along to get along in the hope that Trump won't target them for retribution.

But liberal economist Robert Reich, in an April 17 opinion column for The Guardian, cites three recent examples of people standing up to Trump: the U.S. Supreme Court, Harvard University and the government of Mainland China.

The High Court upheld a lower court ruling ordering the Trump Administration to "facilitate" the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia (a Maryland man deported to a prison in El Salvador) to the United States. Harvard University is speaking out against Trump despite his threats to cut off their funding or remove their tax-exempt status. And the Chinese government is pushing back against Trump's steep new tariffs.

READ MORE:['Bullied into submission': Trump’s 'naked economic incompetence' is now GOP’s greatest liability

"It was bound to happen," Reich writes. "Encouraged by the ease with which many big U.S. institutions caved in to their demands, the Trump regime — that is, the small cadre of bottom-feeding fanatics around Donald Trump: JD Vance, Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller and RFK Jr., along with the child king himself — have overreached. They’ve dared China, Harvard and the Supreme Court to blink. But guess what? They’ve met their matches. None of them has blinked, and they won't."

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Reich adds, "China not only refused to back down when the Trump regime threatened it with huge tariffs, but also, retaliated with huge tariffs of its own, plus a freeze on the export of rare-earth elements that the U.S.' high-tech and defense industries depend on. Harvard also pointedly defied the regime, issuing a clear rebuke to its attempt to interfere with academic freedom."

Reich predicts that "these three institutions will not back down" or "cower to Trump."

"I suspect the testosterone-poisoned lackeys around King Trump are urging him to hit back even harder, escalating their confrontations with China, Harvard and the Supreme Court," Reich argues. "They view these showdowns as ultimate tests of the regime's strength…. If they defeat China, they have brought the world's other economic powerhouse to its knees! If they defeat Harvard University, they have been victorious over the world's intellectual powerhouse! If they defeat the Supreme Court, they have conquered the entire U.S. government!"

Reich continues, "Win these battles, and no one will ever again doubt the power and resolve of the Trump regime!... They cannot and will not cower. If Trump escalates his wars against them, they’ll become even stronger in the eyes of their supporters and constituents, and much of the world. The American people will see that Trump is actually a blowhard with no real power at all. So if he's smart, Trump will try to de-escalate these three conflicts."

*Robert Reich's full column for The Guardian is available at this link.

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AN? --> 4 25

Trump’s recent escalating rhetoric and actions across multiple fronts have alarmed political experts, who are now warning that the United States is not just drifting but accelerating toward fascism—and may have already crossed the threshold.

“He’s threatening media companies who are critical of him,” warned Republican Sarah Longwell, a political strategist and publisher of The Bulwark. “He’s talking about sending Americans to foreign prisons. He’s signing executive orders to investigate former staff members who spoke out against him. Don’t you see what’s happening here?”

Trump on Sunday night attacked CBS and its “60 Minutes” newsmagazine, a top-rated and esteemed broadcast for more than five decades. The President, apparently angered by its reporting, called for CBS’s broadcast license to be revoked. He also called on his hand-picked head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior,” namely, reporting facts he did not like.

On Monday, Trump told reporters he has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate sending U.S. citizens to foreign gulags, as The New Republic reported, without due process, something he floated last week, which experts say is illegal.

“Trump is denying due process to foreign nationals here legally — ripping them from their families and deporting them. Do we really believe this regime will follow any sort of due process for American citizens before he tries to deport them? Call it what it is: fascism,” declared U.C. Berkeley Professor of Public Policy and former Cabinet secretary Robert Reich.

“If Trump can claim a ‘national emergency’ to disappear legal residents without due process, what’s to stop him from doing the same to U.S. citizens who oppose him?” asked Professor Reich. He warned: “No one is safe — not even people legally in the country, possibly not even American citizens. Fascism is here.”

Reich pointed to a conversation (video below) between Trump and Bukele, caught on camera, where the U.S. president says, “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places.”

Also sounding the alarm, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer on Monday warned: “The Constitutional Crisis Is Here.”

“Between the path of outright defiance of the Supreme Court and following its order to ‘facilitate’ the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s infamous Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), the Trump administration has chosen a third way: pretending it is complying while refusing to do so.”

Abrego Garcia is the legal U.S. resident the Trump administration admits it wrongly “deported” to the notorious El Salvador mega-prison. Trump officials have made clear, through word and deed, they have no desire to right that wrong.

“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us,” Attorney General Bondi told reporters. “That’s not up to us. If they want to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.”

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, backing up the Trump administration, declared on Monday he has no intention of returning the 38-year old Abrego Garcia to the United States.

“This morning, however,” Serwer wrote, “Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller claimed on Fox News that the acknowledgement that Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported had been made by a ‘saboteur,’ in the Department of Justice and that ‘he was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador’; he added that ‘this was the right person sent to the right place.’ This is a lie—the admission of error was made by an ICE official in a court filing.”

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a well-known political scientist, warned: “Defying the Supreme Court, planning to spirit American citizens to El Salvador and saying that the courts have no role since it is a foreign country and the president has all foreign policy powers. We have entered the realm of fullblown fascism.”

Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote: “Disappearing people without any due process is fascism — full stop. I’m sick to my stomach and we all should be.”

Thomas Kennedy, who works with the Florida Immigrant Coalition, responded to the video of Trump and Bukele.

“Referring to citizens as ‘home-growns’ while asking a foreign country known for prisons that operate like black sites to build more of those prisons so he can send those ‘home-growns’ is fascist stuff and it needs to be called as such.”

Watch the video below or at this link. RUPAR

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chris hayes says road paved with ppl saying do not be alarmed

an 4 25

Senator warns America on a 'very short road to tyranny'

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AN 4 25 ROBT R

A few days ago I had breakfast with my old friend John Shattuck, who, as president of Central European University in Budapest, saw firsthand how Viktor Orban took over Hungary’s democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state.

When Trump was elected in 2016, Trump endorsed Orban, and Orban started attacking universities — forcing the Central European University out of Hungary.

John believes Trump is emulating Orban’s playbook. (Steve Bannon once declared that “Orban was Trump before there was Trump.”)

Orban’s playbook has 10 parts, according to John:

One: Take over your party and enforce internal party discipline by using political threats and intimidation to stamp out all party dissent.

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Two: Build your base by appealing to fear and hate, branding immigrants and cultural minorities as dangers to society, and demonizing your opponents as enemies of the people.

Three: Use disinformation and lies to justify what you’re doing.

Four: Use your election victory to claim a sweeping mandate — especially if you don’t win a majority.

Five: Centralize your power by destroying the civil service.

Six: Redefine the rule of law as rule by executive decree. Weaponize the state against all democratic opponents. Demonize anyone who doesn’t support the leader as an “enemy of the people.”

Seven: Eliminate checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society. Target opponents with regulatory penalties like tax audits, educational penalties such as denials of accreditation, political penalties like harassment investigations, physical penalties like withdrawing police protection, and criminal penalties like prosecution.

Eight: Rely on your oligarchs — hugely wealthy business and financial leaders — to supervise the economy and reward them with special access to state resources, tax cuts, and subsidies.

Nine: Ally yourself with other authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and support his effort to undermine European democracies and attack sovereign countries like Ukraine.

Ten: Get the public to believe that all this is necessary, and that resistance is futile.

John noted that Orban’s influence now reaches across Europe.

In Austria, a political party founded by former Nazis will be part of a new coalition government this year headed by a leader who has close ties to Russia and opposes European support for Ukraine. A similar nationalist far-right government has taken over next door in Slovakia.

Europe’s three biggest countries, Italy, France and Germany, have all swung toward the far-right, but so far they remain democracies.

Italy has a nationalist government headed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who’s followed parts of the Orban playbook but has been pushed toward the center and has softened her position on immigration and Ukraine.

In France, the far-right party of Marine Le Pen won last year’s parliamentary elections, but a coalition of opposition parties, prodded by Emmanuel Macron, united to deny her party a parliamentary majority. Their resistance will be tested by new elections in June.

In Germany, the center-left government headed by Olaf Scholz fell at the end of last year. In late February, parliamentary elections took place that determined whether the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would become part of a new government. Viktor Orban, Elon Musk, and JD Vance all endorsed the AfD before the elections, but it came in second with just under 20 percent of the vote, and polls show that 71 percent of Germans believe that the AfD is a threat to democracy because of its overt connections to the Nazi past.

Poland, the biggest new democracy in Eastern Europe, at first adopted but is now resisting the Orban model. A far-right government elected in 2015 almost destroyed the independence of the Polish judiciary, but opposition parties united to defend the courts and defeated the government in 2023, replacing it with a centrist regime headed by Donald Tusk, with a strong commitment to restore Polish democracy.

What lessons can be drawn from all this?

John believes that the best way to respond to Orban’s right-wing populism is by building coalitions for economic populism based on health care, education, taxes, and public spending.

He points to historical examples of this, like the American Farmer-Labor coalition that brought together urban workers, white farmers, and Black sharecroppers and led to the Progressive Movement and the New Deal in the 20th century. Today there’s an urgent need for a new populist movement to attack economic inequality.

John says that defending democracy should itself be a populist cause. In the Orban playbook, the national flag was hijacked by the authoritarian leader. John believes that the flag of American democracy must be reclaimed as a symbol of the rule of law, a society built on human rights and freedoms, and international alliances and humanitarian values.

When these soft-power democratic assets are destroyed, a huge void opens up — to be filled by authoritarians like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who are the ultimate political models for Viktor Orban and Donald Trump.

John urges that we pro-democracy anti-Trumpers move quickly with protests, lawsuits, and loud resistance. He says that those who believe Democrats should just play dead and wait for the 2026 midterm elections are profoundly wrong. Speed is essential.

I was struck by John’s optimism. He believes that the U.S. is better situated than Hungary to resist authoritarianism. We are 30 times bigger and infinitely more diverse, and our diversity is the source of our economic and cultural strength. The U.S. has an enormous and active civil society, a judiciary that remains mostly independent, a free and open if partially captured and manipulated media, and a constitution that guarantees the rights of the people to challenge and change their government.

Trump won less than 50 percent of the vote in last fall’s election, and his approval rating is well below that in recent polls.

National polls show that 70 percent of Americans today see democracy as a core American value. Resistance to the assault on democracy is not only possible, John says, but it’s essential — and it can work, as shown by the growing number of successful lawsuits that have been brought against Trump’s flood of executive decrees and the rising tide of grassroots mobilization by civil society groups across the country who are organizing demonstrations and lobbying legislators to stand up for democracy.

For two and a half centuries, Americans have fought to expand the right to vote, to achieve equal protection, to oppose intolerance and political violence, to gain freedom of speech and religion, to guarantee due process of law.

These goals may now seem to be blocked by Trump, but the U.S. is not Germany in the 1930s nor Hungary in 2025. Americans across the country are beginning to resist. John believes American democracy will emerge stronger for our efforts.

NOW READ: There’s a new dress code in Trump’s DC — and it’s straight out of a dictator’s playbook

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/."

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an 4 25

It’s been another grueling week.

Several of you have asked me how to live in a nation whose leader has embraced cruelty as public policy. How do we inhabit Trump’s America without becoming complicit in this cruelty?

Molly watched Trump sign the executive order initiating criminal investigations of Miles Taylor (who wrote an anonymous 2018 New York Times op-ed describing internal resistance to Trump in his first term) and Christopher Krebs (who played a major role in undercutting Trump’s false claims about 2020 election fraud).

Molly asks: Is this America?

No, Molly, it is not — at least not the America we have known and loved.

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Others of you are thunderstruck by Trump’s cruelty toward refugees who fled violence and have been living in the United States legally but are now being forced to return to their home countries and face more violence.

And the Trump regime’s cruelty toward people here on temporary visas who are deported arbitrarily, without a hearing — some sent to a gruesome prison in El Salvador even after the regime has admitted error in sending them.

And children in poor countries who are in desperate need of vaccines but are now doing without them because Trump has ended USAID.

The cruelty toward vulnerable people in Gaza, in Ukraine, and in Yemen who are being bombed, wounded, or killed because the Trump regime is doing nothing to stop these bloodbaths or is contributing to them.

Cruelty toward tens of thousands of public servants who are suddenly and without warning fired — some just months away from retirement and a pension.

Revoking security protection for Biden’s son and daughter. And for General Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Revoking security protection for other former members of his first administration despite warnings of ongoing threats from Iran because of actions they took on Trump’s behalf.

Firing more than a dozen prosecutors who worked for the special counsel Jack Smith on criminal investigations of Trump.

Revoking security clearances of 51 people who merely signed a letter suggesting that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation.

Targeting law firms that employ or have employed lawyers who worked on investigations into Trump or on causes Trump objects to.

Targeting universities that have allowed international students freedom of speech.

And on it goes, day after day — the Trump regime’s abject cruelty, viciousness, heartlessness, brutality.

How does a moral person live with this? How do we not become complicit?

The answer, I think, is to do whatever we can to protect those who are vulnerable to this cruelty.

We speak out against Trump’s use of criminal investigations to punish public servants who helped expose his venality.

We make our communities into sanctuaries that limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

We urge our universities to protect free speech and expression of everyone, at whatever the cost.

To the extent we can, we fund groups that are helping poor families around the world get the medical assistance they need.

We call our senators and members of Congress to tell them to retrieve their constitutional authority over government spending.

We tell them to stop the brutality in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, and everywhere else America is either encouraging it or failing to discourage it.

We tell them to stop Trump’s criminal investigations of opponents.

We protest. We organize. We mobilize. We do what we can to put good people into office and keep them there, and we help regain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

In other words, we become organized activists againstTrump’s organized cruelty.

We try to make this country an America we can love again.

Years from now, when our children and grandchildren ask what we did during Trump’s reign of terror, we can tell them that we worked tirelessly to curb his cruelty — and we did it with our compassion.

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no lnx

Is this the moment American democracy finally broke?

Thom Hartmann April 11, 2025

The highest form of freedom in a democracy isn’t just the right to vote or protest — it’s the right to speak truth to power. To call out corruption. To challenge lies. To stand firm when the powerful demand silence. This is the freedom that sustains all others.

And it’s the one Donald Trump tried to crush yesterday with the stroke of a pen.

When he signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to investigate Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor — two public servants whose only crime was telling the truth — Trump didn’t just abuse his office. He weaponized the government against honesty itself.

This wasn’t law enforcement: It was political vengeance. This wasn’t democracy: It was a warning shot from the edge of autocracy.

And if we let this slide — if we treat it as just another Trump headline — we are inviting the next strongman to do the same, only worse.

The freedom to speak truth to power is either sacred, or it’s gone.

Thus, Donald Trump just moved America miles down the road toward our becoming a police state. There’s no other way to describe it.

His Executive Order (EO) signed yesterday demanding criminal investigations into Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor — and his public statement that Taylor is a “traitor” guilty of “treason” — are nothing short of a blatant assault on the rule of law and a perilous step toward turning America into a dictatorship.

This isn't just about settling personal scores; it's a calculated move to instill fear, silence dissent, and dismantle the very foundations of our democratic institutions.

Can you imagine yourself being called a traitor by the president of the United States and thus facing prison? Having to hire expensive attorneys that may well force you to sell your home to pay for, just to defend yourself? Not to mention having to protect yourself and your family from the rightwing enforcers who are probably at this moment doxxing and threatening Krebs and Taylor?

This echoes tactics used by autocrats throughout history: Stalin’s purges, Nixon’s enemies list (though less successfully executed), and more recently, Orbán in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines, or Putin in Russia. If normalized, it risks further turning the U.S. into an illiberal democracy or autocracy, where elections occur but power is retained through fear, manipulation, and coercion. Or worse, a violent kleptocracy like Russia.

Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), had the audacity to do his job by ensuring the integrity of our elections and debunking Trump’s baseless lies of fraud in the 2020 election. Miles Taylor, who served as Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security, dared to speak out against the administration's reckless policies and wrote a book.

Their “crime”? Upholding their oaths to the Constitution and telling the truth.

By weaponizing the Department of Justice to pursue these individuals, Trump is not only abusing presidential power but also sending a chilling message to current and future whistleblowers: “Cross me, and you’ll pay.” This is the hallmark of a despot, not a democratically elected leader.

But Trump isn’t stopping there. He’s extending his vendetta to the very institutions that safeguard our legal system and might defend Taylor and Krebs.

Law firms like Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block are being targeted with punitive measures — revoked security clearances, terminated federal contracts, and restricted access to federal buildings including courthouses — all because they’ve had the courage to represent clients like these two who have challenged Trump’s overreaches.

In addition to signing an executive order targeting two former employees yesterday, Trump also signed one attacking yet another law firm, this time Susman Godfrey, which helped Dominion Voting Systems get millions from Fox for their 2020 election lies.

This is a direct attack on the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to legal representation. When the government intimidates law firms into submission, it erodes the adversarial system that is essential for justice.

The implications are dire. If attorneys fear retribution for taking on cases that oppose the administration, who will hold the government accountable? Who will defend people like Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor?

This orchestrated campaign of intimidation is designed to create a chilling effect, deterring legal professionals from defending those who dare to speak truth to power.

This EO is a tactic ripped straight from the playbook of violent, authoritarian regimes like Putin’s, Erdoğan’s, and Orbán’s, where the law becomes a tool of oppression rather than justice.

Moreover, this politicization of the Department of Justice undermines its very mission. The DOJ is meant to operate independently, free from political influence, to uphold the law impartially.

Yet, under Trump’s directive, it is being transformed before our eyes into his personal enforcer, pursuing baseless investigations to settle political scores in ways Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. This perversion of justice not only delegitimizes the department but also erodes public trust in our legal institutions.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t just about Krebs, Taylor, or the targeted law firms: It’s about the survival of our democracy. When a president can wield power to punish dissent and dismantle checks and balances without consequence, we are treading dangerous waters.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Trump’s actions are a direct assault on these freedoms, aiming to silence opposition and consolidate power.

The legal community is beginning to push back. Over 500 law firms have united to challenge these types of executive orders, recognizing them as a grave threat to our constitutional governance. Former top lawyers from major corporations have also voiced their opposition, understanding that this isn’t just a legal issue but a fundamental attack on the principles that underpin our society.

However, resistance must extend beyond the legal profession: we all must speak out. Every American who values democracy, justice, and freedom should be alarmed by these developments.

This is a moment that demands vigilance and action. We cannot afford to be complacent as the pillars of our democracy are systematically dismantled. The phone number for Congress is 202-224-3121, and another set of demonstrations are scheduled for a week from this coming Saturday, April 19th.

If there was ever any doubt, Trump’s authoritarian ambitions are now laid bare. His actions are not those of a leader who respects the Constitution or the people he serves: They are the actions of a man desperate to exploit and cling to power by any means necessary, even if it means destroying the very fabric of our nation.

This executive order is more than just a scandal — it’s a frontal assault on democracy. It shows Trump’s willingness to use the machinery of state as a weapon against truth and accountability, and underscores the urgent need to safeguard democratic institutions, enforce accountability, and reaffirm the independence of the rule of law in America.

If we fail to hold Trump accountable for turning the justice system into a tool of revenge, we are not just rewriting the rules — we're erasing them.

Democracy doesn’t “die in darkness.” It dies when truth becomes a crime and silence becomes survival. The time to speak up is now—while we still can.

NOW READ: The sickening secret sauce to Trump's political success

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Colleges in Nazi Germany thought giving in to government demands would save them

an 4 25

---

THOM: five steps in Taking Over America by an oligarchy

step one is to get control of the media

and Academia

step two is to use money to weaken campaign Finance laws

take over a whole political party.

taking over the government is step four.

step five is to use the police to protect oligarchic power .

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an 4 25

A rising group of conservatives is increasingly challenging conventional ideas about empathy, often calling it "sinful."

Amanda Marcotte, a senior writer at Slate, wrote in an articlepublished Friday that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement considers empathy to be a weakness and that sentiment is what makes them support President Donald Trump, who she referred to as "incapable of empathy."

She referred to the transition of Albert Mohler, the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, from denouncing Trump as a "predator" in 2016 to being one of his "loudest Christian right defenders." In a recent interview, Mohler said he now condemns empathy, calling it "an artificial virtue" and "destructive."

ALSO READ:We’re talking to our neighbors about the MAGA rampage — and people are listening

Marcotte noted in the article that the right-wing figures who openly deride empathy follow Trump so much that many high-profile psychologists have argued that he should be considered a sociopath, "despite not consenting to a formal diagnosis."

IFrame Content

"The political impetus behind this overt assault on what was once considered a baseline virtue is obvious enough," she said.

She added, "Trump has eclipsed Jesus himself as the object of worship on the Christian right, as evidenced by the hosts of "Girls Gone Bible" invoking Trump's name as if he were God in their rewrite of the Lord's Prayer. At his inauguration ball, a 'worship painter" even replicated Trump's image while the crowd sang 'amen' over and over, underscoring this shift in the de facto theology of these 'Christians.'"

The author further said Trump's "sociopathy" has now surpassed the empathy of Jesus in MAGA eyes. She added that the MAGA movement has an "unhinged obsession with gender and escalating hatred of women," which is why they see empathy as "feminine."

ALSO READ:'The arc of concentration camps is twofold': Experts detail the 'logical endpoint' of MAGA’s rhetoric

"Both firmly agree that femininity is the root of all evil. One doesn't have to speculate, either, to see this aspect of the war on empathy. Plenty of MAGA leaders will say the misogynist part out loud," she wrote.

Many commentators described misogyny as a reason why former Vice President Kamala Harris, who would have been the first female president of the United States had she won the 2024 election, lost to Trump.

In December last year, just days after the election, a panel of Black female experts argued that "misogynoir, the intersection of racism and sexism," was the main factor in Harris's loss.

“Racism is designed in such a way to make you question your humanity, but sexism is also. Sexism is really a power move,” LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund said at the time. “When you combine those two things together, I think that that best explains what [Harris] experienced.”

ALSO READ:'Powerful motivator': Sociologist explains ways 'fear-based messaging' keeps GOP in power

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rww

04/07/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Tom Durante @ Mediaite: Trump Tells Americans to Stop Panicking as Markets Plunge: ‘Don’t Be Weak! Don’t Be Stupid!’

President Donald Trump promised that his controversial new tariff policy will produce “GREATNESS,” and warned naysayers not to be “weak” and “stupid” as fears of a recession grip financial markets worldwide.

Teddy Rosenbluth and Lucinda Holt @ The New York Times: Kennedy Attends Funeral of Texas Girl Who Died of Measles

The health secretary has faced harsh criticism for his handling of the outbreak, embrace of alternative treatments and tepid endorsement of vaccination.

Julia Ornedo @ The Daily Beast: ‘60 Minutes’ Calls BS on Trump’s Reason for Dystopian Deportations

The president said “horrible criminals” were transported to El Salvador—but records suggest otherwise.

Malcolm Ferguson @ The New Republic: Trump’s Anti-DEI Purge Hits Harriet Tubman and Underground Railroad

Harriet Tubman is now DEI, apparently.

Tom Sherwood @ Washington City Paper: Trump Will Get His Showy (And Likely Expensive) Military Parade in D.C.

Trump’s 2018 plans for a parade of military tanks and planes down Pennsylvania Avenue NW were scuttled. But this year no one will stop him.

Dan McClellan: The Bible did not give us the due process clause

That's not how parables work.

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mma retaliation

### Steve Bannon: “There's major law firms in Washington, D.C.” and “what we are trying to do is put you out of business and bankrupt you”

03/13/25

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{{ aha 3 25

see 1st amend ppl lose ACTIVIST SUPPRESS, STUDENT SUPPRESS --> FAscism

aha yikes this is seen as righteous corrective action, punishment of those ppl

foreigners, but students are spoiled, captured by radical lunatic pinko left accuse real am of being racists [and greedy?]

erode incrementaL ATTACK START WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS, STATE OF EXCEPTION/ EMERGENCY POWERS? CDA 1ST NATIONS WATER PROTECTORS FROM CORP PIPELINE DAPL

RUBIO PULLED GREEN CARD FOR COLUMBIA STUDENT GAZA 3/1025

AN 3 25

Trump is following Putin’s, Xi’s, and Orban’s playbook. First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you.

Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with.

Intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.)

Then focus on independent sources of information: the media and the universities. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews.

Then go after the universities.

Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests. On Friday he cancelled hundreds of millions in grants and contracts with Columbia University.

This is an extension of Republican tactics before Trump’s second term. Prior to Trump appointing her ambassador to the United Nations, former Representative Elise Stefanik (Harvard class of 2006) browbeat presidents of elite universities over their responses to student protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, leading to several presidents being fired.

Senator Josh Hawley (Stanford class of 2002 and Yale Law class of 2006) called the student demonstrations signs of “moral rot” at the universities.

But antisemitism was just a pretext.

JD Vance (Yale Law 2013) has termed university professors “the enemy” and suggested using Victor Orban’s method for ending “left-wing domination of universities.”

I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. [The government should be] aggressively reforming institutions … in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.”

Trump is also targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on university campuses.

But of all Trump’s and Republicans’ moves against higher education, the most destructive is the cancelation of research grants and contracts. The destruction is hardly confined to Columbia and other suspected left-wing bastions.

Research universities depend on funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Trump reportedly aims to slash the budget of the National Science Foundation by up to two-thirds. And he’s instructed the National Institutes of Health to no longer honor negotiated rates for “indirect costs” on grants that it administers — money that universities use for laboratory space and research equipment.

In defiance of court orders, Trump has largely maintained a freeze on NIH funding.

As a result, many of America’s great research universities have stopped hiring and are cutting Ph.D. programs — in some cases rescinding offers to accepted students.

Trump’s moves are consistent with the tyrant’s playbook, but they’re also jeopardizing America’s national security and competitiveness.

Trump speaks of putting America First, but his attack on the nation’s great research universities is ensuring that the U.S. comes in second — to China.

Although America has long been the global leader in scientific output, China is now surging ahead. Even before Trump’s cuts in research funding, China was projected to match U.S. research spending within five years.

China has already surpassed the U.S. as the top producer of highly cited papers and international patent applications. It now awards more science and engineering Ph.D.s than the U.S.

Tyrants close universities. Fascists burn books. Trump is destroying America’s most important asset — its innovative mind. }} end aha

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NO LNX AN

We crushed fascists before — and it's time to do it again

Benito Mussolini in 1942 (Creative Commons)

Thom Hartmann March 05, 2025

Last night, we were treated to a litany of grievance, political bulls---, and lies. Of particular note was Trump’s declaration of war against the government of the United States, particularly Social Security, which I’ll discuss at more length tomorrow.

But the larger issue, given the GOP’s adoption of neofascism, is how far Trump and his Republican enablers have dragged America from the form of government on which America was founded.

On my radio program last Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders said that the older he gets the more he “appreciates the genius of the Founders,” who wrote into the Constitution the separation of powers that have held our country together for almost 250 years and guaranteed that no king has ever emerged in our America.

Until now.

Republicans are going out of their way to overlook Federalist 47, published by James Madison on February 1, 1788. Titled, ”The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts,” Madison wrote about how important it was that the different branches of government serve as checks and balances on each other:

“No political truth is of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty,” wrote Madison of his concern that any one particular group might dominate all three branches of government.

He added, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

A paragraph later, Madison quotes the Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu, inserting his own capital letters for emphasis:

“‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body,’ says he [Montesquieu], ‘there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest THE SAME monarch or senate should ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner.’”

In Federalist 48, Madison quotes from Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia”:

“All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body,” wrote Jefferson in this commentary quoted by his protégé, Madison, in Federalist 48. “The concentrating of these in the same hands, is precisely the definition of despotic government.

“It will be no alleviation, that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.”

Jefferson added in his Notes:

“An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for; but one ... in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

“For this reason, that Convention which passed the ordinance of government [the Constitution], laid its foundation on this basis, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments should be separate and distinct, so that no person should exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time.’’

Which makes perfect sense, unless, of course, you are a Republican sponsored by the richest men in the world whose thirst for wealth and power seems to have no limits.

We’ve danced around the edge of this before, although the last time we actually defeated the American fascists.

In early 1944, the New York Times asked FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “[W]rite a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?”

Vice President Wallace’s answer to those questions — perhaps prescient of a rightwing billionaire buying and twisting fascistic the world’s largest social media site — was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

“The really dangerous American fascists,” Wallace wrote, “are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. …

“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word “fascist” — the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is:

“A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled “The Doctrine of Fascism” he wrote, “If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.” But not the government of, by, and for We The People America’s Founders envisioned: instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the richest and most powerful men in the nation and the corporations they own.

In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the “Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni” — the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like Donald Trump and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government.

Vice President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America:

“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.”

Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who had run for political office, and, in Wallace’s view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate cartels and billionaires.

“American fascism will not be really dangerous,” he added in the next paragraph, “until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information...”

Noting that, “Fascism is a worldwide disease,” Wallace further suggest that fascism’s “greatest threat to the United States will come after the war” and will manifest “within the United States itself.”

In Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talkshow host. The politician — Buzz Windrip — runs his campaign on “family values,” the flag, and “patriotism.” Windrip and the talkshow host portray advocates of traditional American democracy as anti-American.

When Windrip becomes President, he opens a Guantanamo-style detention center, and the viewpoint character of the book, Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, flees to Canada to avoid prosecution under new “patriotic” laws that make it illegal to criticize the President.

As Lewis noted in his novel:

“[T]he President, with something of his former good-humor [said]: ‘There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don’t belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck!’ The idea of the Corporate or Corporative State, Secretary [of State] Sarason had more or less taken from Italy.” And, President “Windrip’s partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or, familiarly, the ‘Corpos,’ which nickname was generally used.”

Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous by 1944, as was his book “It Can’t Happen Here.” And several well-known and powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in the early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing business with Hitler.

These events all, no doubt, colored Vice President Wallace’s thinking when he wrote:

“Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.

“American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after ‘the present unpleasantness’ ceases.”

Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic, but to achieve complete domination of an economy they must first seize complete political control of the nation. Fascism/corporatism is really an attempt to create a modern version of feudalism by merging billionaire and corporate interests with those of the state.

And feudalism, of course, is one of the most stable of the three historic tyrannies (kingdoms, theocracies, feudalism) that ruled nations prior to the rise of American republican democracy; it can be roughly defined as “rule by the rich.”

Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who noted in his book What’s The Matter With Kansas that, “You can see the paradox first-hand on nearly any Main Street in middle America — ‘going out of business’ signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush.”

The businesses “going out of business” are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally-owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business “are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage.” He added:

“Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.”

But American fascists who would want CEOs like Trump and Vance as President and Vice President don’t generally talk to We The People about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses and working people. Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and Jews, they point to a “them” to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.

In a comment prescient of Donald Trump’s recent suggestion that brown-skinned immigrants are “poisoning the blood of America” or Vance’s lie about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, Wallace continued:

“The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power.

“It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination...”

But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation’s largest corporations — who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media — they could promote their lies with ease.

“The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact,” Wallace wrote. “Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy.”

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism the Vice President of the United States saw rising in America, he added:

“They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.

“Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

Finally, Wallace said, speaking as if directly to Musk’s claim that he’s merely increasing the “efficiency” of the federal government by gutting it:

“The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. ... Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit.

“We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.”

This liberal vision of an egalitarian America in which very large businesses and media monopolies are broken up under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which Reagan stopped enforcing, leading to the mergers & acquisitions frenzy that continues to this day) was the driving vision of the New Deal (and of “Trust Buster” Teddy Roosevelt a generation earlier).

As Wallace’s President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party’s renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia:

“[O]ut of this modern civilization, economic royalists carved new dynasties.... It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction.... And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man....”

Speaking indirectly of the fascists that Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt brought the issue to its core:

“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.”

But, he thundered in that speech:

“Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!”

Today, we again stand at the crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II. Fascism is again rising in America, this time calling itself “MAGA.” The Trump administration’s behavior today eerily parallels the warning of 1936 when Roosevelt said:

“In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for.”

President Roosevelt and Vice President Wallace’s warnings have come full circle. Which is why it’s so critical that we all stand up and speak out to stop this most recent incarnation of feudal fascism from seizing complete control of our nation.

NOW READ: Russia could win a war against America without ever firing a shot — here's how

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an 3 15

The alt-right is reintroducing a dehumanizing slur that has its roots in 100-year-old eugenics, Justin Kirkland writes in the Guardian Monday.

“The R-word is in a new era of prominence in rightwing, chronically online circles – especially on 4chan and X,” he writes. “A favorite of those who currently hold power or stand to gain power underDonald Trump’s second administration, the slur is being used with gleeful relish to belittle and mock ideological enemies.”

One adopter of the word is none other than the Trump administration’s Elon Musk, who owns X.

“In the past year,Elon Musk has used the R-word at least 16 times on X,” Kirkland writes. “Hethought Ben Stiller was one for endorsing Kamala Harris; so was the Facebook co-founderDustin Moskovitz for comparing Tesla to Enron.”

There was a 200 percent spike in use of the word on X in January, according to a recentstudy from Montclair State University.

Last year, Trump reportedly used the word to insult Joe Biden and Harris.

“I feel liberated,” an anonymous banker told the Financial Times when Trump was elected. We can say ‘r-----’ and ‘p----’ without the fear of getting cancelled.”

The slur has particular weight coming from Musk. “Musk, a man who launched aNazi salute at Trump’s inauguration festivities,has aligned himself dangerously closely with eugenicist thinking,” Kirkland writes. “Musk, who has said he is on the autism spectrum himself, also wields oligarchic power as he attempts toeliminate “unnecessary spending” in the federal government with Trump’s blessing. Early on, Musk set his sights onMedicaid, which was created in part to ensure people with disabilities had access to affordable healthcare. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are looking toslash Medicaid spending to support Trump’s tax cuts.”

The word has its roots in a “diagnosis” tracing back to 1910 that meant, according to some doctors, a "feeble-minded" person was “incurable.” Leaders at this time also believed that people with disabilities, people of color, and queer people could be eliminated through selective breeding. People with disabilities, proponents of eugenics argued, should be institutionalized.

“[The use of the R-word] is absolutely historically linked to the understanding that ‘r-------’ children are defective children and that we can eliminate defective children for the good of society,” Topher Endress, a reverend in Missouri who holds a doctorate in philosophy, told the Guardian. “I mean, that’s the basis of eugenics. I’m a little fearful of seeing this word pop back up because it does have such a strong eugenic connotation."

“I see the rise of the R-word as a gauge for how far society is willing to let people like Musk and Trump go," Kirkland writes. "And while I believe that in most reasonable environments, it’s still very much taboo to say the word aloud, the fact that it’s being said by some of the most powerful people in the world, with no recourse, says enough."

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an 2 25

What is occurring now in the United States has very little to do with making the government more “efficient,” or rooting out “incompetence," or “depoliticizing” parts of government that should be nonpartisan.

Nor is it motivated chiefly by Trump’s desire get rid of “D.E.I.” and “woke,” or “weaponize” law enforcement, or establish white Christian nationalism, or wreak vengeance on his enemies.

The real story is this.

In every part of the government that involves the use of force — the military, the investigation and prosecution of crimes, the authority to arrest, the capacity to hold individuals in jail — Trump is putting into power people who are more loyal to him than they are to the United States.

He has purged (or is in the process of purging) at the highest levels of the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Inspectors General, and the FBI, anyone who is not personally loyal to him.

Trump is rapidly gaining a personal monopoly on the use of force. This is his most fundamental goal. This is the essence of tyranny.

On Friday, he fired Air Force General CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, as well as the principal military adviser to the president, secretary of defense, and National Security Council.

This was followed by the firings of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Jim Slife.

The media sees the firings as “part of a campaign to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.” This may be part of Trump’s motivation, but it is not the major driver. The firings are part of a campaign to purge the Defense Department of leaders who are not totally loyal to Trump.

For Brown’s replacement, Trump has nominated retired Air Force Lt. General John Dan “Razin” Caine — a career fighter jet pilot.

Caine has not served in any of the positions — Joint Chiefs vice chairman, chief of staff for one of the branches of the armed service, or head of a combatant command — that nominees are legally required to have held in order to be nominated. By law, a president may waive those requirements if he “determines such action is necessary in the national interest.”

Trump isn’t putting Caine in this pivotal position because of the national interest. He’s putting Caine there because of Caine’s unequivocal personal loyalty to Trump. Trump boasted to an audience at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference that Caine had told him, “I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.”

The same is occurring at the Justice Department, where Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal lawyer who’s now the chief enforcer there, is imposing a Trump loyalty test on prosecutors — demanding they comply with Trump’s demands, however unacceptable and incompatible with norms, or leave.

It’s no accident that Bove has targeted the Justice Department’s most powerful officials and divisions — shaking up the national security division, insisting that the FBI’s acting leadership turn over a list of agents who worked on the Capitol riot investigations, and targeting the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (the most prestigious U.S. attorney’s office in the country, known for guarding its independence).

Trump says he’s “depoliticizing” law enforcement in response to Biden’s supposed bow to partisan politics. But Biden’s actions had nothing to do with partisan politics. And, ironically, neither are Trump’s: His are about personal loyalty.

On Sunday night, Trump announced that MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino will be deputy director of the FBI, alongside newly installed chief Kash Patel. Bongino is a former cop, Secret Service agent, conspiracy theorist, and Fox News commentator who joined Trump’s MAGA world in the 2010s and now hosts a popular podcast.

The media sees this as another example of Trump embracing Fox News (Bongino is the 20th ex-Fox News host, journalist, or commentator to bag a senior job in the new Trump administration).

But that’s not it. Bongino’s most important attribute is the same as Patel’s — unswerving personal loyalty to Trump. As elsewhere, Trump is turning the FBI into an extension of his personal will.

Every tyrant throughout history has gained a personal monopoly on the use of force so he can impose his will on anyone, for any purpose. Tyrants achieve this by delegating power only to people personally loyal to them.

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:{:{'Autocratic breakthrough':}: Trump showdown with courts puts U.S. on the brink of abandoning democracy

breaking system so they can never be removed from power

attack media and courts IG’s

299,843 views Feb 10, 2025 #MSNBC #Trump #democracy

As Donald Trump rushes beyond the bounds of his authority to dismantle the U.S. government, courts are quickly catching up and putting his actions on hold. But, Rachel Maddow points out, whether he heeds the authority of the courts or decides to openly defy court orders will show whether or not the U.S. has ceased to be a democracy.

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CRUELTY --> FEAR

an 2 25

'Shatter the consecrated space': Trump administration sued over raids in churches

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AN NO LNX

We've reached the moment of maximum peril for our nation and our freedoms

Donald Trump talks to Shalga Hightower, mother of Iofemi Hightower who was killed in 2007, during a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 2, 2016.

Thom Hartmann February 24, 2025

Get ready.

The resistance to billionaires running our government is growing. Bernie Sanders is touring the Red State Midwest and drawing massive crowds. Federal workers are pissed. Republican politicians are in hiding, refusing to do town halls even when their constituents demand them or try to set them up.

Comrade Krasnov’s…er, Trump’s polling numbers are collapsing as fast as his embrace of Comrade Putin is growing. Fascism expert and On Tyranny author Professor Timothy Snyder notes over at BlueSky:

“Nervous Musk, Trump, Vance have all been outclassed in public arguments these last few days. Government failure, stock market crash, and dictatorial alliances are not popular. People are starting to realize that there is no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power.”

James Carville told Dan Abrams:

“This whole thing is collapsing. … I believe that this administration, in less than 30 days, is in the midst of a massive collapse and particularly a collapse in public opinion.”

At the same time, four Republicans have now thrown Nazi salutes, three over this past weekend at CPAC. They think they can overcome their fear of the people by intimidating us.

This is a moment of maximum peril for our nation and our freedoms because if, as Rachel Bitecofer documents, Trump and his followers really are following Hitler’s script to seize total power and turn America into an authoritarian dictatorship, the next step may well be to exploit an attack on America.

Germans remember well that fateful day ninety-two years ago this week: February 27, 1933. It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack.

A Dutch communist named Marius van der Lubbe had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The German intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians still argue whether rogue elements in Hitler’s intelligence service helped him; the most recent research implies they did not, but simply watched him proceed.)

And then van der Lubbe took down the prize of Germany, the Parliament building (the Reichstagsgebäude), setting it ablaze on that February day.

Hitler knew the strike was coming (although he apparently didn’t know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation’s most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was van der Lubbe who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.

“You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history,” he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. “This fire,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion, “is the beginning.” He used the occasion — “a sign from God,” he called it — to declare an all-out “war on terrorism” and the groups he said were its ideological sponsors, the socialists and Jews.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for “terrorists” was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected “allies” of the infamous terrorist. Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, Hitler had pushed through legislation — in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the “liberal” philosophy he said spawned it — that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus.

His Decree on the Protection of People and State allowed police to intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; and police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

It was the beginning of the end of a democratic Germany.

Similarly, in 2002, the new Russian President Putin was engaged in a war with Chechnya, trying to subdue and subsume a nation that has been both under Russian rule and independent over the past several centuries, very much like Ukraine.

A theater in Moscow was seized that year by “Chechen rebels” who began executing theater-goers: Putin ordered poisonous gas apparently made of something like fentanyl poured into the theater, and it let his police take back the theater (although many of the hostages, along with their tormentors, died from the gas).

Putin used the attack as an excuse to escalate his years-long conflict with the parts of Chechnya that still were fighting for their independence from Russia; he launched a major WWII-style land invasion and bombing campaign. Tens of thousands died, entire cities were destroyed, and Chechnya was largely subdued within the year.

In the aftermath of that 2002 theater attack and subsequent war there was speculation from multiple sources and countries that Putin knew the attack was coming and welcomed it, believing he could use it as an excuse to escalate his low-level conflict with Chechnya to elevate his own profile while finally seizing full control of the region.

It was an echo of the Moscow apartment bombings in 1999 that then-Prime Minister Putin used to leverage himself into the presidency the following year. He’d used those terror attacks to consolidate his power, and repeated the trick in 2003 beginning with the 2003 arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of Yukos Oil. By the following year most serious voices of dissent or opposition in Russia were either dead, in prison, or fleeing for their lives.

There’s a long history of leaders using national emergencies to raise their popularity, expand their own power, overwhelm opposition politicians, scapegoat minorities, suspend constitutions and elections, and provide a legal façade for ending or weakening democracy.

Both George W. Bush and Benjamin Netanyahu — at a time when their popularity was in the toilet and charges of impropriety were swirling (in Netanyahu’s case, actual criminal charges) — ignored multiple warnings of attacks coming.

The 9/11 and October 7 attacks — predicted by agencies and nations warning American and Israeli intelligence services respectively — were then successfully used by both to consolidate their own popularity and power.

Which is why this is such a dangerous moment that requires vigilance and preparation.

Trump’s popularity is now collapsing as his largest campaign donor takes a chainsaw to the American government, threatening virtually every aspect of federal and state functions from Social Security to Medicaid to medical research and foreign aid. An attack on America that would enable him to play the role Bush did after 9/11 would be very politically useful.

In an extreme case, which he has publicly mused about, an attack could justify his declaring a national state of emergency, suspending elections, and putting the Constitution on ice. He could then shut down media he doesn’t like, imprison people who speak out, and suspend the 2026 and 2028 elections.

All legally.

At the same time he’s contemplating this, the FBI — America’s premiere counterterrorism organization — is being scattered with as many as 1500 agents leaving Washington, DC. An open apologist for Putin has been put in charge of our intelligence services. And the senior leadership of our military was just purged, replaced with toadies who’ll praise Trump as if this were North Korea at every opportunity.

And the JAG officers of each branch of the military along with their senior commanders — the people who would determine the legality of presidential orders to, say, shoot at protestors or open detention camps for journalists and dissidents — have been fired and replaced by loyalists who’ll do whatever Trump demands.

Brett Holmgren was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center until a few weeks ago; he recently warned that the threat levels right now are at unprecedented highs.

Muslims around the world are incensed by Israel’s slaughter in Gaza; Ukrainian expats and refugees are furious about Trump’s embrace of Putin; and the Afghanistan-based Islamic State-Khorasan has already carried out attacks killing 13 Americans along with a recent slaughter in Moscow.

And, pointing to the deadly New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans last month, Holmgren added:

“I think it illustrates that while we have been quite effective as a government and across administrations at disrupting plotting overseas and going after terrorist leaders, we have a lot more work to do when it comes to countering violent extremism at home…”

Anybody remember the bombs left at the RNC and DNC on January 6th? The bomber is still at large, not to mention groups across the political spectrum — and recently fired federal workers — who may have grievances against our government. And people from nations around the world where USAID was keeping friends and relatives alive but isn’t any longer.

I sincerely hope I’m wrong in my concern that we’re facing the very real possibility of an imminent attack that will be exploited by Trump to put a final nail in the coffin of American democracy, but we all — and Democrats, in particular — need to be ready. The Reichstag Fire scenario could be closer than any of us expect.

As the saying goes: “Stand back and stand by.”

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AN 2 25

Last month, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who has on rare occasions stood up to Donald Trump, cast the deciding—and, to some, unexpected—vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. Now, a report reveals that Tillis says the FBI had informed him of “credible” death threats before his vote. This revelation has led some to question whether he voted under duress, while others accuse him, and other Republicans, of caving to pressure.

“In private,” Vanity Fair‘s Gabriel Sherman reports, “Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions.”

“They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,” a former Trump official told Sherman.

“Tillis told people that the FBI warned him about ‘credible death threats’ when he was considering voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary,” Sherman reported. “According to the source, Tillis has said that if people want to understand Trump, they should read the 2006 book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. (When asked for comment for this story, a spokesperson for Tillis said it was false that the senator had recommended the book in that capacity. The FBI said it had no comment.)”

In his article at Vanity Fair, Sherman serves up numerous other examples detailing the threats of violence Republican lawmakers have allegedly been facing. On social media, he writes, “GOP Senators and House members are scared of being murdered by Trump supporters if they don’t support Trump. This is fascism in America.”

It’s not the first death threat Tillis received, and some critics say that if Senators can’t do the job they were elected to do, and swore an oath to perform, they should quit.

Some responded to this post from Sherman:

IFrame Content

“I was also scared for my life when I came forward with harassment allegations against Fox News’ Roger Ailes —- but I still did the right thing. Courage isn’t easy. Most Republicans still need to figure that out,” wrote former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, who became one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

John Jackson is a veteran and former Republican who says he fought in Ukraine for nine months, thanks in part from motivation he got from Ronald Reagan.

“There are millions of children in Ukraine who go to school under missile attacks, daily,” Jackson wrote, in response to Sherman’s social media post. “They are far braver than our politicians. If U.S. Senators aren’t willing to risk life and limb to perform their Constitutional duties, they should resign.”

“This is exactly what Trump was counting on when he pardoned everyone for the 6 January insurrection,” noted Jonathan Z. Ludwig, an Associate Professor of Russian at Oklahoma State University.

Others responded to the article in general.

Tim Marksman, an editor for Wired, writes that “there are a lot of legislators, academics, activists, journalists, medical workers etc. who follow their conscience in their work despite death threats and despite not having the protections afforded members of Congress.”

“I have long believed that not enough has been written about how GOP members have felt physically intimidated by Trump supporters,” noted attorney George Conway. “It doesn’t excuse their cowardice, but it still deserves more attention.”

Senator Tillis’s vote to confirm came after an event that had given Hegseth’s critics hope he would not be confirmed.

“Before Senator Thom Tillis voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, he worked with accusers to make the case against him in a bid to get G.O.P. leaders to scrap the vote altogether,” The New York Times reported last week, noting how Hegseth’s nomination had been “teetering on the brink of defeat on the Senate floor.”

“Turning to a group of North Carolina lawmakers who were flying with him to survey storm damage in their state, Mr. Trump noted Mr. Tillis’s impending defection and posed a question: Which of them wanted his endorsement for a primary challenge to the senator next year?” the Times added.

“Tillis personally assured Danielle Hegseth in a call on Jan. 19, witnessed by two other people, that if she signed the statement testifying that she believed her former brother-in-law Pete Hegseth has an alcohol abuse problem and was abusive to his second wife, it would carry weight, and potentially move three votes-his own, along with the votes of Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska),” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Tillis voted to confirm. Two weeks later, in a rare social media post, the Republican Senator from North Carolina proudly posted photos of his impending trip with the President aboard Air Force One:

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AN 2 25

Trump was able to be elected president a second time partly by mobilizing his base of Christian nationalists. This anti-Democratic group has an “us vs. them” mentality, believing that America is on the verge of an apocalypse and that they are being persecuted. In her new book, "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy," journalist Katherine Stewart investigates this voter base. Salon published an interview with her Tuesday.

This subculture, Stewart argues, believes America should move past democracy. “They believe the U.S. is not founded on principles, but on a specific religious and cultural heritage,” she said. “They argue America is on the brink of an apocalypse, owing to the rise of equality and what they call ‘wokeness.’ They argue democracy, as a system, isn't sufficient to meet the ‘challenges’ of feminism and equality. They believe the democratic rules no longer apply, because we're facing this absolute apocalypse of equality. They want an authoritarian leader who puts himself above the law, who's going to seize the reins of power and scrap the rule of law in favor of the iron fist.”

One of the three major tenants of this mindset is the belief that the country is nearing an apocalypse.

“This is what authoritarian leaders do,” she explained. “Christian nationalism is not just an ideology. It's also not just a political movement. It's a mindset… First is ‘us versus them’ or ‘pure versus the impure,’ or those who properly ‘belong’ in the country, and those who do not. Second, there's a sense of persecution. They claim white conservative Christians are being persecuted more than any other group in society. Third is the sense that we're facing an apocalypse. They share this view with the new right. It's always, ‘If we don't win this election, we're gonna go under the control of the Illuminati and the devil's gonna be controlling us for hundreds of years. So it's any means necessary to ‘save’ us from this terrible fate.”

“Those three ideas,” she continued, “clear the way for the acceptance of an authoritarian leader, someone who doesn't respect the rules, who will punish their enemies, and who will suspend the rule of law. If you look at what's happening in our politics today, you can see it playing out before our eyes. In the first weeks of the Trump presidency, we're seeing a version of Project 2025. They've been telling us for a long time they're going to smash the institutions that safeguard our democracy. That's what they're doing.”

But the members of this group have been “colossally misinformed.”

“Many of these supporters don't recognize that American democracy might be destroyed. Some don't care. They think it's more important to put a strong man in power to demolish the supposedly dangerous radical left. But whether they don't care or don't know, it's because they've been colossally misinformed. That's how they rationalize their choices at the ballot box. And I would have to say this is not just about Trump. Authoritarianism loves a misinformed public. The anti-democratic movement has funded this massive propaganda campaign that has led us to where we are today,” she said.

Here is an excerpt from the book, published by Rolling Stone:

“Power has not softened the base of this movement. It’s not just blood that they’re after; they want a show. This is the thing that Trump surely understands best. Policy simply doesn’t matter. You can kill off grandma through vaccine denial, take away health insurance, bust unions, drive up inflation, and reward your billionaire friends with policies that benefit their bloated bottom lines. None of that matters as long as you give the people the pleasure of a good performance, where they can project their frustrations and resentments on the targets they have been trained to hate.”

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an 2 25

Steve Bannon, "War Room" host and former White House chief strategist in the first Trump Administration, famously said that the MAGA movement's strategy is to "flood the zone with s---." The idea is to overwhelm and wear down opponents by creating chaos as often as possible.

In an article published on February 10, Salon's Chauncey DeVega argues that President Donald Trump is implementing a "strategy" of "chaos" — and it's working.

"President Trump and his MAGA Republicans and their forces are smashing American democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law, the institutions and norms," DeVega warns. "Trump has enacted over 50 executive orders since January 20, the most in a president's first 100 days in more than 40 years. Some of the most egregious ones are blatantly unconstitutional and violate current law."

DeVega continues, "It has only been three weeks since Trump returned to power; these are the good times compared to what will come next…. Donald Trump and his MAGA movement's strategy is chaos. Moreover, that chaos is in service to their shock and awe strategy to end America's pluralistic democracy and to replace it with a form of autocracy if not outright fascism modeled on Viktor Orbán's Hungary or Vladimir Putin's Russia with Trump as de facto leader for life."

The Salon journalist argues that the "resistance" to "American fascism's quick ascendance" is "pitiful" and shows a "profound failure of imagination." During the 2024 election, DeVega notes, Trump and his allies, "were direct, vocal, and public" in expressing their desire to create a country in which "plutocrats and kleptocrats and [w]hite Christian [n]ationalists and other [w]hite racial authoritarians are given free rein over American life."

"In many ways," DeVega laments, "the failure of imagination by the country's 'responsible' political leaders, the mainstream news media and the American public that empowered Trump and MAGA's ascendance is willful and negligent. For years, these so-called responsible voices repeatedly proclaimed that Donald Trump was done for after his first term in office after a coup attempt on January 6, twice impeached, multiple criminal and civil trials, a botched COVID response and an economy left in tatters. That did not happen."

DeVega adds, "These same 'responsible' and 'mainstream' voices also declared that there was no way that the Republican Party would nominate Trump to be its candidate in 2024, he is damaged goods with too much baggage — and the 'adults in the room' would step in and rise to the occasion. Again, this did not happen…. Donald Trump's autocracy is not a hypothetical or possibility far off in the future. It is here and now and very real. America's crisis and failure of imagination has been subsumed by a horrible reality — one that is not going away anytime soon."

*Chauncy DeVega's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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an 2 25

Trump's election to a second term and his wave of executive actions in the early weeks of his return to power have a lot in common with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's consolidation of power. Now, Hungarians are urging Americans to act quickly before Trump carries out a similar power grab.

On Wednesday, Vox's Zack Beauchamp compared Hungary under Orbán to the United States under Trump, and documented the numerous similarities that Trump's second term has with the Hungarian leader's tenure. Several Hungarians who live under the Orbán regime said that while the United States has more tools at its disposal to stop authoritarian tactics, it's important for civil society and the media to take action.

“There’s no time for waiting and watching,” one Hungarian said anonymously out of fear of retribution. “They can do so much — so much — counting on the fact that everyone is paralyzed.”

Like Trump, Orbán's power grab didn't begin until after he took office for a second time in 2010. And like Trump's relationship with billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Orbán also got help early on from a wealthy businessman named Lajos Simicska. Just as Musk spent weeks at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in the aftermath of the 2024 election, Simicska "many weeks at Viktor Orbán’s country house" following the Hungarian leader's 2010 victory.

While Musk's allies have since taken operational control of the Office of Personnel Management and the U.S. Treasury Department's internal systems that handle trillions of dollars of payments each year, Simicska likewise took over Hungary's National Development Agency, which oversees the distribution of funds from the European Union. And just like Musk, Simicska managed to do this without having to undergo any public vetting process.

There are, however, several structural advantages Americans in 2025 have that Hungarians didn't have in 2010. The U.S. is a much larger country and has been a democracy for longer than Hungary, and there are numerous powers the U.S. Constitution delegates to states, whereas Hungary's system is more centralized. And while Orbán passed several constitutional amendments through a compliant legislature, the U.S. Constitution is much harder to amend, and Trump does not yet have the Congressional majorities needed to ram through policies via statute. Hungarian scholar Zsuzsanna Végh expressed hope that the federal judiciary could rein in the Trump administration's worst abuses of power, while Americans at large can maintain visible opposition in the streets and the media.

“Whenever there is a power to constitutional practices, the judiciary needs to step in,” Végh told Vox. “Civil society and the general public [need] to call out unconstitutional and undemocratic practices … to not shy away from speaking truth to power and drawing attention to what’s going on.”

Click here to read Beauchamp's article in Vox (subscription required).

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MMA

Trump is trying to throttle the free press — and U.S. moguls are going along with it

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 02/04/25

President Donald Trump is wasting no time in carrying out his goal of throttling the free press. Over the first two weeks of Trump’s presidency, his appointees have wielded federal regulatory authority to punish outlets the president dislikes — and American media moguls are responding with submission.

Trump has turned standard conservative attacks on journalists into one of the hallmarks of his political agenda.

He takes as his model Hungary’s autocrat Viktor Orban, who has “effectively dismantled the news media in his country” as “a central pillar of Orban’s broader project to remake his country as an ‘illiberal democracy,’” as New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger noted in an extraordinary warning last year.

During his first term in office, Trump repeatedly tried to leverage state power against his despised “fake news,” and together with his Project 2025 allies has developed a playbook to attack, defund, and delegitimize news outlets in his second.

Major media companies began signaling before Trump took office that they were willing to play ball with his administration in order to preserve their business interests. But since Inauguration Day, as Trump’s appointees have begun showing their intentions, executives at several news outlets have gone into full retreat.

CBS News preps for a Trump settlement

In the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump denounced CBS News’ editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris as “the biggest scandal in broadcast history” and declared that CBS should be stripped of its broadcast license. But in addition to invective and threats, Trump also filed a lawsuit against the outlet for producing journalism which displeased him.

The suit, which alleged that CBS airing different portions of Harris’ answer to a question in different venues constituted “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference,” drew derision from First Amendment attorneys, who described its legal theory to CNN as “ridiculous junk” and “a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.”

But over the past few weeks, reports have indicated that CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, may be preparing to settle the suit with Trump. Such a settlement would be “an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation,” as The New York Times put it.

But Paramount needs federal approval for its proposed merger with Skydance Media, the production company founded by filmmaker David Ellison, and apparently sees giving the president a payoff as a valid way to smooth the path. Pressure for the settlement is coming from top Paramount shareholder Shari Redstone, the Times reported, who “stands to clear billions of dollars on the sale of Paramount.”

LA Times’ biotech industry owner goes all-in for RFK Jr.}:

Billionaire doctor Patrick Soon-Shiong once drew plaudits for using a small fraction of the vast fortune he made in the biotech industry to purchase and sustain his hometown newspaper, the Los Angeles Times.

But Soon-Shiong’s involvement in the paper’s operations has become more heavy-handed since the final months of the presidential campaign, with the owner repeatedly weighing in on Trump’s behalf. Over the past few weeks, Soon-Shiong, whose medical patents are subject to federal oversight, has begun cheerleading for the confirmation of the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services.

“‘I truly believe [Kennedy] has the American public's best interests at heart,’ Soon-Shiong tweeted Tuesday in a post he pinned to the top of his account on X, formerly Twitter, for much of last week,” NPR reported. “It was one of 18 messages promoting Kennedy that Soon-Shiong — a billionaire surgeon and medical inventor — posted over the course of four days, which included Kennedy's confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.”

Soon-Shiong’s support for Kennedy appears to have bled into his paper’s operations as well. On Friday, an op-ed contributor accused the paper of deceptively editing the piece he submitted in order to remove his criticisms of Kennedy’s nomination.

### CNN tries to move on

Journalists at CNN regularly drew vicious attacks from Trump and his supporters during the president’s first term. During a tone-setting press conference shortly before he took office, Trump lashed out at then-White House correspondent Jim Acosta as “fake news” and “terrible.” And Trump’s salvos at the network went beyond just words — his Justice Department tried to block a merger involving CNN’s then-parent company..

This time, CNN’s corporate leadership appears less willing to leave the network vulnerable to Trumpian retribution. Network chief Mark Thompson led an editorial meeting the day before Inauguration Day in which he instructed CNN talent “to be forward-thinking and to avoid pre-judging Trump” and to avoid “expressing any outrage of their own” or “relitigat[ing] the past,” former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy reported in his Status newsletter.

As for Acosta, he left CNN last week rather than accept Thompson’s offer to anchor the network’s coverage from midnight to 2 a.m. ET.

### Trump’s FCC targets ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, and PBS

The tip of the president’s anti-press spear is Brendan Carr, a Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission whom Trump elevated to chair. Carr authored Project 2025’s chapter on the FCC and has notably refused to reject Trump’s repeated calls for the commission to yank the licenses of broadcast networks whose reporting he dislikes.

Following his promotion, Carr sent a letter to Bob Iger, the CEO of ABC parent company Disney, in which he denounced the network for having “contributed” to the “erosion in public trust” and pointedly referenced the FCC’s regulatory power.

Carr also restored a right-wing group’s bias complaints targeting NBC, CBS, and ABC for purportedly biased coverage of the presidential campaign, which his predecessor had dismissed. In response to the CBS complaint, the FCC demanded that CBS News provide the unedited transcript and tapes of Harris’ 60 Minutes interview, adding government pressure to the benefit of Trump’s private lawsuit. The network ultimately submitted to what one legal expert described as a “highly partisan intervention” with “no historical antecedent.”

And on Wednesday, Carr announced a new FCC probe of underwriting announcements produced by NPR and PBS, “with an eye toward unraveling federal funding for all public broadcasting.”

### Defense Department retaliates against news outlets

The Pentagon announced Friday night that the defense correspondents at NBC News, The New York Times, Politico, and National Public Radio are all required to vacate their dedicated workspaces. Their spots will instead go to the right-wing One America News Network, New York Post, and Breitbart — and theoretically to the progressive HuffPost, which does not have a Pentagon reporter and did not request space.

The move came a week after the Senate confirmed former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defense secretary.

Take Trumpist threats to jail journalists seriously

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Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook to crush the free press in a second term}:

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“Fake News Networks”: Trump and Project 2025’s goal to attack, defund, and delegitimize the press}:

10/16/24

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an 2 25 the conv

no lnx vid

Not just Musk: Inside Trumpworld's coded messages to extremists

Donald Trump salutes the crowd after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States takes place inside the Capitol Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., Monday, January 20, 2025.

The ConversationFebruary 04, 2025

Once again, a presidential administration headed by Donald Trump is in the spotlight over allegations of hidden fascist sympathies. This time, it’s precipitated by what one observer called a “stiff-armed salute” that presidential supporter and adviser Elon Musk did twice during inauguration festivities.

Critics have said it is a clear Nazi salute, while others have claimed it was just an awkward motion. Perhaps it was just the world’s worst dab.

Musk turned the controversy over his gesture into something like a joke about Nazis. On X, he posted, “Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations!” and “Bet you did nazi that coming.”

This is not the first time that Trump or someone close to him has been accused of sending fascist messages, even if they denied doing so. Nor even is it the first time a well-known figure endorsing Donald Trump has been accused of giving a Nazi salute.

As a scholar of far-right extremism, I regularly review instances of coded fascist symbols and other right-wing messages being sent by public figures and their supporters, some more obvious than others.

In plain sight

Like Musk, TV commentator Laura Ingraham ended a fiery speech endorsing then-candidate Trump in 2016 with a rigidly outstretched arm with her palm down – in the exact manner German Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s and rank-and-file modern neo-Nazis perform the “Sieg Heil,” or Nazi salute. Ingraham dismissed the criticism and in 2025 defended Musk’s action.

Laura Ingraham speaks and gestures at a Trump rally in 2016.

[vid]

In 2021, the Conservative Political Action Conference set up its center stage in the shape of an odal rune. That is an ancient pagan symbol coopted by Germany’s Nazi regime and worn prominently during World War II on the uniforms of the brutal Waffen SS units. Social media erupted in outrage over the likeness, and columnists spilled much ink. Event organizers rejected the criticism, calling it “outrageous and slanderous.”

Trump himself has been reluctant to criticize white supremacists. In August 2017, he responded to a reporter’s statement that neo-Nazis had “started” the violence during and after a rally they held in Charlottesville, Virginia, by saying “(t)hey didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis. And you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.”

During the September 2020 presidential debate, Trump responded to a request from moderator Chris Wallace to condemn right-wing paramilitary groups by instead referencing one of them, saying, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”

Just a few months later, several Proud Boys members would help spearhead the violent insurrection against the peaceful transfer of power at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Some of them were convicted of federal crimes for their efforts, though upon retaking office in 2025, Trump pardoned them or commuted their sentences.

More overtly, in November 2022 Trump invited Kanye West to dinner at Mar-a-Lago, despite West’s having posted antisemitic remarks recently on social media. Also at the dinner was well-known antisemite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, whom Trump denied knowing anything about ahead of time, saying he arrived “unexpectedly” with West.

The night before the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017, people carrying torches and chanting fascist slogans marched through the University of Virginia campus.

Coded messages

In other more abstract and lesser-known incidents, Trump may make his sympathies known without making direct statements himself. And I have personally observed white supremacists remark upon – and take encouragement from – these implied messages on Telegram channels dedicated to antisemitism and hate.

In February 2018, during Trump’s first term as president, the Department of Homeland Security issued a 14-word press release titled “We Must Secure The Border And Build The Wall To Make America Safe Again.” I and other investigators of far-right extremism attributed this phrase’s use to a clear dog whistle of the common white supremacist saying known as “the 14 words” – “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

In June 2020, Facebook removed Trump campaign ads for iconography invoking Nazi concentration camp symbols that “violat(ed) our policy against organized hate.” A campaign official disputed the association, saying other groups, including Facebook and anti-fascist groups, used the same symbol.

In September 2024, pro-Trump CEO Mike Lindell’s company MyPillow ran a sale discounting a pillow from $49.98 to $14.88. Critics quickly pointed out that this aligned with the 14-word white supremacist slogan and the numerical reference “88” that white supremacists use to mean “Heil Hitler,” because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Lindell denied any connection between the price and right-wing messaging.

A list of 14 names.

A list of the 14 people whose Jan. 6-related sentences President Donald Trump commuted. Screenshot of WhiteHouse.gov

And on the very day he was inaugurated for his second term, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people, including at least two alleged members of the Proud Boys, for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021. And he commuted the sentences of 14 people, including four members of the Proud Boys.

This extraordinary move was applauded by Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was among those pardoned. Others who received presidential clemency said they were grateful to Trump and encouraged by his action.

Signaling fascism

Sending these sorts of fascist and white supremacist messages allow Trump and his supporters to court right-wing extremist supporters while claiming innocence in the face of public outrage.

If they deny the allegations of veiled fascism or white supremacy, Trump and his backers can claim their opponents are inflamed against them and conducting ideological witch hunts.

People wearing 'Make America Great Again' hats stand smiling together underneath a U.S. flag.

Family members and friends of people imprisoned for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021, wait outside the Washington, D.C., jail for their release on Jan. 22, 2025. Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

But failure to directly deny allegations of fascism is a common strategy used by far-right and radical conservative movements seeking to obscure deeper links to extremist groups to avoid public backlash.

The lack of explicit admission can end up leaving these actions and symbols open to interpretation. Trump’s MAGA movement members, led by his inner circle of advisers and lieutenants, have consistently sought to use outrage and anger to generate additional momentum and attention for their agenda.

But as the old saying goes, “where there’s smoke there’s fire” – and in this case the smoke is probably closer to a book-burning bonfire in Berlin than a tiki torch carried in Charlottesville.The Conversation

Matthew Kriner, Director of Strategy, Partnerships and Intelligence at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, Middlebury Institute of International Studies

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TRUMP MUSK DOGE VOUGHT FUCKERY

mojo

Late Friday, newly sworn-in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave access to the agency’s payments system to representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump and headed by Elon Musk. A strike force of Musk lackeys appears to be pursuing a takeover of key background systems of the US government—from human resources to physical buildings to software systems to, now, what is essentially the country’s central bank account. At this point, Musk’s people reportedly cannot control payments, only view them, but how long that arrangement will last is unclear.

Treasury’s payment system processes more than $5 trillion annually, paying the country’s bills. This includes Social Security checks and tax refunds, which means the system includes sensitive personal information on tens of millions of Americans. A Sunday headline from New York Magazine, “Elon Musk May Have Your Social Security Number,” is not an exaggeration.

When Musk, the world’s richest man, took over Twitter, he cut costs by simply refusing to make payments. From rent for the company’s headquarter offices in San Francisco to janitorial services, Musk’s approach was to simply stop paying the bills and see what happens. (Employees were forced to use bathrooms in other buildings.)

A similar approach to the United States government, however, promises to be catastrophic. One scenario is that shutting off payments to federal grantees and nonprofits could cause rapid harm. And this could come at the whims of extremist ideological allies of Trump. For example, his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a Christian nationalist and purveyor of misinformation (who lied to the FBI and was later pardoned by Trump), posted on X information about federal payments to Lutheran Family Services, which along with its affiliates provides a wide range of services, including counseling. Musk retweeted Flynn’s post promising “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.” The illegal actions would in fact appear to be Musk’s own—Congress appropriates federal funds, but Musk is acting as if the law will never catch up to him.

Disgraced General Michael Flynn Has Made a New Movie—About Himself – Mother Jones

Musk’s tweet may be getting ahead of the reality of what he and his team are doing at the moment. But imagine if the US government were to stop paying bills because a billionaire saw a social media post from a conspiracy theorist urging him to do so.

“Fitch and everyone else should downgrade US credit,” Dean Baker, and economist at the progressive Center for Economy and Policy Research, posted on Bluesky. “If a bill gets paid only if Elon Musk or Donald Trump feels like it, then the US is not very creditworthy.”

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, issued a similar warning. “To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” he said in a statement late Friday. “The federal government is in a financially precarious position, currently utilizing accounting maneuvers to continue paying its bills since it reached the debt limit at the beginning of the year. I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Economists have long warned that should the United States miss a debt payment, it would send shockwaves through the world economy. On the domestic front, the Trump administration this past week attempted to withhold billions in federal aid through an Office of Management and Budget memo instructing agencies to temporarily halt payments. The attempt was “wildly illegal,” according to experts, and two federal judges have halted much of that effort. Now, it may be possible for Musk and his underlings themselves to simply withhold payments they disagree with. Theoretically, rather than asking agencies to cut spending, Musk could move to cut off the funds from Treasury.

“I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs,” Wyden said in statement.

According to reporting in Politico, the Doge team doesn’t have the capability to withhold or change payments—at least not yet. Instead, access by Doge’s Treasury representative, software executive Tom Krause, is “read-only.” But warning signs of a hostile takeover have been flashing. For example, Musk’s team literally took over Office of Personnel Management computer systems this past week, locking OPM officials out of them. They have been taking down entire government websites and datasets, causing public-facing information and research to disappear before Americans’ eyes in Orwellian fashion. And over the weekend, Doge representatives demanded classified information from USAID that they lacked clearances for, according to CNN, despite that the executive order creating Doge explicitly exempts classified information from its efforts. When USAID security officials refused to comply, they were put on leave.

US Government Websites Are Disappearing in Real Time | WIRED

The power that comes with controlling US government payments is vast. How Musk and Trump might try to leverage that against political or legal opponents—say, against states that file lawsuits they don’t like—is sobering to consider. So far, the GOP-controlled Congress seems willing to let them do whatever they want.

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US Government Websites Are Disappearing in Real Time | WIRED

Several government websites have been taken down, including the USAID.gov, ForeignAssistance.gov, NeglectedDiseases.gov, and ChildrenInAdversity.gov. A WIRED analysis of more than 1,000 federal .gov websites found that at least seven sites linked to a USAID server went offline in a two-hour span on Saturday afternoon.

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RWW 01/29/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Rep. Eric Burlison announced the introduction of the Life at Conception Act that will declare "that unborn children are 'persons' under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing their right to life to be legally recognized and protected."
Wanda Alger seeks to quell concerns about President Donald Trump: "I do not believe that President Trump has deceived us all and is the long-awaited Antichrist, nor do I believe that he is setting the stage for The Beast to take over the world."
Stew Peters declares that the Holocaust is "a fairy tale" and that "Auschwitz is an emotional amusement park for gullible retards."
Ali Alexander says that Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute: "You can say it’s not a Nazi salute but you’ll never be able to say what it was which means… it was a Nazi salute."
Finally, far-right priest Calvin Robinson delivered the same salute at the National Pro-Life Summit, which was also attended by Rep. Robert Aderholt, Charlie Kirk, Kevin Roberts, Ben Carson, Seth Gruber, Kristen Hawkins, Abby Johnson, Kayleigh McEnany, and Matt Walsh.

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AN 125

In late 2022, Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board, which, he claimed, defamed him by refusing to retract prizes it gave the New York Times and the Washington Post for their Russiagate reporting.

Trump, in the lawsuit, alleged that the Times and the Post defamed him in their articles and that the Pulitzer Prize Board, by awarding them, defamed him as well. Many Trump critics attacked the lawsuit as frivolous, pointing out that the Pulitzer Prize Board itself didn't write the articles he claimed were defamatory.

Now, according to CNN and Mediaite, the Pulitzer Prize Board is fighting the lawsuit by "using Trump's own legal arguments against him."

CNN's Hadas Gold reports, "In their motion filed on Monday, (January 27), the Pulitzer Board pointed out that Trump previously sought stays in other civil lawsuits where he was the defendant, saying the suits should be halted while he is in office because of questions of whether the U.S. Constitution bars state courts from exercising jurisdiction over…. a sitting president."

Gold notes that "for years," Trump "demanded the Pulitzer Board rescind the 2018 prize, arguing that he had been exonerated by special counsel Robert Mueller's 2019 report."

"Following Trump’s demands," Gold explains, "the Pulitzer Board commissioned two independent reviews of the awards, issuing a statement in 2022 that read in part: 'No passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.' It was that statement that prompted Trump to file his defamation suit against the (Pulitzer Prize) Board, choosing to file it in Florida because one member of the Board is a Florida resident."

Mediaite's David Gilmour points out that the Pulitzer Prize Board is "flipping President Donald Trump's own legal arguments on their head in an attempt to pause his defamation lawsuit against them."

READ MORE:[Apocalypse Now: Extreme interpretation of Christian nationalism now guides Pentagon policy

"The Pulitzer Board's argument essentially repurposes Trump's own defense tactics to shield themselves from litigation while his case is active," Gilmour observes. "While federal criminal charges against Trump are on hold due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents, several civil suits are moving forward. These include the $500 million fraud judgment secured by New York Attorney General Letitia James and judgments won by E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation."

Gilmour adds, "Whether the legal move will halt Trump’s Pulitzer lawsuit remains to be seen."

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an 1 25

After the world's richest man made what fascism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat called a "Nazi salute," one leading authority on anti-Semitism gave him the "benefit of the doubt." But any goodwill between the two seems to be gone after Musk made several references to Nazi Germany on his X account.

Rolling Stone reported Thursday that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appears to have fallen out of the good graces of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) following a Thursday post on X in which Musk made several puns invoking the names of notorious Nazi leaders like Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, Reichstag President Hermann Göring and SS Commander Heinrich Himmler.

"Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming," Musk tweeted Thursday with a crying-laughing emoji.

"We've said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote, quote-tweeting Musk and mentioning his handle. "[T]he Holocaust is not a joke."

The response from Greenblatt was particularly noteworthy that the ADL stood up for Musk after he made headlines for making what the Guardian called "back-to-back fascist salutes" during an Inauguration Day speech. The ADL's verified account tweeted that Musk "made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute" but added that the organization understands "people are on edge."

"In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath," the ADL tweeted. "This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead."

Berlin, Germany-based newspaper Die Zeitdid not hesitate to condemn Musk's gesture. In an op-ed earlier this week, journalist Lenz Jacobsen wrote that "the gesture speaks for itself" and that there was "no need to make this unnecessarily complicated."

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AN 1 25

NO LNX

If Democrats want to win, they need to fight like AOC

John Stoehr January 24, 2025

The thing that keeps me up at night is not totalitarian drift. It’s the lack of fighting spirit among people who say they love this country.

I mean, I get that right now the congressional Democrats don’t have any power. I get that there’s nothing they can do in the face of Donald Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional executive orders. Ditto for his disgusting pardon of traitors, liars, thieves and murderers. And I get that the Democrats are outnumbered by Senate Republicans who are bent on confirming the unworthiest administration of our lifetimes.

Powerlessness, however, isn’t the same thing as impotence. There’s a lot the Democrats can do, the most important of which is saying no to Donald Trump and telling the truth about America’s totalitarian drift.

Bill Kristol put it well when he asked: “What can [the Democrats] do now? Tell the truth — and do it clearly, and do it loudly. Tell the truth about Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel. Tell the truth about Trump’s cruel and damaging immigration policies. Tell the truth about Trump’s plutocrats and corruption and grift. Tell the truth about Trump’s assault on the rule of law. For now, the public’s wondering what to think about Trump. Explaining how damaging and dangerous Trump’s policies will be would be important. Do it forcefully. Do it often.”

Here, though, is another problem – the part about “the truth.”

That’s a complicated subject for liberal types, because we don’t agree on what it is. We don’t agree because the truth about the truth is usually tied up in who we think we are as individuals. It can get so complicated that liberals talk themselves out of a united front. That’s a problem these days – when one side seeks common ground in spite of differences while the other side seeks the other side’s annihilation.

I was thinking of this yesterday while watching a video posted by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’m guessing you recognize AOC as one of the most outspoken liberals and one of the best communicators in today’s Democratic Party. In the video, she responded to Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute on Inauguration Day. She responded by flipping populism around so the “us” in “us versus them” is patriotic Americans and the “them” is fascists like Musk.

“This is the United States of America,” Representative Ocasio-Cortez said. “I don’t care what Elon Musk is doing behind the presidential seal, [but] in this country, we hate Nazis. Kind of like a foundational, defining thing. Two of the foundational things about American history is that we beat the Confederates and we beat the Nazis” (my bold).

She went on:

“I don’t know what side people may be on today, but I still am not rocking with anyone sympathetic to Nazis. And I will do that until I am six feet in the ground. Kind of foundational to me as a human being.

https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.social/post/3lgcfqzjipl2a

This is the fighting spirit that we need. Tolerating the intolerant is what got us here. We now have a demented criminal president who is:

threatening to withhold federal funding from blues states;

suppressing federal research on viruses, including the covid;

using pardons to encourage murders and other criminals;

purging the government of “DEI hires,” aka non-white people;

demanding interest rates bend to his moods and whims;

redefining the meaning of citizenship in terms of whiteness;

and in general restoring the original white-power order.

It’s time to stop asking the haters to stop hating.

It’s time to hate them.

Unfortunately, some of the reaction to AOC’s commentary suggests that too many people still don’t get it. They’d rather argue about “the truth” instead of telling it. They would rather be right than fight. It seems the most important thing is not stopping evil and all those who will serve evil, but appearing virtuous in the eyes of their peers. The consequence of this is the impossibility of speaking with one voice.

I mean, with friends like these, who needs enemies?

If you are telling me that, ackshully, America has always been friendly to Nazis and to rightwing authoritarianism in general, you are not telling me anything I don’t already know. The genocide of indigenous Americans inspired Adolf Hitler – yes. The Jim Crow sadism of the former slaver states inspired Adolf Hitler – yes. Henry Ford’s antisemitism inspired Adolf Hitler – yes. All true. There is no debate. But I guess some people can’t help themselves. They gotta debate even though debating is beside the point of fighting totalitarian drift.

What I like most about AOC’s commentary is that it puts evil at the center of our attention. She doesn’t say evil is a distraction from the real issues. She doesn’t say evil prevents us from finding compromise on things that matter to all of us. She doesn’t say evil is “playing politics” while she and the Democrats are trying to get things done.

No, she’s saying evil is evil, and we should hate evil.

That’s the fighting spirit we need right now.

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brnshirt stormtroopers

proud boys parade at inaug

List of people pardoned or granted clemency by the president of the United States - Wikipedia

on January 20, 2025, Trump issued roughly 1,500 pardons and 14 commutations to people charged in connection to the January 6 United States Capitol attack.^[109] This included former leader of the Proud BoysEnrique Tarrio and founder of the Oath Keepers Stewart Rhodes.^[110]

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1 25 no vids

wASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday issued roughly 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 of his supporters in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of them stormed the building amid his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him.

Trump commuted the sentences of individuals associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. He then issued "a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021," a category that included people who assaulted law enforcement officers.

Capitol riot Trump's Jan. 6 pardons face pushback from Republican senators

"This is a big one," Trump said in the Oval Office while signing the document, adding, "We hope they come out tonight, frankly."

The family of Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy, said in a media statement Tuesday that he was released late Monday from FCI Pollock, a medium-security federal prison in Louisiana, and expected to arrive in Miami on Tuesday.

Tarrio was serving 22 years in federal prison after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was speaker of the House during the attack, called Trump's actions "an outrageous insult to our justice system" and the law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol that day.

"It is shameful that the President has decided to make one of his top priorities the abandonment and betrayal of police officers who put their lives on the line to stop an attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power," she said in a statement. "Despite the President’s decision, we must always remember the extraordinary courage and valor of the law enforcement heroes who stood in the breach and ensured that democracy survived on that dark day.”

The pardons fulfill one of Trump's central campaign promises.

Immediately after the Jan. 6 attack, Trump sought to distance himself from the attack, saying those who broke the law should be held accountable. But over the next few years, a new narrative emerged, and Trump soon began openly signaling his support for Jan. 6 rioters, calling them "hostages."

The unprecedented attack on the Capitol, when the peaceful transfer of power was interrupted, was one of the most significant moments in American history.

It resulted in the largest FBI investigation ever, with criminal charges against more than 1,500 people and criminal convictions against more than 1,100 defendants. Many low-level riot defendants were sentenced to probationary periods after having been convicted of misdemeanor offenses, like unlawful parading inside the Capitol.

But hundreds of others who committed serious felonies, such as assaulting police with deadly or dangerous weapons, got significant prison sentences.

At the time Trump issued the pardons, there were about 700 defendants who either never received prison sentences or had already completed their sentences, meaning pardons or commutations would have little practical impact on them, beyond restoring voting rights and gun rights for those who were convicted of felonies.

More than 600 people were sentenced to incarceration, but only a small fraction of them are still behind bars. Many of those who are in the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons were convicted of violent attacks on police officers protecting the Capitol during an assault in which Jan. 6 defendants were armed with firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive “Trump” billboard, “Trump” flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device.

More than 140 police officers were injured and several Trump supporters died during the attack, including one who was shot trying to breach the House Speaker's Lobby and another who died in the middle of a brutal battle at the lower west tunnel, where some of the worst violence of the day took place.

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Trump did not speak about Jan. 6 in his inauguration address, in which he said he hoped he would someday be remembered as a "peacemaker and unifier."

But shortly thereafter, he spoke to an overflow crowd of supporters in the Capitol and addressed the Jan. 6 defendants, once again airing his baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was "rigged."

"I was going to talk about the J6 hostages," Trump said in that speech, using the term "hostages" to refer to criminal defendants, including hundreds who admitted to their criminal offenses under oath and others who were convicted by either judges or juries of their peers. "But you’ll be happy because, you know, it’s action, not words, that count. And you’re going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages."

An attorney who worked on Jan. 6 cases as a federal prosecutor told NBC News that it was always possible that Trump would return to power and pardon Capitol riot defendants but that the Justice Department "pressed ahead anyway" because "political considerations should not play any part in the Justice Department’s evaluation of facts and law, which showed that these were crimes — some of them terribly serious crimes — that warranted prosecution.”

The source said that they and, they suspected, many of their colleagues "have no regrets about having pursued these cases" and that the effort remains highly consequential because it created "a definitive, public factual record of what actually transpired" on Jan. 6.

"These cases assured police officers and civilians who were assaulted at the Capitol that there were people, and there was a Department of Justice, who recognized what they endured and sacrificed. These cases led to hundreds of defendants' acknowledging their crimes by pleading guilty in open court and hundreds of others' being found guilty at trial," the source said. "The work is likely be terminated before it can be fully completed, most significantly by the abrupt termination of the special counsel’s work. But the record stands

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In Los Angeles County, at least 10 people have died as the result of wildfires that have been inflicting destruction everywhere from Pacific Palisades to the San Gabriel Valley to the Hollywood Hills. Countless homes and businesses have been destroyed, including the home of veteran actor Eric Braeden.

Now 83, Braeden has been on CBS' long-running daytime soap opera "The Young and the Restless" since 1980.

During a January 9 appearance on CNN, Braeden lambasted President-elect Donald Trump for his comments about the wildfires. Trump has been blaming California Gov. Gavin Newsom for the disaster, but Braeden vehemently disagrees.

The veteran soap star told CNN's Laura Coates, "Everyone is really trying to do their damn best, OK? And some idiot — the orange idiot— went on television…. And claimed all kind of things about Newsom and California and the water distribution. All nonsense. Disinformation, period. "

Braeden continued, "There's a guy on your show who does fact-checking. I like him a lot…. What some of these characters are now disseminating on one particular network and some podcast is outrageous and very damaging to our nation."

Braeden was born in 1941 in the former Prussia in what is now part of Germany. And he referenced Europe's history with fascism.

"This is a great nation, trust me," Braeden said of the United States. "I know of what I speak. I come from a nation that believed in fascist ideology for a while, OK? And we certainly would not want to go into that again, but we're close to it. Because people want to simplify complex problems. The essence of fascism is to simplify complex problems and feed people who don't have time to read some bu-----t."

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Days before he becomes president of the USA — and minutes after the release of a prosecutor’s bombshell report into the Jan. 6 election interference case — Donald Trump took to Truth Socialearly Tuesday to attack a comedian.

“How bad is Seth Meyers on NBC?" the president-elect asked at 1:24 a.m.

It came just minutes after special counsel Jack Smith’s report revealed that he believed he had the evidence to convict Trump.

Trump was reacting to a 10-minute segment on Meyers show Monday in which he mocked infighting in the MAGA movement which has seen allies like Steve Bannon and Elon Musk go head to head.

“Trump is caught in the middle between the MAGA diehards and the rich oligarchs who helped him get elected,” Meyers said. “And he doesn’t even really know what the hell they’re talking about.”

Trump hit back that the comedian was a “moron” and that his network, NBC, was “run by a truly bad group of people.”

ALSO READ:Fox News has blood on its hands as Trump twists the knife

“Remember, they also run MSDNC,” he added.

“I got stuck watching Marble Mouth Meyers the other night, the first time in months, and every time I watch this moron I feel an obligation to say how dumb and untalented he is, merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast.

“These guys should be paying a lot of money for the right to give these “in kind” contributions to the Radical Left Democrat Party. These are not shows or entertainment, they are simply political hits, 100% of the time, to me and the Republican Party. Comcast should pay a BIG price for this!”

Watch the Seth Meyers video below or at this link.

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If only more Democrats had the guts of Michelle Obama

The Associated Press reported Monday that the former first lady will not attend Donald Trump’s inauguration next week. Her husband will be there, however. So will the other former presidents and their spouses. So will the current president and the current first lady.

Michelle Obama didn’t attend Jimmy Carter’s funeral, so her decision to skip Trump’s swearing-in can be interpreted as less pointed than it seems. However, I’m not buying speculation about her health. She has said on more than one occasion that Trump’s white-power rhetoric (not her words) literally puts her life and her loved one’s lives at risk.

It’s fair to say that she “just hates Trump,” as Margaret Hartmann reported, but it’s also fair to say that she hates him for a good reason. And it’s fair to say that when someone endangers your life, you’re under no obligation to be nice to him. Indeed, being nice to him might actually embolden him, compounding the danger to you and yours.

Liberals like New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore might interpret Obama’s “boycott” as a sign of weakness. Last month, he said “the peaceful transition of power is central to our traditions as a constitutional democracy, which was precisely why it was so outrageous that the 45th president tried to disrupt it four years ago. His installment as the 47th president will be the last time Democrats have to bow to Trump’s power as a properly elected chief executive, but bow they must before getting down to the hard and essential work of fighting his agenda.”

I don’t see Obama’s decision as a sign of weakness.

She knows people will fairly and unfairly compare her actions to Trump’s. There’s no doubt about that. She understands the expedience that goes into bowing down briefly before “getting down to the hard and essential work of fighting his agenda.” She knows the trade-offs.

Yet she’s choosing to play according to her own rules. She is not going to extend to someone who threatens her life and humanity the same courtesy that she would to someone who does not. That’s not a sign of weakness, because courage like that is never a sign of weakness.

Honestly, the same can’t be said of her husband.

Trump tried in his first term to not only erase Barack Obama’s record as president, including Obamacare, but also erase Barack Obama’s image. Yet, at Carter’s funeral, Barack Obama sat next to Trump. According to the AP, he even “chatted and laughed” with him, like they were “old friends,” as if declaring to the world that politicians never mean what they say, whether it’s that Obama is an evil foreign-born puppetmaster or that Trump is an existential threat to democracy.

The same can’t be said of other Democrats, too.

At least five House Democrats who boycotted Trump’s first inaugural are going to his second, per Politico. California Congressman Jared Hoffman rationalized his choice, saying, “Like it or not, this guy was just elected by the country with full disclosure of all of his ugliness.”

Another takeaway, however, is Trump’s ugliness can’t have been so ugly given that at least five Democrats have now changed their minds.

At least four Democratic governors will be attending, according to the Connecticut Post, including Connecticut’s. Ned Lamont said he was going out of respect for the presidency, even though Trump’s agents have already threatened him and other governors with arrest and prosecution “if they don't comply with Trump's actions on immigrants.” “Look,” Lamont told Dan Haar, “I’m not looking to pick fights and I’m going down there out of respect for the peaceful transition of power."

All this sounds noble, but it looks like fear.

Because it is, according to Keith Ellison. Podcaster Dean Obeidallah asked the Minnesota attorney general why leading Democrats are suddenly quiet about Trump being a fascist threat to democracy.

“I have an answer for you,” said Ellison, a Democrat. “It’s like, ‘yeah, we think he’s a fascist and now that he has power, we’re scared, and so we’re trying to keep our head down so we don’t attract the negative attention of the fascist.’ I have been in so many [cover-your-ass] conversations, Dean, I’ve stopped counting people who have said ‘I’m going to keep my head down and hope I don’t get any attention by the bad guy.’ It’s really fear. That’s what you’re seeing. Many of the louder voices are quiet, because they fear he’s going to keep his promise.”

That promise of vengeance against his enemies, through the Justice Department or some other means available to a president, should put all the happy talk about democratic norms in a less flattering light.

Was Barack Obama chatting and laughing with Trump, as if they were old friends, out of basic human decency, even though Trump has tried to erase him and his presidential record? Or was he scared? (If so, George W. Bush put him to shame by completely ignoring Trump. )

Did at least five House Democrats change their minds about attending Trump’s inaugural out of deference to the will of voters who elected him despite “full disclosure of all of his ugliness”? Or were they scared?

Are Lamont and three other Democratic governors extending a courtesy to Trump, which by the way Trump never felt obligated to extend to his Democratic successor, out of respect for norms and institutions or fear of getting negative attention “by the bad guy.”

The Democrats’ defense of norms and institutions sounded righteous before the election. Afterward, however, and in the calm before the storm, such defense increasingly has the ring of appeasement to it.

The Democrats say they don’t want to normalize Trump, yet the highest-profile among them are about to do just that. And perhaps they are going to do that, not because of some passion for principle but because they are afraid of what might happen to them if they don’t.

"It's breathtaking that in the United States of America, a powerful person tied to the incoming president, credited as the architect of Trump's immigration policy, would threaten governors with prison for their state laws protecting immigrants,” said the Connecticut Post’s Dan Haar on the threat to Lamont. “That's not the stuff of a free country.

That’s the stuff of fear.

There’s no freedom with fear like that.

If only more Democrats were as free as Michelle Obama.

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Historian reveals how Hitler 'dismantled' democracy in less than two months

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...NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Maria, could you say, specifically, I mean, in a place like the Philippines, there’s — almost 90% of the population in the Philippines is on Facebook. And how is Facebook used, not only in terms of posting information, but also as a means of communication, and the way in which misinformation has spread on Facebook in the past, not only, of course, in Myanmar, which is the example that you cited, but also in the Philippines and elsewhere?

MARIA RESSA: I mean, very specifically, our past president, Rodrigo Duterte, used the design of what was an advertising and marketing platform of Facebook to do information operations. I was getting an average of 90 — nine, zero — hate messages per hour, free speech used to stifle free speech. But beyond that, these networks of information warfare, networks of disinformation literally changed our history in front of our eyes, setting the stage for the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the only son of our dictator who was in power for 21 years, Ferdinand Marcos. You’ll remember Imelda Marcos and her shoes. Her son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., won overwhelmingly in our presidential elections, because, literally, Filipinos were taught in information operations — YouTube, Meta and Facebook — that Marcos was not a dictator, in 1986 ousted in people power; instead, he was the greatest leader the Philippines has ever known.

AMY GOODMAN: In 2021, the Rohingya refugees actually sued Facebook’s parent company Meta over its failure to stop violent hate speech on its platform, which contributed to the bloody military crackdown of the Rohingya Muslim community by the military in 2017 in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Law firms in the U.S. and U.K. launched the legal effort on behalf of the Rohingya around the world, including in Bangladeshi refugee camps. Plaintiffs demanded over $150 billion in damages. The U.N. found as many as 10,000 Rohingya were killed by Burmese forces during the 2017 genocide, though some estimates put the death toll at twice that. Over another 730,000 people were forced to flee the country. I just want to go to a quick video, part of a video, produced by Amnesty, featuring a survivor of the Rohingya genocide.

SAWYEDDOLLAH: My name is Sawyeddollah. I am from Myanmar, but now I am living in Bangladesh, Cox’s Bazar, as a forcibly displaced Myanmar national. [translated] I personally experienced that online hate speech turned into offline hate for us. There were many different things on Facebook against us, which turned the people of Myanmar against us. I saw many different anti-Rohingya posts on Facebook. For example, I still remember a post that said, “The birth rate of these Bengali [Rohingya] people is very high. If it remains continuously like this, we will become their slaves. Now they are our slaves. Let’s go for action.” I knew about the option of reporting hate speech to Facebook. I already reported some hate speech to Facebook, but it only said, “Thank you for reporting. This post doesn’t go against our community standards.”

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Siva Vaidhyanathan into this conversation, author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, a professor at the University of Virginia. And I wanted to go to this issue of hate and how deadly it can be, whether we’re talking about Burma, Myanmar, or whether we’re talking about the United States. I mean, you have, just giving a bunch of examples, roughly seven in 10 lesbian, gay, bisexual adults have encountered any harassment online. Fully 51% have been targeted for more severe forms of online abuse. You have roughly about a third of women under 35 may have been sexually harassed online. You have — a study of 51 countries reveals 38% of women had personally experienced online harassment. Professor Vaidhyanathan, if you can talk about the connection to hate and how that connects to, well, your headline of your Guardian piece, “Mark Zuckerberg has gone full Maga”?

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: Right. Well, let’s be clear about this change. And I’m really thrilled that you’ve started this conversation by going beyond the United States. What Mark Zuckerberg announced the other day clearly only applies to the United States in terms of its specificity. In the United States, since 2017, Meta has been trying to at least appear that it’s taking content moderation seriously. And let’s remember, the proper phrase to describe what we’re talking about is “content moderation.” Fact-checking was never part of the formula. It’s not about facts. It’s about protecting users. It’s about protecting people from things like harassment, for protecting groups of people from campaigns and movements, people like citizens of my town, Charlottesville, Virginia, who encountered a flood of violent right-wingers in the summer of 2017 through a movement that was largely organized through Facebook. So, the idea here — and why Zuckerberg has appeared before Congress multiple times swearing that he’s doing a good job — has all been about the United States....

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During Donald Trump's first term as president, Paul Manafort was among the many Trump allies who faced criminal charges. The veteran GOP operative was sentenced to 47 months in prison in 2019 after being found guilty on multiple charges of tax fraud and bank fraud, but in 2020, Trump granted him a presidential pardon.

Manafort has a long history of lobbying for extreme far-right figures in Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world. And in 2025, according to the **Daily Beast's Sean Craig, Manafort and "his team" have been offering their "services" to the far right in Ukraine and France (including a "billionaire backer of" National Front leader Marine Le Pen).

Craig, in an article published on January 13, reports, "A memo pitching the services of Manafort's team — including Trump's 2024 co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita and his 2024 pollster Tony Fabrizio — was circulated in Kyiv recently, the (New York) Times reported, to anxious reception….. Manafort told the Times that he has been contacted 'by numerous parties in Ukraine,' though said he 'never submitted a proposal on any matter to anyone in Ukraine.'"

READ MORE:['Fascist ideology': Veteran actor slams 'orange idiot' Trump for 'nonsense' claims about LA wildfires

Craig adds, "LaCivita said he and Fabrizio “are not currently under contract” with Manafort’s team, adding 'successful political consultants on both the right and left routinely do political consulting overseas.'"

Manafort served as one of Trump's campaign managers in 2016 before Kellyanne Conway joined the campaign. Craig notes that although Manafort's "connections to people with Russian intelligence ties" worried members of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, his "prospects on the global consulting circuit have been revived by Trump's election victory in November."

"A pitch memo sent to French billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin, who plans to invest $150 million in the next decade in far-right parties in his country — including Le Pen’s —offered to 'develop a state-of-the-art and multidimensional campaign plan' that would target voters and use opposition research to discredit opponents," Craig explains. "Stérin’s associate Arnaud Rérolle told the (New York) Times that he held a call with Manafort, whose team agreed to provide the memo."

Craig adds, "They opted not to sign a contract with his team, however. Manafort may turn to Peru, where the Times said he spoke with a representative of Lima Mayor Rafael López Aliaga last month. Aliaga leads the conservative Popular Renewal and is a likely presidential candidate in 2026."

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The Far Right Is Having A ‘Coronation Ball’ At The Watergate Hotel To Celebrate Trump’s Inauguration

Major MAGA figures are set to attend the black-tie event, hosted by a publishing house whose marquee author has advocated for a “dictator” to run the U.S.

Christopher Mathias

:{:{Jan 7, 2025,}:

A far-right publishing house that publishes the works of historical and contemporary fascists is hosting a “Coronation Ball” at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., to celebrate Donald Trump’s second inauguration, featuring a guest list that’s a veritable who’s-who of MAGA influencers and so-called New Right luminaries.

Passage Press will throw the confab in the Watergate Hotel’s Moretti Ballroom on the evening of Jan. 19, the night before Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the U.S., according to an events page on the publishing house’s website.

That the event’s title refers to Trump’s inauguration as a “coronation” — a word typically reserved for the crowning of kings and queens in monarchies — underscores the anti-democratic, authoritarian nature of the black-tie soiree.

“Celebrate the inauguration of Donald John Trump,” Passage Press tweeted Monday, the four-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. “Be there as NRX is introduced to the MAGA brain trust. Be there as MAGA meets the Tech Right.”

“NRX” stands for “neoreactionary” and is used as a shorthand for “the Dark Enlightenment,” a far-right movement whose adherents are often as explicit in their distaste for democracy as they are in their reverence for fascism and monarchism.

One of Passage Press’ biggest authors is Dark Enlightenment figurehead Curtis Yarvin. The former Silicon Valley programmer blogged for years under the pen name “Mencius Moldbug” before emerging as a kind of court philosopher for reactionary tech billionaires and prominent MAGA movers and shakers (including Vice President-elect JD Vance).

Yarvin has advocated for a “national CEO, [or] what’s called a dictator” to be in charge of America. He is scheduled to attend the Coronation Ball, according to a post from Passage Press, as are Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, Christopher Rufo, Steve Bannon, Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova.

The publishing house later deleted its tweet listing the Coronation Ball’s “confirmed attendees.”

Hotels, particularly in the Washington area, have a history of canceling or refusing to host gatherings for white supremacists or other bigots.

Reached for comment about hosting a party whose organizers and prominent attendees have espoused fascist views, the Watergate Hotel — housed in the same building where former President Richard Nixon’s lackeys broke into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in 1972, precipitating Nixon’s resignation — sent HuffPost the following statement:

“The Watergate Hotel prides itself on being a luxury destination that reflects the values of inclusivity and respect. As a hotel with a long-standing reputation for excellence, we prioritize the safety, comfort, and dignity of our guests and our dedicated team of employees.”

What we know about Passage Press comes largely from a remarkable Guardian exposé published by journalist Jason Wilson last year. In the piece, he unmasked the head of the company, a far-right influencer who went by the name “L0m3z,” as Jonathan Keeperman, a former English lecturer at the University of California, Irvine.

Jonathan Keeperman speaks at the National Conservative Conference in Washington D.C., Wednesday, July 10, 2024.

Jonathan Keeperman speaks at the National Conservative Conference in Washington D.C., Wednesday, July 10, 2024. DOMINIC GWINN via Getty Images

As “L0m3z,” Keeperman accrued a following on X, where he currently has 95,000 followers, in part by posting invective directed at anti-racist protesters, queer people and journalists. He expressed support for Kyle Rittenhouse, the armed teenager who fatally shot two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, writing, “May a million Kyle Rittenhouses bloom.”

He also wrote the he was “coming around to the idea that the most powerful and effective political argument against the left in 2020 is probably simple as: shut up fag.”

And Keeperman once appeared to advocate the mass execution of journalists. “The press are in fact the enemy,” he tweeted. “They are mewling midwit scum. Sniveling liars and desperate status junkies. My abiding contempt for them is only ever confirmed.” As Wilson reported, Keeperman also posted a list of “policy proposals” that included the phrase “lamppost the journos” — an apparent call to kill reporters by hanging them.

Keeperman and Passage Press didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about these statements, nor did they respond to questions seeking further details about the Coronation Ball.

Under Keeperman’s leadership, Passage Press has reprinted “out-of-print or public-domain books by historical fascist and reactionary writers,” Wilson wrote, including works “by radical German nationalist and militarist Ernst Jünger; Peter Kemp, who fought as a volunteer in Francisco Franco’s army during the Spanish civil war; and two counter-revolutionary Russian aristocrats, White Russian general Pyotr Wrangel and Prince Serge Obolensky.”

Passage Press’ contemporary authors include Steve Sailer, a blogger for the white supremacist site VDARE. Sailer has written that Black people “tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups” and “need stricter moral guidance from society.” Sailer’s book for Passage Press, Noticing, is an anthology of his musings on, among other subjects, “human biodiversity,” the preferred white supremacist nomenclature for eugenics and so-called race science. (Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson provided a fawning blurb for the book, writing that “if the meritocracy were real, Steve Sailer would be one of the most famous writers in the world.”)

Passage Press also publishes a magazine called Man’s World, which is edited and run by the pseudonymous misogynist “Raw Egg Nationalist.” In the Fox Nation documentary “The End of Men,” hosted by Carlson, Raw Egg Nationalist argued that “globalists” were manipulating food supplies to lower testosterone levels and emasculate men. Before working with Passage Press, Raw Egg Nationalist published books with Antelope Hill, a neo-Nazi publishing house based in Pennsylvania.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis listens to activist and New College of Florida trustee Christopher Rufo before signing three education bills on the campus of New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla. on Monday, May 15, 2023. The Washington Post via Getty Images

Keeperman has also formed relationships with major figures in the MAGA movement, including Rufo, a fellow at the major conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute and close ally of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Republican governor is known for fanning the flames of outrage surrounding “critical race theory” and “trans ideology,” which right-wing figures like Rufo claim are being taught in America’s schools.

After Trump’s election victory in November, Rufo claimed he was set to meet with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago to pitch him on policy proposals.

Rufo is listed as an attendee of the Coronation Ball, according to a tweet from Passage Press, but didn’t immediately respond to a request to confirm his attendance.

Rufo, Yarvin and Keeperman are often considered part of the New Right, a rebranding of familiar counter-revolutionary and anti-democratic politics. It’s the same ideology that animated the “alt-right,” the white supremacist movement that exploded into the public consciousness for its close relationship to the 2016 Trump campaign, only to collapse in the wake of its deadly and disastrous “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Coronation Ball hearkens back to two alt-right gatherings in Washington D.C. celebrating Trump’s election win. In November 2016, the city hosted a conference held by the now-defunct National Policy Institute, the fascist organization helmed by suit-and-tie neo-Nazi Richard Spencer. Spencer finished his speech by declaring “Hail Victory!” — the English translation of the Nazi cry “Sieg Heil” — and “Hail Trump!” A viral video from the event captured Spencer’s supporters throwing up the stiff-armed Nazi salute in response.

There was also the Deploraball event in January 2017, on the eve of Trump’s first inauguration, attended by a slew of conspiracy theorists and bigots, including the anti-Muslim activist Pamela Gellar; Gavin McInnes, the founder of the violent fascist street gang the Proud Boys; white nationalist Lauren Southern; Jim Hoft, founder of the misinformation-heavy news site Gateway Pundit; Cernovich, a pundit and date rape denier; and Posobiec, a conspiracist with a long history of associating with extremists.

Cernovic and Posobiec are both scheduled to appear at this month’s Coronation Ball, according to a tweet from Passage Press. They also both confirmed that they would attend in posts on X.

Posobiec’s path from PizzaGate influencer to fancy Watergate gala attendee is representative of how Trump’s ascent in politics has catapulted a coterie of once-fringe media figures into powerful positions in American politics.

He got his start as a “Game of Thrones” blogger before pivoting to promoting multiple far-right conspiracy theories, all while developing extensive ties to white supremacists and publicly posting racist and antisemitic messages online.

Posobiec nevertheless became a MAGA star and a prominent pro-Trump propagandist, appearing regularly on Fox News and at the Conservative Political Action Conference, among other forums. Last year he published the book “Unhumans: The Secret History Of Communist Revolutions (And How To Crush Them),” in which he argues that Americans with left-of-center views are subhuman while praising the violent fascistic regimes of Franco in Spain and Augusto Pinochet in Chile. (Vance provided a blurb for the book.)

“President Donald J. Trump is waiting in the wings,” Posobiec said while promoting ”Unhumans” at the National Conservatism Conference last year. “And when he assumes office again, let me tell you, the globalists and their entire regime will be smashed to pieces and scattered to the winds.”

He then added: “We don’t negotiate with unhumans because that’s the stakes of this — humanity versus unhuman; populist nationalist versus atheistic Marxist; strength, beauty and genius versus weakness, ugliness and stupidity; civilization versus barbarism; crime and chaos versus law.”

Other expected guests at the Coronation Ball, per Passage Press, include Joshua Lisec, a ghostwriter for right-wing influencers and a co-author with Posobiec of ”Unhumans.”

Jack Posobiec, center, attends the cocktail hour of the New York Young Republican Club's annual gala at Cipriani Wall Street, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in New York.

Steve Bannon is set to attend, too, according to Passage Press. He cofounded Breitbart, which he called the “platform for the alt-right,” before running Trump’s 2016 campaign and later serving in Trump’s White House. Bannon was recently released from prison after serving four months for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. He is currently the host of the popular ”War Room” podcast. Bannon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether he would attend the Coronation Ball, but his War Room co-host, Natalie Winters, tweeted that she will be at the event.

Two other popular podcasters, Khachiyan and Nekrasova, hosts of “Red Scare,” are also scheduled to attend the Coronation Ball, according to Passage Press. Khachiyan and Nekrasova started the podcast years ago as a nominally left, socialist program, but eventually emerged as apostles of the New Right, cozying up to Yarvin and far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel, along with the type of conspiracy theorist they used to skewer — InfoWars’ Alex Jones. Neither Khachiyan or Nekrasova immediately responded to a request for comment.

Grimes, the famous musician and ex-wife of Elon Musk — the world’s richest man and a close Trump ally, currently on a campaign of embracing Europe’s most extreme right-wing and fascist political parties — was listed by Passage Press as a “confirmed attendee,” but a representative told HuffPost she will not be in attendance.

Also listed as an attendee is Jeremy Carl, a fellow at the Claremont Institute, the influential MAGA think tank. Carl is the author of the book ”The Unprotected Class,” which ludicrously asserts that “anti-white racism is the most predominant and politically powerful form of racism in America today.” Carl didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Countdown To Trump Is On

On Jan. 20, Donald Trump will reclaim the most powerful seat in our nation's government. HuffPost will continue to fearlessly report on the new administration — but we need your help.

On Tuesday morning, Passage Press tweeted that the Coronation Ball was sold out. That tweet was deleted Tuesday afternoon, around the same time the ticket price for the event on the Passage Press website shot up from $250 to $875.

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mma

Mike Davis to Steve Bannon: “It'd be a great way to get rid of these mayors in these Democrat hell holes is just charge them with federal felonies”

01/08/25

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alternet

Home | How CEOs are funding one of America's most dangerous shifts

Thom HartmannDecember 18, 2024

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

—Donald Trump Dec. 10, 2024

The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as:

“fascism (făsh'ĩz'am) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

We’re about to be there.

The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted.

When Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.

To the contrary, they would have easily won the case. The judge in Trump’s New York trial came right out and said, in front of God and the whole world:

“The finding Ms. Carroll failed to prove she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the N.Y. Penal Law does not mean she failed to prove Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’. Indeed, as the evidence at trial… makes clear, the jury found Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

It’s also extraordinarily difficult for a public figure to sue for defamation, per the Supreme Court’s 1964 Times v Sullivan case, which requires proof of “actual malice,” a very, very high legal standard.

An article in The New York Times this past weekend added this gem of a paragraph, although ABC insists the meeting wasn’t arranged to discuss the defamation claim:

“Debra OConnell, the Disney executive who directly oversees ABC News, dined with Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in Palm Beach last Monday, according to two people briefed on their interaction. The dinner was part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.”

Whether OConnell and Wiles discussed the defamation case or not is almost beside the point; the reasonable assumption is that Disney didn’t decide to pay off Trump because they were concerned about the lawsuit but, instead, because they wanted to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the group of corporations that will make up the “friends of Trump” as he takes over the reins of government. Disney has already gotten their nose bloody by trying to stand up to Trump’s Mini-Me, Ron DeSantis; they’ve learned their lesson well.

This is, classically, how fascists work. In fascist states, corporations and wealthy individuals fall all over themselves to gain the favor of the fascist strongman leader or they lose out big.

When Putin took over Russia, he essentially said to the richest of the Russian oligarchs, “You can be with me or against me, but there is no middle ground.” Ditto for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán (who met with Trump in Florida last week), Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who Trump praised this week), and history’s fascist strongmen from Tojo, Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini to more recent versions like Pinochet, el-Sisi, and Ceaușescu.

And now America. Soon to be the newest fascist state in the world.

This goes way beyond ignoring fascism’s chronicler Timothy Snyder’s warning not to “obey in advance”: The companies whose CEOs are making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago right now are actively trying to get on the inside with Trump by nakedly supporting him.

They both fear his punishments (he’d called for ABC to lose its broadcast licenses, for example) and hope for his largess when he instructs his federal agencies to start cutting regulations and going easy on corporate mergers and tax evasion.

For over 240 years, America was administered by presidents who adhered to the idea that they should govern, as then-New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs wrote in 1896, “without fear or favor.”

Not only did they not direct the government to help or harm any specific companies or industries, those elected to the White House over the past century or so even put their own personal wealth into blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of using government to enrich themselves.

All of that came to a screeching halt when the most corrupt (and richest) president in American history came into office in 2017. Now, empowered by having gotten away with encouraging outright sedition (among other crimes), Trump is doubling down as he accepts million-dollar “donations” from corporate CEOs.

While it’s unlikely oligarchs who refuse to go along with Trump will begin to fall out of 14th floor windows like in Russia, Trump has already made it clear he’ll use regulatory agencies and the courts to punish them like Orbán does.

This is not the American way. It is, instead, how fascist nations that inevitably morph into dictatorships work. It’s a huge warning signal to us and the world.

It also sets a terrible example for other republics around the world that aspire to our (former) ideals of democracy and fair play in business and government. And it sets our country up to become a sleazy tinpot dictatorship, descending to the ethics and credibility standards of Third World caricatures.

History is taking careful note of those CEOs who are energetically brown-nosing Trump, just as it did with Thyssen and Krupp, who were prosecuted for war crimes in the 1940s.

And to compound this evil, these businesses are adding to the power that Trump is rapidly accumulating as, one after another, they, politicians of both parties, and people across the media bow their heads and bend their knees.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all: Going forward, the honesty, reliability, and safety of their products may well be corrupted by their praetorian relationship with Trump’s regulators, rather than responding to the competitive forces of the actual marketplace.

Which is also why, going forward, we’d all do best to avoid their programs, products, and services.

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strong man beta humiliate

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'USA is a threat': Canadians slam 'bully' Trump’s 'arrogant' mockery of 'Governor Trudeau'

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'Obeying in advance': Wray accused of 'making things easy for Trump' by abruptly resigning

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BIG PICTURE

'Quickly rot from within': Expert reveals 3 traits the US shares with declining empires

https://www.alternet.org/us-empire-decline/)

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The United States is currently displaying several characteristics that have historically been seen by empires in decline, according to one social scientist.

Peter Turchin is one of the pioneers of "cliodynamics," which is the field of study concerning statistical analysis of historical dynamics of societies around the world. In a recent essay for the Guardian, Turchin wrote that he and his fellow researchers have noticed the U.S. having three key traits in common with past global hegemons just before a period of decline. Those three factors are "popular immiseration, elite overproduction and state breakdown."

Turchin explained that "popular immiseration" describes a breakdown of the social contract between workers, the private sector and the public sector, which he said began after the Republican assault in the New Deal that happened around the time former President Ronald Reagan took power. He noted that as "the power of unions was undermined," taxes on the richest Americans were "cut back," which was followed by stagnating wages and a decline in life expectancy.

READ MORE:['Not good enough anymore': Union leader explains why Dems lost economic argument to Trump

"With the incomes of workers effectively stuck, the fruits of economic growth were reaped by the elites instead. A perverse 'wealth pump' came into being, siphoning money from the poor and channelling it to the rich," he wrote. "In many ways, the last four decades call to mind what happened in the United States between 1870 and 1900 – the time of railroad fortunes and robber barons. If the postwar period was a golden age of broad-based prosperity, after 1980 we could be said to have entered a Second Gilded Age."

The second trait, which Turchin called "elite overproduction," involves a growing population of the "uber-rich," (which he defined as "those with fortunes greater than $10 million") and their influence in the public sphere. He noted that when adjusting for inflation, this population grew by tenfold over the last four decades. This has led to rich elites either running for office, like President-elect Donald Trump, or funding candidates for office, like many billionaires have done in recent cycles. He also pointed out that "counter-elites" will emerge who oppose the existing political establishment.

"The more members of this elite class there are, the more aspirants for political power a society contains," he wrote. "By the 2010s the social pyramid in the US had grown exceptionally top-heavy: there were too many wannabe leaders and moguls competing for a fixed number of positions in the upper echelons of politics and business."

"As battles between the ruling elites and counter-elites heat up, the norms governing public discourse unravel and trust in institutions declines," he continued. "The result is a loss of civic cohesiveness and sense of national cooperation – without which states quickly rot from within."

READ MORE:[Watch: JD Vance booed by room full of firefighters as he calls himself 'pro-worker'

Finally, Turchin opined that "state breakdown" will inevitably follow popular immiseration and elite overproduction. He argued that Democrats' loss in the November election "represents one battle in an ongoing revolutionary war," but that the goal of the new order is "far from assured" given that "opponents are pretty well entrenched in the bureaucracy and can effectively resist change."

"Popular discontent in the US has been building up for more than four decades. Many years of real prosperity would be needed to persuade the public that the country is back on the right track," he wrote. "So, for now, we can expect a lasting age of discord. Let’s hope that it won’t spill over into a hot civil war."

Click here to read Turchin's full essay in the Guardian.

READ MORE:['A corporate CEO's dream': Labor unions blast Trump-Vance ticket

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MMA

December 10, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Here's what we're going to turn the page on. We're going to fire everybody in this illegitimate regime on moment one. Everybody, every battlefield commission, every historical society, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, every person that was put in by this illegitimate regime is going to be shown the door. Shown the door.

And we dare you, if you're listening, we dare you, because we know you are. We dare you to give a blanket preemptive pardon on these criminals. Yep, on Fauci. Yep, on shifty Schiff. Yep, on Milley. Yep, on Liz. Liz had a big long thing yesterday. She came back with President Trump, you know, President Trump said something about that – about J6. No.

We're going to pardon all the J6 people who have been in the prisons and then they can get the civil suits and come after you people personally, which they have to do.

…

I'm sure there'll be a couple of, three, you know, investigations and see where that gets. Maybe a special counsel. Maybe. I think that'd be pretty cool. But, hey, that's all decisions guys are got to make. I'm not - I'm just sitting here in front of a microphone screaming like a madman.

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Public opinion research conducted in October shows a shift in one political party that might make Donald Trump’s election on Nov. 5 less of a surprise. A majority of the party now agrees with a sentiment about immigration that has previously been associated with organized hate — that they are “poisoning the blood of the country.”

While October marked the first time respondents were asked that question, responses to others indicated a hard shift against immigrants by Republicans and white evangelical protestants — especially after Trump became president.

The Public Religion Research Institute is a nonpartisan group that studies political issues alongside religious values. Since its founding in 2013, it’s conducted its American Values Survey and done more than 200,000 interviews in the process.

Among its most recent findings was a 50-point gap between Republicans and Democrats over how pressing an issue immigration is for the country. And there now is a huge difference between the parties about whether undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria should be offered a path to citizenship.

In 2013, 71% of Democrats and 64% of independents believed a path to citizenship should be offered. The percentage for Democrats rose to 77% by October, while it fell to 55% for independents.

But for Republicans, the change was far more dramatic.

In 2013, most Republicans — 53% — believed that qualifying people should be offered a path to citizenship. As of October, just 36% did.

At a recent conference in Washington, D.C., Public Religion Research Institute Founder and CEO Robert P. Jones said that support for a path mostly held steady for Republicans between 2013 and 2019, “then it begins to drop, then it just fell off a cliff beginning last year.”

Jones said the partisan disparity indicates that we’ve entered a new era when it comes to the politics of immigration.

“This is a very, very different world than we were living in even 10 years ago,” he said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a religious element to the disparity.

White evangelical protestants make up the only major religious group that does not have a majority supporting a path to citizenship. That support has fallen from 53% in 2013 to 40% now.

The Public Religion Research Institute survey seemed to find an element of hatred in some of the opposition to allowing more undocumented immigrants to become citizens.

“There were a number of questions that, as a social scientist, I found myself having to ask that I never thought I’d have to ask,” Jones said of the most recent survey.

One was prompted by Trump’s statement a year ago that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” The statement has ominous implications because Adolph Hitler, who murdered 6 million Jews along with millions of other targeted groups, made several versions of the statement, including that a male Jew “poisons the blood of others…”

In the survey, Jones asked, “Do you agree or disagree that immigrants who are entering the country today are poisoning the blood of our country?”

A full 34% of Americans agree.

“There is a gigantic partisan gap on this question,” Jones said.

Almost two-thirds of Republicans — 61% — 33% of independents, and just 13% of Democrats agreed that immigrants are poisoning the blood of a nation of immigrants.

Jones, who holds a Ph.D. in religion, said that so many Americans agree with such a statement should concern everyone.

“A racist and hate-filled conception of immigrants has really taken hold with a significant minority of the population,” he said.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and X.

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fASHY

Ben Shapiro on France: Le Pen's “National Rally is not really a far-right party anymore”

12/05/24 mma

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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no lnx

When the jackboots come, what will matter more?

Sabrina Haake, Raw Story December 08, 2024

After a slim majority of America’s voters returned a toddler with a loaded gun to the presidency, I put myself on a strict national news diet. Now entering the second month, I limit my national news consumption to one hour per day, as needed, down from five.

The intake reduction has trimmed my emotional baggage and quieted 3 a.m. bouts of anxiety; I’m pretty sure my fine lines are also in retreat.

At first, my post-election diet resulted in a spare time bonanza bookended by Ambien and daytime gummies. But munchies are a thing, and I didn’t take a year of Ozempic shots just to get fat again, so in the second week I switched to vodka. By the third week, after I’d sucked down a handle of Titos martinis (shelter dogs, you’re welcome), no vermouth, extra large olives, I found a balance.

Because political insanity is as contagious as any life-threatening disease, I now follow Trump’s GOP-backed crazy from a time-constricted distance. It isn’t a retreat so much as a re-fortification for dangerous times ahead.

It’s ok to take a break, just don’t withdraw entirely

For the half of the nation to whom Trump is abhorrent, reduced consumption of the news makes sense, provided it is temporary: Trump’s middle finger to America, brandished with every unqualified cabinet member he recruits from Fox News, Q-anon, and lowest common-denominator reality TV, will still be standing in January.

The dangers Trump 2.0 poses are as grave as they are real, and we owe our children, our history and our veterans of foreign war the courtesy of paying attention. Trump’s revolving door of insanity is designed in part to normalize the abnormal. It’s also meant to wear us down. For that reason alone, we have to remain diligent, keep watch, and, most importantly, speak up.

But too much focus on Trump’s sinister mind-mush can be counterproductive. It’s like obsessing over biopsy results when we already know we have cancer; visualizing metastasis can trigger it.

Don’t obsess over unquantifiable dangers

The main rationale for reducing obsession with the news is that, at this point, the dangers posed by Trump’s clown-car cabinet are speculative.

Senators’ advice and consent on the cabinet is Constitutionally required; when presented with Trump’s most egregiously unqualified goons, senators will either hold or fold, and the variables influencing their decisions are still in flux. Trump has not yet been sworn in (a Trump ‘oath’ strains credulity), and it is impossible to know which way they will break. Down-the-rabbit-hole MAGA senators will salivate, all in, but Republican senators from moderate and mixed districts will be held to account by their voters and will not so easily sacrifice their careers for Trump.

Same caution applies to military leaders. Trump’s choice to head the Department of Defense was forced out of leadership roles from two military veterans organizations after repeated allegations of public drunkenness, financial mismanagement, and sexist aggression. Military leaders take an oath to the U.S. Constitution, not the president, and many of them will be clear-eyed about the dangers of following orders from a man like Pete Hegseth, whose support of pardons for rabid war crimes tacitly encourages them. The Hegseth nomination insults and endangers professional servicemen and women who have dedicated their lives to the military, and they aren’t likely to forget Hegseth’s undisciplined debauchery, lack of credentials, or white supremacist tattoos.

When considering how Trump’s Project 2025 could dismantle Social Security or the Affordable Care Act, the fearful might bear in mind that any cuts to existing federal programs will require congressional approval. There are plenty of small republican congressmen too afraid of Trump to oppose him, but many are not. We just don’t know what Trump’s shake down will look like, whom he’ll threaten or with what, and we can’t know what their countervailing political risks may be when the time comes.

The judiciary will provide the strongest defense, as Trump’s overtly dictatorial moves will trigger federal litigation. Firing federal workers based on a political litmus test, for example, would obviously violate both the 1st A right to free political speech and the 14th A right of due process. So would siccing the military on domestic political adversaries, so would attempting to imprison journalists/ columnists who criticize Trump, like the insane Kash Patel hopes to do as Director of the FBI.

Most these cases won’t make it to the Supreme Court, or even be appealed. Remember that Trump-appointed judges stopped him from overturning the 2020 election, and most of these judges remain on the bench.

Federalists are human too

It’s also possible that even the religious zealots on the Supreme Court, excepting Alito and Thomas, have been humbled by the public’s resoundingly negative reaction to their immunity decision. Justices Alito and Thomas, ethically compromised to a fair inference of corruption, are ideologues whose embrace of MAGA extremism is now well known. But there are only two of them, and there’s a good chance the other four federalists on the bench will see Trump for what he is: a Constitutional crisis of their own making.

Widespread media reports and confidential interviews suggest Chief Justice Roberts was deeply shaken by the public’s revulsion to his immunity ruling. Justices read the news too, and they can see now that Trump is committed to retribution, to destroying what has taken 248 years to build in service to his pathological ego. In private moments, seven justices must know that telling Trump he can get away with murder was a grave error.

In addition to outsize responsibility for what is to come, the Roberts Court will want to protect the balance among the three branches of government, if for no other reason than to protect its own power. But again, trying to prophylactically analyze the outcome of cases that don’t yet exist is a fool’s errand. It’s also wasted time.

Not for me. For now, and at least the next six weeks, I’d rather spend my day turning in, helping my neighbors, building community. If the jackboots come, those relationships will matter more than any opinion or political column.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.

ref 2 vallerga

Abstract

Websites, blogs, and message boards of the “manosphere” are dedicated to a worldview that celebrates hegemonic masculinity and decries feminism. In a reflexive thematic analysis of 227 posts (389,189 words) from two manosphere message boards (The Red Pill and Incel), we analyzed how posters viewed women and men. We found that beliefs about women and men formed an ideology comprised of (a) evolution-based views of gender essentialism, (b) an informal psychology of women's motivations, and (c) a typology of men.

Women were seen as having three primary motives: to deceive and manipulate men, to promiscuously satisfy their own sexual needs, and to trade sex for power. Men were seen as falling into two (The Red Pill) or three (Incel) types: alpha men who are attractive, powerful, and sexually successful, beta men who give to women as their only route to sexual interactions, and incel (involuntarily celibate) men who are too unattractive to achieve sexual success. Posters acted on these beliefs either to improve themselves (The Red Pill) or give up on life and endorse suicide and/or violence (Incel). We discuss these beliefs and actions in relation to theories of sexual aggression, the psychology of radicalization, and the American Psychological Association's Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men.

In 2014, Elliot Rodger committed a mass shooting in Santa Barbara, California, killing six people and wounding more than a dozen (Branson-Potts & Winton, 2018). Hours before, he uploaded a YouTube video explaining his intent to punish women for not sleeping with him, and sexually active men because he envied them. Rodger also discussed these beliefs on PUAhate.com which was frequented by people known as incels (short for “involuntarily celibate”). This message board is part of the “manosphere,” a collection of websites, blogs, and message boards dedicated to a worldview that celebrates traditional masculinity and decries feminism as a source of male weakness or subordination (Ging, 2019).

The Texas Department of Public Safety's (2020) Domestic Terrorism Threat Assessment states that incels are an “emerging domestic terrorism threat” (p. 3), noting the severity of the violent online rhetoric. Our goal for this study was to conduct a reflexive thematic analysis of posts on two websites that are part of the manosphere (The Red Pill and Incel.me), to better understand the men who are part of this community and to gain a better sense of the ways in which traditional and hegemonic masculinities are currently enacted among one group of younger, more technologically savvy men.

HEGEMONIC AND TRADITIONAL MASCULINITY

The ways that men in manosphere communities see women and other men have been compared with hegemonic masculinity (Ging, 2019; Van Valkenburgh, 2018). Hegemonic masculinity is the configuration of enacting gender in a way that grants legitimacy to patriarchy, and subsequently to the dominance of men and subordination of women (Connell, 2005). In addition to hegemonic masculinity, there are other constructions of masculinity that legitimize patriarchy (Connell, 2005). Subordinated masculinity involves practices that constitute the reception of dominance from other men. Complicit masculinity consists of practices by men who do not embody hegemonic masculinity but go along with patriarchy and thus benefit from men's domination of women.

Marginalized masculinity encompasses practices of men with other intersectional identities such as race, that results in their dominance from other men. Scholars who theorize hegemonic masculinity are typically less concerned with the degree to which men live up to these enactments (few men actually do), but more concerned with how the attempts to do so reinforce patriarchy (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Hegemonic masculinity may present differently across time and place. However, a constant is that implicit or explicit threats of violence are directed towards women in service of the hegemonic masculinity project of legitimizing patriarchy (Connell, 2005).

In their current forms, these hegemonic legitimizations of patriarchy become central to an identity that strongly emphasizes adherence to traditional masculinity in the face of perceived threats to it. Traditional masculinity ideology refers to a constellation of beliefs about what masculinity should be. Because cultural definitions of masculinity, even traditional masculinity, are fluid and multiple, a static definition is not practical (Pleck, 1995). However, consistent components of these beliefs (hostility toward femininity, dominance and aggression, nonrelational sexuality, and restrictive emotionality) are seen in the measurement of the endorsement of traditional masculinity ideology (Levant, 2011). These are difficult ideals to live up to and men face negative consequences attempting to do so.

O'Neil (2013) summarized 30 years of research on such consequences describing several forms of gender role strain. Self-imposed restrictions connected to traditional masculinity are related to anxiety, intimacy problems, loneliness, and emotional dysregulation. Violating traditional male gender roles is related to substance abuse, self-objectification, and suicide. Endorsement of traditional male gender roles is related to violation of others through hostile sexism, dating violence, rape myth acceptance, and violence. All of these are common experiences of men, which we expected to see represented in posts on The Red Pill and Incel.

How people enact gender is deeply important to their self-identity. For men who construct a masculine gender identity using sexist attitudes, enactment of those sexist attitudes has generally gone underground (Glick & Fiske, 2011). However, in community spaces friendly to displays of sexist constructions of masculinity and femininity men congregate and reinforce these beliefs (Matthews, 2014). Our research examines discursive constructions of masculinity and femininity, represented on The Red Pill and Incel message boards. The semi-anonymity of these boards and the community culture facilitate frank discussions of these gender constructions.

THE MANOSPHERE

The manosphere is a collection of digital spaces in which hegemonic and traditional masculinity are articulated bluntly and without artifice. These spaces are rich in useful data for researchers interested in documenting the ways in which these masculinities are enacted, because it is not necessary to “read between the lines” to discern the meaning of coded messages. In addition, many sites in the manosphere have a large membership and produce an outsized impact on the world. The Elliot Rodger mass shooting is one key example but, in addition, many spaces in the manosphere seek to encourage men to internalize core red pill tenets, one of which is to subjugate women and coerce them into sex (Dignam & Rohlinger, 2019). These sites often redefine sexual assault to exclude the kind of coercion promoted there (Gotell & Dutton, 2016). Furthermore, the manosphere is an echo chamber where sexism and misogyny are reinforced and escalated (Ging, 2019).

Research on the manosphere generally focuses on one or more distinctive subcultures, including Men's Rights Activists (MRAs), masculinist separatists called Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), groups formed around misogynistic seduction techniques, called Pick-Up Artists (PUA) or red pill groups, and incels. In their discourse analysis of MRA websites, Gotell and Dutton (2016) found that the focus has moved away from fathers’ rights and toward recruiting young men by stirring up anxiety around changing consent standards and sexual assault. A recent content analysis of a MGTOW site revealed that many of the discussions about why posters identify as MGTOW concerned misogynistic constructions of women as a threat (Wright et al., 2020). In an ethnography of London-based PUA communities O'Neill (2018) elucidated how neoliberalism and post-feminism shape men's engagement with PUA instruction-based seduction communities.

Similar dynamics between masculinity and neoliberalism were present in The Red Pill message board's ‘sidebar’, a collection of essential readings prescribed by the moderators of the message board (Van Valkenburgh, 2018). Cosma and Gurevich (2020) conducted a discourse analysis with PUA media and found that women's bodies were constructed as commodities and used to bolster men's masculinity. In another study, members of the manosphere construed men as active and women as passive and discussed women through misogynistic lenses including objectification, gendered scrutiny, and the assumption that women are immoral and untrustworthy (Krendel, 2020).

In general, incels have not been included in data collection as part of larger explorations of the manosphere. Understandably, incels are typically discussed as a culture unto themselves, with a focus on their violent acts and violent discourse. Tomkinson et al. (2020) defined incels as a violent extremist threat and recommended government intervention in terms of mobilizing public security agencies and employing deradicalization processes.

The incel subculture has been found to malign women, validate male oppression of women, and encourage violence (Glace et al., 2021; O'Malley et al., 2020). In a recent study, incels presented themselves as the victims of new dating technologies, with women manipulating this new system to give themselves a higher status than (male) incels (Preston et al., 2021). Maxwell et al. (2020) theorized that incels, beset by severe loneliness and unable to live up to internalized masculine ideals, become radicalized through experiencing romantic rejection and commiserating with the incel community.

Despite the separate treatment of the incel community in the literature, the Incel message board is embedded within the manosphere, both in terms of shared membership (Ribeiro et al., 2020) and beliefs about gender (Hoffman et al., 2020). These beliefs about gender center around the idea that there is a surface level cultural story (that women are oppressed by patriarchy) which covers up the true nature of gender relations (that male dominance represents the natural order, which feminism is upsetting with negative consequences for everyone). This is codified through a metaphor taken from the film “The Matrix”, in which a blue pill would allow the protagonist to return to his existence in the false world and a red pill would allow him to break free and learn the truth about reality.

The term “red pill” is shared across the manosphere, tying different groups together with the underlying belief that the metaphor represents (i.e. a kind of libertarian heterosexuality in which men and women are rational actors seeking to maximize different kinds of gains; Gavey, 2005, Hoffman et al., 2020). This is where The Red Pill forum in the manosphere gets its name. The corresponding “blue pill” in the ideology of the manosphere represents everyone else who remains ignorant of red pill “truths” (Labbaf, 2019). Both Incel and The Red Pill position themselves in opposition to the blue pill ideology, the only difference being the presence of “black pill” terminology among incels, which represents the additional “truth” of permanent hopelessness (of having a romantic or sexual relationship) that they accept for themselves (Hoffman et al., 2020).

The relatively small body of social scientific research on the manosphere has been somewhat diffuse in both purpose and focus. The studies conducted to date differ from our proposed study most centrally in terms of scope, in that no research thus far has collected data from both The Red Pill and Incel. Our study seeks to do so in recognition of the fact that Incel formed in reaction to The Red Pill and other communities like it (Labbaf, 2019) and the two communities continue to be in dialogue with each other. Our study also differs from past research in that the only previous study that conducted a content analysis on data from The Red Pill examined core ideological texts rather than direct member discourse (Van Valkenburgh, 2018).

Research focused on Incel has relied on exploratory thematic analyses of member discourse, similar to ours (Maxwell et al., 2020; O'Malley et al., 2020). However, our analysis of the Incel community connects it back into the larger manosphere, weaving common threads together to speak to the diverse responses that participants in the manosphere can have to similar underlying misogynistic ideologies. This goal is in line with quantitative findings that, over time, different spaces within the manosphere tend to share the same user base (Ribeiro et al., 2020).

THE PRESENT STUDY

To better understand hegemonic and traditional masculinity in the current sociohistorical moment, and to explore the ways in which masculine ideology is articulated in online message boards that are part of the manosphere, we conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of posts on The Red Pill and Incel message boards. Our goal was to better understand these men's beliefs about men and women. To facilitate this exploratory study, we used a thematic analysis of conversations in the message boards to develop themes that highlight and explain members’ ideologies.

METHOD...

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Give the people what they want.

That’s the grumbling I’ve heard from more than one progressive in Kansas after voters strengthened GOP supermajorities in the Statehouse. New political math mean legislators likely won’t expand Medicaid or legalize marijuana anytime soon. Rather than support families in need, these lawmakers likely will erect further barriers to nutrition, health care and secure housing.

So what, these profoundly irritated people say. *Voters wanted this. Let them suffer the consequences

The same sentiment can be heard in national post-election dialogue. Voters can select leaders who harm them, experts warn.

“Authoritarianism is often popular. Many people support a strong and decisive leader,” said Timothy Longman, a professor of international relations and of political science at Boston University. “In Africa, which is the focus of my scholarship, military coups have frequently been greeted with dancing in the streets, because people think that military rule will bring order.”

People want a state government that throws the needy to the wolves. Let them feast.*

I understand why people feel this way. I understand the temptation to throw up one’s hands and retreat, leaving callous lawmakers free rein to slash taxes for oligarchs, pare budgets to the bone and legalize discrimination against minority groups. After an election in which consequences were clearly spelled out — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly explicitly connected Medicaid expansion to state legislative races — a majority chose callousness.

But here’s my modest proposal: Forget that nonsense.

What’s right is right, no matter the majority’s whims. In Kansas, sizable numbers either voted another way or chose not to vote at all. Should we blithely accept policy that harms these folks as well?

A rising tide lifts all boats. But a sinking tide lowers all boats. Giving the people what they want could hurt everyone and everything.

Before starting at Kansas Reflector, I spent nearly four years in nonprofit children’s advocacy. My former boss, John Wilson, laid it out in a column published here Wednesday. Children will suffer the consequences of a neglectful Legislature. They can’t vote. They can’t make the kind of decisions that hand political power to one party or another. Their fates are up to the adults who take care of them.

“We cannot let the next legislative session go by without providing targeted relief to Kansas kids in need,” Wilson wrote.

He added: “We need every lawmaker to go into the 2025 session with the belief that there are tangible answers to the complex issues we’re facing.”

That means transcending rigid ideological frameworks. That means working across the aisle. That means accepting that sometimes government can provide solutions rather than simply create problems. That means opening lawmakers’ minds to the possibility that they can build and create, rather than slash and burn. Sometimes, the right thing to do — making sure that children grow up healthy and educated — transcends any one election.

This goes for Kansas’ delegation in Washington, D.C., too. Our U.S. senators and representatives will confront an dizzying array of choices in the coming months, along with great pressure from the new presidential administration. Can they chart an independent course, one that includes the folks who didn’t vote for them last month? Hope springs eternal, as Alexander Pope wrote.

I’m making a narrow point here, one that I don’t want folks to misconstrue. Lawmakers will reflect ideologies and policies supported by the voters who elected them. That’s natural. That’s the electoral name of the game. I raise no objection to such representation, even if I object to the policies that result.

Give the people what they want.

On the other hand, not all governmental functions can or should be viewed through an explicitly political lens.

Basic human rights transcend any election. These include the right to necessities such as housing and health care; the right to live unimpeded by prejudice; and the right to raise one’s voice in opposition, no matter the circumstances. They are elemental. They are foundational. While partisans may view such rights as liberal, they are in fact just reflections of our shared humanity.

In the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, speaking in 1941: “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.”

Some might say Wilson’s column sounds too optimistic. Some might say my column sounds too confrontational. (Some might say Roosevelt was just another liberal Democrat.) They might be correct. Or maybe we — and a huge number of Kansans — understand that politics can only take us so far.

Working together, let’s give the people what they need.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary,[here

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and X.

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We speak with journalist Mehdi Hasan, founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, about the incoming U.S. administration and President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for key roles, including lawyer Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump reportedly considered Patel for FBI deputy director during his first term but dropped the idea after pushback from within his own administration. Hasan describes Patel as a “toady” whose threats against political opponents and journalists should be disqualifying, but that he aligns with Trump’s goals of further politicizing the FBI. “He wants to use it as an instrument of vengeance.”

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AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi, let’s talk about Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to head the FBI. This is Kash Patel speaking to Steve Bannon in his War Room podcast.

KASH PATEL: We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But, yeah, we’re putting you all on notice. And, Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators, because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Kash Patel speaking on the Shawn Ryan Show in September.

KASH PATEL: The FBI’s footprint has gotten so frickin’ big, and the biggest problem the FBI has had has come out of its intel shops. I’d break that component out of it. I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops. Go be cops. Go chase down murderers and rapists and drug dealers and violent offenders. What do you need 7,000 people there for? Same thing with DOJ. What are all these people doing here? Looking for their next government promotion. Looking for their next fancy government title. Looking for their parachute out of government. So, while you’re bringing in the right people, you also have to shrink government.

AMY GOODMAN: So, again, that’s Kash Patel. When President Trump wanted to make him deputy director of the FBI in his first administration, the attorney general, Bob [sic] Barr said, “Over my” — Bill Barr said, “Over my dead body.” Mehdi Hasan?

MEHDI HASAN: Yes, he did. Bill Barr, of all people, said the guy was completely unqualified, it was detached from reality to try and put him in the FBI. And he said, “Over my dead body.” Gina Haspel, who was director of the CIA in December 2020 during Trump’s lame duck, when Trump tried to appoint Kash Patel to deputy director of the CIA, she threatened to resign, and Mike Pence had to get involved and block that. So this is not some kind of liberal whining about Kash Patel. Prominent conservatives at the time said, “No way. This guy is completely unqualified.”

:{:{And you played that clip from the War Room, from the Steve Bannon show. I think that’s from December 2023. He put us on notice. He says in that clip, “We’re putting you on notice.” Well, we’re on notice. In fact, I’ve been warning about Kash Patel since 2022, when I predicted — when I was at MSNBC, and I predicted that Trump would make him FBI director, and he would go after the media. He’s making it very clear. He wants to prosecute journalists. In another time and era, Amy, those words would be chilling. }:

Those words would disqualify him from the running. But, of course, Republican senators mostly will fall in line. We’ll see if the — you know, the Murkowskis and the Susan Collinses and Mitch McConnell, whether they’ll push back in the way they did on Matt Gaetz. He’s a deeply dangerous nominee. I would argue that clip you played from the Bannon War Room show makes him perhaps the most dangerous nominee so far, because he’s open about the fact that he wants to use the power of the state to crush Donald Trump’s opponents. He’s a sycophant. He’s a bag carrier. He literally wrote a children’s book about King Donald Trump. That’s how sycophantic he is.}:

And I would say to some of the progressives maybe watching your show this morning, Amy Goodman, who say, “Well, you know what? The FBI does need reform. We on the left don’t like the FBI. We think Kash Patel should go break it up,” well, look, you can not like the FBI, for good reason, but the only reason Kash Patel and the Republicans don’t like the FBI is because the FBI investigated Donald Trump over ties to Russia and because the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago and searched his home for stolen classified documents which he was keeping against the law in his home. So, they don’t actually care about reform or bureaucracy or deep state; they care about neutering all institutions that can stand up to Donald Trump and MAGA.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go more deeply into what he said in Bannon’s War Room, “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens.” If you could explain more who you think he’s talking about, about Joe Biden rigging presidential elections, “We’re going to come after you,” Mehdi?

MEHDI HASAN: So, Patel is at the core of pretty much every major MAGA conspiracy theory about the deep state, about the election, if you go through the list. I mean, he came to prominence — he was a very junior, as I say, unqualified person. He was working on the House Intelligence Committee with Devin Nunes, the right-wing California congressman. And he came to prominence in going after Robert Mueller, going after the Russian investigation, coming up with this memo that — some of the stuff in this famous Nunes memo turned out to be true, some of it, the inspector general said, “No, not true.” That’s how he caught Trump’s attention. That’s how he ended up in the White House. That’s how he ended up on the National Security Council.

By the way, one of the many people saying he shouldn’t be given this job is John Bolton, his former boss — not exactly a kind of lily-livered liberal — John Bolton saying he should be rejected by the Senate 100 to 0.

But he’s at the core of every conspiracy theory, Amy, whether it’s about, you know, Donald Trump didn’t lose the election, whether it’s January 6th. He testified in a Colorado courtroom over January 6th and the election. The judge said he wasn’t a credible witness. He’s even had the endorsement, I think you mentioned in the intro, of QAnon. In one of the books he wrote, he actually handwrote a QAnon mantra into the book, and they just posted it on social media. By the way, the FBI regards QAnon as a domestic terror threat. Think about the irony, Amy, of putting a person in charge of the FBI who’s actually fine with this group that the FBI thinks is a domestic terror threat. So, he is at the core of all these conspiracies.

When he says he’s going after people — you asked me who he’s talking about — of course he’s talking about the Bidens and Clintons of this world, but actually it’s much more dangerous than that. It’s much broader than that. It’s anyone who they think — who they think is an opponent. I mean, let’s just be very — this is what authoritarianism looks like. I know it’s become fashionable since the election, even on parts of the left, to say, “Well, it was all exaggerated to say that Trump is a fascist threat to the Constitution or authoritarian threat to the media.” No, it’s not exaggerated. These people are saying it out loud, and Trump is appointing them or trying to appoint them to the most senior positions in the United States government and national security apparatus.

AMY GOODMAN: And let’s talk about who he would be replacing, Christopher Wray, whose term doesn’t end for several years, who was appointed by Donald Trump, and why an FBI director has a 10-year term, which goes back to, what, post-Watergate, when a president, Nixon, is trying to deploy his FBI director exactly in the way Kash Patel threatens to do.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, so, of course —

AMY GOODMAN: So that they would span several terms.

MEHDI HASAN: Well, we know that J. Edgar Hoover was the man who abused more FBI power than any director in the history of the FBI. I think he was in charge — for what? Four decades? Five decades? Astonishing amount of time. No president dared to remove him. And the 10-year terms comes in after that, of course. By the way, I would credit my former MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown, who said appointing Kash Patel to the FBI director’s job would be like appointing a cross between J. Edgar Hoover and Alex Jones, which I think sums up pretty well who Patel is.

But, look, on the 10-year term, what’s interesting, Amy, is, of course, Donald Trump is the great precedent breaker, the great norm buster. When I hear Democrats talking about norms, Trump has already trashed all of them. In Trump one, in Trump term one, he got rid of James Comey, who, of course, he was angry at, even though James Comey, arguably, helped him win the 2016 election. But he got rid of Comey and put in Wray. And that itself was quite unprecedented, only the second time, I believe, an FBI director had been fired and replaced in the middle of their term. He appointed Wray. Then he got upset with Wray. Now he wants to replace Wray.

I would also make a side point to some of the progressives watching at home. Why is it that the FBI director is always a Republican, even under Democratic presidencies? It’s always a Republican. And Democratic presidents always keep on the Republican who the previous Republican appointed, which I just find so ironic.

But now he wants to get rid of Wray, put in Patel, which tells you, again, everything that he wants from the FBI. He wanted to use it as an instrument of vengeance, of score settling, of silencing dissent. He wants to use it to basically intimidate people. And that’s why he’s getting rid of Wray, not because he disagrees with Wray’s politics. Christopher Wray is a Republican who Trump appointed. But in this Trump term, he’s made it very clear what he wants the FBI to be doing.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about another of Trump’s picks. The New Yorker magazine’s Jane Mayer has an explosive piece in the magazine. Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was forced out of leadership roles at two veterans organizations for misusing funds, sexually harassing women, being repeatedly drunk on the job. According to a whistleblower report, Hegseth once had to be restrained from joining strippers on the stage at a strip club. In another incident, he drunkenly chanted “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!” at a bar in 2015. Meanwhile, The New York Timesreports Hegseth’s own mother accused him of a mistreating women. In 2018, Penelope Hegseth wrote him an email that read in part, quote, “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” unquote. The email was sent a year after a woman accused Hegseth of raping her at a California hotel. This is Trump’s pick to head the Defense Department. Your final comments on this, Mehdi Hasan?

MEHDI HASAN: So, Amy, if you had asked me this a few weeks ago, I would have said, “Hegseth is the worst pick of all. You can’t get worse than Hegseth.” And then we got Tulsi Gabbard, and I said, “You can’t get worse than Gabbard.” And then we got RFK Jr., and I said, “You can’t get worse than RFK Jr.” Now we’ve got Kash Patel, and I’m telling you, “You can’t get worse than Kash Patel.” Donald Trump says “hold my beer” every time and keeps producing these nominees.

And look, while we’re focused on Patel, we’ve got more reporting on Hegseth. I mean, it’s astonishing. It’s almost beyond belief. If you were writing a TV show about the Trump years, if it was a Netflix show called The Trump Years, you would say these storylines are just too unrealistic. If you were sitting in the writers’ room, and you said, “You know what? Let’s have a scene where it turns out that Hegseth, the great Christian nationalist, tried to get on stage with strippers. Let’s have his mother write him a letter saying, 'I disown you because of all, you know, your misogyny,'” you would say, “Oh, come on. That’s a little unrealistic. Those are kind of beyond-parody characters.” No, it’s real life. This is the Trump administration. These are the people he’s appointing.

And I think it’s interesting, by the way, the Islamophobia is very worrying on Hegseth’s part, because there was this strain of thinking, even on some parts of the left, that, well, Trump won’t be as militaristic and belligerent as the Democrats. Not true. He’s putting in a guy at Defense Department who has crusader tattoos on his body, who said outrageous things about killing Muslims, supported the Iraq War. He’s going to be in charge of the Pentagon? You know, there’s no way this is going to be a, quote-unquote, antiwar presidency, if Hegseth is at the Pentagon and Marco Rubio is at the State Department. By the way, can you imagine, Amy, if Biden or Obama had a nominee who had been accused of screaming drunkenly “Kill Jews! Kill all Jews!”? It would be the end of the world. But, of course, with Muslims, no one cares, so this will be a minor story in the résumé of Peter Hegseth.

One last point, very quickly, is Hegseth’s mother is attacking him. Elon Musk’s daughter is attacking him. Bill Barr is attacking Kash Patel. Donald Trump was called Adolf Hitler by JD Vance. When people say, “Oh, liberals are deranged about Trump people,” it’s always other Republicans who are actually leading the charge and reminding us how awful these people are.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, it’s other Republicans who would have to approve these —

MEHDI HASAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — appointees, these nominations, unless —

MEHDI HASAN: Many of them will.

AMY GOODMAN: — this is done in a recess appointment. Twenty seconds, Mehdi.

MEHDI HASAN: Many of them will, Amy. They all roll over. They’re intimidated by Trump. A lot of them are scared to go against Trump. And it comes down to, basically, you know, the four who stopped Gaetz: Mitch McConnell, Murkowski, Collins and the new Utah replacement for Mitt Romney whose name I forget. But those four Republicans are basically the ones everyone’s going to look at and say, “Are you going to stand up for the Constitution? Are you going to stand against this unqualified nominee, Kash Patel; this dangerous nominee, Peter Hegseth; RFK Jr., who kids could die because of?” Let’s see.

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, I want to thank you for being with us, editor-in-chief of the new media website Zeteo.

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In the 2024 election, many North Carolina voters were willing to split their ticket.

President-elect Donald Trump carried the state, but Democratic North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein defeated far-right GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson and will be sworn in as governor in 2025.

North Carolina, a swing state, will have two Democratic governors in a row. But outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper and other North Carolina Democrats are slamming Republicans in the state legislature for making a "power grab" via Senate Bill 382 — which limits Stein's powers as governor in a variety of ways.

READ MORE:[Mehdi Hasan rips Nikki Haley over Biden jab: 'You hated Trump'

For one thing, SB 382 prevents Gov.-elect Stein from appointing members of the North Carolina Board of Elections and moves that power to GOP Auditor-elect Dave Boliek.

Cooper, during a Tuesday, December 3 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," slammed the bill as an egregious "power grab." And Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern has been equally critical of North Carolina Republicans and SB 382.

In a scathing post on X, formerly Twitter, Stern wrote, "This is a hugely corrupt power grab by the North Carolina General Assembly's Republican supermajority, seizing authority from the governor and the courts to prevent any meaningful check on legislative abuses. Authoritarian stuff. A really dark day for democracy in N.C."

SB 382 also prevents Rachel Hunt, North Carolina's lieutenant governor-elect, from chairing committees on energy issues.

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an 11 24

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have both upheld Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán's regime as a model for Trump's second term in the White House. One former member of Hungarian parliament who witnessed Orbán's ascent is now pointing out ways Democrats can avoid the mistakes of Hungary's opposition.

In an essay for Politico, former Hungarian MP Gábor Scheiring noted that there are numerous similarities between Orbán and Trump. Both men are authoritarians bent on expanding executive power and crushing institutional opposition. Both are former presidents who lost elections and then returned to power. And both are strident culture warriors who are intent on dominating the media. Scheiring wrote that Orbán deployed populist "software" and "hardware" that paved the way for his far-right power grab, and alerted readers to watch for certain things that Trump will borrow from Orbán in the coming years.

In describing the "software of autocracy," Scheiring noted that the Hungarian leader exploited a "folksy outsider" label allowing him to pose as a populist hero of the working class, and noted that Trump has done the same on multiple occasions – like donning an apron and working the drive-thru window at a McDonalds restaurant. Orbán and Trump also share an intense anti-immigrant platform, and demonize immigrants as a means of dividing and conquering the working class while simultaneously playing on racist and xenophobic sentiment.

Another critical piece of "software" is "economic nationalism," with both Orbán and Trump combining cultural grievance politics with palpable frustration among their nation's working-class voters about economic insecurity. Scheiring observed that "right-wing populists glorify 'makers' over 'takers,'" which he said resonates with "working-class voters who value hard work."

"This narrative also serves to cement an alliance between plutocrats, billionaires and workers, which might seem paradoxical, but it isn’t," he continued. "They are all portrayed as hard-working value creators as opposed to 'lazy bureaucrats' and 'benefit scroungers.'"

Scheiring explained that the "hardware" of the far-right authoritarian state Orbán built in Hungary is fourfold: Strengthening executive power; disciplining the judiciary; changing election processes, controlling the media and controlling their political party. In accomplishing these four things, Orbán has managed to stay in power consistently since 2010. While Trump is almost 80 years old and is prevented from seeking a third term due to the 22nd Amendment, Scheiring warned that Trump copying his Hungarian counterpart could lead to MAGA cementing power for decades. He encouraged Democrats to focus their opposition on litigating Trump's policies in courts, fighting back at the state and local level and waging war in the media by inserting their own narratives.

"Hungary’s key lesson is you don’t protect democracy by talking about democracy — you protect democracy by protecting people," Scheiring wrote. "Only a democracy that works for the people is sustainable."

Click here to read Scheiring's full essay in Politico.

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A senior Trump official has issued a threat to Senate Republicans: support and confirm the Cabinet and administration nominees Donald Trump is choosing or face a primary challenge funded by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, according to a new report from ABC News.

Jonathan Karl, ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent reports, “the Trump team will play hardball with Republicans who waiver [sic] on any of the president-elect’s nominees.”

“There’s votes coming,” the Trump advisor said, according to Karl. “And if you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.”

“The president gets to decide his cabinet. No one else. That’s just the way it is,” that advisor added, Karl reports.

The U.S. Constitution requires the Senate to provide its “advice and consent” on a large number of presidential nominees, which is not a rubber stamp. It reads in part: the President “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate…”

Democratic strategist Matt McDermott responded to Karl’s reporting, observing: “This has never, in the history of American democracy, been ‘just the way it is.'”

Media critic Susan Bordson urged the press “to provide audiences meaningful context.”

“No journalists covering executive public governance should be skittish about contextualizing these actions, she writes, calling the threats “a TRAIT of authoritarian-style governance.”

Journalist James Surowiecki warned, “Having one super-rich guy exercise massive influence over American politics is a very bad thing. I know Americans don’t really care about the nuts and bolts of democracy, but this is a true corruption of democracy.”

Jesse Lee, a former Biden White House National Economic Council senior adviser declared, “Oligarchy is here.”

ABC’s Selina Wang invoked Matt Gaetz’s name in her report, but Karl stated the threat applied to “any of the president-elect’s nominees.”

Minutes ago, Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for Attorney General.

Watch ABC News’ report from Thursday below or at this link.

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rww random but //

11/18/2024

Kyle Mantyla

Ryan Bort @ Rolling Stone: Oklahoma Superintendent Demands Students Watch Him Pray for Trump

Ryan Walters has already been under fire for using state money to purchase Trump Bibles for classrooms.

Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, Vaughn Hillyard and Mosheh Gains @ NBC News: Trump transition team compiling list of current and former U.S. military officers for possible courts-martial

All of the officers were involved in the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which independent reviews have blamed on both the Trump and Biden administrations.

Jennifer Bowers Bahney @ Mediaite: ‘TRUE!!’ Trump Confirms Plans to Declare a National Emergency to Use the US Military For Mass Deportations

Donald Trump has confirmed that he will declare a national emergency and use the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants.

Edith Olmstead @ The New Republic: Trump’s War With the Press Takes a Terrifying Turn

Donald Trump has nominated a Project 2025 author to lead the Federal Communications Commission.

Michael Kranish, Josh Dawsey and Jonathan O'Connell @ The Washington Post: Defense pick Hegseth paid accuser but denies sexual assault, attorney says

Documents obtained by The Post provide extensive detail about allegation and the response by Trump’s defense secretary pick.

Will Steakin and Peter Charalambous @ ABC News: Lawyer tells ABC News his 2 clients told House Ethics Committee that Gaetz paid them for sex

An attorney representing two women who testified before the House Ethics Committee told ABC News in an interview that former Rep. Matt Gaetz paid both his adult clients for sex.

Phil Williams @ NewsChannel 5: Aiming to 'radicalize Main Street,' Christian nationalists set sights on tiny Jackson County, Tennessee

An exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation has discovered that those Christian nationalists have set their sights on a remote Middle Tennessee county, hoping to attract hundreds, even thousands, of like-minded people from across the country as part of efforts, in the words of one activist, to “radicalize Main Street.”

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SEE THOM 3 ANNO

no lnx

alternet-

Under siege: How fascism quietly seizes control

'Knock-down, drag-out fight': GOP senators sharply divided over VanceThom HartmannNovember 19, 2024

President Biden told the nation, “American democracy is under attack … [by the] former president of the United States…”

I wrote about this years ago when Trump was trying to overthrow our government, and it’s time to talk again about what an American authoritarian government would look like. Because over the next two months we may — depending on how Americans react to the changes in our form of government Trump has planned — very rapidly slide into a form of fascism much like the old Confederacy in the 1840-1860 era.

Like the old Confederacy, it could feature political violence and threats of violence, rigged elections, and single-party rule combined with a corrupt oligarchy that finances the politicians.

And, like the old Confederacy, it could try to destroy the historic democracy of the United States of America, only this time in 2025 and the three following years.

The word “fascism” gets thrown around a lot, but most Americans have no idea what it would look like or how it would actually play out.

ALSO READ: The America-attacking Trump is coming for our military — and then he's coming for us

It’s critical to lay out what a fascist America would look like now, because this is what’s being envisioned right now by many in the Republican Party, and it might come to pass in the course of the next year or two.

Republicans don’t talk about it out loud very much, unlike Nixon’s man G. Gordon Liddy, who used to embrace fascism back in the day when he signed memos using Hitler’s SS symbol. But there is a model here and MAGA Republicans do have something in mind.

What could it be? What would it look like? How will it most likely come about?

First, and essential to American fascism, Republicans envision a strong-man Dear Leader who will hold power for as long as he (it’s almost always a “he”) chooses, with the transition to the next Dear Leader determined by The Dear Leader himself.

This has been the primary characteristic of every fascistic government to emerge in the 7000-year written history of the modern world.

When Trump was running for re-election in 2020, at rallies in both Nevada and Wisconsin, he came right out and said that not only would he win that election but that he’d also be re-elected again in 2024 and 2028. He was dead serious, and brought up running again in 2028 just this week.

Sure, our constitution says a president can only serve two terms: so did the Russian constitution, until Putin got it amended. Trump is apparently planning the same, and his followers are — if the response at the rallies when he “joked” about it is any indicator — ecstatic at the prospect.

That single strongman Leader, and his hand-selected toadies at every secondary or tertiary level of government, is the key to understanding everything else that happens when a country flips from democracy to oligarchy and then to fascism.

For example, in a fascist state the way that you as an average citizen ensure your own advancement and economic, personal, and political security is by sucking up to that one man (albeit often through one of his factotums). You either become an acolyte/follower or you find yourself on the outside looking in.

If you think this sounds extreme, just look at today’s GOP, which has become the prototype for how these MAGA Republicans will reinvent the United States now that they’ve gained power.

Liz Cheney spoke against Trump, and the Wyoming GOP expelled her and Trump supported a primary challenger. Five Republicans who voted to impeach Trump faced such a backlash that they decided to retire at the end of their terms: Adam Kinzinger, Anthony Gonzalez, John Katko, Mitt Romney, and Fred Upton.

Republican freshman Congressman Chris Jacobs, representing a district including parts of Buffalo, NY, was forced to withdraw from 2022’s primary (and, thus, he retired from the House) because after the Buffalo massacre he spoke against Trump’s and his party’s embrace of assault weapons.

Not only is fealty to Dear Leader required for political advancement in a fascist state, it’s also a requirement for individual economic advancement. Employers eager for state contracts or Dear Leader’s endorsements of their products or services demote or fire those insufficiently loyal to him.

Psychologist Dr. Bandy Lee was fired from Yale University for tweeting that Trump was mentally ill. Schoolteacher Leah Kinyon was fired from her job for saying that “I hate Donald Trump. … He is a sexual predator. He’s a literal moron.” Juli Brisker was fired from her job with government contractor Akima for giving Trump’s motorcade the finger.

Rebekah Jones was fired by Ron DeSantis for telling the truth about his covering up Florida Covid statistics. Florida’s Orange County Health Director Dr. Raul Pino was removed for encouraging his staff to get vaccinated.

When companies defy Dear Leader they are brutally punished, as DeSantis did to Disney and the Tampa Bay Rays. Soon companies don’t even try to stand up to The Leader, including media companies. The Washington Post and the LA Times both, for example, decided this year to simply “obey in advance.”

This past weekend, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Largo to kiss Trump’s royal ass, probably at the insistence of network executives since Trump has threatened the very existence of MSNBC.

Trump than ran to Fox “News” to ridicule the pair, saying they, “congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books’” and that “it’s too bad that it [Joe & Mika’s ass-kissing] wasn’t done long ago.” He added: “I expect this will take place with others in the media, even those that have been extremely hostile.”

In that, he’s certainly right. Expect more media stars and network executives to do in-person or online versions of the same, just as Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg already have. And expect guests and hosts on MSNBC, CNN, etc. to stop using the “fascism” word to describe Trump, his actions, and his people.

They think it’ll mollify Trump; instead it’ll empower him to become even more brutal, just as we saw in Florida when DeSantis signed legislation giving him the authority to “hold accountable” college professors, reviewing their politics every five years so those who aren’t totally on board with his agenda can lose tenure and be fired. The headline at Salon says it all:

“DeSantis signs bill requiring Florida students, professors to register political views with state: Universities may lose funding if staff and students’ beliefs do not satisfy Florida’s GOP-run legislature.”

You end up doing things on Dear Leader’s behalf, whether you’re an elected official in his party, working at a private corporation, or engaged in the nonprofit sector like teaching at a university or medical center.

Defying or challenging Dear Leader brings opprobrium; supporting Dear Leader is the path to career advancement. The first Trump White House and DeSantis Governor’s Office are filled with examples.

Everything is done for Dear Leader because Dear Leader is the state. The state and Dear Leader have become one.

If you challenge Dear Leader, you’re challenging the state, and that’s treason.As Marjorie Taylor Greene said of speaker Pelosi:

“She took an oath to protect American citizens and uphold our laws. And she gives aid and comfort to our enemies who illegally invade our land. That’s what treason is. And by our law, representatives and senators can be kicked out and no longer serve in our government — and it’s a crime punishable by death”.

Similarly, Trump now openly proclaims that he intends to use the power of the state against Jack Smith and others who tried to hold him to account for the crimes he has committed.

Whatever Dear Leader says becomes the law. This is called “rule by decree” and it’s where every fascist in history has ended up.

The power to rule by decree goes back to the days of kings and is also embedded in our laws about the president’s emergency powers. Trump came close to invoking it with an “emergency declaration” when he lost the election. General Flynn begged him to do it and “temporarily suspend the Constitution.”

Next year he won’t be so restrained and he will have surrounded himself in advance with people like Flynn who will make it happen.

Yet, while it will change how power is distributed in our government, things will still look much the same to average people.

As a fascistic Trump rises to power again in the United States, there will still be all the trappings of democracy.

The House and Senate, state houses and governors, bureaucracies and political systems will remain intact. Everything looks normal on the surface.

But when you peel off the top layer, you discover that all of those people in all of those offices, whether elected or bureaucratic, are serving only one principle and one person and that is Dear Leader.

Be they governors, secretaries of state, United States senators, members of the US House, state representatives, or even a part-time guy working at a polling place in Michigan, they might get a call at any time from Dear Leader demanding that they do something for him, whether it’s legal or not.

There will still be opposition parties and political candidacies in a Republican fascist America, although if any of them seriously challenges Dear Leader or shows the ability to disrupt the status quo, they’ll be discovered to have a secret drug problem or porn habit, or get imprisoned for corruption, tax evasion, or other made-up charges.

Nobody will really notice, though. People will just shrug their shoulders and assume another crook got caught. The swamp is being cleaned up. Just look at Hunter Biden facing years in prison for checking a box on a gun purchase form that an estimated 20 million other Americans checked, and paying his taxes late like other millions of Americans. Selective prosecutions become the norm.

The prosperity of the company you work for depends in part on how well it supports the politics of Dear Leader.

Dear Leader helps a few dozen oligarchs he knows are loyal to him seize control of the nation’s major industries, and every smaller company in each of those industries must directly or indirectly answer to that oligarch.

Those who fail to are bought out, shut down, or simply cannot find customers or supplies because nobody will do business with them.

The industry where this is most visible at first is the media.

Some media organizations will be absorbed by the government itself, as Putin has done in Russia; others will be bought out and run by the Leader’s oligarch buddies, as is the case today in Hungary and Turkey (among others).

Soon opposition voices vanish from all but the most obscure media, and those few opposing voices that are tolerated are pointed to by Dear Leader as proof the nation is still an open democracy.

Jews and people of color may find a rougher time maintaining a job or staying safe from vigilantes, abuse, and discrimination but most whites will be just fine, particularly white men. The majority of Americans, so long as they pay attention to football instead of politics, will tell you nothing much has changed.

There will still be Christmas parties, although people celebrating Hanukkah or Muslims praying may want to pull the shades closed.

Hate crimes and murders by vigilante groups will start happening with such frequency that the media doesn’t bother to report them anymore.

Within a few years a little bit of every business activity in the country ends up in Dear Leader’s pocket. And Dear Leader uses that revenue to enrich himself, his inner circle, and those who are part of his military entourage, his private military.

That’s right: Dear Leader’s private military.

It’d be put together like what Ron DeSantis organized in Florida, a state-sanctioned militia that answers only to Dear Leader, in this case DeSantis. Trump tried the same, flying 700+ Customs and Border Protection and other federal officers into Portland in 2020 where they hit the streets without identification on their uniforms to beat and kidnap people protesting George Floyd’s murder.

When the private militia is created at the federal level it’ll become a substantial national military force with hundreds of thousands of soldiers under Dear Leader’s direct command. Hitler’s was called the SS and answered only to The Fürher himself. Mussolini had his, as do Putin, Erdoğan, el-Sisi, bin Salman, and others today.

Citing “national security” and the need to “deport criminal immigrants,” Dear Leader’s private militia will have an undisclosed and therefore vast budget. Outside of times it’s called on to intimidate people or make a public display of power, it’ll largely operate in secret.

Its members won’t have to obey the law because, as agents of Dear Leader who’s above the law, they are, too. If they have to kill somebody, there will be no investigation unless it’s to cover up the crime. If they need to make somebody disappear, that person disappears. At first it’ll be done by stochastic terrorism: lone wolf actors not directly connected to Dear Leader but answering his general call to punish political evildoers. As well as by Dear Leader’s private secret police.

Just ask Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence, who both narrowly escaped being murdered on January 6th.

Dear Leader’s oligarch buddies and their media machine, along with his well-indoctrinated followers, promote a law-and-order crime ideology that results in high levels of incarceration, heavily militarized police, and a disregard for the general rights of the average citizen, particularly racial and religious minorities.

This is how the kind of government Donald Trump promises he will establish in America has played out, over and over again, across the world and throughout history. If Trump can bring the Senate to heel with his outrageous Cabinet nominations, you’ll know it’s fully here, now.

In our own time we’ve seen it in Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Cuba, Hungary, the Philippines, Venezuela, and dozens of other countries around the world less well known for the democratic nature of the government.

It may call itself left-wing or right-wing, but what really matters is that all power and authority rests with Dear Leader. Stalin was every bit the fascist that Hitler and Mussolini were; his fascism just had a different face and brand.

As “future dystopian” as all this may sound, there are more governments in the world run this way today than there are democracies. It’s “normal.”

Once established it’s almost impossible to dislodge without a crisis like the death of Dear Leader or an actual revolution. Just ask any Russian. Or the women in Iran today.

Some of the governments around the world that are structured like this were democracies that turned fascist, like Russia, Turkey, and Hungary. But many have been this way for centuries, including the hereditary kingdoms in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

So, how do the democratic countries that make the transition to fascism allow that to happen? And what is life like in those countries, both during and after the time that it’s happened?

After World War II, a Chicago reporter named Milton Mayer struggled to understand how Hitler was able to flip one of the world’s most stable democracies into fascism.

An American Jew of German ancestry and a brilliant writer, Mayer went to Germany seven years after Hitler’s fall and befriended 10 “average Germans,” asking each how the Nazis rose to power in an otherwise civilized nation.

His book, They Thought They Were Free, is his story of that experience. Intertwined through it — first published in 1955 — are repeated overt and subtle warnings to future generations of Americans: to us, today.

Mayer quotes one of his German friends as describing what happened once The Leader seized power:

“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”

Did the German people realize they’d abandoned democracy? That they would soon become international pariahs? The college professor Mayer interviewed answered:

“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop.

“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.

“And one day it is over his head.”

Is it possible this could happen in America? That all these “small steps” would one day lead to a dictatorial form of government that has so cowed the people, the politicians, and even the business community and media that it can’t be challenged?

Doesn’t the nation rise up and protest the destruction of its own democracy? Don’t the people pour into the streets?

Mayer’s professor gave us the answer:

“You see, one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow.

“You don’t want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? — Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.”

We can’t say we weren’t warned by our own people, our own politicians, the most senior members of our own institutional power structure.

In a speech that was hysterically criticized by Republicans and Fox “News“ pundits, former President Obama came right out and said it:

“You have to tend to this garden of democracy, otherwise things can fall apart fairly quickly. And we’ve seen societies where that happens.”

Yes, the former President of the United States was invoked Nazi Germany seven years ago while Donald Trump was President, adding:

“Now, presumably, there was a ballroom in Vienna in the late 1920s or ’30s that looked and seemed as if it ― filled with the music and art and literature and the science that was emerging ― would continue into perpetuity.

“And then,” President Obama said, “60 million people died. And the entire world was plunged into chaos.”

The warnings have been there all along. I wrote of this in 2005, quoting Mayer and going off on Bush and the PATRIOT Act as the prequel to fascism.

Americans have been shouting about it lately, in venues like The New York Times and Madeline Albright’s book and from legislators like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

And now the President of the United States makes a prime-time address to the nation, warning Americans that fascism is at our door. It gets only a passing mention in the news.

But, still, how do we know? Is there a sudden proclamation by The Leader that the nation is now “officially fascist”?

Back to Mayer’s German friend in 1954:

“But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.”

Next year and in 2026 many of us will no longer be able to know if our voices, our attempts to vote, will actually decide who leads our nation.

Many of us will show up at the polls in two years to discover we are no longer registered to vote. Many of our mail-in ballots will be “challenged” by Republican vote observers and we won’t learn about it until after the election is long over.

Five Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that you can be purged from the voting rolls on a whim. In the majority of US states Republicans can take over electoral precincts, install their people (as we just learned they are doing right now) and run them under whatever rules they want.

Already in some states when the GOP inflicts 10-hour lines to vote on their people, for example, you go to jail if you bring them water. If you make a mistake on your voting registration or ballot, or help another person register to vote, they can send you to prison for five years or more.

Somehow, of the many people from both parties who are busted for this, it seems only the Democrats end up going to jail. Particularly Black Democrats.

And yet everything seems “normal.” As Mayer’s professor friend told him, when Dear Leader finally seizes control of all the levers of power from political to economic to spiritual, everything changes but everything also stays the same:

“The world you live in — your nation, your people — is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.

“But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed.

“Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.”

We’re already quite a ways down this road, which is why our democracy has been rated by numerous international groups as being “at risk” or similar designations.

Voter suppression, gerrymandering, the proliferation of phony media selling rightwing propaganda as “news,” armed militias on our streets (and the GOP recruiting them for “election monitors”), the media bending its collective knee to Trump, are the visible tip of the proverbial iceberg.

“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men?” Mayer’s friend asked rhetorically.

And, without the benefit of a previous and recent and well-remembered fascistic regime to refer to, Mayer had to candidly answer: “Frankly, I do not know.”

That was 1954; this is 2024. We now know.

We know how the poisonous hate that animates fascism seeps into a society because we saw it ourselves during the first 4 years of the Trump administration and throughout the past year’s campaign.

We’re watching it in Red states across the country as MAGA Republicans replace honorable Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

We know how easily a government can be toppled and how close we came on January 6, 2021: if just five Republicans had not refused to go along with Trump we would have been thrown into this fascist dystopia four years earlier.

We can’t pretend we don’t know what’s happening and where it will lead if it’s not stopped. And now that we do know, we can’t escape the moral obligation to resist with everything we have.

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FASCISM6

More than revenge

Attacks enforce loyalty

A litany of failed politicians

Attacks also target opposition power

From an external to an internal enemy

Channeling anger

Authoritarian impulse

Examination of propaganda, rhetoric

Improper interference

What ‘fascism’ means

Shared mutual concern

As Trump ignores order to return Abrego Garcia, right-wing media falsely claim undocumented immigrants have no due process rights

Star Wars has always been political

A galaxy not so far away

Trump is trying to throttle the free press — and U.S. moguls are going along with it

Capitol riotTrump's Jan. 6 pardons face pushback from Republican senators

Historian reveals how Hitler 'dismantled' democracy in less than two months

Abstract

HEGEMONIC AND TRADITIONAL MASCULINITY

THE MANOSPHERE

THE PRESENT STUDY

METHOD...

Capitol riot Trump's Jan. 6 pardons face pushback from Republican senators