FASCISM 7 625

ESTB 6 25 NAT GUARD ICE RAIDS

MERRI OK

SEE FOUR HORSES: privatization, financialization, militarization, and criminalization, which together are producing a steadily creeping authoritarianism

SEE MILITARIZATION DC 8 25 martial law ~ posse comm

SEE VIOLENCE 5 POLITICAL LIE DEMONIZATION

EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLING VENEZ NARCO-TERROR 9 25 FORCE TAG

SEE RETALIATION DEFUND LEFT XO EXEC ORDER TERROR BS 3 EMERGENCY DECLAR GOP STEAL ELECTION

SEE DIRECT ACTION ~ HEDGES

SEE DEATH THREAT EG JUDGE , ELECTION WORKERS

SEE KLEPTO CORRUPT 3 SEE PLUTO BUY MEDIA FLYNN DOJ PAYOUT 3 26

SEE RACISM thom says = 8 25

SEE TEXAS 3 ABBOTT Paxton

see infiltration radicalization

SEE CRUEL PERFORMATIVE PSEUDO-EVENT SADO-POPULISM CHANGE DOMINATE NARRATIVE DISTRACT FROM FAILS VENEZ KIDNAP MADURO

SEE MISO HOMOPHOBE ~ MACHO

SEE DISRUPT FLOOD ZONE EARTH 2 ALT RT ~EXPERT FACT

ATTACK EXPERT SCIENCE UNIVERSITIES labor econ stats 7 25

ACAD SUPPRESS DEI CRIT THINK FLORIDA STORY 1

SEE VOTER SUPPRESS CLETA EMERGENCY 2026 MIDTERMS

SEE PRESS SUPPRESS 1ST AMEND // EARTH2 ; antifa zone 11 25

ACTIV SUPPRESS // CRIMINALIZATION

SEE CENSOR WWW MEMORY HOLE STORY 1 LIE GASLT REVISION

SEE CORP BAD ACTORS CAVE LAW FIRMS MEDIA CORPS CONSOLIDATION MERGER

SEE CAVE APPEASE BEND GALLUP

SEE PPL LOSE CONST RIGHTS FLAG BURN BS XO

see SECRET POLICE MARTIAL LAW ICE

SEE RULE OF LAW HABEAS Drag 2nd class

SEE COURTS 4 JUDGE ~

SEE REAL VICTIM

BAK CAPT 11 25

SEE TRUMP JUDGE STACK COURTS

SEE DEATH THREAT, POLITICAL VIOLENCE

~ SALON CDV AMANDA ATLMOTHOM ROBT REICH

BAK 9 25

---

doj poll watchers to blue cities 8 26

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HEDGES SAID PPL IN STR OUR ONLY DEFENSE //

AN 10 26

Trump receives a chilling warning that he could face a lengthy prison sentence in a new analysis examining what could happen if he attempts to interfere with the midterm elections, drawing comparisons to a president who tried to seize power and is serving life in prison.

In The Nation on Thursday, Paul Loeb and South Korean activist Jungmin Choi gave an example of Yoon Suk Yeol's downfall, whose failed December 2024 martial law declaration ended in mass protests, impeachment and life in prison for insurrection.

The authors say that Yoel’s fall from grace is an example of why Americans should resist any attempt by Trump or his administration to refuse to accept the election results.

“How do you stop a would-be dictator? The first requirement is knowing that it’s possible,” they wrote.

On December 3, 2024, Yoon declared martial law, which banned political activity and sent troops into the National Assembly. However, protesters fought back by surrounding the building, and lawmakers forced their way past military forces to overturn the martial law decree.

The protesters grew to over a million in just a few days, and Yoon was impeached and removed from office.

He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison in February 2026 after he was found guilty of leading an insurrection. Yoon escaped the death penalty and has filed multiple appeals for his conviction.

The court found that Yoon attempted to obstruct lawmakers from carrying out their constitutional duties by sending armed forces to the legislature.

“It is sufficient to conclude that there was intent to obstruct or paralyze the Assembly’s functions for a considerable period,” Judge Ji Gwi-yeon said.

Loeb and Choi detail five lessons for Americans from Yoon’s failed attempt at seizing power. They include the importance of voting, public resistance, and encouraging the military to refuse illegal orders. They referenced the six US senators and House members with military and national security backgrounds who released a video last November urging the military to refuse illegal orders.

They add that the effort to safeguard an election doesn't end once ballots are cast, noting that local authorities, the courts and regular citizens may all have a part to play if an administration tries to obstruct the process.

“But massive, immediate nonviolent protest will also be essential,” the authors wrote.

They also mention that it is essential to protect voting polls, writing: “For the US midterms, most points of contestation will be local: Citizens and local governments need to protect polling places and vote-counting centers, including having police protect them from disruption.”

They write that in the US, "power gets consolidated in stages," and aside from legal challenges, protest organizations such as Indivisible and No Kings have conducted poll monitoring and Hands Off the Vote trainings.

Following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and Trump's subsequent pardons of the insurrectionists, many have feared what he may do if he doesn't hold on to power.

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rww 10 26

• Nick Fuentes wants to see America taken over by a dictator who will "literally just break the system."

• Greg Bovino has now teamed up with neo-Nazi Jake Lang.

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AN 10 26 TC

Bruce Severy, a full-bearded, idealistic 26-year-old, moved from Southern California in 1973 to the small town of Drake, North Dakota, where he had accepted a job teaching English at the public high school. He, his small family and their menagerie of pets settled into a large, white frame house across from the school.

Severy’s progressive bent showed in the curriculum he taught. Insisting that his students should learn “how to think, not what to think,” he assigned his sophomore literature class contemporary fiction to read, including Kurt Vonnegut’s

“Slaughterhouse-Five,” a strange and quirky anti-war novel published four years prior.

While Severy chose works that he believed could help his students make sense of the problems confronting society, they clashed with the conservative values of his new home. A parent eventually complained about profanity in “Slaughterhouse-Five.” In November 1976, the Drake school board voted unanimously to remove the book from school premises. School officials told students to turn in their copies, and their lockers were searched if they refused. The district went on to burn 32 copies of the novel in the school furnace.

As a Vonnegut scholar, I’m fascinated by the backlash to “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which is now widely taught in high schools and colleges across the country. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court eventually weighed in on Vonnegut’s novel, there are direct parallels between that controversy and the politics of school censorship cases today, which continue to target “Slaughterhouse-Five,” among countless other works.

Vonnegut responds

News of what happened in Drake spread quickly in the press. Those who objected to the school board’s actions made comparisons to Nazi book burnings. The school district’s cause wasn’t helped by the fact that the superintendent’s last name was Fuhrman – evoking Adolf Hitler’s formal title, Führer – and the school board chairman’s last name was McCarthy, reminding the public of Joseph McCarthy, the disgraced anti-communist senator who sought to purge and censor Americans from all walks of life.

When Kurt Vonnegut learned of the case, he was both angry and saddened.

In a letter to the Drake school board, he insisted his books were “not sexy” and did not argue “in favor of wildness of any kind.” Instead, “they beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are.” He informed the board that he was a decorated World War II veteran who had fought against nations that hate books and burn them. He never received a reply.

The North Dakota incident, while the most egregious attempt to censor Vonnegut, was not the only case of its kind.

As “Slaughterhouse-Five” made its way into high school and college curricula, it faced a backlash by parents and school boards who argued the novel was obscene and immoral. Its irreverent treatment of Christianity was deemed blasphemous, while its unsparing portrayal of the U.S. military’s bombing of Dresden, Germany, was condemned as anti-American.

The book has been challenged as recently as January 2026, when the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of Vonnegut’s estate after Utah’s “sensitive materials law” gave school districts a mechanism to ban the novel.

The Supreme Court weighs in

Censorship cases involving “Slaughterhouse-Five” are complex because they have occurred almost entirely in high schools rather than colleges. Schools must balance their responsibility to decide what material is appropriate for younger students with students’ First Amendment rights to receive information and ideas.

One important case dealing with these issues made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1976, several board members from the Island Trees School district in Long Island, New York, reacting to a list of “inappropriate” titles publicized by a conservative activist group, objected to 11 books held in the districts’ school libraries or included in the curriculum.

Seven of the books were written by authors from minority ethnic or religious groups, including titles as seemingly inoffensive as “Best Stories of Negro Writers,” edited by Langston Hughes, and the young adult novel “A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich” by Alice Childress.

The 11th book on the list was “Slaughterhouse-Five.” At a press conference, school board member Frank Martin read excerpts from the novel out loud, focusing on a passage where one of Vonnegut’s characters, Kilgore Trout, reimagines the story of Christ’s crucifixion. Trout claims that this revised story actually offered a better moral than the original Gospel story: It teaches people to be kind to everyone, not just the well connected.

Martin, however, declared that even if the rest of the book told the best story in the world, he wouldn’t want it in the school library “with this stuff in it.”

Five high school students, led by 17-year-old Steven Pico, soon filed a lawsuit against the district, claiming the book removal was unconstitutional and that their First Amendment rights to freely receive information had been violated. The case wended its way through the lower courts for years, before it came to the Supreme Court in 1982.

Board of Education v. Pico was a tangled case. The justices wrote seven separate opinions and did not definitively settle the First Amendment issues. But a 5-4 majority did determine in favor of the students who argued that their case should have received a full trial rather than a summary judgment years ago.

As the only Supreme Court case to date involving censorship in school libraries, Pico, while a limited ruling, did set out general guidelines still used today.

The decision affirmed that school districts have the authority to supervise the education of students in their care and may remove materials that are, in the words of Justice William Brennan, “pervasively vulgar” or educationally unsuitable.

But such a decision may not be based on a school district’s objections to the ideas expressed in the books. Books may not be removed on narrowly partisan or political grounds, and removal must comply with the “transcendent imperatives of the First Amendment.”

Book banning today

Despite the fact that the justices ruled that books cannot be banned on partisan or political grounds, book banning has been on the rise in America since 2020.

The literary and free speech advocacy group PEN America documented 2,532 instances of book bans in public schools in 2021–22. That figure rose to 3,362 in 2022–23 and nearly tripled to 10,046 in 2023–24.

Since then, the numbers have dipped somewhat but are still alarmingly high.

Surprisingly, many of the school censorship cases today still focus on the same old issues affecting “Slaughterhouse-Five” over 50 years ago – profanity, sexual content and violence. John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” has been the most frequently banned book in schools since 2021, mostly because of a brief, awkward sexual encounter between two main characters.

But fiction and memoirs focusing on gender identity and LGBTQ+ issues have increasingly become targets of censorship, abetted by right-wing parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty. George M. Johnson’s memoir “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and Maia Kobabe’s autobiographical graphic novel “Gender Queer” are among the most banned books in schools in recent years.

And like the majority of the books banned in the Pico case, books by Black authors remain high on the list of school censorship cases. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” appears among the top 10 banned books since 2021, and her Pulitzer Prize-winning “Beloved” comes in at No. 26. Ironically, “Beloved” was also named the single best work of American fiction since 1980 in a 2006 poll of writers and literary critics.

Kurt Vonnegut believed in and argued for First Amendment rights his whole career. In 1976 he told students at Connecticut College that language and literature were “holy” to him. He thought schools should make a point of exposing children to all sorts of opinions and information to make them better citizens.

But he wasn’t too hopeful. Arguing against book banning, he wearily concluded, was like “attempting to explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans.”

Susan Farrell, Professor of English, College of Charleston

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

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MMA

Who's calling for the Trump administration to send federal agents to polling places?

Right-wing media personalities have pushed for the Trump administration to send federal agents and the military to polling places and interfere with vote counting, but voting rights groups are pushing back

Written by Jack Winstanley & Reed McMaster

Published 10/02/26

Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, right-wing media figures have called for President Donald Trump to deploy federal law enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, or the military to polling stations across the country to “surround the polls” as votes are cast or to interfere with vote counting after the election.

While administration officials have offered mixed messaging on whether they'd actually send law enforcement agents or military to polling places, the law directly prohibits any potential effort to station armed federal agents at polls, and experts say this policy could potentially disenfranchise voters who feel intimidated by their presence. In order to prevent this kind of interference by federal agents at the polls, civil rights, labor, and voting rights groups have filed lawsuits ahead of the midterms.

The proposal to deploy ICE officers to polling stations is just one of several election-related policies floated by right-wing media and the Trump administration ahead of the 2026 midterms. Right-wing media figures have also suggested the president could declare a national emergency over alleged voter fraud in order to increase federal control over the midterms, and have pushed for restrictive voting requirements such as those included in the SAVE America Act. The courts have blocked many of the administration's actions to implement parts of these policies.

Is it even legal for law enforcement or the military to be at polling places?

As the Brennan Center for Justice's Sean Morales-Doyle has written, “The law is crystal clear: It is illegal to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to any polling place.” Dale Ho, then-director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project, similarly stated, “There's no law that I'm aware of that permits, or that would authorize, the president to deploy federal law enforcement or military or anything like that for domestic use in … or around polling places.”

Experts explain that stationing federal law enforcement at polling sites risks intimidating voters out of casting their ballots. The ACLU noted that the mere presence of federal immigration agents at polling places could qualify as illegal voter intimidation, with its report listing “the deployment of federal immigration agents or federalized National Guard in or around polling places in targeted communities during early voting or on Election Day to try to suppress voting” as an example of “illegal voter intimidation.” The ACLU also specifically cites “aggressively questioning voters about their citizenship, criminal record, or other qualifications to vote” as another example of illegal voter intimidation.

Ahead of the midterm elections, several lawsuits have already been filed to block federal agents from interfering at the polls, including one from a coalition of civil rights groups and unions. The Brennan Center also noted that any individual can sue under the Voting Rights Act if they are “intimidated from voting by the presence of ICE agents or soldiers.”

Who has been among the biggest proponents of having federal agents at polling places? Steve Bannon.

For months, former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon has been a prominent voice supporting the deployment of federal agents to polling stations, regularly advocating on his show for ICE to be present at polling stations.

Bannon said ICE officers will be near polling places: “If you don't have an ID — if you're not a citizen — you're not voting.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 8/19/25]

While interviewing former Trump Department of Homeland Security adviser Todd Bensman, Bannon stated, “I think ICE agents belong at polling places.”

Bannon dismissed fears of voter intimidation, stating, “It's intimidation. It should be intimidating to noncitizens. Yes, we want it to be intimidating to noncitizens. You should not go to a polling place.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 8/13/26]

Bannon called it a “minimum requirement” for ICE to be present at polling stations. [Real America's Voice, War Room, 7/17/26]

Bannon said that stationing ICE at airports can be “a test case … to really perfect ICE's involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.” Bannon added, “They can’t work the machines, you know what they’ll do? Just walk up and down, hey, we're going to speed things through — can we check your IDs? That’s what’s going to happen in the fall of ’26 because, folks, we’re tired of having elections stolen.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 3/23/26]

Bannon stated, “And I'm saying you're going to have ICE agents around the polls to make sure you can't have illegal aliens in there voting.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 2/19/26]

Bannon also said in February, “You’re damn right we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 2/3/26]

Who else in right-wing media has promoted federal agents at polling places?

Article III Project founder Mike Davis: “I would have ICE agents and other federal law enforcement at every polling place across America. And that should only scare away noncitizens.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 9/1/26]

Podcaster Tim Pool stated that, “at the bare minimum,” he expects federal law enforcement to be present at polling locations in states that do not cooperate with DHS. He said, “This press conference had me expecting, OK, Trump made the announcement. Markwayne Mullin, DHS, they're going to come out and they're going to say, here's what we intend to do. I mean, at the bare minimum, we expect something like we will have federal law enforcement agency at polling locations in states that do not cooperate.” [Rumble, Tim Pool Daily Show, 7/17/26]

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro: “Making sure illegal immigrants do not show up at polling sites is not a horrible use of ICE.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 3/24/26]

Podcaster Benny Johnson: “Can we deploy ICE to every voting booth in America? Would that fix the fraud? Of course, it would.” Johnson continued, “Why are we even talking about the SAVE Act? You don't need the SAVE Act if you don't have a nation overrun with criminal aliens.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 3/24/26]

On X22 Report, the host declared that ICE and the National Guard can “absolutely” “assist with helping in the elections.” [Rumble, X22 Report, 3/24/26; X22 Report, accessed 9/24/26]

Fox’s Jesse Watters argued for ICE to be at polling locations. Watters said, “Well, one of the demands, they say no ICE agents can be at a polling station. What's the trouble with that, Jessica? What's the problem? If illegals aren't voting, why can't ICE agents be at a polling station?” [Fox News, The Five, 3/23/26]

X22 Report’s host also argued that “if you pre-position ICE in certain areas around the country, maybe with the National Guard, that makes it a lot more difficult for the illegals to actually vote in the election.” He added that lawsuits preemptively filed over potential ICE deployments to polling locations were an attempt “to find out if ICE is going to be at the voting centers.” [Rumble, X22 Report, 3/3/26]

During an appearance on Newsmax, radio host Tony Katz questioned, “Why aren’t ICE agents at polling places? Why aren't we ensuring that Americans vote?” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie Frontline, 3/3/26]

The Gateway Pundit wrote in a blog that any concern from Democrats about voter intimidation because of ICE presence “only makes sense if illegal aliens are, in fact, showing up to vote.” The blog, which also shares Bannon’s call for ICE to “surround the polls,” states, “Democrats will inevitably argue that ICE’s presence at the polls constitutes voter intimidation, but that concern only makes sense if illegal aliens are, in fact, showing up to vote.” [The Gateway Pundit, 2/4/26]

Newsmax host Carl Higbie said, “ICE at polling places shouldn’t be a problem because illegals shouldn’t be voting in our elections.” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie Frontline, 2/2/26]

Who has suggested deploying the military to interfere with vote counting after the election?

In response to host Alex Jones asking what “martial law after the election” would look like, attorney Peter Ticktin said “it would be the FBI probably going out and seizing the machines where there’s a good reason to suspect that the vote was not a real vote.” He further explained, “Let the machines do the count, but before the count — but then let us commandeer and get the ballots. If we have the ballots, we can count them ourselves. You know, there’s ways we can do it, and it would be done after the election, but before certification.” Earlier in the episode, Ticktin claimed Trump's “going to seize the machines. … If it’s stolen from us because of their machines, we’ll be — then he’s going to have to declare martial law.” [Alex Jones Live, The Alex Jones Show, 9/29/26, 9/29/26]

Mark Cook, described by Colorado Newsline as one “of the most influential election deniers in Colorado,” said during an interview with podcaster David Nino Rodriguez that “if the military shows up to ensure that the people can run their own election unfettered, I’m all for that.” He stated, “What really needs to happen is the people that have been manipulating elections, that have stolen the elections from the people and have blocked the people away from having oversight in their own elections, we need someone to hold them back so citizens can have the oversight necessary to conduct their own elections and ensure and verify the integrity of the vote. So if the military shows up to ensure that the people can run their own election unfettered, I'm all for that. Bring them.” [Rumble, 2/19/26; Colorado Newsline, 6/18/24]

On Brighteon Broadcast News, host Mike Adams argued, “We need the military to count the votes, especially in the blue cities, because you can’t trust Democrats.” While speculating about a potential “armed uprising” from the left, Adams added, “I think Trump actually sort of tactically needs that to happen in order to declare the emergency and deploy the troops before Election Day.” [Natural News, Brighteon Broadcast News, 1/14/26; Media Matters, 4/2/18]

On Health Ranger Report two days later, Adams repeated his call to “have the military count the votes.” He argued, “You have to have a national emergency to where you deploy the military, especially in blue cities,” in order to count the votes. [Natural News, Health Ranger Report, 1/16/26]

What has the Trump administration said about deploying federal law enforcement or the military to the polls?

The Department of Homeland Security has offered mixed messaging on the potential for sending ICE officers to polling locations. In February, DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity Heather Honey — whom ProPublica has described as “a protege of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results” — reportedly told a group of secretaries of state that “any suggestion that ICE will be present at any polling location is simply not true.” But Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has refused to rule out the possibility; during his confirmation hearing, Mullin said that if ICE is sent to polling places, “there will be a reason for us to be there, and it’ll be known why we’re there.” Mullin added in September that agents could make arrests at polling places if needed, noting that the “only reason” agents “would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone.”

White House border czar Tom Homan, meanwhile, downplayed concerns about federal law enforcement presence at polling stations, noting, “Part of DHS' job is secure elections, and I’m not going to say … what our plan is going forward, but if only U.S. citizens can vote, I don’t see the issue of what they’re concerned about.” And earlier this year, Trump expressed his own willingness to send federal agents to the polls when a reporter asked whether he would “send the National Guard or ICE to voting locations in November” and Trump responded that he would do “anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”

What do voting rights groups advise voters to do in response to threats of law enforcement or the military at polling places?

Voting rights groups have resources to prepare voters for the possibility of federal agents or the military intimidating voters at polling stations. Democracy Security Project Action Fund suggests voters “go to vote.gov and check your eligibility; be sure that you’re registered” and know “the most convenient polling place for you, whether that’s in person or vote-by-mail. Keep track of deadlines.”

Additional recommendations from the ACLU include:

What to do if there are reports of ICE, National Guard, or other federal agents in your community during early voting or Election Day

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an 10 26

Harvard expert: Trump is fully prepared to launch a brute-force coup

Matthew Rozsa October 01, 2026

President Donald Trump has made it very clear that, if it is within his power, he will steal the 2026 midterm elections rather than allow Democrats to win them. If he succeeds, America will cease to be a democracy — yet even if he fails, he has already made democracy in America into an "if" rather than a given.

That, at least, is the assessment of Dr. Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government at Harvard University. When he spoke with me for AlterNet, Levitsky made it clear that there is a non-zero chance of Trump successfully turning America into an effective dictatorship before the 2026 election cycle is over. The question is not whether he has the legal authority to declare martial law, send the military (and/or ICE and/or other forms of law enforcement) to seize ballots or to demand Republicans in Congress simply refuse to seat Democrats. From a strictly legal perspective, he cannot do any of those things.

The concern is that Trump also has what Levitsky described as "de facto" power — that is, the capacity to effectively implement these or other anti-democratic measures in defiance of the law. After all, Trump has already engaged in mass deportations, silenced media critics, levied tariffs, destroyed national monuments and slapped his name all over the place regardless of the legality behind those measures. Perhaps most notably, he attempted a coup after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden and was able to regain power thanks to the complicity of right-wing media and the complacency of America's top legal and business institutions.

In that sense, as Levitsky pointed out, American democracy is already in a sense permanently weakened. We are no longer a consolidated democracy, or one in which democratic institutions consistently work even if there are other social injustices; we are an unconsolidated democracy, or a government in which it is never entirely certain whether basic democratic structures will remain in intact.

Trump trying to steal the midterms through brute force.

Rozsa: President Trump has repeatedly said, either directly or through various surrogates, that he is considering declaring a national emergency, implementing martial law, sending ICE or the military to the polls, and in other ways directly hindering the actual process of the election occurring. Does he have the power to do these things?

Levitsky: Well, it depends whether you're talking about de facto power or legal power, constitutional power. I'm not a constitutional expert, but most would agree that he does not have the formal power to do these things. The Constitution gives the federal executive almost no power over election administration. That is left to the states. So the kind of federal intervention that Trump is talking about is almost certainly unconstitutional.

The real issue, of course, is whether he has the de facto power to do it, whether he can pull it off. And first, I'd say from the outset, I have no doubt that Trump is willing to order some sort of a coup against democracy to try to overturn the elections. He has shown over and over again that he is not a democrat and is perfectly willing to engage in really old-school authoritarian tactics to overturn elections.

We don't know for sure whether he can get away with it. There are some troubling signs. One of them is that we're just completely unprepared for a sort of radical seizure of power in this way. The courts have been pretty good, not great, on Trump's efforts to sort of overstep his bounds on elections, but courts move slowly. And it's just not at all clear, if on election night Trump were to order the seizure of ballot boxes, declare some kind of an emergency, mobilize troops, that courts could move quickly enough to stop it. So at the very least, it would create a massive, massive crisis.

But ultimately, I don't think he's got the power to get away with it. Unfortunately, we're living in a world where the chances of it happening are well above zero. But looking at, one, Trump's public support and his political power, which is in pretty sharp decline: there's a lot of evidence that the most successful assaults on democracy are carried out by presidents with 70, 80, 85% support, whether it's Putin or Hugo Chávez or Fujimori or Bukele. All of these guys had 80% support. Trump's at 35, 36.

And secondly, if you look at the Trump administration's record in planning, orchestrating, carrying out major policy initiatives, from DOGE to the Liberation Day tariffs to the war in Iran, it's just utter, utter incompetence, lack of foresight, lack of coordination, lack of planning. Fraud is hard. Repression is hard. Destroying constitutional rule is hard. If I had to bet a dollar — glad I'm not — I don't think these guys have the capacity to do it.

Rozsa: When I talked with Justin Levitt from Loyola Law School, he was very doubtful that Trump could use law enforcement and/or the military in this way. I then interjected with a recent quote from attorney Peter Ticktin, who is one of Trump's advisers. When someone told Ticktin that there would be riots if Trump attempted a coup, Ticktin responded, quote, "Our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are." Levitt then replied that this was a fantasy. But my question is, do you think Ticktin has a point, logistically speaking?

Levitsky: What does "logistically speaking" mean?

Rozsa: That because their armed forces are a lot bigger than the forces that could be arrayed against them, they could ultimately carry out a coup.

Levitsky: Well, this is a little frustrating because, again, there is a non-zero chance that they could carry out a coup. The reason why I think it's a relatively low probability — and we're dealing with a lot of speculation here — is that they have to pull off two things to militarize in that way. One, they've got to get the military to go along with egregiously, openly anti-democratic behavior, which they might, but it's not certain that the military would go along. And secondly, repression is really hard, especially if you're talking about an unpopular government in a context where there isn't a perceived crisis. In the aftermath of something like 9/11, or if we were at war, or if there were a real subversive organization in the country — if Americans were really scared about something, or if they really liked Trump — they'd be more likely to tolerate repression.

This is a context that is very unfavorable for carrying out repression. Look at what the Trump administration tried to do in Minnesota. They made the streets of Minneapolis look like El Salvador in the 1980s for a while, and it blew up in their face politically. And so if they couldn't militarize Minneapolis in January 2026, I think chances are that an effort to do it at the national level would fail.

Rozsa: Certainly, I hope you're right, but here is my counter to what you're saying, and I want to emphasize I'm playing devil's advocate. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but this is the thought that keeps occurring to me. It's the information ecosystem in which a lot of Americans choose to live. To illustrate what I mean: after January 6th, I kept hearing over and over again, "That's it. Trump's political career is dead. He just attempted a coup." Even some right-wing media outlets were initially critical of him. But then the far-right outlets were backing his attempts to gaslight people about what happened, and soon even the more mainstream conservative outlets began to fall in line, either downplaying it or contributing to the gaslighting, so that by the time the 2024 election rolled around, an event that had once been considered disqualifying was no longer an impediment to him being reelected.

Using that same reality, what is to stop CNN, which is soon going to be taken over by a pro-Trump family, and Fox News and all of these conservative outlets from spinning their own version of events regarding Trump's coup attempt, and in so doing, reducing the backlash against it? Do you see what I'm saying?

Levitsky: Yeah, look, I take your point about January 6th and the elite reaction to January 6th. After the shock wore off, after two or three days, when Republican politicians kind of put their finger to the wind, the elite abdication that occurred after January 6th was shocking. I certainly didn't expect it, and it was really costly. The reason why we have Trump today, and the reason why we're facing this threat, is exactly the dynamic you just described: that elites just decided to look the other way.

Could that happen again? Well, the thing to watch, and what was really critical in the 2021–2024 period, which I agree with you was just really, really decisive, was the behavior of Republican elites. Almost all Republican elites got in lock[step]. A few of them wandered off the reservation for a couple of weeks, but they all came back. And the ones who didn't, like Liz Cheney, were purged from the party. The unified Republican message that January 6th was okay, was justified, was acceptable, that the election might have been unfair — it was the fact that it was a unified message coming from the Republican elite. That's what allowed that myth to persist and allowed Trump to remain politically viable.

So one of the keys, one of the things to look for, is how Republican leaders would respond to this coup. If there is unified or even majoritarian Republican politician support or acquiescence or even silence in the face of this coup, then we're in worse shape. If a number of leading Republicans speak up, we'll be in better shape. But even so, Trump has less support, even in his own coalition, than he had back in 2021. I think the evidence shows that the support is weaker. It's thinner. And you can throw in CNN if you want, but the right-wing media ecosystem is real, but it's a third of the country. It's a third of the country. And a third of the country may well mobilize or support a coup attempt. I think there's reason to think that much of that MAGA base would support it. But Fox News lying about the coup is not going to affect majority public opinion in the United States.

Rozsa: CNN, by the way, will also lie about it now that it's been purchased by the Ellisons. And I would say I'm not only concerned about Republicans —

Levitsky: CNN might lie about it. We don't know that.

Rozsa: I think they will. I think Ellison has made it very clear where he stands. But my —

Levitsky: Ellison wants to make a lot of money in the medium term. And with Trump this weak, that's a hell of a bet, to bet on a coup.

Rozsa: Well, the other point I wanted to make is it's not just Republicans who need to go along. Jacob Weisberg wrote a great book called Profiles in Cowardice about individuals who aren't part of that coalition, but for transactional reasons decided to participate. People like Jeff Bezos, people like the head of the law firm Paul, Weiss. That type of logic, which argues that only a sucker makes a sacrifice in the name of principle, that a smart person goes where the power is — that could also facilitate a coup. What do you think?

Levitsky: I think you're misreading the balance of power today. This is not December 2024. It's not January, February 2025. Trump is in a political [corner]. He's politically weakened. And I'm as dismayed at the behavior of Paul, Weiss and universities and Jeff Bezos as Jacob Weisberg is. But those guys are making a different calculation today. To jump on the Trump train as it's descending into chaos is a much, much [riskier bet]. It turned out to be a pretty stupid bet in early 2025. The law firms that cooperated, the universities that cooperated — they're not better off for having acquiesced to or appeased Trump than those that ultimately resisted. But as Weisberg lays out in his book, there was a logic to it.

And it's not a very pretty logic from the standpoint of someone who cares about democracy, but there was a logic to it. I don't think that logic exists anymore. I think it's utterly irrational for somebody who's thinking about making money in the next two years to support a coup led by somebody that's unpopular. It's super high-risk.

Trump trying to steal the midterms through legal chicanery.

Rozsa: Now I want to talk about another way that Trump could pull this off. Let us say, hypothetically, that he isn't able to overturn the results through physical force and all of his efforts at frivolous litigation fail. He could, through the bureaucracy, get Democrats who were elected ultimately rejected. And I'm thinking of two possible methods. The first is through bureaucrats that he's embedded in positions of election administration and certification who believe in the Big Lie. And the second is by convincing Speaker Johnson or Leader Thune to reject Democratic victories when they are handed over to Congress in 2027. What do you think of either of those possibilities?

Levitsky: In terms of the first one, there's been talk in my world of kind of packing local election administrations with election deniers, and to some extent that has happened. But I don't think it ever amounted to as much as the supporters hoped and people like me feared initially. And again, looking at this administration and its efforts — its war efforts, its tariff efforts, its DOGE efforts — it strains my imagination to think they could pull off some kind of extraordinary coordinated feat like this. The Johnson Congress option —

Rozsa: Or Thune.

Levitsky: Or Thune, yeah. I think that is more credible. First of all, it's entirely legal, it turns out. If Republican candidates scream fraud and Johnson can point to a, quote-unquote, contested election, it is actually in his power to decide who gets the seat. And looking at his behavior, I think he'd do it. And if the balance of Congress [hinges on] a handful of seats — three, four, five seats — I'm going to worry a lot about that. To the extent that the Democrats achieve some sort of a landslide, that becomes less likely, becomes more difficult. We have to be very thankful that Trump is so unpopular that the Republicans are tanking this badly in the election. If it were a very close election, I would be very worried about that outcome. I'm a little less worried because I don't think it's going to be two or three seats holding the balance. I think it's going to be much more than that.

Rozsa: Now, when I asked the same question of Professor Levitt, he said, and I'm quoting, "The key moment isn't anything that Mike Johnson has a part in. The key moment is who's put on the roll of potential House members when at noon the House dissolves as a body. At 12:01, there is no House. There is no Speaker Johnson. He's just a dude. The Clerk of the House is the person who controls the roll. The Clerk of the House has a non-discretionary, very clear statutory duty to recognize the potential members who show up with certificates of election from their states, the things that the state officials have certified." Do you agree with his analysis there?

Levitsky: I'm not enough of an expert on that to say. I have no opinions. I just don't know.

Rozsa: Well, I want to ask this. Do you think it would be possible, if it seemed like Speaker Johnson was considering playing along with Trump's coup attempt, that Democrats could perhaps convince a few anti-Trump Republicans in the House to hold an early election to replace Johnson as speaker with someone who won't go along with him?

Levitsky: Yeah, I think that's actually a relatively likely scenario. Again, and thank God, because Trump is so unpopular and because this sort of a coup would be so unpopular — there's uncertainty, but I think there's a pretty good chance that Democrats could find a handful of Republicans — it wouldn't take many — they need to vote Johnson out.

Rozsa: Of course, my concern is that they'll face so much pressure from the Republican media that they'll ultimately be cowards and just toe the party line.

Levitsky: It's certainly possible. But again, given the balance of public opinion and political strength right now — I mean, in part just given Trump's age and his physical condition — it's very hard to bet on Trumpism in the medium term right now. Much harder than it was even, you know, a year and two quarters ago.

Trump's long-term consequences for American democracy — regardless of the midterms.

Rozsa: I want to take a step back from these immediate questions and ask something much deeper. What does it say about the health of American democracy that these worst-case scenarios are even plausible? I've been following politics since I was a teenager in the late 1990s. I've been covering it professionally since the 2012 election. And in my lifetime, at least, there was never any serious threat to democratic institutions. Based on my research into American history, the closest analogy I can think of was the 1860 presidential election, which ultimately led to a civil war. But even then, it didn't seem like people were questioning that Lincoln had been legitimately elected. They simply didn't want him to win, because then he would limit the expansion of slavery. What does it say about the state of democracy right now that these things are even possible?

Levitsky: I'll put it in boring political science terms. It means that the United States, at best today, is an unconsolidated democracy. I've argued that the United States has actually slid into kind of mild competitive authoritarianism under Trump 2.0. I don't think the regime at present is fully democratic. But even for those who argue that Trump's abuses are not sufficient to say that we've lost our democracy, the U.S. has become what political scientists call an unconsolidated democracy.

My day job is as a Latin Americanist. I've studied political regimes in Latin America for years and years and years. And what I was brought up learning was that democracies in countries like Peru and Argentina were unconsolidated in the sense that there was always uncertainty that all the powerful actors would play by the rules of the game. There was never certainty that everybody was committed to democratic rules of the game.

The United States for years and years and years was held up as an example of a consolidated democracy, where everybody knew that everybody was committed to democratic rules of the game. You could take for granted that elections would be free and fair, that everyone would play by the rules, that the government would play by the rules. There would be uncertainty over the outcomes of elections, but there was never uncertainty around the procedure of the elections. And that is long gone — since the 2020 election, but certainly with all the discussion we've had around the election today. Even if one agrees with me that the likelihood of a coup is relatively low, there is a lot of uncertainty.

There's uncertainty about whether the election will be fair. There's uncertainty about whether the government will accept the results of the election, or that there'll be an effort to manipulate the outcome of the election after the election. That uncertainty is a classic sign of what we call an unconsolidated democracy, an unstable democracy. And that sets the United States apart from all other established democracies in Europe and in Canada, and makes it much more like some of the unstable democracies we see in Latin America and elsewhere.

Rozsa: Have there been any of those unstable democracies in Latin America that went back to being consolidated democracies?

Levitsky: Yeah. Very often, sadly, after they tip into a period of authoritarian rule. But yeah, Argentine democracy was considered an unconsolidated democracy in the 1980s. There were several coup attempts. Today, it's considered a consolidated democracy. Brazil may not be a great example, because they had a similar —

Rozsa: With Bolsonaro.

Levitsky: In 2022. Yeah. So maybe it's not fully consolidated. I think they handled it better than we did. But Argentina is a much more consolidated democracy than it was in the 1980s.

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AN ATL MO 9 26 EMERGENCY MART LAW

On Wednesday, new reporting revealed that many in President Donald Trump's orbit believe he will declare "martial law" to seize control of the midterms. This is according to the Atlantic, which spoke with several people close to Trump who asserted he is likely to claim a "national security emergency" to justify efforts to "seize control of the federal elections."

For example, attorney Peter Ticktin -- who went to school with Trump when they were teenagers, helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton, and pushed the president to pardon convicted election equipment tamperer Tina Peters — said there are three possible outcomes in November. As the Atlantic writes, he asserts that, "The first — a smooth election — won’t happen in his view because, he claims without evidence, Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second is that Trump takes action before the election to prevent cheating. The last option is that Trump tries to declare martial law on or around November 3." Or in Ticktin's words, "Either martial law, or step aside." When the Atlantic raised the possibility of riots if Trump were to overturn the election results, Ticken said he was not concerned, asserting, "Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are."

Trump has not been shy about signaling his intention to meddle in the midterms. As the Atlantic explains, "In August, when the television and radio host Wayne Allyn Root pushed Trump to declare a 'national-security emergency' to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and other measures, Trump played coy: 'Let me just say that stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that.' Later that month, Trump posted a Root column on the topic, with a headline that described the plan as 'foolproof.' Peters announced after meeting with Trump in June that the president 'basically said to his lead counsel to do what I was asking.' In a prime-time address at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump again repeated the false claim that he had won the 2020 election, and sarcastically encouraged his supporters to 'cheat like hell' in the upcoming elections."

And MAGA literally applauds such plans. Speaking at a recent conference for election deniers, Root described a "nightmare scenario" in which Democrats won, flipped Congress, then impeached the president. He received a standing ovation after assuring attendees that, according to research done by a friend, the election would be upended if Trump were to declare a national-security emergency."

Trump is so adamant about these efforts that, according to the Atlantic, "Trump’s White House and Cabinet advisers have been working for months to move Trump’s focus away from baseless theories of election fraud peddled by people like Ticktin, Root and Peters ... But the prospect of Trump deciding to act on the demands of his most fervent election-denying supporters has remained a constant threat, one that even Trump’s inner circle admits remains possible."

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PRESS SUPPR AN 9 26

President Donald Trump recently banned three media outlets that he claims were unfairly critical of him — Politico, CNN and MS NOW — from covering him at the White House. Now it has been revealed that he openly admitted that he did so based on their viewpoints, in violation of the First Amendment.

"After MS NOW, CNN and Politico sued the Trump administration on Monday over the president banning their reporters from White House grounds, Trump’s communications team sent congressional Republicans talking points Monday night in defense of the president’s decision," reported MS NOW's Mychael Schnell on Tuesday. "According to the document obtained by MS NOW, the White House wants Republicans to argue that “no president has been more transparent or offered more of his time to the press” and that the First Amendment does not grant reporters access to the White House."

The talking points claimed that the reporters are not protected by the First Amendment to engage in "fabricating facts or reporting verifiable falsehoods from inside the White House complex is an intentional breach of professional decorum and it is severely disruptive to the mission and purpose of the White House.”

The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Despite claiming he has the legal authority to ban those media outlets, early signs from the courts suggest otherwise.

"A federal appeals court ruling Tuesday on demonstrators’ access to the steps of the Capitol could bode poorly for President Donald Trump’s attempt to ban three media organizations from the White House," Politico's Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein reported on Tuesday. "The majority opinion, written by Trump appointee Neomi Rao, concluded that the East Steps of the Capitol are a 'nonpublic forum' — just like most areas of the White House grounds, including the press facilities."

Politico continued, "While the government may impose restrictions on access to those nonpublic areas, the limits must be 'viewpoint neutral,' apply 'objective, workable standards' and not permit officials to exercise 'unbridled discretion over a forum’s use,' the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel concluded."

One of those networks may soon regain Trump's favor. After Trump's billionaire ally David Ellison officially purchased Warner Bros., which owns CNN, media watchdogs expressed alarm that Ellison would gut CNN of journalists who are critical of Trump and replace them with pro-Trump alternatives, much as Ellison did when he took over CBS News.

Trump himself has admitted that he wants Ellison to capture CNN for this reason, despite often denying his involvement in helping them take it over. Trump told CNN's Jake Tapper in July that "we're trying to have CNN go on a normal path." Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has similarly commented that he wants CNN to be taken over by the Ellisons so that the Trump administration will receive more flattering press coverage.

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RWW 9 26

• Erick Erickson: The Midwestern Führerbunker Driving the Right Off the Cliff

A group of white guys have subtly inserted themselves into conservative institutions and church organizations. They all embrace racial grievances. To varying degrees, they embrace white nationalism, antisemitism, and even Nazi sympathies. They are getting added to conservative institutional boards, attempting to purge churches, and are desperate to indoctrinate young conservatives into fascist ideology. They even surround the Vice President of the United States. Some of them believe the United States is at a tipping point, and they want to push it over the edge and rebuild it in their image. You might think it does not affect you, but, in time, you will see their efforts in your church pews, in your kids’ brains, and in your politicians’ mouths.

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9 16 26 WITHPOD HAYES END TIMES FASC NAOMI ASTRA

MILLER TEST: DO YOU WANT HIM TO HAVE X POWER?

CH: STRONG TAKE WHAT THEY WANT HISTORY SAYS

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an tc 9 26 bk rev

“A moment of reckoning has arrived for the West,” reads a recent recruitment ad for Palantir, a Silicon Valley firm that increasingly provides data-driven “intelligence” for intelligence, police and military agencies – as well as blue-chip corporations and non-profits. “On the factory floor, in the operating room, across the battlefield,” the ad intones, “we build to dominate.”

How do we make sense of this convergence between advanced technologies and unapologetic violence, between “rational” AI and a primordial view of the world that seems to revert to a language of blood and soil, friends and enemies, “us” and “them”? In op-eds, talk shows, and political analyses, a single word has risen to prominence: fascism.

As a term, “fascism” is highly provocative, but seemingly untimely. It conjures up powerful images of jackbooted throngs of followers repeating chants and salutes, visions of black-lettered and blood-red banners. Yet these images are typically associated with political orders from a century ago in interwar Europe, a dusty relic from a previous age where “evil” was identified and annihilated.

So what is fascism in the present? How can it help explain contemporary technological, social and political dynamics? Two recent books attempt to diagnose these conditions: End Times Fascism And the Fight for the Living World by writer Naomi Klein and filmmaker Astra Taylor, and The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy by journalist Gil Durán.

End times fascism

For Klein and Taylor, what we see now is not a repetition but an evolution. Fascist ideologies have been injected into a broader apocalyptic vision.

“End times fascism is a fascism embedded in an understanding that something immense is ending, and it responds to this discomfiting truth with unabashed cruelty,” they write.

ALT RT IN EUR ACCEPTS AGW BUT SAYS THUS WE MUST BUNKER~ DARK HORDES?

In this vision, it is taken for granted that our economic, institutional and environmental systems are collapsing. Financial inequality is surging, with unaffordable houses and skyrocketing cost-of-living. Ecologies are crumbling, with earth systems hitting planetary limits. And that’s just a few of these stacked crises.

But an apocalyptic mindset, grounded in fundamentalist religion, stresses that crisis is not to be fixed, but fast tracked. Dysfunction and disorder are necessary to arrive at something more glorious, the labour pains to a great rebirth. Here, apocalyptic religion and political fascism agree: the current world is corrupt and cannot be saved; it must be burned to the ground and remade from scratch – or escaped altogether, for a greater paradise.

For its proponents, the end times are here — and only by embracing and accelerating this winner-takes-all transition will the chosen elite assure they can survive and even thrive.

Klein and Taylor follow this thread across three core sections.

Messianic Dreams traces the birth and rise of the Zionist dream, through to its present vision of genocidal reset in Gaza – where the glorious next stage of one society is built on the ashes of another. The authors explain these moves are not just about “righteous revenge” or “national security”, but have a distinct cosmological goal: to “move us all significantly closer to the prophesied end of times.”

Escape to the Cloud unpacks big tech’s fervent faith in AI superintelligence and the double-edged utopia or dystopia it would usher in. Here, claims of existential risk resulting from “the singularity” – where AI becomes sentient and human/machine norms break down – are essentially self-serving, directing investment and attention to tech development. They prop up the power of the already powerful.

(These claims of existential risk, which have been around for a long time, have been big news recently, with warnings from everyone from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to former AI staff and the “Godfather of AI”.)

And Prepper Nation steps through the push to bunker the United States against future threats and deport the alien others who are corrupting its purity. Here, elites ride out the apocalypse by establishing their own tech infrastructures, ethnostates, finance streams, and even their own (literal) bunkers.

For Klein and Taylor, fighting end times fascism starts with fighting its core premise that the world is doomed: a sinking ship beyond saving. They locate hope in embracing “hereness” and “staying”, rather than leaving. Their plea is to embrace our broken reality and engage in the slow, messy work of improving it – rather than abandoning it (and democracy) to a scorched earth authoritarian order.

Zohran Mamdani – the progressive mayor of New York City, who pulled off a remarkable grassroots campaign and embraces the city’s diverse foods, festivals and communities – is held up as a champion of this “here and now” mentality.

End Times Fascism is a thoughtful and engaging read that deftly weaves journalism into a cohesive premise about our current political condition.

The authors deserve particular praise for making careful distinctions between the distorted versions of Judeo–Christianity weaponised by fascist entrepreneurs – a blend of Holy war and culture war fought by the Chosen – and mainstream understandings of doctrine.

Indeed, as the book explains, it was longstanding Christian injunctions to love thy neighbour – including the migrant – that partially motivated Minnesota’s antifascist pushback to ICE deportations. Churches and faith organisations took part in protests, set up community kitchens and offered aid. Far-right fundamentalists, by contrast, cherry-pick the Bible passages they like, while ignoring core injunctions to “act justly, walk humbly, and love mercy” (Micah 6:8): to embrace the stranger, rather than expel them as Other.

Yet if the book represents the best of popular journalism, it also comes with its limitations. Klein and Taylor are resolutely focused on people, places and events, rather than attempting to unpack their ideologies in a more systemic way. The result is that end times fascism becomes linked to the actions of egotistical and powerful men, from politicians to tech titans. US President Donald Trump in particular is the common thread, appearing over and over again throughout.

So when Klein and Taylor suggest, at the end of the book, that end times fascism is not about Trump, and will continue when these men disappear, their claim runs against the book’s premise. Place powerful elites to one side, and end times fascism becomes difficult to envision. What does it look like when it moves off the front page and out of elite hands in everyday contexts?

Nerd Reich

In Nerd Reich, reporter Gil Durán, a longtime San Francisco resident, looks to Silicon Valley. He focuses on how “the world’s richest men are building a new political order.” Durán’s primary antagonist is Peter Thiel (who also appears in End Times Fascism), the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir: “a man fusing business, politics and religion into one terrifying bundle of power”.

For Durán and others, Thiel is the lynchpin for a new breed of Silicon Valley-driven fascism, whether concretely (through donations) or ideologically (through his books and speeches). Thiel has increasingly moved beyond the tech world to offer political diagnoses and future visions that find sympathetic ears in elite circles.

Where do these ideas come from? Durán suggests they can be traced back to the Sovereign Individual, a 1997 book of future predictions based on the transition to the information age, by former Times (UK) editor William Rees-Mogg and financial advisor James Dale Davidson. Strangely, Durán never really carries out a close reading of this book he regards as an ur-text. Instead, he chooses to highlight some key claims and its general reception.

Durán’s circle of rich fascists ranges from technologists to politicians. It includes well-known figures like Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. But it also features lesser-known figures, like cryptocurrency entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, who wants Silicon Valley to carry out an “ultimate exit” from the US altogether, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who elevates the acceleration of “techno-capital” and denigrates democracy.

Each of them, in their own way, has leveraged wealth from the finance and tech industry to grab political and social influence and push forward their vision of society and the state.

What exactly is fascist about these individuals and their ideas? For Durán, tech fascism “bundles powerful technologies” like AI, crypto and social media “towards authoritarian goals” that benefit a “small, interconnected group of oligarchs”. They wish to privatise what is public and “eliminate democracy”, he writes.

And yet the book lacks a deeper or more systemic unpacking of tech fascism. What are its core values? How do these technologies actually carry out authoritarian goals? And what might this mean beyond power games in a US bubble?

The closest we get to answers is two breezy paragraphs on page 240. They tell us tech fascism “updates this ideology for the AI age” by controlling “reality through algorithms” and launching the “next generation of killer robot drones”. And it’s all driven by a venture capital system that has “run out of unicorns and must now hunt Antichrists to meet its unquenchable thirst for acceleration”.

The strength and weakness of Nerd Reich, then, rests on its journalistic approach. Drawing on a decade of newsroom experience, Durán weaves in insider knowledge of Silicon Valley.

He provides a play-by-play of San Francisco City Council election manipulation, for instance, where a flood of Big Tech money aimed to flip local politics from progressive to conservative. And he serves it all up with visceral language — like “an image dripping in fascist cosplay” — that leaves no doubt as to how he views these men and their manoeuvrings.

The downside of this approach is that chapters fragment into dozens of “human interest” style vignettes, with only a gossamer-thin thread to connect them.

The reader wades through a whirlwind tour of names, dates and places. Garry Tan, CEO of venture capital incubator Y Combinator. Sam Bankman-Fried and his fraudulent FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Michelle Stephens and her Acts 17 organisation, which hosts events hoping to bridge technology and Christianity. Bryan Johnson, who believes he can live forever via products like his own bespoke “snake oil” elixir.

And Curtis Yarvin, the political blogger whose illiberal ideas have found traction in Washington.

In each case, we get titbits without a deeper throughline. How exactly does a long backstory on Yarvin — including his love life and use of psychedelics — shed light on his increasingly influential ideas about remaking the state as a startup? The reader must draw their own conclusions.

Technofascism and everyday people

In both these books, the lens could be described as the Big Man – the powerful politician, swaggering tech founder, or deep-pocketed venture capitalist who can leverage their immense resources to transform their visions into fascistic realities. This cast of strong antagonists lends itself to strong storytelling — concrete people who can be pointed to and called out.

But this focus on unsavoury elites leaves some key questions unanswered. Where did these fascist energies originate? How have they been updated? What are the grievances and desires at the heart of this ideology? And how are these values packaged, narrated and circulated in ways that make them compelling to everyday people?

Today, we are surrounded by platforms, models and algorithms that hold up a vision of reason and rationality. Yet politically, we see a return to myth, bigotry and barbarism. These twin forces are not a paradox but a program. Technofascism leverages advanced technology to bolster authoritarian ideals and regressive values that carve up the world along bloodlines, gender lines and borderlines.

But how do these twin forces prop each other up? What role does the “techno” in technofascism play? I see three core functions.

Technology augments, providing a practical outworking of fascist visions by operationalising difference and domination. Palantir’s data-driven deportation partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a perfect recent example of transforming fascist ideals into a concrete program of platforms, software and servers that can be leased and run.

Secondly, technology alienates. It creates a vacuum of meaning that is filled by powerful mythologies that address grievances and reimpose order on the world. Meta-narratives like the Great Replacement Theory, suggesting non-white immigrants are replacing white populations, translate complex crises into tangible figures. Anti-immigration marches in Australia were a recent troubling example. They transformed a complex set of pressures — from rising costs of living to climate anxieties — into a powerful myth with a single scapegoat: the migrant.

Finally, technology manipulates. It creates environments that leverage desire while cultivating fascist ideologies over time. Manosphere influencers translate misogyny, insecurity and xenophobia into viral packages of content. Ex-radicals describe a pipeline effect where media played a key role in nudging them towards more right-wing stances. Eventually, they arrived at violent, dehumanising visions that can only be described as fascist.

Together, these books shed light on the fascistic energies that increasingly seem to permeate our present moment. This is not a problem for other places and times, but one that confronts us here and now.

As one scholar stressed after three decades of researching authoritarian personalities: “I study normal folks, not Nazis.” Grasping the core logic of this fascist phenomenon is the first step in combating and countering it.

Luke Munn, Research Fellow, Digital Cultures & Societies, The University of Queensland

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

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PPL LOSE 6TH? 14TH? STATE OF EXEMPTION?

AN 9 26

Trump just activated a secret 1990s court

Thom Hartmann September 16, 2026

Last Friday, for the first time in American history, a brand new court in America deported to Afghanistan Nazira Haji Zada, a 47-year-old lawful permanent resident living in Fort Worth. She was never charged with a crime, and wasn’t allowed to see the evidence against her (and neither were her lawyers). Attorney General Todd Blanche called the whole thing “a win for national security and the rule of law.”

This was possible because, in a moment of national hysteria following the Tim McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City in the 1990s, Congress authorized the creation of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, something so counter to normal American concepts of the rule of law and fair play that no president before now had been willing to use it.

Until, of course, Trump.

When I was around twelve, my dad gave me his tattered copy of a paperback of Franz Kafka’s short novel The Trial and told me he wanted to discuss it after I’d read it. The book gave me nightmares for weeks, which was clearly his goal.

He was a tool-and-die maker in Lansing, a WWII vet, and a man who’d volunteered in 1945 to go fight and even die to defeat fascism and defend the rule of law. He saw The Trial as the essence of why he’d joined the Army straight out of high school.

The Trial opens with a bank clerk named Josef K. being dragged out of his bed one morning by two officers who won’t tell him what he’s being charged with. They made clear that even they didn’t know what his crime was.

Over the following year he’s pulled deeper and deeper into a dark court that’s never held in public or official buildings, whose judges he never sees, and whose files are “secret” and thus not available to him or his lawyer. Nobody ever sees or says what Joseph K. was accused of, and his attorneys advise him it’s best to stop asking because the fact that he was arrested in the first place will be considered by the court as all the proof they’ll need of his guilt.

The story ends when two men in frock coats drag him out to a quarry at night and carry out his execution as mandated by the secret court:

“Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread all his fingers.

“But the hands of one of the men closed around K.’s throat, while the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing eyes K. could still see the two men close in front of his face, cheek pressed to cheek, watching the outcome. ‘Like a dog!’ he said…”

When Kafka wrote that in 1914, he was a Jew living in Prague inside a dying empire. He never lived to see Hitler or the Gestapo or Putin build the very thing he’d imagined, but my dad did which is why he’d given me that book so I could understand what a police state would feel like from the inside. He told me repeatedly throughout my life that “only the rule of law” and the Constitution protected us from the tyranny he’d volunteered to fight as a teenager.

I got a glimpse into that world myself twenty-some years later, in the winter of 1986, when my teenage daughter and I crossed through Checkpoint Charlie and were picked up in East Berlin by a young gypsy cab driver named Torsten. Before we’d traveled even a full block he had us rehearsing a cover story, that we were his cousins from the West, in case the Volkspolizei or the Stasi pulled us over.

That’s because in East Germany — where the secret police were then largely run by a guy named Vladimir Putin — Torsten knew that anybody could be hauled into jail at any time for any reason and nobody would ever have to explain why.

What happened Friday here in America is the Trump administration’s version of the same thing:

— Under this bizarre law in these secret courts, 8 U.S.C. § 1534, the judge reviews the government’s classified evidence alone, in chambers, and neither the accused nor the public may learn what it is or where it came from beyond an unclassified summary.

— The Federal Rules of Evidence don’t apply.

— The government may use the fruits of FISA wiretaps and warrantless physical searches, and the accused is specifically denied the right to suppress evidence she claims was gathered illegally.

— You get a court-appointed “special attorney” with a security clearance who can look at the secret file on your behalf, but that lawyer is forbidden by law from telling you or other lawyers what’s in it, and if he does he faces ten to twenty-five years in federal prison.

Kafka gave Josef K. a lawyer who couldn’t see the file with the charges against him. Now Trump mandates a lawyer who can see the file, but goes to prison if he talks about it to any other living being.

Zada’s public defenders put it plainly before she was chained and thrown onto the plane to Afghanistan:

“Dragging lawful permanent residents into court but refusing to show them or their attorneys the evidence that will be used against them is a plain violation of due process,” they said in a statement, adding that her consent to removal “should not be seen as an endorsement of this court’s legitimacy.”

This secret court is only the most recent brick in the fascist wall Trump, his tech bro billionaire supporters, and his fascist lickspittles are building around what used to be American law. Last year he sent 238 men to life sentences in to a torture prison in El Salvador — most with no criminal record whatsoever — without even bothering with a hearing for them.

One of them — a gay makeup artist named Andry Hernández Romero who was snatched by masked, armed men at the asylum appointment the government had set up for him — was shipped off to his life sentence in a foreign hellhole on the strength of crowns tattooed above the words “mom” and “dad”; he spent 125 days incommunicado before a prisoner swap got him out.

Shades of Joseph K. 109 years later.

ICE today is holding roughly 65,000 people in detention, most of them never convicted of even any minor crime (being in the country without papers is a civil infraction, not a crime) and never having seen a real judge or courtroom. Most will wait months for a hearing that may never come, a clear violation of their Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

In their frantic efforts to purge America of nonwhite people, Trump’s racist toadies have frozen our refugee program since he was sworn in a year ago January, with more than 100,000 fully vetted people stranded abroad. We’ve only admitted 6,069 refugees, and all but three were lily-white South Africans.

These misogynist white supracist fascists are also purging our government’s own institutions of women and people of color. Whiskey Pete Hegseth has fired or forced out at least twenty generals, admirals, and senior civilian leaders; when he removed the Army’s chief of staff in April, in the middle of a war, the Pentagon announced it in true Kafkaesque fashion without even bothering to give a reason.

White South African immigrant Elon Musk’s DOGE and the OPM drove out more than 300,000 federal workers in a single year, with Black women losing roughly a third of those jobs. (I can no longer link to this because the administration deleted their workforce demographic data in March, 2025.) Many were fired with Joseph K.-style form letters that cited nonspecific “performance” issues, often sent to people who’d gotten glowing reviews just weeks previously.

One NIH analyst’s supervisor told her that management had been ordered to pick either misconduct or performance as the reason and so had simply randomly picked one. A federal judge correctly called the entire process a “sham” and when ProPublica dug into what ICE has been up to they found more than 170 US citizens who’d been dragged off and imprisoned, often for days with no access to either a phone or a lawyer, all in clear violation of the law and our Constitution.

Each of these examples of overreach and lawbreaking by Trump, ICE, and the DOJ are grounded in the same basic logic Kafka described: you are powerless before the all-knowing all-seeing state. Instead of being judged, you’re processed through an impersonal, uncaring, brutal machine.

If you’re arrested it must be because you’re guilty, even if nobody knows for sure of what. And when you ask why this is happening to you, the answer is a variation on, “You don’t need to know and, besides, we won’t tell you in any case.”

My father’s generation understood something we’ve lost track of in the years of rightwing hysteria since McVeigh and 9/11.

Our Sixth Amendment guarantees that every accused person — citizen or not — must be told the nature and cause of the accusation they’re charged with, have a public trial, and be confronted with the witnesses against them. The Fourteenth Amendment requires and guarantees due process for everybody confronted by the government, citizen or not.

When a government stops honoring the rule of law, due process, and fundamental human rights it cease to be a legitimate republic and has demonstrably slid into the early stages of being reinvented as a full-blown fascist state.

Zada may well have been involved in potential terrorist activity, although none of us will ever know because of the secretive nature of this case. If she was guilty, it should have been established in public; we have plenty of ways to protect sources and methods, when necessary, that are consistent with our Constitution.

Torsten knew what a country that doesn’t respect the rule of law and civil rights felt like. So did my dad, which is why he asked me to read The Trial when I was twelve. We’re not East Germany yet, but Trump’s clearly learned from his mentor/owner who used to run that country’s secret police, and this new terrorist court is now established as a legal precedent. Which means this is just beginning.

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an 9 26

Trump attack dog has a bold Election Day plan —and critics say it's illegal

ice dhs MULLIN

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gil d bk out checks all boxes, 2x dn? seder? kqed?

8 26

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yt 8 26

Steven Crowder Says We Need Fascism. Here’s Why That’s Terrifying

Steven Crowder Says We Need Fascism. Here’s Why That’s Terrifying

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RWW

08/14/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

Opinion

Right-wing pundits and some mainstream reporters have grilled progressive candidates over controversial views expressed by leftist streamer Hasan Piker, but there’s been relatively little effort to hold Republicans accountable for their continuing embrace of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, despite his record of promoting racist and inflammatory anti-immigrant views.

“Why do we tolerate Elon Musk’s racist commentary?” asked New York Times writer Jamelle Bouie a few weeks ago:

Musk spends a large part of his free time fomenting violence and spreading the same hateful ideology that motivated some of the deadliest shootings and attacks ever to happen on American soil. It is that fact, and not the cars he builds or the rockets he launches, that ought to define his place in public life.

One answer to the question, at least when it comes to the Republican Party, is money. Musk’s Super PAC is preparing to spend more than $100 million to help Republicans try to hold onto their congressional majority. That’s on top of more than $250 million it spent to put Trump back in office. Some of Musk’s money comes from U.S. taxpayers in the form of huge government contracts.

Speaking of money, on Monday, the Republican National Committee made Musk the subject line of a fundraising email: “Elon crunched the numbers…” The body of the email featured a photo of Musk as part of a graphic that read, “Elon’s Election Fraud Alert.”

The RNC was using Musk’s name to promote bogus Trump claims about election fraud that the GOP cites as justification for trying to make it harder for some people to vote:

Elon crunched the numbers…

Millions of illegal immigrants.

Zero Voter ID laws.

Infinite mail-in ballots.

Dozens of rigged electoral maps.

And there’s only ONE answer that made sense:

The Democrats are FLAT-OUT RIGGING our elections, and the SAVE America Act is the ONLY way to stop it!

“IT MUST BE DONE OR DEMOCRACY IS DEAD” – Elon Musk

Where are all the calls for RNC officials and Republican members of Congress to disavow Musk and his extremism?

While Musk called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down protests against ICE brutality in Minnesota, researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate say he used his X account to amplify anti-immigrant sentiment that led to mob violence in Belfast in June.

Earlier this year, the Guardian noted Musk’s “fixation” on race and reported that he had “made allusions to race science or promoted anti-immigrant conspiracy content on 26 out of 31 days in January.” In April, the Washington Post noted that Musk was posting “near daily” about race and the supposed threat of a genocide against white people, leading one commentator to tell the paper that Musk’s recent statements had left “no doubt he’s a white nationalist.”

Musk has also promoted far-right parties in other countries, which The Nation characterized last year as Musk “pushing for global neo-Nazi regime change.”

In his NYT column, Bouie noted that Musk has repeatedly used his massive social media platform to promote the idea of dealing with “traitors first, then invaders”—which Bouie connected to the concept of “race traitors” demonized in the Turner Diaries, a book that fantasizes about white nationalist political violence.

Bouie also noted that Musk has promoted the movie “Citizen Vigilante.” In a recent interview, Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, called it “irresponsible” for Musk to promote the movie, which she said “glorifies the murdering of a Muslim immigrant family.” Musk responded, “It’s worth watching.” He reposted someone who wrote that people “complaining that [the lead character] spends the first half of the movie murdering white people not migrants” are missing the point: “Always hang a traitor before you shoot an enemy.”

Musk posted “Deal with traitors before invaders” a few days before he asserted that anyone who opposes remigration—a far-right term for forcing nonwhite people to leave western countries—a traitor.

Is there anything Musk could say or do that would lead Republican leaders to denounce him?

Yes, it might be uncomfortable for Republicans to disavow Musk’s extremism when it is so aligned with the White House: when immigrant sentiment is a primary driver of policymaking, when the only refugees the Trump administration is willing to admit to the U.S. are white South Africans, and when the MAGA movement is waging a war on anything deemed to be “woke.”

But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be asked.

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an 8 26

Trump throws tantrum after rebuke of his National Guard deployments

bannonwants ice at polls

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trump 1.8 b slush fund for paramilitary; bbb ice funding; tarrio 3% convictions erased?

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an 8 26

Trump throws tantrum after rebuke of his National Guard deployments

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trump 1.8 b slush fund for paramilitary; bbb ice funding; tarrio 3% convictions erased?

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an 7 26 see fasc NOTE PROJECTION ON GULAGS

Last Thursday, three speeches delivered by MAGA figureheads in the Trump administration amounted to “pronouncements” of the death of American democracy. This is according to veteran critical care physician Robert B. Shpiner, who took to the Guardian to warn of the dangerous way the White House is wielding the word “cancer” to describe its political opponents.

“The presumption that US elections are legitimate died last week in Washington,” writes Shpiner. “It did not die of one wound. It died of three, inflicted in a single day… And the country, running to the loudest of them, never examined the one most likely to kill.” Shpiner admits that while such pronouncements can seem alarmist, when his family left Russia in 1917 and Germany in 1933, “in both generations, leaving was called excessive; staying was the reasonable position. But an alarm that was right both times it sounded is not overcaution.” He asserts that the alarm sounded three times last Thursday.

“The morning belonged to the secretary of state,” writes Shpiner. “Before officials of more than 60 countries, he announced that the counterterrorism architecture of the free world, built over a generation against jihadist mass murder, should be rebuilt and aimed at the domestic left. He named a transnational enemy defined by hatred of the west, ‘a revolt of the worst against the best.’ He tied it to Iran and to Cuba and offered no evidence for either link. He said the journalists and thinktanks who might check the claims often agree with the enemy’s goals. The move is old and reliable: discredit the second opinion in advance.”

Then, writes Shpiner, “midday belonged to the White House deputy chief of staff. What he said deserves to be quoted rather than summarized, because summary is a mercy it has not earned. He called ‘leftwing political terrorism’ a ‘fatal cancer of civilization.’ He said that its politics, left to run its course, ‘always becomes a gulag.’ He said antifa demonstrators are ‘all deformed in some way, in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism,’ that ‘their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred,’ and he asked why there is ‘not one normal-looking person among them.’ He said that when the leftist protests that his rights are being violated, those appeals ‘must fall on deaf ears.’ He urged the assembled governments to be ‘completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization.’”

Here Shpiner notes that he has practiced critical care for four decades, and that “cancer is my vocabulary, not his,” writing, “I know what happened the last time a government borrowed it. The Nazi state’s central perversion was the medicalization of killing: the enemy as tumor, as bacillus, the nation as patient, extermination as cure… When a government describes citizens as a cancer, it has written the first line of a treatment plan. On Thursday, the plan was read aloud, from a state department podium.”

Finally, writes Shpiner, “the evening belonged to the president. In primetime he called the American election system indefensible, claimed a foreign power held 220 million voter files, declared mail voting inherently corrupt, accused his own intelligence services of concealment, and told Congress that the only reason to oppose his bill is the intent to cheat. That framework converts every future outcome into evidence. Pass the bill and win: the bill worked. Fail and lose: the cheaters blocked it. A presumption of legitimacy cannot survive inside a belief system engineered to be unfalsifiable.”

Shpiner describes the media’s response in the days to come as a “triage error,” asserting that the focus fell on the “loudest injury” — President Donald Trump — and ignored “the morning’s remarks, the ones that declared a class of Americans a cancer and read enmity on their bodies.” Writes Shpiner, “I have watched teams run to the dramatic patient while the quiet one, the one not crying out, exsanguinates behind a curtain. The most dangerous words spoken in Washington on Thursday were not spoken in primetime. They were spoken before lunch, to more than 60 countries. The official transcript records the applause.”

He concludes on a grim note, writing, “In 40 years of intensive care, I have pronounced death many times. The criteria are strict because the declaration is irreversible, and so we are taught to be certain before we speak. I have also, more than once, seen a rhythm return after the room had gone quiet, when someone refused to stop compressions on schedule. This notice is filed in the knowledge that pronouncements can be premature. It is filed in the fear that this one is not.”

AN 7 26

Multiple experts are warning that President Donald Trump is gradually eroding American democracy through his actions since resuming office in 2025. Now, a new study from the American Journal of Political Science explains how so many Americans are willing to go along with his authoritarianism.

To learn this, researchers turned to Norway in order to assess how ordinary people reacted when surrounded by individuals with authoritarian ideologies, reported PsyPost's Eric W. Dolan on Sunday. In a paper co-authored by Sirianne Dahlum, Torbjørn Hanson, Åshild Johnsen, Andreas Kotsadam, and Alexander Wuttke, the scholars conducted a “field experiment [which] randomly assigned soldiers to different rooms during boot camp, so soldiers lived among peers with varying levels of openness to authoritarian rule. We found that many individuals adjusted their privately reported support for authoritarian rule to align more closely with their peers.”

They added, “Further survey-experimental evidence among soldiers and the general Norwegian population confirms that learning about others’ level of support for authoritarian rule changes both perceptions and own support. Our results suggest that support for authoritarian rule can have a social basis and could potentially spread through social contagion in established democracies.”

As a result of their study, the researchers concluded that there are weaknesses in democratic cultures when it comes to combating authoritarian ideas.

“The social basis of regime preferences that we have identified could imply that support for authoritarian rule could quickly spread in a society when citizens realize that these attitudes are more widespread than previously thought,” the authors explained. “It also points to the potential for cascade effects, where initial shifts in attitudes—through exogenous shocks—can spread rapidly through social networks, potentially leading to widespread changes in political norms. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for identifying how authoritarian sentiments might proliferate even in seemingly stable democracies and for developing effective strategies to reinforce and sustain democratic values.”

The researchers learned this first by studying over 1,300 Norwegian military recruits and how their authoritarian views evolved based on whether they were placed in rooms with peers who held or did not hold authoritarian views. They examined how these recruits’ attitudes changed over a period of eight weeks based on those exposures. Then they did the same thing with people outside the Norwegian military.

“To test whether these findings apply outside the military context, the scientists replicated the survey experiment using a representative sample of 1,500 general Norwegian citizens,” Dolan wrote. “The participants received similar prompts about the popularity of strongman leadership in a recent public opinion poll. A control group answered the questions without receiving any prior information about the views of others.”

Dolan added, “The findings in the general population closely mirrored the results from the military recruits. When ordinary citizens were informed that authoritarian views were widespread, they reported higher levels of personal support for strong leaders. The researchers then conducted a final replication using a massive cross-national sample of over 25,000 respondents from more than 29 different countries, which yielded the same pattern of social influence across diverse cultural contexts.”

As Kotsadam told PsyPost, “The field experiment shows that attitudes can converge among people who actually live together, while the survey experiments indicate that simply learning what other people believe can itself alter stated preferences. More broadly, the findings suggest that the stability of democracy depends not only on what citizens privately believe, but also on what they think their fellow citizens believe.”

If there is any silver lining to the study, it is that these views are not set in stone.

“They can be influenced by the surrounding social climate,” Kotsadam told Doland. As such, “making support for democratic principles visible may help reinforce those principles.”

Writing for Zeteo in April, journalist John Harwood further identified how Trump has eroded democratic norms to turn America into a dictatorship.

"To state the obvious, Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler," Harwood wrote. "MAGA is not Nazism. No despot or movement in history compares to the Third Reich, and the nature and scale of evil it perpetrated. Moreover, Trump's handiwork appears less formidable today. Most of America recoils from his second-term grotesquerie. If permitted free and fair elections, voters will punish his Republican Party this fall — just as Hungarian voters have now punished Trump's authoritarian role model Viktor Orbán. But the lessons Rees identifies remain relevant to the crisis confronting 21st-Century America. And that is not merely because Trump and a disturbing number of his young fans have, at times, expressed admiration for Nazi strength and ruthlessness."

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CHANNEL Ben Hoerman

The New Aesthetics of Fascism

42 MIN

Jul 30, 2025

Centrist PART 3: • The Aesthetics of Anti-Fascism

• Friendly Fascism (Bertram Gross)
• The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America (David A. Graham)
• Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (Lucan Way and Steven Levitsky)
• Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer on „culture industry“: Dialectic of Enlightenment
• Facing Gaia. Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime (Bruno Latour)
• Fascinating Fascism (Susan Sontag)
• The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Benjamin Walter)

no lnx

America's point of no return: Inside Trump's irreversible damage — and what comes next

John Stoehr July 13, 2026

Don't kid yourself. The sphere of freedom is shrinking. Trans people wanted to live their lives, but the political right, in the form of Donald Trump, made them demons and the political center, in the form of respectable white people, made the right's demonization seem respectable. Kamala Harris wanted America to choose liberty. "We're not going back," she said. Many of us agreed, but we are. The pulling back of trans rights could lead to the pulling back of other rights – birth control, gay marriage, inter-racial marriage, and more.

Yet the future is unknown. People will fight. More importantly, they will find joy in the struggle. That's the spirit I found in the interview below with Evan Urquhart. After writing extensively for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and others, he set up Assigned Media in 2022 to report on transgender news. He told me that hope can be found in the fact that for all the bigotry trans people are facing, they still face less than they used to. Moreover, there's greater awareness, which means more chances for normalizing trans life. But most of all, he said, trans people just know themselves, and "you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. We're out, we're everywhere, and even if our lives are harder, we're not going away."

Even so, things will get worse before they get better. "The presidencies of Donald Trump represent a phase shift for American democracy, one that has made it impossible to return to the way things were," Evan told me. "I think if you look at the totality of the actions of Trump himself, his administrations, and his judges, that's an inescapable conclusion. ... It's too unsettling ... so people tell themselves this is just trans issues stuff, nothing to do with them."

SCOTUS ruled that states can ban transgender athletes. The number of such athletes is vanishingly small. Yet states are targeting people without much power. What's going on?

Trans women's participation in women's sports was identified as a perfect wedge issue by conservatives, in part because the stakes feel relatively low, because playing sports isn't required for survival, and because fairly few trans people play sports.

The right has since moved on to targeting trans people in every part of our lives, from identity documents to restrooms to stripping any mention of trans women out of rape protections in federal prisons, but sports has been around the longest, which is why it had the time to make it to the Supreme Court.

As a wedge, it works to cement the idea in people's minds that trans people should be treated as members of our birth-assigned sex, in order to slowly roll up the idea that treating us equally means making room for us to live as our authentic selves.

What do you see being done about this among Dems and allies? What are the obstacles?

I think that the consensus among Democrats and allies, and even among many trans people, has been to let this one go. The majority of Americans have been convinced to see this as a common sense issue of keeping men from steamrolling women's sports, and since it really is such a tiny group of people being impacted, the thinking is to retreat and regroup.

I personally think there's a bit of a lost opportunity here, though. Because sports is lower stakes, there's actually room to get people curious about the science, about the ways hormones influence our bodies, about the vast differences between trans people and cis members of their birth sex. In all the years trans women who'd medically transitioned were allowed to participate, not one dominated a single sport. That's interesting and unintuitive for a lot of people, and I think you can activate the part of people's brains that gets curious and wants to know more about this issue, which can be useful for education. It's different with questions that are more emotional, like whether to allow your 14 year old to start a hormonal medication. On those questions, I see people's curiosity give way to fear.

On transitioning, I think what are called radical centrists are largely responsible. They pushed fear over liberty. They pretended that rightwingers are only reacting, not making the choice to punch down. What can be done? What historical models are there?

Centrists want easy answers to the challenges we're facing. They want an easy answer to the challenge of having a completely unsuitable, unethical, mendacious person attain the US presidency, and to other challenges like climate change and increasing inequality as well. They want to believe we're still living in the 1990s, an eternal 1990s where the Overton Window is extremely narrow, our political parties agree and work together on a lot of things, and voters reward them for that.

To someone with that mindset, it's very appealing to think there's a minority (one who people in their social set largely agree are a little weird) who they can just change positions on with no pain. If that's true, you can just tweak your platform at the margins and avoid the hard question: Why are Americans so desperate for change they'll vote for a fascist in one election and a socialist in the next?

But the damage is not going to be limited to one subset. Some say the trans ruling is softening the ground toward striking down gay marriage, birth control and perhaps inter-racial marriage. The sphere of freedom is shrinking. Is there enough awareness of that?

In my view, the presidencies of Donald Trump represent a phase shift for American democracy, one that has made it impossible to return to the way things were. I think if you look at the totality of the actions of Trump himself, his administrations, and his judges, that's an inescapable conclusion.

It's also a very scary conclusion, which is why people don't want to look at these precedents on trans rights and ask, if a state legislature can ban a safe and effective treatment for trans people, does that mean they can ban vaccines? Does that mean they can ban antidepressants, birth control, and ADHD medications? They want the disturbance to stay with the trans community, not necessarily because they hate us but because it's quite scary to imagine the consequences of, for example, a far-right court deciding that equal protection just doesn't apply to trans people in sports because there aren't that many trans people in sports.

Who else might they decide equal protection doesn't apply to? It's too unsettling to ask the question, so people tell themselves this is just trans issues stuff, nothing to do with them.

Here in Connecticut, the state GOP is trying to ban trans women from women's sports, but their effort is falling in deaf ears. That seems indicative of the future, where some states and regions honor and protect equality under law while others savage it. Legally speaking, the same person in Connecticut is different in Alabama. Is that our future?

Blue states have largely circled the wagons around their trans communities, in a way that's lovely to see. I think that the far right really wants to federalize fascism, and make it impossible for states to protect trans people, but that project may be more difficult than they thought.

As difficult and scary as it is to see my rights being chipped away, a lot has changed. Part of that is that more people know trans people, and even with a bit of backsliding the prejudice isn't nearly what it was when I was young. Another part is that trans people have more ways to know themselves and express themselves than they ever did. I can't predict the future, but I know you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. We're out, we're everywhere, and even if our lives are harder, we're not going away.

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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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NOT PEER REV BUT ONE GRANT CZAR LOYALIST AT EACH agency?!

btb 6 26

work medicaid?!

ps://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/this-new-omb-rule-is-bigger-than

When I published my summary of OMB’s proposed Federal Financial Assistance rule last week, I was writing from my lane. I spent 22 years as an NIH Program Official overseeing federally funded science. I know firsthand how real and severe that damage to science funding would be, and it deserved to be named clearly.

I want to widen the lens now, because the more I have dug into this rule, the more I realize that scientists are not the only ones who should be alarmed. Not even close.

2 CFR Part 200, the regulation being rewritten here, is not the science grants regulation. It is the universal legal framework governing every federal grant to every recipient across every agency in the federal government. When OMB rewrites it, they are rewriting the rules for all of it.

According to the Congressional Research Service, in FY2024 the federal government sent $1.1 trillion in grants to state and local governments. That money is what funds:

• Medicaid — more than $600 billion, with the federal government covering between 50 and 77 cents of every dollar states spend on health care for their most vulnerable residents

• Transportation — $95 billion for highways, bridges, transit systems, airports, and ports

• Education — $65 billion for Title I schools, special education, Head Start, and workforce training
• Food assistance — $51 billion
• and much more

Every single one of those programs operates under 2 CFR Part 200. Every one of them is now subject to the same provisions I described last week.

Consider what that means in practice. Political appointees who can override expert judgment and block science grants that don’t advance the President’s priorities would have that same power over transportation awards, and housing funds, not just NIH applications. Any active grant could be canceled mid-project because it no longer serves ‘the national interest.’ A highway already under construction. A tribal health program mid-delivery. A city still rebuilding from a flood. And every new grant program must align with administration priorities before a single application is even solicited. Entire categories of funding can be quietly discontinued without a public announcement or a vote.

Federal grants are not peripheral to how states and communities function. They represent, on average, 36 cents of every dollar a state spends. This rule puts that entire financial partnership between the federal government and the states under political control, without an act of Congress, effective October 1, 2026.

A scientist reading my last post understood immediately why they should be worried. These professionals should also be concerned:

• The county engineer overseeing a federally funded bridge.
• The housing authority director managing Section 8 vouchers.
• The rural hospital administrator whose Medicaid reimbursements depend on stable federal grant terms.
• The Head Start center manager operating preschools with teachers hired, children enrolled, and parents depending on them for the childcare that lets them go to work.
• The school principal whose Title I funding supports her lowest-income students.

This rule touches all of them.

If you found my original post worth sharing, I hope you will share this one too, especially with people outside the scientific community who may not yet know this is coming. The comment period is open now and closes July 13, 2026.

Submit your comment in opposition here: https://www.regulations.gov/document/OMB-2026-0034-0001**

...

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AN 5 26

I keep hearing that one of America’s biggest problems is we’re “divided and polarized.” For example, New York Timescolumnist David French: “We’ve known for a long time that America is deeply polarized, and we’ve known the problem is only getting worse.”

This is bull----. The problem is notthat we’re divided and polarized.

The problem is that a significant portion of America is buying Trump’s violent, hateful, lawless crap. Some of those buying it are white supremacists. Others are conservative fundamentalist Christians. Others are xenophobic nationalists.

I feel compassion for those who’ve been seduced into supporting Trump after being brutalized and mistreated for years by employers, big corporations, Wall Street, and America’s oligarchs. As I warned 32 years ago, widening inequalities of wealth, income, and opportunity would eventually persuade some on the losing side to support a demagogue.

But an explanation for why some of Trump’s followers have bought into his neofascism isn’t a justification for them to do so. And it’s certainly no reason for us to put aside our differences and compromise with them.

As you undoubtedly know, Trump has created a violent police state inside America. He is conducting an illegal war abroad. He has usurped the powers of Congress and defied court orders. He is taking bribes. He’s criminally prosecuting his enemies and pardoning his criminal supporters (he has even set up a slush fund to compensate them). He has gotten his Justice Department to immunize him and his family from any future tax audits. He is silencing critics. He is fomenting racism and bigotry.

None of us should fall for the false equivalency between this, and opposition to it. The contest today is notbetween “right” and “left,” as the two sides have traditionally been understood in America. It’s not even between “Republicans” and “Democrats,” as we’ve defined the two major parties over most of the past century.

No, the contest today is between democracy and authoritarianism. It’s between tolerance and bigotry. Between a multiracial, secular, inclusive society and one that believes in white Christian nationalism. Between the rule of law and neofascism.

The two sides in this contest do not merit equal weight. If we are going to have a decent society, the nation must come down on the former side.

As long as Trump has followers who support his bigotry, racism, corruption, and violence, the nation will remain divided and polarized. That is necessary and proper.

We shouldn’t “reach out, or “meet halfway,” or “find middle ground,” or “split the difference,” or any other of today’s hackneyed expressions for putting aside what divides us and agreeing.

Generations of Americans fought and died for the ideals of democracy, freedom, social justice, the rule of law, and equal opportunity. We have never fully achieved them, but they remain our ideals. Tomorrow we celebrate Memorial Day to honor those ideals and the memories of those who died for them.

There cannot be, must not be, any compromise with neofascism.

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trump-domestic-violence-authoritarian

5 26 nyt op ed

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RWW

05/12/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Ryan Bort @ Rolling Stone: Trump Melts Down Over Reflecting Pool Reports in Wild Posting Spre

The president isn’t exactly locking in ahead of his high-stakes visit to China this week.

• Madiba K. Dennie @ Talking Points Memo: There’s an Easy Way to Tell That Trump’s Judicial Nominees Don’t Belong On the Bench

Trump has long lashed out when judges he nominated rule against his interests because he believes that his appointees are his to control. Now, Trump is publicly asserting that his expectation of fealty is, as he put it, “really OK.” Trump-appointed judges owe their positions to him, and Trump is signaling to judicial hopefuls that they should repay that debt with their court rulings.

• Sherrilyn Ifill: White Supremacy Is an Antidemocracy Movement

If You Want Democracy in this Country You Have to Fight White Supremacy.

• Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti @ The New York Times: A Racist Remark About Jeffries Sets Off Democratic Anger in Virginia

Representative Jen Kiggans, a Republican in a tough re-election fight, faced criticism after she agreed with comments by a local radio host that included a racist line about Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader.

• Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: Nick Fuentes Faces a Revolt From His Fellow Groypers and Groypettes

Federal agents, alleged assassination plots, and a Fyre Festival-like disaster!

• Tommy Christopher @ Mediaite: ‘This Is a Coup’: Trump Pal Laura Loomer Flips Out Over Obama Visit

Conspiracy theorist and close Trump ally Laura Loomer had an over-the-top reaction to former President Barack Obama’s visit with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

• Bill Scher @ Washington Monthly: Hondurasgate Looks Worse than Watergate and Iran-Contra Combined

Trump pardoned a right-wing authoritarian convicted of cocaine trafficking, apparently to reinstate him to power in Honduras and undermine left-wing governments in Mexico and Colombia. So why isn’t America media covering it?

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an 5 26

In the wake of Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán’s electoral loss — which was widely interpreted as a major blow to the global MAGA movement — a number of his cronies have been forced to flee abroad. Among these is Polish politician Zbigniew Ziobro, who fled to Hungary in 2023 after his attempts to instill Poland with authoritarianism failed. Now Ziobro has gone to the United States under the protection of President Donald Trump, and according to renowned historian and fascism expert Timothy Snyder, this raises disturbing questions about the present state of the U.S.

As Snyder explains, by the time Ziobro arrived in Hungary, he was on the run from serious crimes. As a justice minister in Poland, he was found guilty of mishandling funds intended to be used for the victims of crime, diverting the money instead to a spyware program he leveraged to monitor journalists and political opponents. In Hungary, he appeared safe alongside fellow authoritarian Orban, but when the latter lost power, the likes of Ziobro were no longer welcome.

“Hungary will no longer be a dumping ground for internationally wanted criminals,” said Orban’s successor Peter Magyar, who called out Ziobro by name.

“When democracy wins, the losers go to America, it seems,” said Snyder. “What was left for Ziobro? The United States. You might not have heard of Ziobro, but Donald Trump has.”

Ziobro’s arrival in the U.S. has caused a global scandal. As Snyder notes, “Ziobro is a wanted man with no passport. The Trump White House just went to a good deal of trouble to bring him to the U.S.” The international community is wondering how Ziobro could have crossed the border without a passport, with many suggesting that it could only have been done with the express support of the Trump administration. Now Poland says it expects the U.S. to extradite Ziobro to face charges.

“This teaches us, once again, how much the Trump project is an international one,” explains Snyder. “Americans are punished every day, but foreign authoritarian friends are remembered.”

Beyond the many legal and political issues this situation raises, Snyder argues that Trump’s willingness to embrace Ziobro prompts pressing questions about the ethics underpinning American society.

“What does this mean about our country when we become a place where we welcome people who are accused of corruption, we welcome people who are architects of attempted authoritarian transitions, we welcome people who are fleeing not only from their own country but from another attempted authoritarian regime — what does that mean?” Snyder muses. “Doesn’t that make us a bit third-rate ourselves — to become the kind of third repository of people like this?”

To Snyder, it comes down to a matter of identity: “It’s a question for us as Americans. Don’t we all agree that we would like the rule of law? Don’t we all agree that we would like for politicians at home or abroad to be following the rule of law? What does it mean when we go around the law to bring people to our country who are serious opponents to the rule of law? What does it mean when the people who get special treatment in the United States are precisely those who have been trying to break democracy elsewhere? What does that say about us?”

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AN 4 26

When conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year, President Donald Trump and his supporters vowed that his death would change things. In at least one tragic sense, this has been true — politicians are now spending campaign money on personal security.

“Since the assassinations of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and Democratic Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, more than 15 states have passed laws or approved rule changes allowing lawmakers to access campaign funds for personal security, a sign of growing concern about political violence in America,” Politico’s Natalie Fertig reported on Sunday. Since the start of 2026 Alabama, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah altered their policies so that state lawmakers can use campaign funds for personal security, while states like Tennessee are discussing similar laws.

“The suspect in Hortman’s killing, Vance Boelter, is facing federal murder charges, and authorities said he allegedly confessed in a letter in which he recounted a confusing and convoluted scheme to punish Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz,” Fertig wrote. “Boelter has pleaded not guilty. In Kirk’s killing, the suspect, Tyler Robinson, allegedly inscribed bullet casings with anti-fascist phrases and meme-culture phrases. A preliminary hearing in his case is scheduled to start this month.”

The newfound vigilance is not limited to politicians; even political activists have to be on their guard. Turning Point USA head Erika Kirk pulled out of a University of Georgia speaking event, where she would have been joined by Vice President JD Vance, because of “serious threats.”

“I take my security team’s recommendations extremely seriously,” Kirk explained in a post on X, with Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet adding the threats against Kirk were “a terrible reflection on the state of reality and the state of our country.”

Trump himself has been accused of inciting violence against politicians who disagree with him. When he accused Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey of “domestic terrorism” for disagreeing with him, former Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Rights Division attorney Julia Gegenheimer told Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern that Trump’s rhetoric is designed to harm the Minnesota Democrats.

"It is profoundly disturbing. And the reason why this feels different to you is that it is a bit of a different flavor," Gegenheimer said. "It’s pitting the federal government against the states and creating tension where it doesn’t need to be. And frankly, it’s implicitly encouraging acts of political violence against these elected officials by turning them into the enemy." Indeed, Trump has issued subpoenas against Walz, Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

"We’ve seen this throughout history, even recent history: When you put people in opposition like that — when you portray them as the enemy, when you describe them as kind of threatening a person’s way of life or things that they hold dear — that creates the conditions under which people are more likely to resort to political violence, and it becomes more and more the norm," Gegenheimer explained.

Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2024, New School for Social Research history department chair and author of "A Brief History of Fascist Lies" Federico Finchelstein explained that Trump and his supporters engage in a "kind of dissonance between what Trump is saying and what is going on. And this has been the case with totalitarians and fascists for decades, that they say stuff that doesn't connect to reality." He described as “shocking” "the idea that the person that has promoted violence through rhetoric, and even sometimes the glorification of that violence, the idea that that person can complain about the 'rhetorical violence' of his enemies.” Finchelstein then added that Trump "does this kind of thing again and again, and that's why he reminds us of [Nazi Germany dictator Adolf] Hitler." The former and possibly future president "follows Hitler's playbook in projecting onto his enemies all his desires, fantasies, and aspirations. This includes, of course, as he said, 'retribution' and violence."

In response to Finchelstein’s comment to Salon, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Salon that "it's been less 72 hours since the second assassination attempt [by Ryan Wesley Routh] on President Trump's life and the media is already back to comparing President Trump to Hitler. It's disgusting. This is why Americans have zero trust in the liberal mainstream media."

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an 4 26

Trump’s “gauche” habit of naming everything after himself is more than just a quirk picked up by his narcissistic father; it is, quite literally, a threat to our republic.

“He got it from his father, Fred Trump,” USA Today's Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy reported in an interview with Barbara Res, a former executive vice president at Trump Organization who oversaw major projects like building Trump Tower in the 1980s. The elder Trump was a wealthy New York City real estate developer who raised his son to inherit that empire and expand it.

“He (the president) was raised to believe that he was different and his family was different,” Res said. “And by different, I mean better than and more important than anyone else.” Res was a close adviser to the younger Trump from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

Jeffrey Engel, founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, added that Trump’s renaming obsession speaks to a deeper authoritarian trend in his governing style.

“The leader is the state is what those messages are trying to convey,” Engel told Ramaswamy. “And in our country, the leader's not the state, the people are the state.”

He added that there are only two reasons why presidents’ names are added to buildings and other important institutions only after they have died. The first is that doing otherwise is “gauche”; the second is that “more importantly, this is still a constitutional republic.”

Despite the fact that renaming important institutions after a living president implies that America is a dictatorship rather than a constitutional republic, Ramaswamy noted that “the 79-year-old commander-in-chief’s name has been inserted into decades-old establishments such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He’s also slapped his name on key policies including TrumpRX, Trump Gold Card, Trump Coin and Trump Accounts.”

Ramaswamy added, “Federal buildings – including the Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture and Department of Justice – unfurled large banners with Trump’s face on them over the past few months. Lawmakers have sought to cater to Trump's ego with legislation to put him on Mount Rushmore. The latest canvas? The Treasury Department announced in March that Trump’s signature will appear on future U.S. paper currency in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary.”

Veteran reporter Michael Wolff reported in February that Trump initially wanted the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which was named after the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, to be named solely after himself.

"His first idea was to call this the Trump Center,” Wolff explained, adding that Trump asked, “Why does this have to be Kennedy? That was such a long time ago.” He then insisted that because Trump himself had been “almost assassinated," the name on the center should be his alone.

“You can’t say, ‘This is a terrible idea. This is a megalomaniacal idea. This is not good politics.’ You just cannot say any of that stuff to Trump,” Wolff explained regarding the perspective of those who work for Trump. “So instead, they said, ‘Well, why don’t we call it the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center?’”

Wolff added, "It’s a perfect Trump setup. He goes for the absurd, and he settles for the outlandish."

Also in February it was reported that Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that he would lift his hold on $16 billion for a long-planned railway project connected New York and New Jersey if Washington Dulles International Airport and New York’s Penn Station were both renamed for him. Two unnamed sources later told CNN that Schumer "swiftly rejected" Trump's demand.

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rww

03/30/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Kathryn Wilkens @ Mediaite: ‘Trump Is Winning’: FCC Chair Boasts He’s Remaking the Media by Pushing Out Left-Leaning Figures

During a Friday CPAC appearance, FCC Chair Brendan Carr bragged that he’s remaking the media by pushing out left-leaning figures, declaring, “[President Donald] Trump is winning.”

• Patrick Marley @ The Washington Post: He took Pelosi’s lectern on Jan. 6. Now he’s running for office.

Adam Johnson has rarely voted and embraces his role as clown prince of Jan. 6. Floridians will decide whether a man who tried to upend democracy can help lead one.

• Hafiz Rashid @ The New Republic: January 6 Rioters Pardoned by Trump Sue Over “Emotional Distress”

January 6 insurrectionists say police used excessive force while trying to stop them from storming the Capitol.

• Jason Wilson @ The Guardian: College Republicans director made racist and sexist remarks on live streams

Review of Kai Schwemmer’s broadcasts undermines claim ‘process of growth’ had led him to abandon bigoted views.

• Lydia O'Connor @ HuffPost: A Running List Of The Totally Real, Not At All Fake Awards Donald Trump Has Received

The president is the "undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal," and he has the trophy to prove it.

• Amogh Dimri @ The Atlantic: Nick Fuentes’s Strategy is Working

Viral clips of the far-right white supremacist are growing his audience.

• Ben Jacobs @ Slate: CPAC Now Has No Trump and No Swag

CPAC was never cool, but it was once exciting. In 2026 the conference was no longer a hotbed of insurgents against a Republican establishment, let alone a place where factions of conservatives maneuvered for dominance. It wasn’t even an out-and-out MAGA pep rally that celebrated the ascension of Trump. It didn’t have a clear function anymore. Instead, it just felt like an event held out of habit.

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an 3 26

President Donald Trump’s proposed law to “crack down on rogue judges” and his rhetoric toward judges who rule against him — such as calling them “criminals” and “a disgrace to our nation” — is a “breathtaking” danger to the Constitution, according to an expert.

“Demanding that the legislative branch enact laws that punish the judiciary is a breathtaking breach of the president’s oath to support and defend the Constitution, which creates our three separate — and coequal — branches of government,” lawyer and former US attorney Barbara McQuade wrote in a recent editorial for Bloomberg. “Trump’s recent attacks came after the Supreme Court struck down his tariffs, which he has used to wield economic power against foreign governments, last month. By a 6-3 majority, the Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize the president to impose tariffs, a power otherwise reserved for Congress. Among the justices joining the majority were two of Trump’s own appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.”

Trump, who said Gorsuch and Barrett “sicken” him because they dissented, is doing something “different” with his attempts to cower judges, McQuade wrote.

“His proposed legislation would target the judges themselves for punishment,” McQuade said. “It seems likely that Trump knows he will not get his wish. Even a Congress that has been largely submissive during his second administration would surely not go so far as to retaliate against judges based on their case decisions, a move that would wreak havoc on the separation of powers. But the president’s public statements nonetheless risk the independence of the judiciary, an essential pillar of democracy. By attacking judges and justices who rule against him, Trump is sending a message to the others: Rule my way or else you’ll be next.”

McQuade is not alone in criticizing Trump’s attacks on the judiciary. Earlier this month The New York Times reported that judges themselves are “quietly” saying that it is concerning how much “risk” is involved in speaking out against the president.

"Judges are turning up the volume" in their rulings against Trump, eschewing the judiciary’s traditional “restrained” tone in favor of "an emotive, populist approach" which permits them to give "full vent to the intensity of their concerns about cases flooding their dockets since President Trump returned to office."

The Times added, "One compared her district’s ballooning caseload to a demigod’s battle against a mythological monster. Another sought to buttress his argument against National Guard deployments to U.S. cities with a YouTube link to a 1970 protest song. A third compared the Trump administration’s rewriting of American history to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel '1984.'"

Trump’s intimidation of the judiciary extends to the jurists he has appointed in his second term, many of whom have been required to avoid telling the truth about Trump losing the 2020 presidential election while under oath.

Senate Judiciary member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) typically ended each hearing for a judgeship with the question, “Who won the popular vote in 2020?”

He always received variations on the same reply, namely that “President Biden was certified and served four years as president.” By using the word “certified,” they curry favor with the president who nominated them by refusing to flat-out say that Trump lost.

“There is a special peril when federal judges, who serve for life if confirmed, agree to demean themselves in this fashion,” legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said at the time.

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OMG AN 3 26

The Department of Justice has awarded Michael Flynn, the retired three-star Army general who served as Trump's National Security Advisor for less than a month, a $1.25 million settlement—a decision that legal experts are comparing to outright theft of taxpayer funds.

Flynn's settlement, announced this week, compensates him for what the Trump administration is characterizing as wrongful prosecution. The irony is stark: Flynn pleaded guilty under oath in 2017 to intentionally making false statements to the FBI. He admitted to the crime in court with a lawyer present, with a judge confirming his understanding of what he was confessing to. Trump later pardoned him in 2020.

Now, with a new Trump administration in place, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has agreed to hand over more than a million dollars in public money to a man who has already admitted guilt.

"I really do not understand how you justify this as anything but theft," said Andrew Weissmann, a former DOJ prosecutor who spent 20 years at the Department of Justice and served as general counsel at the FBI,during an appearance on "The Illegal News" podcast this week. "To make this a legitimate settlement, there would have to be a good faith belief that he has a meritorious argument and that there might be some downside in litigating this."

Weissmann's critique goes to the heart of how government settlements are supposed to work. When the DOJ settles a case, there must be a reasonable belief that the other side might actually win if the case went to trial—a genuine legal dispute, in other words. But in Flynn's case, Weissmann argues, there is no such ambiguity.

"I don't see the downside of having taken it to court," Weissmann said. "The issues here seem so completely one-sided that I really do not understand how you justify this as anything but theft."

The case against Flynn was straightforward. As National Security Advisor, Flynn had engaged in back-channel communications with Russian officials during the transition period. When FBI agents questioned him about these contacts, he lied. Vice President Mike Pence later went public saying he had repeated Flynn's denials on air, only to discover they were false—a betrayal that led directly to Flynn's firing after just 24 days in the job.

Flynn initially tried to withdraw his guilty plea, leading to years of litigation, but ultimately the legal process confirmed the guilty plea stood. There was no meritorious legal argument waiting to be discovered. There was no ambiguity about whether Flynn had committed the crime he admitted to committing.

Yet Bondi and Blanche signed off on the settlement anyway.

Weissmann raised additional concerns about the precedent this sets. "This is something that Michael Flynn admitted under oath he did, which was lied to the FBI. Now he then moved to withdraw his guilty plea. There was lots and lots of litigation back and forth, and that ultimately ended up with Donald Trump pardoning him," Weissmann explained.

The settlement also raises questions about potential conflicts of interest. Blanche was Trump's personal criminal defense attorney during his hush money trial and conviction. Now, as Deputy Attorney General, he's using government resources to benefit his former client.

"The next administration can look into this as an ethics issue," Weissmann said. "Remember, they represented Donald Trump individually. And they have to be looking out for the interests of the public, not for the interests of Donald Trump."

Perhaps most troubling to Weissmann is what this settlement signals about future Trump administration conduct. "This is the harbinger of more to come," he said, "because we know that Donald Trump wants to do this. And for all we know, this has been happening with other people doing this without bringing a lawsuit—just having a private agreement with the Department of Justice where they give out money and we just don't know."

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an 3 26

Joel Webbon Says Gender Equality Is A Jewish Plot To 'Eradicate White People'

03/25/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

It is well established that Joel Webbon is a deeply misogynistic, antisemitic, white nationalist far-right pastor, so it was no surprise to see him put all of these qualities on display during a recent episode of his "Right Response" program, where he alleged that gender equality is a Jewish plot to eliminate white people and destroy the world.

The crux of Webbon's argument is that nefarious forces are at work providing women with various means and reasons to forgo motherhood in favor of having a career, and that these forces are intentionally doing so in order to "eradicate white people."

"The end game in pushing egalitarianism pertaining to the sexes almost exclusively in the West and nowhere else is because they want Western people, particularly those of European descent—AKA white people—to stop procreating," Webbon declared. "True equality for women with men can only be attained if women have all the same opportunities that men have and they never ever will so long as they bear children, so long as women can get pregnant."

"So how do you achieve then equality between men and women?" he continued. "There is only one way to do it: you have to cut off motherhood; you have to cut off procreation. So then what is the outcome? What is the real end game, the real driving incentive and motive of those who have pushed for an egalitarian system as it pertains to men and women, but done so almost exclusively in the West among those of European descent? I'll cut to the chase. Here it is. It's very simple: They want to eradicate white people."

"This is the destruction of the world," Webbon added. "Egalitarianism is not baked into the scripture. It is baked into the fabric of communism. It's baked into the fabric of Marxism. And it is baked into the fabric of Judaism, which I believe is the root of communism. It is the root of transgenderism. It is the root of Marxism. It is the root of all bitter, baseless envy that just seeks to destroy the world."

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aha not me note spatial aspect: zone of exception

[btw scotus working on pulling TPS 2 more countries?

an 3 26

When President Donald Trump sent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to airports, his supporters applauded the move as a great way to help out Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees who are feeling overwhelmed during a partial government shutdown. Trump's critics, however, countered that ICE's presence at airports did nothing to make TSA agents' jobs easier or shorten long lines at airports — and if anything, they got in the way.

Salon's Amanda Marcotte, in a biting article published on March 25, argued that Trump's real motivation wasn't helping beleaguered TSA agents — he saw the ICE agents as a way to "bully" and "trigger the liberals." And Marcotte's Salon colleague Chauncey DeVega sees Trump's ICE/airports move as part of his "authoritarian" push to restrict "freedom of movement."

"Authoritarian regimes attempt to control freedom of movement, association and privacy; this is one of the most direct ways that such leaders exercise power," DeVega explains in an article published the day after Marcotte's. "People internalize the restrictions and conform. Those who refuse to do so are punished. The Trump Administration is now using America's airports as a space for authoritarian training and conditioning."

DeVega notes that in a 2024 report, Freedom House pointed out that authoritarian regimes "around the world use mobility controls — revoking citizenship, passport restrictions, travel bans — to coerce and punish dissidents, activists, journalists, and ordinary people."

According to Freedom House, "For people targeted in this way, mobility controls produce a sense of powerlessness."

Paul Gowder, a law professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, views airports as a place where authoritarians make a point of exercising control.

Gowder told DeVega, "The federal government has created agencies and personnel trained and socialized in operating in these liminal spaces. Most infamous is the Border Patrol, which has a long record of brutality — predictable, because they are trained to deal with people with lesser rights, in spaces where monitoring of their conduct is thin or nonexistent."

DeVega warns, "When militarized guardians of the border and the larger national security state are turned inward against a country's own citizens, it is known as the boomerang effect. This is a defining feature of democracies collapsing into authoritarianism…. Civil and human rights abuses at airports are a feature of this system, not a bug — and a measure of how far Trump is pushing its boundaries to advance his authoritarian project."

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AN 3 26

In Riverside County, California, Sheriff Chad Bianco — a Donald Trump supporter and former Oath Keepers member who is running for governor of California as a Republican — recently announced that his department had seized 650,000 voting ballots cast in a 2025 election. Bianco, at a, told reporters, "This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported.""

MS NOW's Steve Benen, in an opinion column published on March 24, argues that Bianco is conducting an "investigation that appears entirely baseless" and could be used as a "template" for MAGA Republicans to challenge election results they don't like.

"For those inclined to be charitable," Benen explains, "there is a relatively benign interpretation of these developments. It's possible, for example, that Bianco is simply trying to generate attention for his longshot gubernatorial candidacy. Relatedly, the sheriff likely realizes that ballot seizures will please the White House, which in turn, may lead to greater institutional support from his party in the coming months. The move, in other words, may very well be little more than an elaborate campaign stunt that will have little practical impact and will be largely forgotten after Bianco loses. But then, there are the less benign interpretations of what transpired."

The "Rachel Maddow Show" producer notes that Bianco's investigation "comes on the heels of Trump sending the FBI to seize election materials in Georgia in response to other assorted conspiratorial complaints."

"The broader concern is that a template is taking shape, offering precedents for law enforcement to start making plans to seize ballots in areas nationwide — after or even during official counts," Benen warns. "What's more, the more frequently this happens, the more Americans may be led to believe it's normal and routine for law enforcement officials to seize and impound ballots — despite the fact that this is neither normal nor routine."

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AN SALON 3 26

On March 10, the New York Times' Glenn Thrush reported that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was moving from an apartment in Washington, D.C. to housing on a military base in response to threats from drug cartels and others. And she isn't the only Donald Trump appointee who moved to a military base despite not working directly for the Pentagon; others have ranged from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Historically, those homes were reserved for senior military officers.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega examines this trend in an article published on March 24, warning that it is exactly the type of thing one finds in authoritarian regimes.

"Cabinet members have traditionally lived in the wealthy enclaves of Washington, D.C., or Northern Virginia," DeVega explains. "But instead of choosing homes in Georgetown, Kalorama, McLean or Great Falls, some officials in Donald Trump's Cabinet and among his White House staff — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem — are living in secure military housing, citing safety concerns. In doing so, they are embracing the literal architecture of authoritarianism."

DeVega continues, "The security concerns are very real. According to a recent study, violent online rhetoric against prominent public officials in the U.S. increased dramatically between 2021 and 2025. But for most, if not all of American history, senior government officials accepted the personal risk as part of the job. The symbolism of living among their fellow Americans mattered. It is a damning indictment of the Trump Administration that its policies are so unpopular and have caused so much pain and anger among the American people that senior officials are hiding from them."

Steven Levitsky, author of the 2018 book "How Democracies Die" and a professor of government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts outside Boston, is among the scholars who finds this trend disturbing.

Levitsky told the New York Times, "It is something you never see in a democracy. Government officials live on military bases or other sorts of fortified zones in authoritarian regimes."

According to DeVega, the fact that Bondi, Rubio, Miller and other Trump appointees are living on military bases demonstrates that "American democracy is continuing to collapse."

"America's norms and institutions long ago surrendered to Trump's MAGA movement, and granting his closest Cabinet officials and staffers military housing is just the latest example of how the president is consolidating power and building a cult of personality," DeVega warns. "He is also in the process of redesigning the nation's capital in his own image by bulldozing historic sites, slapping his name on a presidential memorial, erecting new monuments for his own glory and hanging banners bearing his face on government buildings. This comes in addition to his administration's assault on freedom of speech, thought and the press; civil society; voting rights; and civil and human rights — all in the name of patriotism and destroying the enemy within."

The Salon journalist adds, "The walled city his most trusted agents live behind is itself a metaphor for Trump's wider authoritarian project."

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AN 3 26

President Donald Trump recently fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on the grounds that doing so will improve her department — but a Republican national security expert argued Sunday that the problems are much deeper than that.

“The switch is cosmetic: The problem with DHS isn’t Noem or [Trump’s nominee GOP Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne] Mullin or whoever else will run it,” explained Paul Rosenzweig, who served as deputy assistant secretary for policy of the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush (2005-2009) and currently cybersecurity at the George Washington University Law School. “The problem is with the agency itself.”

While some of the problems are longstanding, such as issues with FEMA or the TSA, Trump has made them worse, Rosenzweig opined.

“Under Donald Trump, ICE and Border Patrol have become rogue agencies, accused of unnecessary violence and disregard for the rule of law,” Rosenzweig argued. “In January alone, ICE violated more court orders than most federal agencies violate in their entire existence, according to a federal judge in Minnesota. ICE has also adopted what appears to be a blatantly unconstitutional search policy.”

He added, “Meanwhile, more than 40 people have died in ICE custody since the start of Trump’s second term. The answer to such abuses is not reform; it is wholesale disassembly and restructuring.”

From there Rosenzweig suggested several new policies to overhaul the Homeland Security Department. These include returning “its focus to the original objective—foreign counterterrorism—which remains a serious concern. Retain those portions of DHS that serve a counterterrorism function—CBP officers at ports of entry, TSA screeners at airports, Border Patrol agents at the nation’s land borders—and return the other components to more appropriate federal departments.”

From there, “most of the rest of DHS should be disaggregated. Terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are so infrequent that FEMA can, and should, go back to being an independent agency. Likewise, immigration adjudication (currently housed in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) can be returned to the Department of Justice. The home of the few agencies whose functions are decidedly mixed—such as the Coast Guard—should be decided on a case-by-case basis, but whatever the outcome, joint task forces that coordinate response activities should be developed.”

Rosenzweig argued that the “most important” change would be to “eliminate the possibility of the creation of a federalized interior police force. Border Patrol can be limited to the border, and Homeland Security Investigations can be retargeted toward their traditional function of sophisticated transnational commercial crimes. Meanwhile, the single gravest militarized threat—ICE—should be reined in and restructured under new leadership, so that it focuses on its core mission of genuine civil-process interior enforcement.”

As Rosenzweig noted, the Senate did not seriously propose any reforms along these lines, instead treating the problems with Homeland Security as an issue primarily of Noem’s bad leadership. For example, Trump’s decision to fire Noem was based on the ex-Cabinet officer inaccurately claiming the president authorized her $220 million ad campaign.

“I was stunned when Noem answered categorically that the president approved every single bit of it,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Fox News at the time. “Later that day, I got a call from President Trump. He was mad as a mamma wasp. He said, ‘Kennedy, I hope you understand that I had nothing to do with this.’ I said, ‘I do believe you, Mr. President.'”

He added, “He was not happy. It was clear to me after that conversation that the secretary’s time at the department was limited. To be blunt, she was dead as fried chicken.”

Noem was also grilled by House members for her alleged affair with a special government employee she hired to work for her, former lobbyist Corey Lewandowski.

"Secretary Noem, at any time during your tenure…have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski?" U.S. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) asked Noem during a hearing earlier this month.

Noem told Sydney Kamlager-Dove, "That is garbage and it is offensive that you have brought that up.”

Kamlager-Dove replied, "It is about your judgment and decision-making.”

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AN 3 26

President Donald Trump’s 19-year-old son Barron is reportedly close friends with Justin Waller, an influencer in the so-called “manosphere” who preaches mistreatment of women.

In the new Netflix documentary Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, the 40-year-old Waller bragged that he had befriended Barron and in general joined Trump’s “inner circle.”

“I had dinner with Barron at Mar-a-Lago,” Waller said. “I met Donald that night. I’ve been to Mar-a-Lago four or five times.”

Manosphere influencers like Waller preach the belief that men are inherently superior to women and should be able to control women’s lives. They argue for patriarchal values in which women exist only to serve men domestically and sexually. Waller specifically advocates one-way monogamy wherein women are expected to be faithful to men but men are socially permitted to sleep with as many women as they desire.

Waller is not the only manosphere influencer to find his way into Barron Trump’s good graces. In December, The New York Times reported that Trump is close friends with Andrew Tate, another manosphere influencer who has been accused of multiple counts of sex trafficking and rape. Like Waller, Tate is an outspoken advocate of far right politics across the board, but focuses on teaching that men are superior to and should dominate women.

Thanks to Barron Trump’s instigation, Tate was allowed to leave Romania where he had been under house arrest since 2022 on allegations of coercing women into pornography, rape and pedophilia. Tate had previously been barred from leaving the country, but Barron Trump intervened to help him.

“I had word from The Trump admin that they’re on top of things,” Tate wrote at one point regarding the younger Trump’s assistance. “Ive been told I'll be free soon but Trump needs to see me in Miami.”

One month later, the Times reported, “an extraordinary order came down from the highest levels of the Romanian government” in which “the prosecutors were told to find a compromise with the Tates. Despite their misgivings, they lifted the travel restrictions, a move that Romania’s prime minister thought would appease the Trump administration.”

“We’re massively back,” Tate declared after the legal victory.

Although a legal adult, media outlets have traditionally been shy about covering the youngest Trump child in a critical way. First Lady Melania Trump has directly encouraged this, saying in January that Barron is “a child” and requires her constant supervision. Despite this kid gloves treatment, Trump is already worth $150 million according to the Nasdaq and is legally eligible to serve in the military, which he has refrained from doing despite his father provoking wars in Venezuela and Iran.

"America is strong because its leaders are strong. President Trump proves that every day,” declared the creators of a website called DraftBarronTrump.com. “Naturally, his son Barron is more than ready to defend the country his father so boldly commands. Service is honor. Strength is inherited. Dog (sic) Bless Barron.”

The site added, "This site is dedicated to honoring the strongest and bravest voices in war. When power is projected abroad, it is only right that strength exists at home. If you’re looking for proven genes, inherited courage, and unquestionable resolve, look no further than the Trump family. Leadership starts somewhere.”

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AN 3 26

Last week, reports revealed the U.S. government has redesigned the Great Seal of the United States to use on the dime for the country's 250th birthday. And on Thursday, coin aficionados are set to commence the next great coin debate: whether President Donald Trump will get his own official U.S. government gold coin.

*The Washington Post* reported that the Commission of Fine Arts will meet Thursday and decide whether to approve a 24-carat gold coin showing the president leaning on a desk. As the report notes, every member of the committee was nominated by Trump.

In the past year, Trump has made vast strides to leave his mark on Washington D.C., including tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a monstrous ballroom and planning to build the Arch de Trump — a large arch resembling the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. More recently, Trump appointed his own board to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and had them vote to add his name to the building.

The coins, typically sold for several thousand dollars, would be made available at a time when the economy is taking a serious hit, and families are struggling to afford housing, fuel and groceries.

The barrier might come when the coin has to go before the second panel of deciders, a bipartisan Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which last month refused to consider Trump's gold coin

"In interviews, members opposed putting a sitting president on currency, saying it would break with democratic norms and reek of subservience to royalty," the report said.

It would also break with the laws that mandate someone be dead before they go on currency.

Republican coin collector Michael Moran, who was appointed to the panel by by former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said, “It’s wrong. It goes against American culture and the traditions that drive what we put on our coinage. I didn’t sign up for this."

The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee includes people who regularly collect coins, along with a historian and an artist specializing in medallic arts.

Retired basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was once on the committee; he's an avid coin collector. He said he was disheartened by the Trump coin, the Post reported. "He believed well-designed coins could inform and inspire. He cited as examples a 1998 silver dollar that honored Crispus Attucks, who was enslaved, escaped and was killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770, and a 2017 gold coin that depicted Lady Liberty as an African American woman."

“I’m not enthusiastic about memorializing Mr. Trump on a coin because he has done so much damage to our country,” said Abdul-Jabbar. “It takes a huge consensus to get agreement on something like this, and I’m not inclined to be supportive of the president’s request.”

Last year, the commission approved a $1 Trump coin, which Democrats tried to stop.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Navada) called it "embarrassing."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Or.) added, “Monarchs and dictators put their faces on coins, not leaders of a democracy."

A 2005 law restricts presidents from appearing on a $1 coin unless they are dead. Trump is getting around the law by making it a "gold coin."

“They can definitely make the coin without our review. But it would be an illegal coin,” said Donald Scarinci, a Democratic appointee on the committee. “It’s not about Donald Trump. It’s about whoever the president is. It’s not something done in a democracy.”

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TRAINING CUT AN 2 26

Federal agents are trained to ignore constitutional rights: ex-ICE instructor - Alternet.org

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AN 2 26

President Donald Trump is crossing “a dangerous line” by attacking the Supreme Court for overturning his controversial tariffs, according to America’s most distinguished organization of lawyers.

“The recent remarks by the president of the United States, leveling personal criticisms against members of the U.S. Supreme Court, are not acceptable and cross a dangerous line that threatens the safety of the judiciary and our judicial process,” declared American Bar Association (ABA) President Michelle A. Behnke in a statement.

“Vigorous debate over policy is a strength of our democracy, but attacks that demean the judiciary are not,” Behnke added. “Incendiary rhetoric has helped contribute to the alarming increase in attacks on and threats to our judges. It must stop.”

The ABA head is referring to Trump’s criticism of the six Supreme Court justices who ruled against his emergency tariff authority, including two jurists — Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — that Trump himself appointed. Deriding them as “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” Trump said Gorsuch and Barrett are “an embarrassment to their families. You want to know the truth, the two of them.” He also said the liberal justices were loyal to the Democrats, which he admired, but added that he believes they are a “disgrace to our nation.” The president also claimed those judges were motivated by foreign powers, although did not provide evidence for this assertion.

“Personal attacks against individual justices, particularly allegations that they are influenced by ‘foreign interests,’ are wholly inappropriate,” Behnke criticized Trump in that statement. “Such statements risk undermining the rule of law and the public’s faith in an impartial judiciary, foundational pillars of our democracy that have guided our nation since its founding.”

She added, “The men and women of the Supreme Court, regardless of who appointed them, deserve respect for exercising their duty to interpret the Constitution faithfully and independently. The health of our constitutional system depends on maintaining that independence, free from political intimidation or retribution.”

Perhaps anticipating Trump’s lashing out, Gorsuch explained in his opinion that the president’s seeming desire to bypass the legislature to more effectively achieve his policy goals is dangerous to the American system of government.

“Yes, legislating can be hard and take time,” Gorsuch said. “And yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man.”

In addition to the ABA, one of the most prominent Republicans currently holding elected office also criticized Trump for his words about the Supreme Court. Former Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who told Trump in a statement that "Congress is not an inconvenience to avoid." The conservative publication The Wall Street Journal similarly argued that Trump’s language was “ugly,” adding that “this is the same Court that ruled Mr. Trump’s way on presidential immunity, which was more personally consequential for this President.”

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Secretive Tactic DHS Is Using to Target You (With Steve Loney)

[

The Lever

27.9K subscribers

Feb 20, 2026 Lever Time

On this video episode of Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with ACLU attorney Steve Loney to ask some big questions: How are federal agencies obtaining your private data without a warrant? How are tech giants like Google enabling them? And what should you do if the feds come knocking on your door?

The Secretive Tactic DHS Is Using to Target You (With Steve Loney) - YouTube

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NO LNX

America reaches the line historians warned us about

Thom Hartmann February 19, 2026

This fight isn’t really about immigration. It’s about whether the Constitution still restrains government power at all.

When elected officials call it a “nonstarter” to require federal agents to get a judicial warrant before kicking in doors, to give people bail or a trial before they face long-term prison, and to allow protests, they’re not debating border policy, they’re testing whether the Bill of Rights is still binding or has become merely decorative.

The Bill of Rights was written to put friction between the state’s power to use force and the people it governs. To restrain government.

If that friction can be removed so government can attack any one disfavored group, then constitutional rights stop being universal guarantees and turn into conditional privileges. And once that shift happens, history — and Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem — show us that the groups of people who’re unprotected never stays small for long.

This week’s news which highlights this crisis is that Republicans have shut down the Department of Homeland Security because they say Democrats’ call for ICE to follow the law and the Constitution is “a nonstarter.”

Seriously. Here’s the first sentence of the Democrats’ demand that Republicans say is so unreasonable:

“DHS officers cannot enter private property without a judicial warrant.”

Right now, ICE is kicking in doors and smashing windows of cars in order to attack and arrest both citizens and non-citizens alike. They do it because they say they can. And to arrest, detain, and imprison people they claim they can issue their own phony, made-up “administrative warrants” and don’t need a judge or court to see any evidence or say a word.

This is complete bull----, and it’s genuinely astonishing that Republicans are backing them up. The Fourth Amendment isn’t complicated. Here it is, in it’s entirety (notice it does NOT say “citizens” but says “people”):

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

That’s it. Every word. And it applies to any “person” who happens to be in the United States. Nonetheless, ignoring 250 years of American law and history, DHS General Counsel James Percival said:

“[I]llegal aliens aren’t entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as U.S. citizens.”

His argument is that kicking in the front doors of the homes of people where undocumented immigrants may be staying, or smashing the windows of their cars, is not “unreasonable.”

This is a classic example of how law can get twisted into gibberish by a criminal regime like we are currently suffering under. And it doesn’t even include the right to a trial by jury, the right practice journalism, or the right to protest, all guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Yesterday I told you about something the people who started this country learned from bitter experience and their deep reading of history: a wannabe fascist government (like Donald Trump is trying to turn ours into) doesn’t have to openly break the law to destroy liberty.

It just has to have enough sycophants in positions of power to ignore the law so it no longer restrains the government’s awesome power.

To modern Americans that may sound like an abstraction, but it’s critical. Government is the only institution that has widespread cultural approval to use violence, to imprison or even kill us, and to tear our lives apart in search of alleged criminal activity.

The whole point of a democracy is to restrain that power and prevent it from ever becoming so concentrated in a small number of hands that it can be abused for the benefit of one group over another.

Our movies and old newsreels of the Nazi era seem to tell us that we’ll recognize tyranny when there are tanks in the streets, newspapers are shut down, elections are canceled, and we see public executions of protestors.

But that’s not how tyranny usually works in its middle stages, like the one we’re in now.

At our founding, for example, the British Empire never announced, “Colonists have no rights” the way ICE’s lawyer is now proclaiming that immigrants aren’t protected by the Fourth Amendment. In fact, Parliament repeatedly insisted the opposite. Americans were British subjects, protected by British law, and the king’s officials repeated that constantly.

And yet, nonetheless, British agents kicked in doors without meaningful warrants. People were faced with almost daily violence. British agents monitored, followed, and often beat or arrested people who protested. Newspapers were shut down and writers arrested. And the courts couldn’t meaningfully restrain officers acting in the name of the Crown because their authority was both granted and limited by a single man, the King.

Everything existed inside a legal framework, and the British repeatedly insisted that it was the colonists, not their own agents and troops, who were “breaking the law.”

That’s what finally snapped the colonist’s patience. It wasn’t a single outrage like the Tea Act or the Boston Massacre — although those highlighted the oppression they experienced — but their final realization that every complaint they filed was answered with a legalistic explanation of why the abuse was justified.

Read the Declaration of Independence — which I quoted yesterday — closely and you’ll see a pattern emerge. Jefferson doesn’t just list harms. He listed systemic, undemocratic structural and jurisdictional moves: judges who were dependent on the ruler, military power that was put above civil authority, the denial of power to local courts, tax laws that only benefited the rich, and people transported for trial elsewhere.

The issue wasn’t cruelty or British abuse of power, although both were terrible. It was that the very structure of authority, the system, had been arranged so law was constantly being rewritten on the fly, tweaked to confront defiance, and abused to enhance and justify government power over people’s lives instead of limiting it.

That distinction, after the Revolutionary War, shaped the Constitution that came next.

We tend to treat the Bill of Rights as a moral document, a statement of national values, but the people who wrote it were being much more practical than philosophical. They were building a machine they believed would make tyranny as a governing method impossible.

They assumed — again, based on their own experience and their reading of history —that every government would always want to expand its own power because every government throughout history always had.

That’s why they wrote our Constitution the way they did: to establish a structure, a system, that’s bigger than any politician (including the president).

If the government wants to arrest or imprison someone, it must first charge them with a specific crime.

If it charges them, it must present valid evidence to an independent judge or jury.

If it presents evidence, the accused can confront it and has a mandatory right of defense counsel.

Before force like arrest, home invasion, or imprisonment is used, the courts must review and can even prevent it.

Those protections enumerated in the Bill of Rights and the overall three-branch structure of our government weren’t there out of kindness or to enhance public morality. They were put into the highest law of our land to produce serious friction — a proverbial “throwing sand into the gears” of our system — that would slow down any politician’s or party’s rush to destroy democracy.

They understood that when politicians and bureaucrats have to explain themselves in public, when they must justify their actions, they’re less likely to abuse people the way the King of England had done during their era.

Perhaps even more important, the Founders and Framers of our Constitution also knew from history that when any group seizes enough power to rise above the law, the republic itself is on its last legs.

Once a segment of society (like the Epstein-billionaire-class or ICE) reached that point — whether because of government employment or vast riches — they knew that the system would be distorted and democracy could die, even if the black-letter text of the law remained intact.

When that happens — as we’re seeing today with Trump having ignored more than 4,400 court orders — court’s rulings become technically binding but the government feels free to ignore them.

The British abuse of the colonists in 1773 is an ancient echo of what we see in Minneapolis today where the FBI just this week officially refused to turn over evidence in the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti to the local authorities who, under the law, have jurisdiction over murder.

Under this Trump regime federal government officials now refuse to comply with the Constitution, the law, with court orders, and with even normal American expectations for human decency. They shop around for friendly judges, laugh at court orders, and daily ignore the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.

This is exactly why early Americans were obsessed that the due process provisions in the Bill of Rights must apply to everyone, not just citizens, not just allies, not just the respectable. The moment any government starts to decide who receives full legal protection and who the law can either abuse or elevate, it has quietly shifted into that second operating mode the King of England was asserting in 1773. What our nation’s founders called “tyranny.”

History shows what happens once the law restrains some and elevates others above itself: the category of both the abused and the exempt expands. Both always expand, because power, once exercised, becomes precedent. What began as an exception becomes “normal.”

The Founders knew republics — when corrupted by rich, unscrupulous men — drift into this new mode. Like in modern-day Russia and Hungary, elections continue, laws remain on the books, courts keep ruling and yet the poor, the workers, the dissenters, the protesters get crushed while the rich and well-connected — the Epstein billionaire class — rise above any accountability whatsoever.

Which raises the harder question we, as Americans suffering under this regime, must confront right now:

If our government can commit violence, violate the Constitution, lie to the public on a daily basis, repeatedly lose in court, and yet continue acting however they want because the structure now allows it, is there some specific point or line where we’ve officially moved from democracy to tyranny?

It turns out, history tells us that such a line exists. Political philosophers have argued about it for centuries, but the people who wrote our Constitution were quite certain they knew roughly where it lay.

History also tells us there is a line, a point where a democracy stops being a democracy. The people who wrote our Constitution believed that line is crossed when those in power can ignore the law and face no consequences.

It’s passed when rights can be denied to some, when court orders can be brushed aside, and when the government can use force without meaningful oversight. And when that happens, our republic itself is in danger.

Tomorrow I’ll walk through that threshold and explain what it means for us today, because whether we’ve crossed it or not determines whether normal political remedies like elections and legal processes can still function — or ever again function — the way most Americans still assume they do.

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AN 2 26

Note to the decision-makers at the Gallup Organization,which for nearly 90 years has tracked presidential approval ratings: Capitulation never works.

I learned this the hard way as a teen playing basketball on D.C. playgrounds. I regretted my fecklessness.

Gallup last week admitted it would no longer survey Americans’ sentiments on how the commander in chief was faring, though I couldn’t find news of that major switchon the company’s website.

The organization’s latest presidential barometer,in December, placed Donald Trump’s approval rating at an abysmal 36%. The worst was34%, another honorific Trump earned as he was leaving office at the end of his first term. It was right after the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol.

Yes, other companies conduct surveys nowadays about the presidency. Gallup, though, held a unique place in the industry.

A Gallup spokesman told The New York Times the company was shifting strategy. He also used other corporate-speak that, frankly, doesn’t justify Gallup’s cowardice.

As The Times noted, the polling firm’s decades of data gave “historical context to what amounts to a monthly snapshot of Americans’ views.” The independent barometer has been valuable.

It’s curious the company didn’t make the change under then-President Joe Biden, but is doing so now under a thin-skinned president.

Trump and his administration havetargeted journalists with criminal indictments,filed lawsuits against media outlets and often lied about theactions of violent federal immigration agents – even whenvideo footage andwitness statements proved the contrary.

My questions to Gallup’s media folks, including what role Trump’s attacks on journalists played in the polling decision, weren’t returned by my deadline.

Gallup’s groveling reminds me of when I relinquished my chance to play a playground basketball game – even though I’d earned it – to a guy bigger, stronger, and a little older than me. “I’m taking your spot,” he declared, with a hint of menace.

The shame was I didn’t fight for it, even if I would’ve gotten bloodied. I couldn’t return to that court because no one would respect me. As I got older, I stood up for myself more, no matter whether it made me uncomfortable.

That a private company like Gallup would cave so dramatically to this administration is reprehensible. Why is it acting beholden to officials who disrespect law, precedent and common decency?

The capitulation is a stain on Gallup’s reputation and legacy, and it leaves Americans with less information on how we all feel our top government executive is faring.

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AN 2 26

The United States is facing a major test of American democracy as experts warn that the Trump administration is dragging the nation into “some form of autocracy,” NPR reports.

The U.S. has already crossed the threshold and become an “electoral autocracy,” Staffan I. Lindberg, the director of Sweden’s V-Dem Institute, told NPR.

“I would argue that the United States in 2025-26 has slid into a mild form of competitive authoritarianism,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die. “I think it’s reversible, but this is authoritarianism.”

“Under competitive authoritarianism,” NPR explained, “countries still hold elections, but the ruling party uses various tactics — attacking the press, disenfranchising voters, weaponizing the justice system and threatening critics — to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor.”

Levitsky cited several critical points in September as examples, including the Trump administration’s threat against ABC parent company Disney following host Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks on the killing of Charlie Kirk.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said.

He also cited Trump’s proposal to use American cities as “training grounds” for troops.

“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military,” Trump said, as the Military Times reported.

The president “told the commanders that defending the homeland was the military’s ‘most important priority’ and suggested the leaders in attendance could be tasked with assisting federal law enforcement interventions against an ‘invasion from within’ Democratic-led cities, such as Chicago and New York City.”

“No different than a foreign enemy,” Trump said, “but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”

Levitsky, NPR reported, “said this is the kind of language dictators in South America used in the 1970s — leaders like Augusto Pinochet in Chile.”

NPR notes that the “next big test” could come during the midterms.

Kim Scheppele, a Princeton University sociologist who has studied the authoritarian tactics of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, warned that in 2014 Orbán’s government “disenfranchised almost all the Hungarians in the U.K., most of whom were oppositional to Orbán,”

Dartmouth College professor of government Brendan Nyhan warned, “The way Election Day works in this country, there are no do-overs.”

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an 2 26

A stark report from one of the main independent European think tanks says there is no going back to any sort of pre-MAGA America, and warns that even after the Trump years, unless drastic action is taken, the “core fascist” political beliefs of the MAGA movement won’t quickly disappear.

“By the 2030s, the vulgarity, corruption, buffoonery, cult-like loyalty to Donald Trump and gratuitous cruelty of this regime may fade into history,” writes Lincoln Mitchell for the Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS). “As these most visible aspects of MAGA disappear many will choose to believe that the country has been reunified, but the core fascist political beliefs of the MAGA movement are unlikely to fade away so quickly.”

“As the Trump regime continues to sink into fascism and corruption, it is increasingly evident that the US will be forever changed by this era,” he continues. “If the US emerges from the Trump years as a functioning and cohesive, just in the legal sense, country, something that cannot be easily assumed, it will look very different than it did before Trump announced his candidacy in June of 2015 and almost immediately became the dominant figure in American political life.”

Mitchell, a political analyst, essayist, and lecturer at Columbia University, points to other times of crisis in American history, such as the Civil War or the 1960s and 1970s, and warns against those who “say that if we survived that, we can survive this.”

“That view cannot be ignored, but if we take it seriously, we must push back on the idea that the US simply survived those crises,” he writes. “The social movements that led to greater racial equality and expansions of rights for women, people of color, LGBT people and others-and the backlashes to all those movements that soon followed-still drive much of our political life and political conflicts.”

He says that even if, post-Trump, “the MAGA fervor cools a little,” it will be possible for Americans to reform the political system just enough to say to themselves that the fascist MAGA threat has passed — but they may be fooling themselves. The issues that spawned the MAGA movement will still be “central to our political life.”

Mitchell says it “should be clear” to all that now, more than a decade after Trump launched the MAGA movement, “there is no going back.”

He suggests that the question Americans need to answer is whether they want to return to “ineffective center-left administrations” or “fascist or fascist adjacent ones.”

Mitchell warns that to defeat MAGA, a few Democratic Party wins at the ballot box will not suffice.

“It will require an earnest rethinking not just of what American democracy can be, but of what the US is. It means accepting that the Constitution is no longer the core document that governs the US, so our political imaginations must not be bound by it.”

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The Trump administration is using secretive orders to crackdown on dissent

SARAH MCL

Imagine finding out that the government is issuing secretive orders to unearth your personal information and then sending federal agents to question you — all because you sent an email criticizing the life-or-death decisions the government makes.

That sounds like something out of China, Russia or the increasingly dystopian United Kingdom, right? Well this time, it’s happening here.

The Trump administration is reportedly abusing oversight-free administrative subpoenas to chill protected speech. Recent targets include a man who sent an email criticizing efforts to deport an Afghan man on humanitarian parole seeking asylum.

Our right to express ourselves, particularly in ways that displease the government, is under attack — sometimes echoing authoritarian censorship efforts abroad.

While subpoenas have been used to chill speech across numerous presidencies, the way this administration is using them, and the broader repressive pattern they are part of, should disturb all Americans. As The Washington Post reported this week, a Philadelphia-area retiree wrote an email to a federal prosecutor last year asking him to “[a]pply principles of common sense and decency” to the deportation case of an Afghan man, who feared death at the hands of the Taliban. Only the retiree’s first name, Jon, is given, as he fears for his safety.

Only hours later, to Jon’s shock, he received a notice from Google that the company had received a subpoena compelling the release of identifying information, including older account activity and his physical address. The Department of Homeland Security issued an administrative subpoena, which doesn’t require the oversight of a judge or grand jury, to get Jon’s information. DHS attempted a similar stunt to target internet commenters who posted about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That was not Jon’s only brush with DHS. Agents would also soon show up at his door with a copy of the email he’d sent and ask him to explain himself.

There is no better guarantee of the right to speak and criticize our government than the First Amendment, which stands as guard between us and the power of the state. But our right to express ourselves, particularly in ways that displease the government, is under attack — sometimes echoing authoritarian censorship efforts abroad. Americans must understand that with enough time and pressure, even the strongest of foundations can weather down to dust.

These administrative subpoenas intended to unmask critics of government action are just the tip of the speech-chilling iceberg.

Between these disturbing allegations, recent alarming on-camera encounters between civilians and law enforcement and the ceaseless incursions from the Trump administration against our First Amendment rights, Americans must recognize that the United States is failing as a bulwark for liberty in a world increasingly bereft of it.

Alex Pretti’s death at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis last month was deeply alarming. Rather than immediately commit to an intensive investigation of what took place, officials such as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem spread the unfounded claim that Pretti tried to “kill” law enforcement. Senior adviser Stephen Miller called Pretti an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” The administration has since started to shy away from these fantastical claims after Americans could watch the video for themselves.

Their narrative might still stand, however, had protesters nearby not caught the shooting on camera from multiple angles. But that First Amendment right to film law enforcement is increasingly under attack. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said filming and posting videos of ICE is “doxing our agents” and the government “will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.” Pretti himself had been recording agents with his cell phone moments before he was killed.

U.S. federal agents also appear to be creating a database to track protesters and observers who are legally and peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. In an encounter a woman filmed in Maine, an ICE agent told her he’s recording her information for a “nice little database” for “domestic terrorists” like her. A CNN report confirms a DHS memo informing agents to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” News of this database follows in the footsteps of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s plan to crack down on “domestic terror organizations,” using a framework that targets broad ideologies such as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” as markers of political violence rather than constitutionally protected beliefs.

You may be familiar with lists of alleged anti-government activists from their other iterations in Belarus, Russia and China. The lists are frightening. What governments do with them is usually even worse.

The distance between freedom and tyranny is shrinking fast — and so is our window to combat it.

And many Americans were rightfully shocked by a “60 Minutes” exposé of German censorship last year, which included raids on the homes of social media users who had insulted politicians, and by regular reports from other nations such as the U.K., where a late-night knock at the door from police has become disturbingly commonplace. In Germany, the government treats insults to politicians more, not less, harshly than other forms of insult, essentially exempting the powerful from upsetting speech.

That’s the opposite of how we view political speech in the U.S. — with great power must come a thick skin.

But the Trump administration doesn’t see it that way. In fact, ICE and DHS leadership have undertaken a concerted effort in recent months to pervert the concept of “doxing,” the sharing of identifying information about an individual, into one so broad it includes simply saying the name of the men and women who serve as armed agents of the state. Administration officials have repeatedly — and wrongly — suggested this “doxing” is illegal.

Imagine a United States in which federal agents have the authority to fire their weapons as representatives of the government, and yet everyday Americans aren’t even free to state clearly who or where those agents are. Even worse, those same Americans may find themselves on a clandestine government database for engaging in protected speech. Or, like Jon, they could even face a secretive administrative subpoena followed by a knock at the door from DHS agents.

“Secret police” cannot be a necessary term in the American vernacular, but if we do not stem the tide of these First Amendment violations and transgressions, it may become one. The distance between freedom and tyranny is shrinking fast — and so is our window to combat it.

The post The Trump administration is using secretive orders to crackdown on dissent appeared first on MS NOW.

This article was originally published on ms.now

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President Donald Trump's second term will enter its second year on January 20, and there is already a running tally on the number of people who have been either killed or wounded by U.S. immigration agents.

Nonprofit gun violence news outlet The Trace reported Wednesday that after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Trump administration immigration officials have so far killed four people and shot five others since Trump officially took office last year. There have also been 28 incidents in which federal agents held people at gunpoint during immigration operations, and 14 shootings.

"They include the shootings of three people observing or documenting ICE raids; the shootings of five people driving away from traffic stops or evading an enforcement action; and the September 30 raid on a Chicago apartment building, during which half-asleep tenants and their children were held at gunpoint," wrote The Trace's Jennifer Mascia.

Mascia noted one particularly controversial shooting in which U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez was shot by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Chicago, Illinois last October. Martinez was shot five times but survived.

"I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes," read a text message from the officer who shot Martinez. "Put that in your book boys."

According to The Trace, there have also been 13 incidents in which federal immigration agents fired less-than-lethal munitions (like pepper balls and rubber bullets) at both suspects and the public. Mascia wrote that those munitions "can cause welts and burning in the lungs and eyes."

"[The Trump administration is] describing what’s happening to cities across the United States as an invasion and using language and imagery that’s evocative of war," Ohio State University law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández told The Trace. "The fact that immigration agents are responding in a way that is more aggressive than what is customary cannot be divorced from the fact that the rhetoric that leading figures in the Trump administration, including the president himself, are using is far more aggressive than what is customary."

Click here to read The Trace's report in full.

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A newly surfaced Trump administration memo has been deemed "outrageous," per an analysis from Bloomberg, for paving the way to turn federal agents into "an all-powerful police force" for the president.

The memo, first reported on by the New York Times, pertains to officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and authorizes them to make arrests of anyonethey suspect of being undocumented, without the need for a warrant and without providing any proof that the individual is a flight risk. Breaking down the details for Bloomberg, legal scholar Noah Feldman decried the memo as an attempt not merely to exploit "loopholes" in the system, but to fundamentally rewrite the law itself.

"The directive, contained in a memo obtained by the New York Times, reverses long-standing ICE policy and effectively renders the warrant requirement itself empty," Feldman wrote. "Coming on the heels of another legally indefensible memo, which purported to allow ICE agents to enter the homes of suspected undocumented people without a judicial warrant, the new policy shows that ICE isn’t just exploiting legal loopholes to create massive sweeps. Instead, it reveals an agency actively attempting to change the legal landscape to turn itself into an all-powerful police force."

According to Feldman, ICE was previously authorized to make warrantless arrests under two circumstances. The first was when an officer directly witnessed someone making an unlawful crossing at the U.S. border. Given the nature of ICE's nationwide mass deportation agenda, he noted that this circumstance is essentially irrelevant. The second instance would be, as he noted earlier in his piece, when an office “has reason to believe” that someone is in the U.S. with undocumented status and “is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.”

Feldman argued that this new memo stems from a 2025 Supreme Court ruling that "disasterously eroded" the protections afforded by the law to individual rights. In the decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that officers were permitted to make arrests based on "reasonable suspicions," which could include factors such as their ethnicity or the language they spoke, two factors that did not previously meet the standard for probable cause.

The memo broadens the definition of a flight risk for ICE officers, allowing them to arrest anyone who is "likely to escape," meaning anyone who might not be expected to remain at the scene of a stop by the time an arrest warrant is obtained.

"Since just about anyone would walk away from an ICE arrest if they could (at least under current circumstances), it follows from this interpretation that anyone stopped by ICE is 'likely to escape' — and therefore may be subjected to warrantless arrest," Feldman explained.

He later added: "I realize all these legal technical details are a lot. So let me put it simply. Under the new memo, ICE agents can detain anyone they think might be undocumented, based on factors like ethnic appearance, language, and where you happen to be hanging out when they stop you. Once they’ve stopped you, they can claim to have probable cause that you’re undocumented (for example, because you don’t have proof of citizenship on you). Then the officers can simply arrest you, without a warrant. The total package amounts to a sweeping authorization for ICE agents to roam the streets, grab just about anyone they want, arrest and detain them."

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DON LEMON ARREST AFTER 2X CT LOSS BY DOJ

ALSO

'Agents at my door right now': Minnesota journalist arrested after filming church protest

AN 1 30 26

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Russian-American columnist M. Gessen wrote for *The New York Times* on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s ICE operations in Minneapolis have crossed into state terror—not mere repression, but deliberate, arbitrary violence designed to instill pervasive fear in which no one feels safe.

In the past month, ICE agents have shot and killed two US citizens: Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti. Neither had a criminal record. Another U.S. citizen was pulled from his home in his underwear by agents who later realized he wasn’t their target.

Gessen argues this is part of a Trump effort “to reduce us all to a state of constant fear — a fear of violence from which some people may at a given moment be spared, but from which no one will ever be truly safe. That is our new national reality. State terror has arrived.”

The randomness is the point, he continues. In Pretti’s case, agents fired 10 rounds into him at point-blank range while he was already subdued. The Department of Homeland Security labeled both Pretti and Good “domestic terrorists” before any investigation.

Gessen posted a blistering list of ICE activities designed to terrorize Americans and the federal government’s swift smearing of victims.

“Either way, we tell ourselves, if we can predict the consequences, we have agency. But that’s not how state terror works,” Gessen wrote.

He recalled Soviet citizens targeted in the 1990s who told him they knew they’d been named by jealous neighbors or pressured colleagues. “How could they come to know so much?” Gessen asked. “They couldn’t. People crafted narratives out of suspicions, rumors, and hints to fill a desperate need for an explanation.”

It later emerged that those officers had quotas — not unlike the numbers now set by Trump’s administration.

“Fundamentally, the terror was random. That is, in fact, how state terror works,” Gessen wrote. “The randomness is the difference between a regime based on terror and a regime that is plainly repressive.”

The same tactics are part of Trump’s toolbox, Gessen argues: quotas, a “paramilitary force made up of thugs drunk on their own brutality,” and “postmortem vilification of the victims.” Normal brains seek logic, but Gessen says it’s simply state terror.

*Read the full report here.

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Unraveling claim Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino wore 'Nazi uniform'

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an 1 26

Doomsday preppers are often depicted as right-wingers. Some are libertarians, while others are Christian fundamentalists. And their reasons for predicting doom vary, ranging from fears of an economic collapse worse than the Great Depression to predictions of nuclear war.

But Dmitri Mehlhorn, according to The Atlantic's Michael Scherer, is a "doomsday philosopher" and a former Democratic strategist who fears a "political apocalypse" under President Donald Trump.

"Betting money puts the odds of constitutional collapse in the United States at about one in 25," Scherer explains in an article published on January 22. "Anyone can wager three or four cents on Polymarket, Kalshi, or PredictIt that will pay out $1 if Donald Trump wins a third term in the 2028 election — an impossibility, according to the plain text of the 22nd Amendment: 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.' Dmitri Mehlhorn, a former Democratic strategist, thinks that the chance of political apocalypse is about 20 times higher — and that Americans need to start preparing now."

Scherer adds, "He recently secured dual citizenship for his family on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and is obsessively thinking through how people should respond if Trump tries to maintain power with the threat of force. He styles himself a doomsday philosopher of this worst-case scenario."

In December 2025, according to Scherer, Mehlhorn visited Manhattan's Soho area to "play a war game of sorts" with "about 15 finance professionals, nonprofit leaders, technology executives, and former Democratic-campaign advisers."

In the game, Scherer reports, the people gathered in Soho faced a fictional scenario in which "President Buzz Windrip" and "his team must increase their own wealth and maintain power or secure legal amnesty through 2030."

Mehlhorn told Scherer that in the scenario, "You have a man who breaks the law, and that man is the strongman. Which bends, the man or the law? That's the question…. If the president has proven in his first term that he will ignore subpoenas and ignore congressional budget authorizations and pardon anybody who also does, then suddenly, there's no power. What are the remaining checks? Every check is gone."

Interviewed by Scherer, Mehlhorn voiced his fears about what could happen in the 2028 presidential election.

"Trump would announce his candidacy for president late, leading the Republican Party to easily nominate him," Scherer explains. "The Supreme Court then would either split on the question of whether this is legal or rule against Trump with no effect. (Vice President) JD Vance has repeatedly endorsed the idea of the president defying Supreme Court rulings. As the votes are being counted, Mehlhorn imagines, Trump and federal law enforcement would declare rampant fraud in urban centers and move to disqualify residents of those districts' votes. In January 2029, Vance would do what (former Vice President) Mike Pence did not do in 2021: use his power to throw the election to Trump."

Scherer continues, "If there is resistance, another pro-Trump mob — including many who have already been pardoned for the January 6, 2021, attack — could provide backup."

Mehlhorn told Scherer, "As president, who stops him? Who prevents that from happening? What person? What combination of people?"

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NO LNX

Inside the deception that made Trump possible

Thom Hartmann January 22, 2026

For decades, Americans were told that “conservative values” stood for restraint, responsibility, and respect for the rule of law. The rise of Donald Trump forces an unavoidable question: were those values abandoned, or were they a generational lie that made his authoritarian takeover possible?

The billionaires and CEOs funding Trump and the Republicans in Congress believe they’re invincible. They believe the GOP’s abandonment of the principles that animated John McCain and Mitt Romney in favor of authoritarianism and oligarchy will keep them fat and happy.

They’re wrong.

Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh said something on my radio program on Monday that would have been shocking just a few years ago but now is becoming increasingly self-evident to anybody with a conscience and an honest view of American politics and history.

He said the GOP as a party with an ideology, a set of principles, or even a governing philosophy is now almost entirely dead.

It’s been replaced by a violent, racist, lawless, unprincipled cult organized entirely around Trump. It’s a cult that demands total loyalty and punishes dissent with both political annihilation and, increasingly, with threats of real-world violence.

Remember when Romney said there were plenty of Republicans in the Senate who wanted to vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, but they began flipping when senators started getting death threats against their families?

His biographer, McKay Coppins, wrote that Romney told him “story after story about Republican members of Congress, Republican senators, who at various points wanted to vote for impeachment — vote to convict Trump — and decided not to, not because they thought he was innocent, but because they were afraid for their family’s safety.”

That terror is delivered from the hands of both prosecutors who can threaten imprisonment and MAGA lone-wolf assassins like the one who murdered Melissa Hortman and her husband in Minnesota, and those who routinely terrorize federal judges who rule against Trump.

Republican elected officials, Walsh said, echoing Romney, now live in a state of deep fear. Not a metaphorical fear, but genuine terror.

It includes a fear of physical violence, the fear of being primaried and losing their jobs, and the very legitimate terror that Trump will turn the power of the state against them and thus break them financially with legal fees and the threat of prison, as he’s trying to do today with Letitia James, James Comey, Adam Schiff, etc.

Mark Twain noted that history rhymes, and this one is getting downright alarming.

The end of the modern-day GOP and its conversion into a fascist-tolerant party started with Ronald Reagan flipping classical economics on its head with his “supply side” scam and his scapegoating Black people to justify gutting social and educational programs, all to benefit his morbidly rich donors.

Reagan’s policies destroyed the American union movement, exploded the costs of health care, housing, and college education, and stole $51 trillion from working class people, putting almost every penny of it into the money bins of the GOP’s morbidly rich patrons.

He did this because devastating the working class was actually part of the plan to return “stability” to the American social order, following the outline of Russell Kirk in his 1951 book The Conservative Mind, the Heritage Foundation’s 1980 Mandate for Leadership, and Lewis Powell’s infamous memo.

Out of the chaos of the collapse of the middle class, Republicans believed they could rebuild our nation along the lines of a new form of feudalism, one of the most stable of the ancient governing systems. And when Trump came along, riding the wave of outrage at the economic devastation Reaganism had caused, they thought they could control him, too.

Pro tip: you can’t control the madman.

Fritz Thyssen, the steel baron who was one of Germany’s richest industrialists in the 1930s, wrote a book about how he’d made the same bet American billionaires and Republican politicians are making today: he thought he could ride a tiger that would make him massively richer but never turn and devour him.

His book I Paid Hitler (my book-collecting father gave me a copy 54 years ago for my 21st birthday) — which lays out how he personally convinced Paul von Hindenburg to make Hitler chancellor and raised the Nazi Party’s first 3 million Reichsmarks so they could win their first national election — reads like a modern-day tragedy.

At first, Thyssen got along with Hitler and even believed he was influencing the man, but when he began to object to some of the Nazi leader’s worse excesses he had to flee the country with his family to avoid being murdered.

Dictators, he learned — even those who only start out as a “dictator for a day” — play for keeps.

Thyssen described how traditional German conservatives also convinced themselves they could ride a demagogue into power and then control him. They feared the left more than they feared authoritarianism, believed “order in society” mattered more than democracy, and were certain that once Hitler’s power was secured, moderation would follow.

What followed instead, however, was a demand for total submission or the threat of total personal and national destruction.

Thyssen’s story shows us how fear dissolves loyalty to principles and power silences the soft voice of conscience. Loyalty to a man replaces loyalty to the law and its traditions.

By the time conservatives realized what they’d enabled, escaping Germany was the only remaining option; Thyssen fled the country in 1939 (although the Vichy French captured him and turned him over to the Nazis, who imprisoned him until the end of the war).

That brings us back to Russell Kirk and his landmark book The Conservative Mind that I write about at length in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. Although Kirk argued strongly for “classes and order,” claiming that inequality is both natural and good, he also tried to anchor American conservatism in moral restraint, historical humility, institutional continuity, and a deep suspicion of demagogues and mass movements.

He warned repeatedly that if conservatives were to abandon those restraints out of fear or resentment, they’d become something else entirely. He explicitly feared rightwing hate ideology, leader worship, and the belief that force could substitute for virtue.

There’s little doubt Kirk would have despised Trump. Trump embodies almost everything Kirk warned against: contempt for history and institutions, appetite over restraint, grievance over stewardship, and power over a moral order. Trump is not even remotely a conservative in any Burkean or Kirkian sense.

He was able to seize control of the GOP because, over the past four decades, much of American conservatism has simply hollowed itself out as it embraced racism (Southern Strategy); promoted lies about trickle down, voter fraud, and tax cuts; and conducted debt-financed foreign adventurism including Iraq and Afghanistan.

What survived was hierarchy, nationalism, hostility to the left, cultural grievance, and the protection of wealth. Tragically, the GOP has discarded the moral restraint, constitutional humility, reverence for truth, and respect for institutional limits that were once elevated by men like Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, and Mitt Romney.

Starting in the 1980s, American conservatism became less a philosophy than a set of race- and gender-based resentments married to perpetual deregulation and tax cuts for the party’s morbidly rich donors. Once that happened, the GOP was defenseless against a charismatic authoritarian who promised dominance and control instead of democracy.

Trump didn’t hijack conservatism from the outside: he stepped into a vacuum created by the GOP’s abandonment of constitutional and traditional American principles. Like Thyssen’s peers, today’s Republican donors and leaders believed they could use the wannabe dictator, ride his popularity, placate his followers, and keep the machinery of government power under control.

They were wrong in the same way German conservatives were wrong, and for the same reasons. Once fear takes over as a governing principle, the most ruthless and outspoken leader will inevitably own the party. Everybody else gets destroyed, some sooner, some later.

Now the GOP exists as a sort of permanent loyalty test. Tell the truth and you’re exiled, uphold the Constitution and you’re primaried, defy the leader and you’re threatened with death or imprisonment.

As Walsh pointed out, most Republicans know exactly what’s happening. They know the lies are lies, the elections weren’t stolen, and under Trump and Kristi Noem violence is being normalized. Many know where this road leads, but fear of Trump’s wrath silences them more effectively than their conservative ideology ever unified them.

This is where the comparison between today’s Republicans and their donors to Thyssen becomes unavoidable. In Germany, conservatism didn’t just die the day Hitler seized power. It began to collapse a decade or more earlier, when conservatives decided that democracy, law, and moral restraint were simply political tools rather than binding commitments.

Once they crossed that line, they lost both the authority and the moral courage to resist Hitler and his Nazi Party. As a result, when the time of real terror directed at them arrived a few years later, that terror was all that was left of the system.

That is where the GOP now stands. It’s no longer a party arguing about tax rates or regulation or even federalism. It’s become, instead, an cult of personal loyalty dedicated to the deification and enrichment of one man and his family. That’s neither conservatism nor democracy.

Which brings us to the question Democrats — and the rest of us — today find ourselves confronting: what do we do about it?

First, Democrats must stop treating this as a normal partisan contest. This isn’t a disagreement over policy, it’s a struggle over whether the United States remains a constitutional republic governed by law or becomes a fascist regime organized around loyalty and fear. Democrats must say that plainly, repeatedly, and without euphemism. Not “threats to norms,” not “concerns about rhetoric,” but the clear truth: one of our two major parties has abandoned democracy and embraced fascism.

Second, Democrats should relentlessly frame Trumpism not as strength but as weakness. Authoritarian movements thrive on the myth of invincibility, and Thyssen tells us how that myth collapses when its confronted. Democrats should point out, over and over again, that a party that can’t tolerate dissent, won’t allow truth-tellers, and must rely on hate, fear, and intimidation is not strong, but is fundamentally brittle and weak.

Third, Democrats should invite disaffected conservatives like Joe Walsh and independents into a pro-democracy coalition without demanding ideological conformity. This is not the moment for purity tests: traditions — including our democratic traditions — survive by coalition and continuity. As fanatic a progressive as I am, I also know Democrats must welcome former Republicans, libertarians, faith conservatives, and business leaders who still believe in the Constitution, even if they disagree on taxes, healthcare, or regulation. The message should be simple: democracy first, arguments later.

Fourth, Democrats must model the courage of our Founders and the generations since who fought for democracy. That means unrelentingly defending courts, free speech, and the rule of law. The contrast matters: as we saw in South Korea when Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from power last year, authoritarian movements collapse when their opponents are willing to fight for democracy rather than flee or hide in panic.

And finally, this isn’t just about politicians. We average citizens have the biggest role to play, and Thyssen’s story makes clear what happens when we don’t.

Speak up loud and frequently. Support local journalism. Show up to school board meetings, city councils, and your local Democratic Party meetings. Defend your neighbors who’re being targeted by Trump and his ICE goons. Double-check your voter registration every month at vote.org.

Authoritarianism feeds on isolation; democracy survives on solidarity and participation.

The most chilling part of Thyssen’s book isn’t that he and his family had to flee Germany: it’s that by the time they did in 1939, it was the only option left.

For those of us who Trump identified in his National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), it might be a matter of months or a year or two unless he and his regime are blocked from moving forward with their repression. America’s top three experts on fascism have already fled the country; if we don’t win this battle for the soul of America, the same may become necessary for many Americans sooner than we’d like to imagine.

Although the media covered it as a one-day story, NSPM-7 directs the FBI, ICE, other federal police agencies, and over 200 local police departments coordinating with them to begin putting together dossiers on any person or group who meet it’s “indica” (indicators) of potential domestic terrorism.

They include, as Ken Klippenstein first reported:

“[A]nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, … extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”

If that list includes you or people you love, now is the time to speak up and take positive political action to stop this missile aimed at the heart of our democracy and our Bill of Rights.

Russell Kirk warned that social and political order without moral restraint becomes despotism. Fritz Thyssen taught us that conservatives who empower authoritarians don’t survive the experience. Joe Walsh is describing the end state of that process in real time: a party that has ceased to exist as a governing institution and now operates only as an extension of one demented man’s will.

History doesn’t guarantee outcomes, but it does show us trajectories. Fear is never a stable foundation for politics and only delays the day of reckoning. And the longer the party exploiting it delays, the more catastrophic that reckoning becomes.

The lesson here isn’t that conservative values inevitably lead to authoritarianism: it’s that any political movement without courage, conscience, and adherence to constitutional principles and individual freedom eventually dies.

If “conservative values” can be so easily discarded in favor of fear, loyalty, and power, then they were never values at all, only a story they cynically told us to get elected.

Hopefully that’ll sink in for enough Republicans — and be loudly pointed out by enough Democrats — soon enough to rescue our republic from Germany’s fate.

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RWW

01/21/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Ryan Bort @ Rolling Stone: Trump in Davos: ‘Sometimes You Need a Dictator’

The president delivered an erratic address to the World Economic Forum, pushing for the U.S. to take control of Greenland.

• Steven Bechloss @ America, America: The Goal Was (And Is) Dictatorship

This was clear years ago: Trump hungered for total power and retribution, while extremist Republicans mocked liberal government and right-wing groups plotted a fascist takeover.

• Jim Carroll @ Flux: MAGA authoritarianism takes square aim at Minnesota

As the Trump administration unleashes repressive mayhem in Minneapolis-St. Paul, crippling biases and blind spots keep the Democrats and major media from conveying the full story to the public.

• Nina Martin @ Mother Jones: Trump’s Abortion Strategy? Do Nothing. But His Base Has Other Plans

Historian Mary Ziegler sees conservative courts poised to force his hand.

• Brian Kaylor @ Public Witness: Hegseth Shares War Psalm He Prayed During Venezuela Attack

During the first Christian worship service at the Pentagon in 2026 — and the first since the U.S. military operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth framed that military action as a godly mission. Hegseth also detailed the Bible passage he prayed during the mission and urged the military personnel present to similarly pray for their work decisions.

• Ruth Graham @ The New York Times: An Alabama Pastor Credits Trump for Putting ‘Christ’ Back in Christmas

The president has given a new class of evangelists direct access to the White House. In return, many support him without question.

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AN OCT 2026

Threats against federal judges in the United States have reached record levels this year, with the U.S. Marshals Service investigating more than 500 threats by September — a surge legal observers say reflects rising politicized hostility toward the judiciary.

In an article for the Guardianpublished Sunday, investigative journalist Jason Wilson argued that El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele is seeking to export his authoritarian playbook to the U.S. by calling on President Donald Trump to impeach “corrupt judges.”

Wilson noted that Bukele has made repeated public attacks on the US judiciary — including describing the country as “facing a judicial coup” — and that his latest call was amplified by pro‑MAGA figures such as tech billionaire Elon Musk.

He writes that the timing of this intervention is significant, as the U.S. judiciary is already under unprecedented pressure from threats, harassment, and rhetorical assaults tied to the current Trump administration. Wilson cites figures showing hundreds of threats to federal judges in 2025, plus numerous instances of attacks on judges at the local level.

The writer traced Bukele’s tactics back to actions his government took in 2021, when loyalist legislators dismissed constitutional court justices and the attorney general to install allies. He argued that although the U.S. system makes removal of judges difficult, the tactic being tested is not direct removal but delegitimisation and intimidation.

According to Wilson, the Trump administration is using sustained attacks on the judiciary, repeating claims that courts are not co‑equal branches and targeting judges who rule against it, as a tool to discourage judicial review. He warned that consistent threats and undermining of institutional legitimacy may lead judges to hesitate in decisions that conflict with the administration’s agenda, weakening one of democracy’s key checks.

The article quoted Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, who said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

"That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in several countries, including by Bukele," the article noted.

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AN 1 26

A Reagan-appointed judge just shot a warning flare up into the night

:{Thom Hartmann January 21, 2026

Nebraska mom Jamie Bonkiewicz filmed her interaction with Secret Service agents and police who came to her door because of a tweet.

“The Secret Service came to my door today because of a tweet. No threats. No violence. Just words. That’s where we are now.”

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is going after multiple Democratic members of the House and Senate, the governors of two states, the mayor of Minneapolis, and any Republican who speaks against Trump or his lickspittles:

Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Chris Christie, Jack Smith, Christopher Krebs, James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Miles Taylor…

Are we really losing our fundamental freedoms under Donald Trump?

Back in 1994, I was invited by a parents group in Singapore to speak about education and ADHD; my book on the topic had just made the cover of TIME magazine. I flew in, they put me up in the city/state’s fanciest hotel, and late the following afternoon I gave my speech. When, during the Q&A afterward, somebody asked me how best to institute the public school reforms I’d suggested, I said words to the effect of, “Get politically active, get your politicians involved, as they control and fund the schools.”

The room went completely quiet, which I thought odd, but then the conversation moved on and I didn’t think about it again until a few hours later when I arrived back at the hotel. My room had been ransacked. The bed was askew, drawers emptied, my suitcase all over the floor, even my toiletry kit spread across the bathroom floor.

When I called down to the hotel’s switchboard to let them know what had happened, the manager came up to my room and carefully told me that the police had visited my room while I was out.

“You must have done or said something suspicious,” he told me. That’s when I remembered the eerie silence in response to my suggestion that people get politically active.

America isn’t Singapore. Yet.

Or Russia, where even standing in the street with a blank sign will get you prison time. Yet.

Or Hungary, where posting on Facebook against Viktor Orbán will get you thrown into jail. Yet.

But we’re sure as hell moving in that direction.

Retired professor Barbara Wien stood outside Stephen Miller’s home passing out “No Nazis in NOVA” [North Virginia] fliers with his picture and the slogan, “Wanted for crimes against humanity.” Three weeks later, she was visited by agents of the FBI, the Secret Service, and a Virginia state policeman, because Miller’s podcaster wife had reportedly called them.

In addition to intimidating Wien, they had a search warrant signed by a judge and took her phone. The New York Times notes:

“The activist … has not been charged with any crime, though the Virginia State Police still have her phone. The investigation remains active, leaving it unclear whether law enforcement has since gathered additional evidence.”

Her lawyer told the Times about his client and the activists who’d been distributing similar flyers in town:

“They were speaking truth to power, and that is really at the core of our Constitution. It’s a principle and a right that our country was founded on.”

True, but the Trump regime doesn’t care about the law.

Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson had been reporting on Trump’s corruption and reorganization of our government, so FBI agents showed up at her home and took her phone, her laptop, and her sports watch, which had a record of everywhere she’d visited for the past few weeks. They were apparently looking for the names and locations of the federal employees she may have interviewed. As theTimes reported:

“It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to search a reporter’s home. A 1980 law generally bars search warrants for reporters’ work materials, unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing a crime related to the materials.”

True, but the Trump regime doesn’t care about the law.

Meanwhile, a Reagan-appointed federal judge in Boston just said out loud what millions of Americans are feeling in their gut. U.S. District Judge William G. Young, hardly a lefty firebrand, looked at the evidence in front of him and concluded that the Trump administration is using the machinery of the state to punish speech it doesn’t like.

“I find it breathtaking,” Young said, that he was forced to conclude that “high-level officers of our government — cabinet secretaries — [were] conspiring to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States.”

Young was presiding over a case involving the arrest and threatened deportation of non-citizen college students and scholars who spoke out on Palestine. What troubled him wasn’t just the individual cases, but the pattern. The brown-nosers around Trump, he said (without using that word), appeared to be deliberately chilling dissent by turning immigration enforcement into a political weapon.

“The record in this case convinces me,” Young said, “that these high officials — and I include the president of the United States — have a fearful view of freedom. A view that defines the freedom here in the United States by who’s excluded.”

In other words, free speech for those who agree with Trump, Miller, Vance, Noem, et al, but fear, harassment, and punishment for those who don’t.

Then Young went farther, in a way judges almost never do. He openly described Trump’s governing style as authoritarian:

“It’s fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone — everyone in Article II — is going to toe the line absolutely.”

When a Reagan judge with impeccable conservative credentials and four decades on the bench is sounding alarms about authoritarianism and the collapse of First Amendment norms, it’s not partisan noise. It’s a warning flare shot up into the night.

But, of course, the Trump regime doesn’t care about norms or the Constitution. And if what’s going on isn’t clear enough, Stephen Miller posted last night about Minneapolis:

“Local and state police have been ordered to stand down and surrender.”

I spent decades doing international relief work in some of the worst places on the planet. I’ve had government soldiers threaten my life, police put automatic weapons in my face, and government ministers on three continents solicit bribes from me and my organization.

I’ve met with political prisoners and families whose members were murdered by the state for simply having the wrong political view. I’ve held children as they stopped breathing from starvation and had an aid worker shot to death in front of me.

This is the road to third-world-style-governance that our corrupt felon of a president has put America on. He justifies the execution of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, sets his rabid mobs on judges who don’t rule the way he wants, intimidates reporters and sues news outlets to shut them up, and is now threatening to deploy the full force of the federal government to silence dissent, criminalize protest, and punish individual speech he finds inconvenient.

He’s destroying our European alliance to the benefit of his friend and mentor Vladimir Putin, writing to the Norwegian Prime Minister as if Trump alone can determine American foreign policy like some sort of emperor or America’s mad king:

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace…”

He’s dragging this country step by step toward the sort of strongman state like the ones I used to work in, where loyalty matters more than the law and fear crowds out personal freedom. He’s overseeing a rapid and radical transformation of America from a democratic republic into a strongman oligarchy where billionaires like him, Elon Musk, the 13 billionaires in his cabinet, and the 140 billionaires who supported him in 2024 run the show.

He’s turned America into an oligarchy, in other words. Rich people buy pardons, corporations buy regulations and subsidies they want, and average people are screwed, particularly if they complain too loudly.

But history teaches us that oligarchies are unstable systems of government.

They typically either collapse from their own internal rot (as happened here in 1932 when the Republican Great Depression brought down the oligarchs of the Roaring Twenties) or get overthrown by their own people (as happened here in the 1860s when the fascist Confederate system that had taken over the Old South was destroyed by the Civil War).

And when oligarchies don’t collapse or get overthrown, they morph into tyranny; usually that happens within a single generation.

That’s what happened in Russia. It went from the chaos of the 1990s oligarchy to Putin’s authoritarian state in less than 20 years. It’s also what happened in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán took a newly-liberated democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state in less than a decade. It’s also what’s happening right now in Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil, India, and multiple other countries around the world.

Tyranny doesn’t typically pop up fully formed and all at once. It comes incrementally, moving step by inexorable step, until it hits a tipping point where it can no longer be stopped. Even days before that tipping point is reached, most people still think the system will correct itself, that once everyone figures out what’s happening, things will go back to normal.

They’re almost always wrong.

America is now in that dangerous zone between oligarchy and tyranny. Because of the corrupt Supreme Court Citizens United decision and its 1978 parent Bellotti, our nation’s oligarchs have controlled our politics for a solid 40 years.

They own the media, have captured the courts, and have bought most of Congress. The question for today is whether they’ll be satisfied with their comfortable oligarchy or whether they’ll join Trump and the GOP’s push for America’s final transition to outright dictatorship.

Steve Bannon told us what the goal was: “Deconstruct the administrative state.” That’s tyrant-speak for dismantling the institutions that might dare or have the ability to constrain oligarchic power.

As a result, we’re in a race against time and the window for successful action is narrowing. Every week that the Trump regime isn’t seriously challenged in the states, courts, the press, or at the ballot box, America’s oligarchs tighten their grip. Every election they buy makes the next election easier to purchase. Every judge they install makes the next judge easier to intimidate or buy off.

This isn’t alarmism: it’s the historical pattern, repeated across dozens of countries and thousands of years. I’ve seen it, repeatedly, with my own eyes.

Oligarchies either collapse or they become tyrannies; there’s no third option.

Thus, the only real question now is whether enough of us will recognize what’s happening while there’s still time to stop it. Republics like ours die — like Russia and Hungary did — when ordinary people convince themselves that the warning signs aren’t real. At least until the knock on the door comes for them.

And then, of course, it’s too late…

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an 1 26

Nebraska mom Jamie Bonkiewicz filmed her interaction with Secret Service agents who came to her door because of a tweet.

"The Secret Service came to my door today because of a tweet. No threats. No violence. Just words. That’s where we are now," she wrote on X in a thread about the ordeal.

"For anyone doubting me. Here they are," Bonkiewicz said, posting a photo of a local police officer and the federal agent as she stood with her screen door open.

She was asked about the comments she made online, and she made it clear, "I want to see their trials."

He then asked if she goes to protests, which she refused to answer.

"Why do you want to know that?" Bonkiewicz asked.

"I'm just curious," he responded. "For certain questionnaires, we have to ask."

He asked if there were weapons in the house and she said there were not. Bonkiewicz was also asked if she "traveled to any Democratic functions or rallies."

"I just answered you," she said about the question he'd previously asked.

"Anything else you want to tell me? Any statements at all?" the agent asked.

Her husband, who was filming the incident, asked what is considered crossing the line on social media.

"Something like this, a veiled threat," he said, shrugging. "Is it a threatening nature? Now that I know you didn't mean anything by it, it's basically a non-issue."

He asked her again what she meant by the comment, and she made it clear she was talking about officials having Nuremberg-style tribunals for those who enabled unlawful behavior.

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AN PP 1 26

The Trump administration is directing employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate foreign scientists who collaborate with the agency on research papers for evidence of “subversive or criminal activity.”

The new directive, part of a broader effort to increase scrutiny of research done with foreign partners, asks workers in the agency’s research arm to use Google to check the backgrounds of all foreign nationals collaborating with its scientists. The names of flagged scientists are being sent to national security experts at the agency, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.

At a meeting last month, USDA supervisors pushed back against the instructions, with one calling it “dystopic” and others expressing shock and confusion, according to an audio recording reviewed by ProPublica.

The USDA frequently collaborates with scientists based at universities in the U.S. and abroad. Some agency workers told ProPublica they were uncomfortable with the new requirement because they felt it could put those scientists in the crosshairs of the administration. Students and postdocs are particularly vulnerable as many are in the U.S. on temporary visas and green cards, the employees said.

Jennifer Jones, director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the directive a “throwback to McCarthyism” that could encourage scientists to avoid working with the “best and brightest” researchers from around the world.

“Asking scientists to spy on and report on their fellow co-authors” is a “classic hallmark of authoritarianism,” Jones said. The Union of Concerned Scientists is an organization that advocates for scientific integrity.

Jones, who hadn’t heard of the instructions until contacted by ProPublica, said she had never witnessed policies so extreme during prior administrations or in her former career as an academic scientist.

The new policy applies to pending scientific publications co-authored by employees in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which conducts research on crop yields, invasive species, plant genetics and other agricultural issues.

The USDA instructed employees to stop agency researchers from collaborating on or publishing papers with scientists from “countries of concern,” including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.

But the agency is also vetting scientists from nations not considered “countries of concern” before deciding whether USDA researchers can publish papers with them. Employees are including the names of foreign co-authors from nations such as Canada and Germany on lists shared with the department’s Office of Homeland Security, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. That office leads the USDA’s security initiatives and includes a division that works with federal intelligence agencies. The records don’t say what the office plans to do with the lists of names.

Asked about the changes, the USDA sent a statement noting that in his first term, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum designed to strengthen protections of U.S.-funded research across the federal government against foreign government interference. “USDA under the Biden Administration spent four years failing to implement this directive,” the statement said. The agency said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last year rolled out “long-needed changes within USDA’s research enterprise, including a prohibition on authoring a publication with a foreign national from a country of concern.”

International research has been essential to the Agricultural Research Service’s work, according to a page of the USDA website last updated in 2024: “From learning how to mitigate diseases before they reach the United States, to testing models and crops in diverse growing conditions, to accessing resources not available in the United States, cooperation with international partners provides solutions to current and future agricultural challenges.”

Still, the U.S. government has long been worried about agricultural researchers acting as spies, sometimes with good reason. In 2016, the Chinese scientist Mo Hailong was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiring to steal patented corn seeds. And in 2022, Xiang Haitao, admitted to stealing a trade secret from Monsanto.

National security questions have also been raised about recent increases in foreign ownership of agricultural land. In 2022, Congress allocated money for a center to educate U.S. researchers about how to safeguard their data in international collaborations.

Since Trump took office last year, foreign researchers have faced increased obstacles. In March, a French researcher traveling to a conference was denied entry to the U.S. after a search of his phone at the airport turned up messages critical of Trump. The National Institutes of Health blocked researchers from China, Russia and other “countries of concern” from accessing various biomedical databases last spring. And in August, the Department of Homeland Security proposed shortening the length of time foreign students could remain in the country.

But the latest USDA instructions represent a significant escalation, casting suspicion on all researchers from outside the U.S. and asking agency staff to vet the foreign nationals they collaborate with. It’s unclear if employees at other federal agencies have been given similar directions.

The new USDA policy was announced internally in November and followed a July memo from Rollins that highlighted the national security risks of working with scientists who are not U.S. citizens.

“Foreign competitors benefit from USDA-funded projects, receiving loans that support overseas businesses, and grants that enable foreign competitors to undermine U.S. economic and strategic interests,” Rollins wrote in the memo. “Preventing this is the responsibility of every USDA employee.” The memo called for the department to “place America First” by taking a number of steps, including scrutinizing and making lists of the agency’s arrangements to work with foreign researchers and prohibiting USDA employees from participating in foreign programs to recruit scientists, “malign or otherwise.”

Rollins, a lawyer who studied agricultural development, co-founded the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute before being tapped to head the agency.

There have long been restrictions on collaborating with researchers from certain countries, such as Iran and China. But these new instructions create blanket bans on working with scientists from “countries of concern.”

In a late November email to staff members of the Agricultural Research Service at one area office, a research leader instructed managers to immediately stop all research with scientists who come from — or collaborate with institutions in — “countries of concern.”

The email also instructed employees to reject papers with foreign authors if they deal with “sensitive subjects” such as “diversity” or “climate change.” National security concerns were listed as another cause for rejection, with USDA research service employees instructed to ask if a foreigner could use the research against American farmers.

In the audio recording of the December meeting, some employees expressed alarm about the instructions to investigate their fellow scientists. The “part of figuring out if they are foreign … by Googling is very dystopic,” said one person at the meeting, which involved leadership from the Agricultural Research Service.

Faced with questions about how to ascertain the citizenship of a co-author, another person at the meeting said researchers should do their best with a Google search, then put the name on the list “and let Homeland Security do their behind the scenes search.”

Rollins’ July memo specifies that, within 60 days of receiving a list of “current arrangements” that involve foreign people or entities, the USDA’s Office of Homeland Security along with its offices of Chief Scientist and General Counsel should decide which arrangements to terminate. The USDA laid off 70 employees from “countries of concern” last summer as a result of the policy change laid out in the memo, NPR reported.

The USDA and Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about what happens to the foreign researchers flagged by the staff beyond potentially having their research papers rejected.

The documents also suggested new guidance would be issued on Jan. 1, but the USDA employees ProPublica interviewed said that the vetting work was continuing and that they had not received any written updates. The staff spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly.

Scientists are often evaluated based on their output of new scientific research. Delaying or denying publication of pending papers could derail a researcher’s career. Over the past 40 years, the number of international collaborations among scientists has increased across the board, according to Caroline Wagner, an emeritus professor of public policy at the Ohio State University. “The more elite the researcher, the more likely they’re working at the international level,” said Wagner, who has spent more than 25 years researching international collaboration in science and technology.

The changes in how the USDA is approaching collaboration with foreign researchers, she said, “will certainly reduce the novelty, the innovative nature of science and decrease these flows of knowledge that have been extremely productive for science over the last years.”

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an 1 26

During his first presidency, Donald Trump's critics often attacked him as an "isolationist" who was uninformed about the rest of the world. But Trump has taken a much more imperialistic turn since returning to the White House, from capturing leftist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to threatening to take Greenland by force to calling for Canada to become "the 51st state." Libertarian/conservative Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and MAGA ex-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) believe Trump is betraying the "America First" agenda he once championed.

Trump went from being called an "isolationist" to being called a warmonger with a belligerent foreign policy.

In a scathing opinion column published on January 18, MS NOW's Paul Waldman (formerly of the Washington Post) argues that Trump is waging a "comprehensive war" — only he isn't talking about Venezuela or Greenland. Trump, Waldman stresses, is declaring "war" on Americans who didn't vote for him in 2024.

"Something important and dangerous is happening," Waldman warns. "The Trump Administration is engaged in a comprehensive war, and its enemy is half of America. This war is being waged in rhetoric and regulation, budget cuts and violence. Its aim is to tear the country in two. There is no precedent in modern times for this; one might make an analogy to Reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War, in which the federal government forced the South to accept democracy. But that was for the best of reasons, and Trump's attempt to bend blue states to his will is for the worst. We're seeing the ugliest face of Trump's plan in Minnesota."

Referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Minneapolis, Waldman laments that Minnesota's largest city is "under siege from roving gangs of masked federal thugs."

"Trump promised a 'DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION' against the city and the state of Minnesota, and he is already delivering," Waldman observes. "Even before an ICE officer shot dead Renee Good, ill-trained and overly aggressive agents rampaged through the community, brutalizing people, lobbing tear gas into crowds and spreading an atmosphere of fear that has everyone in the city on edge. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wrote on social media this week, 'Minnesota voted against him three times and now he's punishing us,' and it's hard to argue, especially since Trump is openly talking about 'retribution'…. Most remarkably — as in the administration's filings in the case on environmental grants — officials in Trump's administration don’t even pretend they should serve all Americans equally. Trump himself certainly doesn't."

Waldman adds, "Every day he makes clear that if you support him he likes you — and if you don't, you’re his enemy."

Paul Waldman's full column for MS NOW is available at this link.}:

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January 15, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

STEVE DOOCY (HOST): I'm looking at these pictures out of Minneapolis and I'm thinking man something is so messed up there, and obviously the president looking at the same things. If he does invoke the Insurrection Act, doesn't that mean that he can send in the National Guard. He is emboldened to do that by law, if there's a civil disobedience and occurrence -- and that's the definition of it, what I'm looking at right there.

TREY GOWDY (GUEST): Yeah, it's one of the few exceptions to the Posse Comitatus, where you cannot deploy military forces for domestic use and it's often done when state authorities either cannot or will not. So think back to the 1960s, southern states said, 'we refuse to integrate our schools' presidents used the Insurrection Act to say you know what, you are going to follow the law. I actually think we may be beyond this point in Minnesota. You actually have governors and mayors who are openly defying federal law enforcement. I mean they are not like ambiguous or agnostic about it. They are openly defying it. So I think he's got all the justification. I'm sure he's wanting Minnesota to get in the right hymnal themselves, but they are going the opposite direction, Steve.

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During the first few weeks of 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump has generated plenty of headlines — from capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to sending even more U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Minneapolis, Minnesota following the fatal shooting of unarmed 37-year-old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good in that city.

Trump's actions have plenty of defenders in MAGA media outlets. But MS NOW's Vaughn Hillyard, in an article published on January 13, stresses that Trump's "increasingly brazen assertions of executive power" are "running into an unexpected problem: They risk undermining the very goals they were meant to achieve."

"His threats to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark are accelerating European discussions about looking for alliances beyond the United States," Hillyard observes. "His public verdict in a fatal shooting by an immigration agent — delivered before a Justice Department investigation — risks further politicizing law enforcement. His administration's attempts to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to reduce interest rates — culminating in the DOJ's investigating Powell for criminal charges — threatens to make it harder for Trump to appoint Powell's successor. And a week after the mission to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, the chief executive of ExxonMobil called the country 'uninvestable,' undercutting the economic rationale for the military intervention."

According to historian/author Ruth Ben-Ghiat — a New York University professor known for her expertise on the history of authoritarianism — authoritarians can become increasingly volatile when they are feeling desperate.

Ben-Ghiat told MS NOW: "Trump was recently on a downward path in terms of popularity with his base, and that is when autocrats do unpredictable things to assert their power."

A Pentagon official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, warned that Trump's belligerent foreign policy risks destroying alliances that have served the U.S. well for many years.

The official told MS NOW: "If Greenland goes, so goes the allies in Europe. The one refrain I've been hearing is we don't realize how many equities the U.S. has in Europe and how valuable Australia is, too, and they'll all pull the bridge out from over the moat."

After Good's death, Trump and his allies — including Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — defended the ICE agent who killed her. And according to MS NOW legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, attacking Good can only hurt law enforcement in Minneapolis.

"If people don't have confidence in DOJ excessive force investigations, communities will spiral down without closure after events like the shooting of Renee Good," Joyce Vance said. "If the president fully breaks it, the consequences will be dire — we could become a country of endless protests with escalating violence from law enforcement on American streets."

*Read Vaughn Hillyard 's full article for MS NOW at this link.

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AN 126 ROBT R

At the same time agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol are swarming into Minnesota and other states and cities, Trump is planning bombing raids on other countries.

Domestically and internationally, he is putting America on a war footing.

ICE is reportedly investing $100 million on what it calls “wartime recruitment” of 10,000 new agents, in addition to the 20,000 already employed. Its recruitment is targeting gun and military enthusiasts, people who listen to right-wing radio, who have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship fights or shopped for guns and tactical gear, live near military bases, and attend NASCAR races. It’s calling for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.”

Meanwhile, Trump has announced that he’ll ask Congress for a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the next fiscal year — a 66 percent increase over the 2026 defense budget Congress just authorized.

There’s coming to be no difference between Trump’s foreign and domestic policies.

Both are based on the same eight maniacal ideas: (1) Might makes right. (2) Law is irrelevant. (3) America is at war with the world’s “radical left,” who are defined chiefly by their opposition to Trump. (4) Fear and force are better weapons in this war than hope and compromise. (5) The U.S. stock market is the best measure of Trump’s success. (6) Personal enrichment by Trump and other officials is justified in pursuit of victory. (7) So are lies, cover-ups, and the illegal use of force. (8) Trump is invincible and omnipotent.

These ideas are at such fundamental odds with the norms most of us share about what America is all about and how a president should think and behave that it’s difficult to accept that Trump believes them or that his White House thugs eagerly endorse them. But he does, and they do.

Rather than some “doctrine” or set of principles, they’re more like guttural discharges. Trump is not rational, and the people around him trying to give him a patina of rationality — his White House assistants and spokespeople — surely know it.

The media tries to confer on Trump a coherence that evaporates almost as soon as it’s stated. The New York Times’s breathless coverage of its recent Oval Office interview with Trump — describing his “many faces” — is a model of such a vapidity.

According to the Times, Trump “took unpredictable turns” during the interview. But instead of seeing this unpredictability as a symptom of Trump’s diminishing capacities and ever-shorter attention span, the Timesreported it as “a tactic he embraces as president, particularly on the world stage. If no one knows what you might do, they often do what you want them to do.”

Attempts to show inconsistencies or hypocrisies in Trump’s domestic or foreign policies are fruitless because they have no consistency or truthfulness to begin with.

Nor is it possible for the media to describe a “big picture” of America and the world under Trump because there is nothing to picture other than his malignant, impulsive, unbridled grandiosity all the way up and all the way down.

Trump has unleashed violence on America’s streets for much the same reason he has unleashed violence on Latin America and is planning to unleash it elsewhere: to display his own strength. His motive is to gain more power and, along the way, more wealth. (On Sunday, he even posted an image referring to himself as the “Acting President of Venezuela.”)

“Policy” implies thought. But under Trump, there is no domestic or foreign policy because it is all thoughtless. It is not even improvised. It is just Trump’s ego — as interpreted by the toadies around him (Miller, Vought, Vance, Kennedy, Rubio, Noem) trying to guess what his ego craves or detests, or fulfilling their own fanatical goals by manipulating it.

We must stop trying to make rational sense out of what Trump is doing. He is a ruthless dictator, plan and simple.

All analyses of what is happening — all reporting, all efforts to understand, all attempts at strategizing — are doomed. The only reality is that an increasingly dangerous and irrational sociopath is now exercising brutal and unconstrained power over America and, hence, the world.

Trump is putting America on a war footing because war is good for him as it is for all dictators. War confers emergency powers. It justifies ignoring the niceties of elections. It allows dictators to imprison and intimidate opponents and enemies. It enables them to create their own personal slush funds. It distracts the public from other things (remember Jeffrey Epstein?).

War gives dictators like Trump more power and more wealth. Period.

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AN 1 26

Smithsonian removes text referencing Trump’s 2 impeachments that 'upset' White House

Sarah K. Burris

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AN 1 26

Pope Leo condemns 'Orwellian-style language' in veiled jab at Trump admin

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AN 12 25

MAGA Republicans and right-wing media figures often attack liberals and progressives for obsessing over language, whether it's saying "unhoused" instead of "homeless" or using "Latinx" instead of "Latino." And not everyone who has that complaint is on the right: veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, "Real Time" host Bill Maher and Sen. Rubén Gallego (D-Arizona) are all disdainful of the term "Latinx," and Maher argues that progressives should spend less time on language-policing and more time "getting s--- done."

But President Donald Trump is obsessed with language as well, from demanding that reporters call the Gulf of Mexico "the Gulf of America" to renaming the U.S. Department of Defense the "War Department" to renaming Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center —which now has a sign that reads "the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts."

The Kennedy Center renaming is drawing a strong rebuke from Trump's critics, who view it as both goofy and narcissistic. But Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts, believes that Trump's "renaming binge" is much more than buffoonish — it's outright dangerous.

In an op-ed published by The Hill on December 29, Sarat warns, "Before you know it, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport may become Donald J. Trump International Airport. The city's metro system may become the 'Trump Train.' I think more is at stake here than a mere effort to feed the president's ego. The renaming project is very much in keeping with what strongmen do when they take power."

Sarat argues that it's important to defy Trump and continue to use the names he wants to change.

"So, let's not meekly acquiesce," Sarat writes. "In our daily conversations, let's continue to refer to The Kennedy Center by its proper name. Newspapers and other media outlets will have to decide whether to comply or refuse to fall in line. That is what the Associated Press did when it said it would continue calling the Gulf of Mexico by that name, even after the president's January 20 executive order renaming it 'Gulf of America.' It reminded readers, 'The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years,' and no president can undo that history with the stroke of a pen."

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We used to have a pretty clear idea of what an autocrat was. History is full of examples: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, along with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping today. The list goes on.

So, where does Donald Trump fit in?

In this six-part podcast series, The Making of an Autocrat, we are asking six experts on authoritarianism and US politics to explain how exactly an autocrat is made – and whether Trump is on his way to becoming one.

Like strongmen around the world, Trump’s first step was to take control of a party, explains Erica Frantz, associate professor of political science at Michigan State University.

Trump began this process long before his victory in the 2024 US presidential election. When he first entered the political stage in 2015, he started to transform the Republican Party into his party, alienating his critics, elevating his loyalists to positions of power and maintaining total control through threats and intimidation.

And once a would-be autocrat dominates a party like this, they have a legitimate vehicle to begin dismantling a democracy. As Frantz explains:

Now, many Republican elites see it as political suicide to stand up to Trump. So, fast forward to 2024, and we have a very personalist Trump party – the party is synonymous with Trump.

Not only does the party have a majority in the legislature, but it is Trump’s vehicle. And our research has shown this is a major red flag for democracy. It’s going to enable Trump to get rid of executive constraints in a variety of domains, which he has, and pursue his strongman agenda.

Listen to the interview with Erica Frantz at The Making of an Autocrat podcast.

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U.S. bars five Europeans it says pressured tech firms to censor American viewpoints online | PBS News

Washington

By —

Fatima Hussein, Associated Press

U.S. bars five Europeans it says pressured tech firms to censor American viewpoints online

:{:{Politics Dec 24, 2025}:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure U.S. tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.

The Europeans, characterized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as "radical" activists and "weaponized" nongovernmental organizations, fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May to restrict the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States.

"For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose," Rubio posted on X. "The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship."

The five Europeans were identified by Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, in a series of posts on social media. They include the leaders of organizations that address digital hate and a former European Union commissioner who clashed with tech billionaire Elon Musk over broadcasting an online interview with Donald Trump.

Rubio's statement said they advanced foreign government censorship campaigns against Americans and U.S. companies, which he said created "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences" for the U.S.

The action to bar them from the U.S. is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or sanctions.

The five Europeans named by Rogers are: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index; and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for digital affairs.

Rogers in her post on X called Breton, a French business executive and former finance minister, the "mastermind" behind the EU's Digital Services Act, which imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep internet users safe online. This includes flagging harmful or illegal content like hate speech.

She referred to Breton warning Musk of a possible "amplification of harmful content" by broadcasting his livestream interview with Trump in August 2024 when he was running for president.

Breton responded Tuesday on X by noting that all 27 EU members voted for the Digital Services Act in 2022. "To our American friends: 'Censorship isn't where you think it is,'" he wrote.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France condemns the visa restrictions on Breton and the four others. Also posting on X, he said the DSA was adopted to ensure that "what is illegal offline is also illegal online." He said it "has absolutely no extraterritorial reach and in no way concerns the United States."

A statement from Ballon and von Hodenberg, the co-CEOs of HateAid, called the move, "an act of repression by a government that is increasingly disregarding the rule of law and trying to silence its critics by any means necessary."

Most Europeans are covered by the Visa Waiver Program, which means they don't necessarily need visas to come into the country. They do, however, need to complete an online application prior to arrival under a system run by the Department of Homeland Security, so it is possible that at least some of these five people have been flagged to DHS, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details not publicly released.

Other visa restriction policies were announced this year, along with bans targeting foreign visitors from certain African and Middle Eastern countries and the Palestinian Authority. Visitors from some countries could be required to post a financial bond when applying for a visa.

Associated Press Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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NYT columnist David Brooks didn't mean any of it

New York Times columnist David Brooks sits next to Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, in this image from the U.S. Justice Department’s file of late financier Jeffrey Epstein, released by the House Oversight Committee Democrats in Washington, D.C., U.S., on December 18, 2025. House Oversight Committee Democrats/Handout

:{:{John Stoehr December 24, 2025}:

David Brooks, the conservative columnist who is beloved by liberals, wrote last month that the Democrats make too much of the Epstein story. He said they’re acting as conspiratorially as the Republicans.

Brooks said he was “especially startled” to see leading progressives characterizing all elites as part of “the Epstein class.” If he were a Democrat, he said, he’d be focused on “the truth”: “the elites didn’t betray you, but they did ignore you. They didn’t mean to harm you.”

Brooks went on to say: “If I were a Democratic politician … I’d add that America can’t get itself back on track if the culture is awash in distrust, cynicism, catastrophizing lies and conspiracymongering. No governing majority will ever form if we’re locked in a permanent class war.”

Sounds noble, but he didn’t mean any of it.

Last week, it was discovered that David Brooks had palled around with Jeffrey Epstein. Pictures of him were part of a trove released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. It was deduced that they were taken at a 2011 “billionaires dinner.” A 2019 report by Buzzfeed identified Brooks, among others, along with Epstein, who had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex just three years prior.

Buzzfeed: “In 2011, after Epstein had been released from a Florida jail, it was an exclusive gathering, dominated by tech industry leadership. A gallery of photos taken at the event by Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Microsoft’s chief technology officer, named 20 guests, including just one media representative: New York Times columnist David Brooks.”

While defending Brooks, the Times inadvertently confirmed Epstein's presence at the dinner. “Mr. Brooks had no contact with [Epstein] before or after his single attendance at a widely-attended dinner.”

Sure, but Brooks knew Epstein was there. If he didn’t know about his crimes, which is doubtful, he still chose to write a column warning the Democrats against waging “permanent class war” without disclosing his non-trivial association with the namesake of “the Epstein class.”

It’s bad faith, up and down.

“I think that's what we get when (very) wealthy people are shaping opinion,” said Denny Carter, publisher of Bad Faith Times, a newsletter. “We can never really know the depths of their conflicts of interest, whether it's covering for a known pedophile ringleader or promoting a cause or politician or company that will benefit them financially.”

In 2023, Denny wrote a piece highlighting the importance of bad faith, which is to say, if you don’t put it at the center of your thinking about rightwing politics, you’re going to be very, very confused. He wrote:

“Republicans today support women’s sports (if it means barring trans folks from participating). They love a member of the Kennedy family. They’re skeptical of Big Pharma. They hate banks. None of it – not a single part of it – makes any sense unless you understand bad faith.”

They never mean what they say.

Denny brought my attention to that two-year-old piece by reposting it. I immediately thought of Brooks. Scolding the Democrats about demonizing “the Epstein class” while fraternizing with “the Epstein class” (it was a “billionaires dinner,” for Christ’s sake) – that’s the kind of behavior you might expect from a man who’s ready to betray you.

“You see these op-eds about supporting the fossil fuel industry and continuing to accelerate climate collapse in the guise of electoral advice for Democrats without having any idea if the writer means what they're saying or has some financial stake in promoting Big Oil and its various subsidiaries,” Denny told me in a brief interview. “You assume good faith among these writers and influencers at your own peril.”

In a 2023 piece you recently reposted, you said the world is upside down. The right loves Russia. The left hates Russia. This is confusing for those of us who remember 20 years ago. What happened?

This one, I think, is pretty straightforward. The right despised the collectivism inherent in Soviet ideology and the left was curious about how it might look in action. The fall of the USSR (eventually) led to a totalitarian fascist Russian state ruled by a vicious dictator who used religion and "traditional values" as a weapon against his many enemies, or anyone who dared promote democracy in Russia.

Listen to Putin and you'll hear a Republican babbling about “woke” this and “woke” that and positioning himself as the last barrier between so-called traditional society and some kind of far-left hellscape.

It's the same script every modern fascist leader uses, and it appeals very much to Republican lawmakers and their voters. You sometimes read stories about Americans fleeing to Russia to escape the “woke” scourge, only to deeply regret it. That's always funny or tragic, depending on how you look at it.

You say bad faith explains the upside-downness, but you also suggest the center has not held -- that social fragmentation brought us here. You even cite David Bowie. How did you come to that insight?

I've been a Bowie superfan for a while now, and like a lot of folks who spend too much time online, I've seen the viral clip of Bowie explaining the world-changing potential of the internet way back in 1999.

He was right on a few levels, but most of all he identified the internet's potential for destroying any sense of commonly held reality. Here we are today, a quarter century later, trying to operate in a political world in which there are a handful of different realities at any one time.

A traitorous right-wing mob tried to overthrow the US government in 2021. We all saw the footage. We all know what happened. Yet there are tens of millions of Americans who believe January 6 did not happen or was in fact a walking tour of the US Capitol.

We can't even agree that there was a coup attempt orchestrated by the outgoing president because social media took that event, broke it into a million pieces, and allowed bad actors to piece it back together to fit a politically convenient narrative. I wrote about it here.

You suggest that simply telling the truth won't fix things. Why?

I don't mean to sound cynical but if we've learned anything over the past decade of small-d democratic backsliding, it's that the truth doesn't mean anything anymore because of the societal fragmentation created by social media. There is no truth. We can choose our own adventure now because our phones will confirm our priors about what happened and why.

Pro-democracy folks in the US can't rely on facts and figures to win the day. They won't. The Harris campaign reached a highwater mark in August 2024 when they were ignoring facts and figures and coasting on vibes. It was a heady time because it seemed like Democrats had finally learned their lesson: good-faith “Leslie Knope” politics [facts will win the day] has no place in the modern world, if it ever did.

The right has a gigantic media complex and it's getting bigger. Twitter, CBS News and soon perhaps CNN -- all are right-coded or soon could be. Are you seeing recognition among liberals and leftists that this imbalance is unsustainable? If so, what's the plan?

Look, there are plenty of pro-democracy folks in the world with more money than they could spend in 50 lifetimes. A little bit of that money could go a long way in establishing pro-democracy media outlets that operate as propaganda outlets for the kind of liberalism that has been washed away by the right's capture of the media. Democracy needs to be sold to Americans just as fascism was sold to them, first in the seedy corners of the internet, then on Elon Musk's hub for international fascism, then in mainstream outlets run by people cooking their brains daily on Musk's site.

I'm not sure of a specific plan. I'm just a blogger. But people are awash in fascist propaganda 24 hours a day on every major social media site. It has ruined a lot of relationships and radicalized Americans who spent most of their lives ignoring politics as the domain of nerds.

There has to be a flood of pro-democracy messaging in the media and that can't happen without billions being invested in a massive network of outlets that can effectively push back on the right's unreality.

I wrote about the selling of democracy here.

The meaning of "elites" is central to the fascist project. As defined by David Brooks, they are educated liberal-ish people who drive Teslas, or used to. With an affordability crisis underway, liberals and leftists have a chance to redefine "elites" for the long haul. Thoughts?

I think engaging the right on the meaning of "elites" is probably a road to nowhere. They will label as "elite" anyone who has ever read a book or graduated from college. I would say the left can and should point out the vast gulf between real populism and fake right-wing populism. Media outlets, of course, have conflated these two because the media assumes everyone in politics is operating in pristine good faith.

But pointing out that Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are real populists while Trump and his lackeys talk a big populist game while selling the country for parts to their golf buddies and business associates could offer people real insight into what it means to be on the side of the working person. Barack Obama has toyed with the idea of rejecting Trump as a populist; I think every pro-democracy American needs to push back harder on that label because it's disingenuous and a powerful tool for fascist politicians who have nothing if they don't have at least some working-class support.

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AN 12 25

Opponents of President Donald Trump, from liberals and progressives to right-wing Never Trump conservatives, have often been accused of having "Trump derangement syndrome" — even by people who aren't necessarily Trump supporters or MAGA Republicans themselves. The opponents who criticize Trump's views as dangerous or authoritarian are told that they take his rhetoric much too seriously and are being "alarmists" or "hysterical."

But podcaster Toby Buckle, in an article published by The New Republic on December 18, emphasizes that almost 11 months into Trump's second presidency, the warnings of his most vocal critics are proving to be spot on.

Buckle equates those critics with "Cassandras." In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a prophetic figure who was frustrated because she knew that no one would believe her. And modern-day "Cassandras," Buckle says, were not exaggerating when they sounded the alarm about Trump as far back as 2015.

"Imagine I sent you back in time to July 2015 with the goal of saving liberal democracy in America," Buckle argues. "Donald Trump announced his candidacy a month ago, the polls are showing him with a narrow lead, and the media — while noting his extreme rhetoric — are mostly treating this as a fun diversion. You can't prove you're from the future, and you're limited to broadly legal means. Can you persuade enough people to take it more seriously? After all, you know what's coming — January 6, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, checks and balances failing, massive open corruption, troops on the streets, abductions by masked men, and concentration camps."

The podcaster continues, "But when you warn of these horrors, it sounds outlandish. People won't believe you. If you insist, you'll be dismissed as hysterical. Despite knowing the future, you won't be able to prevent it. This is not that far from the position many ordinary Americans found themselves in at the start of the Trump era."

Those "latter-day Cassandras," according to Buckle, "saw what was coming clearly enough" when they "called Trump's movement fascist from the very start."

"Accordingly, they did everything they could to get others to listen," Buckle notes. "But not enough people did, and many attacked them — even as events proved them right, again and again."

Buckle interviewed "37 Americans who meet the profile of a latter-day Cassandra," and their warnings about Trump, the podcaster says, were far from exaggerations.

"The first thing to say about fascism's Cassandras is they're usually women," Buckle explains. "Not all women are Cassandras — most aren't — but most Cassandras are women. My sense is that Black Americans, of either gender, are likelier than whites to be Cassandras, and trans and nonbinary people are heavily overrepresented within the group…. What were they afraid of? Authoritarianism, political violence, racism, sexism, corruption, as well as threats to bodily autonomy and LGBT rights, were the common themes. Everyone mentioned at least one of those, and the vast majority mentioned multiple."

*Read Toby Buckle's full article for The New Republic at this link.

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YIKES ELI MYSTAL SAYS CTS ARE LEADING NOT LAGGING INC OF FASCISM, NEED TO MAKE THEIR CRIMES LOOK LEGAL?!

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GREIVance IN A BIGGER SENSE // STORY 1

AN 12 25

In his New York Times column and frequent appearances on MS NOW, journalist David French isn't shy about attacking President Donald Trump from the right. Like other Never Trump conservatives — from attorney George Conway to MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace to The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson — French believes that Trump and the MAGA movement have been terrible for the GOP and terrible for conservatism.

But French examines MAGA's belief system in his December 14 column for the Times. MAGA, according to French, believes that Trump is fighting to save the United States from a "death spiral" — and that combination of anger and "despair" is one of the things that makes MAGA and the "New Right" so dangerous.

"In this telling," French explains, "the 'strong men' of the American past had created a glorious and powerful nation. Our peace and prosperity had spawned a weak and feckless generation that had squandered America's strength and cultural identity, and now, it was time for hard men to arise to reclaim what was lost. This view of America's glorious past is indispensable to understanding MAGA's appeal — and the extremism of MAGA youth. After all, the slogan, 'Make America Great Again' implies the loss of greatness."

French continues, "This sense of loss provides the intellectual and — crucially — emotional foundation of the right's authoritarian turn. It's hard to overstate how much the New Right idealizes America's past. Online spaces are full of memes and images, for example, of families from the 1950s in idyllic settings, often with the caption, 'This is what they took from you.'"

The New Right, French observes, typically "contrasts its vision of a glorious past with a miserable present."

"Now, combine that hyperbole with smartphones and social media, and you've got a recipe for a nonstop sense of alarm," the conservative New York Times columnist warns. "I can open my Twitter feed and see video after video of outrageous conduct, and no amount of telling myself that these are isolated incidents in a nation of over 340 million people can blunt their emotional impact."

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

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an 12 25

Heritage Action and President Donald Trump are coming under fire after the conservative advocacy organization made a claim that the president threatened to defund the state of Indiana should lawmakers not pass legislation to redraw its congressional district maps.

“President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders: if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state,” Heritage Action wrote on social media on Thursday. “Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.”

The post ended with, “#PassTheMap.”

While President Trump has publicly threatened to support primary challengers against lawmakers who oppose his redistricting push, NCRM has not found any news reports confirming Heritage Action’s assertion. It is possible the group is relying on information that has not been reported or made public.

READ MORE: ‘Where Is Antifa Headquartered?’: FBI Official Struggles Defending Top Threat Label

Should Indiana pass legislation to redistrict, it reportedly could pick up only two more GOP-held seats.

Critics blasted Heritage Action, a sister group to the Heritage Foundation, for appearing to support Trump’s alleged threat, and blasted the president as well.

“The president and one of the most influential conservative groups in the country are threatening to deprive all Indiana residents of paved roads, guard bases, and major projects if they don’t pass an extremely gerrymandered map to deprive voters of choice,” noted Isaac Saul, founder of Tangle News. “Awesome stuff.”

“Heritage sure loves authoritarianism,” remarked Media Matters researcher Zachary Pleat.

Calling it “nonsense,” Joel Griffith, a senior fellow at the conservative group Advancing American Freedom wrote: “Appalling to see @Heritage_Action endorse this unconstitutional threat by @realDonaldTrump. The President does not have power to coerce state legislators to redraw congressional maps.”

Others appeared to aim their ire directly at the president.

READ MORE: ‘Shaky’ House GOP Leadership ‘Losing Control’: Report

“This is the behavior of a madman,” declared Tim Carney, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

“This isn’t conservative. This is fascist,” commented former Republican U.S. Congressman Joe Walsh.

Mother Jones’ D.C. bureau chief David Corn declared the move “dictatorial.”

“This does not sound like an appropriate or legal use of federal authority or presidential discretion,” observed Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias.

“Nothing about this shakedown is conservative,” noted CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Jacob Stewart, the deputy opinion editor for the IndyStar called the move “illegal.”

Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the conservative online magazine The Dispatch, wrote: “I remember when Heritage cared about federalism, the rule of law, separation of powers, and all that stuff. Now it’s all ‘We love Trump’s musk, do what he says (or what Tucker says).'”

“This is called extortion,” wrote former White House correspondent Sam Youngman, also deeming it “illegal.”

“If this comes to pass,” wrote IndyStar columnist James Briggs, “then the story will be that Trump is punishing Indiana citizens for reasons that have nothing to do with them and so-called Indianans will see the punitive measures for what they are.”

READ MORE: ‘You’re a Loser Dude’: Carville Scorches Trump as ‘Done’

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an 12 25

White House may deter Trump from future rallies as aides say he's not 'capable' of empathy

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MMA

The year the media oligarchs bowed to Trump

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 12/03/25

We warned last year that Donald Trump’s second term as president would turbo-charge the political right’s burgeoning media-intimidation complex. Republican officials and right-wing billionaires were already trying to secure their political agenda by using their wealth, lawfare, and government power to silence journalists. And Trump, we wrote, using his authoritarian strategies, would force media moguls to choose between the journalistic integrity of the news outlets they oversee and their broader business interests, with the fate of the free press in the balance.

Twelve months later, it is clear that many of these corporate media owners have made their choice: They are damaging celebrated news outlets like CBS and The Washington Post out of some combination of personal preference and political expedience. While journalists at their outlets are still producing important stories that reveal the corruption and malfeasance of the Trump administration, it’s anyone’s guess how long they will be permitted to do so.

Trump has spent the last decade at war with the press. He has no regard for free speech, treats all dissent as inherently illegitimate, and uses every available tool to curtail critical journalism. The president’s years of anti-media diatribes have achieved their goal of destroying the credibility of potentially damaging reporting among his supporters, and in his second term, he has backed up those verbal attacks with a flurry of actions.

He and his administration have supplemented or even replaced members of the traditional press corps in favor of MAGA influencers and Trumpist outlets; defunded public media outlets in the U.S. and sought to dismantle them abroad; sued reporters and news outlets for publishing content he dislikes; and terminated rules protecting journalists from prosecutorial scrutiny, while targeting them with retaliatory immigration enforcement.

But Trump’s most unnerving assaults on the press involve his administration's use of state power as leverage against oligarchs who control broadcast and cable news operations and major newspapers. For billionaire owners or top executives at massive multimedia companies, news outlets typically represent a tiny fraction of their overall business interests. And those broader holdings create potential vulnerabilities — like regulatory scrutiny of mergers, federal contracting, and criminal investigations — that an authoritarian president can manipulate to encourage media moguls to cudgel their news outlets into line.

Trump’s strategies resemble those of Victor Orban, the Hungarian autocrat many on the American right take as a model, who has dismantled his country’s independent press and forced the sales of outlets to his allies. Trump's desired result is a cowed journalist corps that will produce Fox News-style propaganda venerating his successes and covering up his corruption and failures.

America’s media oligarchs often resisted Trump’s corrupt abuses of power in his first term, either enduring his attacks without constraining their news outlets or beating his administration in federal court. But in his second term, while some media organizations (including Media Matters) have fought to protect the First Amendment against Trump and his administration, certain wealthy magnates have chosen the path of cowardice, submission, and collaboration.

David and Larry Ellison

David Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder who is one of the richest men alive and a close friend and ally to Trump. The younger Ellison took control of CBS News in July after the Federal Communications Commission approved his Skydance Media’s purchase of CBS parent company Paramount. Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr acted only after Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle an absurd lawsuit Trump filed over CBS News’ editing of an October interview with then-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — and after he secured pledges from Skydance to push the network’s coverage to the right.

Ellison followed through on his promise. The new ownership appointed “anti-woke” champion Bari Weiss as CBS News’ editor-in-chief and Kenneth Weinstein, a Trump-supporting right-wing think tanker, as its ombudsman. An October wave of layoffs hit nearly 100 CBS News employees, gutting the network’s teams focused on climate change and race and culture. Trump certainly seems happy with the changes — in a November 2 interview that marked his first appearance on the network since 2020, he praised Weiss as a “great new leader” and “great person” and described David Ellison’s takeover of CBS News as “the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.”

With the CBS News takeover as proof of concept, Ellison and his father are each making moves to seize additional media outlets and move them in a Trumpy direction.

David Ellison is trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — and the administration is reportedly signaling that other bidders will face grueling oversight from federal regulators. “Trump wants WBD in the Ellisons’ hands, and insiders say it’s because he wants favorable coverage from its CNN news channel,” wrote the New York Post.

Larry Ellison has even reportedly “engaged in a dialogue” with the White House “about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar,” if the sale were to go through.

The Trump White House is also trying to broker a deal in which the social media giant TikTok, a news source for one-fifth of American adults and 43% of those under 30, would be sold to a coalition including companies controlled by Larry Ellison as well as fellow pro-Trump magnate Marc Andreessen.

• ### Jeff Bezos

Bezos owns The Washington Post, but his massive fortune comes from founding Amazon, the online retailing and web service giant, and he also owns the space technology company Blue Origin. During Trump’s first term, Bezos bore numerous potshots at what Trump termed the “Amazon Washington Post,” as well as his administration’s apparent retaliation against Amazon’s operations. But Bezos signaled that things would be different in a second term even before Trump’s election when he barred the Post’s editorial board from endorsing in the 2024 contest, blocking the publication of its piece supporting Harris.

The decision began a deterioration of Bezos’ relationship with the Post, accelerated further by his February demand that the paper’s Opinion section advocate without exception for “personal liberties and free markets.” Opinion editor David Shipley resigned rather than execute that pivot; his replacement, Adam O’Neal, an undistinguished reporter and editor previously at The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, has overseen buyouts and layoffs of the section’s veterans (my wife Alyssa Rosenberg, the section’s former letters and community editor, was among those who took the buyout) and hired several conservative writers, leading one of the paper’s right-wing columnists to boast, “We’re now a conservative opinion page.” The dramatic changes seem to have blown a hole in the Post’s subscriber numbers, with NPR’s David Folkenflik estimating “a net loss of a couple hundred thousand subscribers” at the end of February. With revenue plummeting thanks to Bezos’ decisions and the owner unwilling to eat the losses, more layoffs are reportedly on the way.

But defanging the Post — and finding a way to put money in the Trump family’s pockets — seems to be working out well for Bezos. His rewards include plum seats for Trump’s swearing-in, federal contracts for Blue Origin and Amazon Web Services, and the president publicly applauding him for “trying to do a real job with The Washington Post, and that wasn’t happening before.”

### Patrick Soon-Shiong

Like Bezos, Los Angeles Times owner Soon-Shiong has other business interests that left him vulnerable to Trump’s retaliation; he made his fortune in the biotech industry, and his medical patents and products are subject to federal oversight. Whether due to fear of retribution or a shift in his own political views, Soon-Shiong stepped up his oversight of the Times last year, beginning with the cancellation of a planned endorsement of Harris.

He subsequently shilled for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as secretary of health and human services; announced a remaking of the editorial board, beginning with the addition of pro-Trump CNN commentator Scott Jennings; killed an editorial that criticized Trump’s Cabinet picks; announced the addition of an AI-powered “bias meter” to the paper’s opinion pieces, which was pulled after it downplayed the Ku Klux Klan; floated a conservative version of The View featuring right-wing actor Rob Schneider; launched “LA Times Studios,” a multimedia studio featuring influencers reading AI-generated scripts; sat for interviews with right-wing commentators including Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly; and put forward an ill-starred initial public offering plan which led The Hollywood Reporter to ask, “Does Patrick Soon-Shiong Want to Turn the L.A. Times Into a MAHA Memestock?”

As with Bezos’ actions at the Post, Soon-Shiong’s changes to the Times have resulted in plummeting circulation, an exodus of talent, and the diminishment of the paper’s influence. But his medical patents are still getting approved by the federal government.

• ### Bob Iger

Iger, who as the CEO of Disney oversees its subsidiary ABC, was at the center of two of the most craven media moves since Trump’s reelection.

First, his December 2024 decision to sign off on a $15 million “blood sacrifice to Trump,” settling a defamation lawsuit that ABC News’ lawyers thought they would win, only looks worse over time. The capitulation made clear to ABC staff that Iger would not support them in a stand-off with the president and set a precedent that media companies and other major corporations would knuckle under to his demands.

Second, after Carr threatened Disney and ABC’s affiliates with FCC retribution if they failed to “take actions” against Jimmy Kimmel over one of his monologues in September, Iger folded by suspending Kimmel’s show within hours. Carr’s threats made a mockery of the First Amendment — but Iger wasn’t willing to fight to uphold those rights in court. Iger relented and returned Kimmel to the airwaves only after an outcry by Hollywood talent and a spike in Disney+ cancellations.

What did Iger’s cowardice bring ABC? When ABC News chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce dared to ask Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a question about his role in the brutal murder of the U.S.-based dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a joint Oval Office appearance with Trump, the president became enraged, lashing out at the journalist and calling her outlet “fake news” and “one of the worst in the business.”

“I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” he later added, threatening to shut down a U.S. news outlet for producing reporting he doesn’t like in front of a foreign dictator who represses his own country’s media.

“And we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should look at that," he added.

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ROBT R VID

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THOM REES

Dec 1, 2025 Trump's Second Term

Historians are scared - These 12 Warnings show how the third Reich was built, and under Trump - every single one of them is happening again. Laurence ReeS, author of The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings From History - joins Thom Hartmann for a shocking interview detailing how Hitler took over Germany.

...06

the chapters chapter one is titled spreading conspiracy theories what role

4:12

does that play in evoking the Nazi mind as it were

4:18

uh conspiracy theories are absolutely central to to the Nazis. They thrived on conspiracy theories. Um

4:26

many of the conspiracy theories they passionately believed in came out of the First World War. And that was because

4:34

uh millions of people in Germany couldn't make sense of how it was possible that they'd lost this war. STAB IN BACK BLAME JEWS FOR DEPT STORE AND WEATHER; LOST LAND PAID REPS...

2 Your second

chapter is using them and us. This is a a key dynamic for I think any fascist

7:40

regime. Tell us about that. Yeah, but it's also a key dynamic in all our lives, To...We've all got a bit in our brain called the amygdala. And what the amygdala does is trigger us in new situations as to

8:41

whether that situation is dangerous or not. And it will always on the side of it being dangerous. And the we none of

8:48

us would be here if we didn't have that part of our brain. That's because we'd all have been eaten by wild animals in

8:54

when we came out of the savannah in Africa however many hundreds of thousands of years ago. But actually,

9:00

you know, you hear a rustling in the bush on the savannah, and what you do is you act as if it's a lion coming to eat 1 IN 100 BUT 1 TIME LETHAL VS FRONTAL CONTEX ANALYSIS

...that comes in subsequently and goes an analysis and goes, "Hey, it's not a

9:59

it's not a threat. Don't worry, take a chill pill." Now, what someone like Hitler's doing unconsciously, because he

10:07

doesn't know any of this stuff, but what he's doing, if you read his early speeches in the 1920s,

10:12

is he's saying to an audience, many of whom are predisposed to believe all the prejudices he's got. And what he's doing

10:20

isn't just saying, you know, all of us here are right about

10:26

these prejudices. He's tending to say it's actually even worse than you think.

10:34

So he's stretching stretching all the time that feeling those emotional feelings of

10:42

of of anxiety, fear, and so on because it's an incredibly powerful thing to hold a group together.

...

crucial thing Hitler said in 1926, which I think is applicable, you look

12:24

around today, is really applicable, which is in his judgment, he said the only stable emotion is hate.

12:32

It's much much easier to define a political group through agreeing on what you hate than agreeing on what you like.

...13:17

Yeah. Yeah. Which which leads us logically to your third chapter leading as a hero.

...13:58

he was able because he'd won the Iron Cross in the First World War. He was able to come forward at that time in the

14:04

early 20s. But it was but actually it was a whole range of other bits of luck. I mean he'd never had any form of

14:10

leadership at all. But of course that helped because the people who'd been the leaders had just lost the first world war for Germany. So why not give somebody who hasn't got a clue a go? MUST BE ONE OF US, OUR VALUES

....

chapter

16:21

four, Lawrence, is corrupting the youth. I I knew two men who were in the Hitler youth. Um, uh, tell us about this. DARWINIAN PREF CORTEX NOT FORMED THUS SOLDIERS

...

conniving with the elite.

18:22

Again, there's no way that Hitler could come to power unless the president of Germany, a

18:30

man uh uh uh called Hindenburg, appointed him. Didn't matter how many

18:36

votes he got. Didn't matter. It it was a system whereby the president appoints the chancellor. And Hindenburg, like...

Tell us about attacking human rights. How is that a strategy that act, you know, that the Nazis used that kind of

20:00

activated the Nazi mind as it were among Hitler's followers? Well,

20:06

you it's not this isn't confined to to the Nazis, but you can't be a successful

20:12

uh totalitarian or desperate state without destroying human rights. You

...

enemies. It's a common misconception with people that the concentration camps which happened

20:42

almost immediately the Nazis came to power in 1933. The first common misconception is that they were the death camps of the Holocaust. Actually

20:50

most people who were sent to concentration camps survived. Uh many of them of course were all of them were

appallingly brutalized and some were indeed murdered. But the majority of people who were sent there in the

initial years were not sent because they were Jews. They were sent there because they were the political opponents of the Nazis. The Jews of course were

21:09

persecuted in lots of other ways from the beginning. But the concentration camps were initially primarily for their

...

prison system. But what you then what what you then see is a whole altering of the rule of law.

21:37

So that the ultimate arbiter was Hitler. The ultimate arbiter of what was legal

or not legal was this guy who absolutely had no concern for the rule of law and

that came in relatively quickly. And the second thing that you that they did almost immediately is shut down the free

press. Germany had an enormously vibrant free press in the 20s and early

22:01

30s I think almost more than anywhere else. And it was shut down in a matter of days. And Joseph Gerbles, the

22:07

propaganda ministry minister, was very clear at the meetings with journalists who said, "Now your job is to reporT

what we say to you." And so you create this completely controlled environment

....

FAITH ...uh this is this again is crucial. Uh and Hitler recognized that and he he said

24:02

memorably that in effect that what do people die for throughout history? People die for faith-based beliefs. They

don't die for political beliefs necessarily. They die because they have faith in something. And he wanted people

to have faith in him and the Nazi party. And you see this it's really interesting JEHOVAH WITNESS CD WALK OF JUST RENOUNCE BUT ~

...

CH 8

kind of a

paradox. Valuing enemies. Tell us about this. Well, if you go back to thinking about

them and us, what you realize is again, if you're running this kind of

despOtism, if you're if you're a dictator in this environment, it's very

26:00

difficult to justify what you're doing in terms of all of the levels of oppression on the public without saying

26:08

there's a clear and present danger from incredibly uh aggressive, sneaky

26:16

enemies. And you see that with the Nazis during the mid to late30s when uh HEydrich who

26:23

were was worked very closely with Himmler uh uh writes this big paper and he points out that just because now

26:31

we've dealt with the communists uh and we're and we're dealing with in terms of

26:36

persecution at that point with the Jews. Um don't think that's enough. Actually,

26:41

we've now got to target people who aren't working. We've got to target um people who uh um

26:49

behave inappropriately. We got to target people who are making jokes about the regime in an increasing way than they

had previously done. And and what you realize is that that enemies are

incredibly important to these people because it's a justification

for what they're doing. Yeah. It's the first lesson that they teach you in in novel writing school

essentially, which is that your your hero can only be as good as your as your anti-hero is evil that that Superman

27:20

without Lex Luthor would have been a boring guy who stopped 7-Eleven robberies. Um, yeah, that's why the Jews that's why the

27:27

Jews are held up as this incredibly one of the reasons they're held up as this

27:32

incredibly secretive organization across national boundaries that are plotting

27:37

and scheming and you know so it's it's you you know you you you you create you

27:44

create imagine enemies that can absolutely destroy you and Hitler always

27:49

talked in terms and you see a lot of dictators doing this in either or there's no no middle.

27:55

Yeah. Either we kill these PE either we destroy this threat or they destroy us.

28:00

Either we win or we're just either or all the time to hype up all of this feeling.

28:05

Your your your next chapter uh after valuing enemies number nine was eliminating resistance. Tell us about

that. Yeah. Um this really is a because the the the book isn't just operating as you

know if you read it. It isn't just operating as these warnings. It's operating as a as a chronological history through the development of

Nazism and the mentalities. And with this chapter, I hit uh the invasion of Poland in September 1939

and look at how they are targeting um the the Poles and particularly how this

is an invasion unlike really hard to imagine a parallel before in

certainly in European in European world. um where they're targeting not just uh

the the opposing armies but they're targeting the intellectual class uh

28:55

within the country and also the Jews who they ghettoise will get ghettoise quite shortly but they're killing people who

are clever and what they're doing is they're trying to do that in order to prevent a future

uh um uh people rising up against them. They're killing them in order to make

them, what's the phrase they use? A leaderless rabble. That's the crucial thing they're doing.

29:22

And this is really different. This is different from uh uh you look at the

First World War or wars prior to that. This is a this is a different attitude towards what war should be.

That's it's it's remarkable. It's doing away with the intelligencia, too. It was sort of like what POl PoT did. Um yeah,

29:43

your 10th chapter is escalating racism. Uh we have a minute.

This is said in the context this is said in the context of the invasion of the Soviet Union um encompassing Russia as

29:54

we call it now. But the invasion of the Soviet Union in uh June 1941

and they invade the Soviet Union because Hitler's vision had always been uh since

he had went into politics essentially I want an empire. we want an empire and that empire is going to be based

primarily in the western part of the Soviet Union. Uh and he believed that

this dealt with a number of problems because he saw that there were large numbers of Jews there that the that

there were large numbers also of course of communists who he hated and despised and also they were Slavic people and he

:{:{believed they're subhuman. So what you see as they go in immediately into the Soviet Union is}:

this is this ramping up of absolute horror and it's it's it's a necessary

precondition of that is their belief system going back years of Nazism uh uh

which was essentially racial which is the people they're targeting aren't really human at all. And so he escalates

that up for this invasion. And he calls it explicitly. This is a war of extermination. Let's be clear about

that. And and and it absolutely became that

and and derived out of that notion that if we don't get them, they will get us. It's just

31:14

Yeah. Absolutely. An extraordinary that was the motive that was the motive. I've met many many former soldiers who

fought in that war on the German side and that's one of the key motivations. Absolutely. It's a they almost see it as

a it's a preemptive war and they think we should be grateful in the west for it because if you know we

31:31

went in there and tried to deal with this problem before it hit us. The last two chapters and and we have

31:36

about u I think around 7 minutes here before we're going to hit a a hard break at the end of close to the end of the

31:42

hour are titled killing at a distance and stoking fear and then perhaps we'll

31:47

have a little time to wrap up but killing at a distance tell us about this chapter. This is this is again really

important uh psychologically because there's a common misconception that the

Nazis invented gas chambers in order to kill people in large numbers in order to

kill primarily uh the overwhelmingly the Jews. Um actually they they didn't they

had no problem in killing large numbers of people by shooting. You see that at the Babbyar killings in uh the autumn of

1941 in Ukraine. You see that at the harvest festival killings later in the war uh centered around places like

Maiden in near Lublin in Poland. Uh they had no problem killing very large numbers by by shooting. In fact, more

people were killed per day in those those terrible atrocities than were ever killed in one day in the gas chambers of

BIrkanau. So why are they doing this? They're doing this because they discovered that

when you have to kill somebody up close, it was difficult for a lot of people.

32:50

:{:{And if you look and I made a special study of the people who were doing these terrible killings in}:

eastern part, western part of the Soviet Union and and you could divide them broadly into three for killers who were

doing it. And these were all people who were predisposed to support the regime. And there was a a small group of people

33:10

who discovered when they were killing people up close, they loved it. And there was a small group of people who

discovered they simply couldn't do it and they turned away. And they were never killed for that. No one was ever

shot for refusing to take part in the Holocaust. And then there was the big middle area of people who actually recognized they

33:30

thought crazily as we might think that it was important to do it and they had

psychological difficulties. And Himmler witnessed this and they pushed forward with the development of gas chambers

which immediately made it not a psychological problem because so few uh

members of the SS were involved in having to operate the gas chambers. And there's a huge warning in that for us

because of course you look at uh bombing or you look at drones or whatever it there's we lose the psychological

34:01

barrier against going up to a small child and shooting it in the head. We

34:07

lose that once we're able just to press a button. Yeah. And and take out a boat in the

34:12

Caribbean, for example. Um, stoking fear is the last chapter in your book, The Nazi Mind. Tell us about that.

Well, again, this you see this when things start to go wrong. So, when things start to go wrong for the Nazis,

um, what they've got left is you think we're bad or you think this is

bad, wait until the enemy gets here. And of course they managed to do that. People say, well, why did they hold on

so long when the Italians surrendered in 1943, but it took until uh um May April

uh 1945 for uh Hitler to kill himself. And he killed himself when the Red Army

soldiers are yards from his door in the fur bunker in Berlin. And the reason is

one of the reasons crucial reasons is because people in Germany for the most part knew they didn't know the details

35:04

necessarily but they knew the nature of the horror of that war of extermination. And here were the people they'd been

doing that to coming at them. So they're going to they're going to want some revenge. They're going to want

vengeance. So you're going to hold out. And of course the Nazis played on that

massively. they played on that to say, "Hey, you you we we've got to all stick together because worse is coming."

35:30

Yeah. Yeah. I I totally get it. In the in the what two minutes we have left,

what what lessons for today did you derive as you did the research for and

35:42

wrote this book? Well, as I say, Tom, I don't believe in I mean, warnings is how I try and put it, but but the crucial

35:48

thing I learned the crucial thing I learned of going back 35 years, if if I'm asked one thing, it's that

everything is fragile, often a great deal more fragile than we think. Mhm. Because I met so many people whose lives

changed for the worse in an pretty much in an instant. Whether it's the Jews in Hungary who were um sent almost

immediately to the gas chambers of BIrkanAU, horrendous things happen and

36:15

the common common idea for many of them was the speed at which this can change.

So I think we look on the institutions around us like you look at the building of a courtroom and you think well yeah

we got a court rule of law. Well you can still have the building if they've just altered all the judges in it. Um so

everything it it it it's an incredible privilege to live in a democracy. It's a miracle I think in many ways we have any

democracies but it can be so swiftly taken away because things institutions

are more fragile than we think. Yeah it it is uh an absolutely remarkable book. I want to recommend it

to all of my uh listeners and viewers. Uh Lawrence Ree is a historian,

documentary filmmaker, author of several books. He wrote a book also titled Awitz, a new history. Uh this is the

37:04

Nazi mind, 12 warnings from history. He's also a former head of BBC TV's

37:09

history programs. And uh Lawrence u it I

37:14

I learned so much from this book and I thought I knew a lot because you know I'd live, as I've mentioned, I lived

37:20

there. I knew some Nazis. I I But you've just done a marvelous job here

...

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an 11 25

IFrame Content

President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense is now targeting a sitting U.S. Senator, one of six Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a video reminding members of the U.S. Armed Forces and the Intelligence Community of their right to refuse to obey an illegal order.

U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a retired astronaut and former naval officer, along with the other five said, “threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”

“Our laws are clear,” they added. “You can refuse illegal orders.”

In an official statement on social media, the Department of Defense alleged it has “received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.).”

It added, “a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” The statement also said, “federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 2387 prohibit actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”

President Trump last week in a series of social media posts promoted hanging the six Democrats.

“It’s called seditious behavior at the highest level,” the president also charged. “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be Arrested and put on trial. Their words cannot be allowed to stand – We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example must be set.”

“Seditious behavior, punishable by death!” he continued.

Critics blasted the Pentagon’s move.

“Sen. Kelly didn’t tell troops to defy lawful orders, he reminded them of their duty to refuse unlawful ones, which is literally what the UCMJ and decades of military precedent require!” wrote The Bulwark’s Evan Rosenfeld. “Pretending that doing so is ‘misconduct’ is complete propaganda and not rooted in law.”

Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio called it “Pretty extraordinary to call out a sitting senator in this way.”

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein labeled it “ham-handed,” and Bill Kristol of Defending Democracy called it “Naked authoritarianism.”

But The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg noted that the video “looks to have been an official one for which [Kelly] would enjoy Speech or Debate immunity.”

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AN 11 25

A Rutgers University professor who teaches a course on anti-fascism has become one of the highest profile targets of President Donald Trump's war on antifa, *The Guardian* reports, and his family’s ordeal has become part of a wider strategy by the Trump administration to target the movement to advance its authoritarian goals.

Mark Bray, whose 2017 book "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," made the professor a leading expert in the movement, says that his crusade took on new life after the murder of far right podcaster Charlie Kirk when President Donald Trump, "without any evidence to show a link between the suspected assassin and antifa," signed an executive order designating the movement as a “domestic terrorist organization.”

“I’m anti-fascist insofar as I don’t like fascism and I would really like us to organise against fascism,” Bray tells The Guardian. “But that’s the extent of it. I have never been part of a group.”

But far-right activists targeted Bray, calling him a "domestic terrorist professor" and calling for him to be fired. Then came the death threats.

As a father of two young children, Bray says he was finally rattled when he was doxxed and his address was made public.

“I kept battling this notion that you’re playing into their hands by getting scared of this,” Bray says. “But the difference between this time and last time, among other things, was having little children and if it was like a 0.001 percent chance that someone would drive by our house and spray that house with an automatic weapon, I can’t take that chance.”

That's when he and his professor wife packed up the kids and moved to Spain until the end of the academic year. When they attempted to board the plane, they were turned away.

“Someone’ cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second,” Bray posted on Bluesky. “We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.'"

Hours before Bray’s flight was cancelled, "Trump and his top officials had held a meeting at the White House, vowing to use the full force of the government to crush antifa, which they likened to some of the world’s most violent gangs and drug cartels," The Guardiannotes.

“On the day I was leaving the country, the far-right influencers who targeted me were at the White House meeting with Trump about antifa and they’re in touch with him directly,” Bray says.

Although the family got on a plane the following day, prior to boarding, however, "they were held for about an hour by customs and border patrol agents who peppered Bray and his wife with questions, asked to see his phone and peered into the family’s carry-on luggage," The Guardiansays.

They grilled Bray on how he donated half of his proceeds from the 2017 book to the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund, which supports the legal and medical costs for people around the world charged with offenses related to anti-fascist actions.

“It’s not an antifa group,” Bray told them. The agents backed off when he said he would need his attorney present to answer such questions, The Guardian notes.

“The authoritarian fascist playbook is well documented and it thrives on crisis and emergency,” Bray tells The Guardian. “It’s well-documented that figures like this want to squelch opposition resistance and usually will try to come up with a catch-all bogeyman category to do so.”

And as much as antifa is a movement to fight fascism, Bray says, MAGA is the new face of fascism.

“I do think that Maga is a fascist movement, I do think that the intent of the administration is to destroy opposition and protest and is to create an authoritarian system,” Bray says.

Trump's targeting of anti-fascists may have temporarily upended Bray's life, but it sends a greater, dire message to more than just him and his family.

“It was really not about me, per se, so much as using a bogeyman to try and target anyone that the administration doesn’t like. That’s how I see it,” Bray says, "pointing to the far-right media ecosystem that had amplified these claims, leaving him fending off death threats."

“But it was aggravating that someone could just fire off an email and change my life," he adds.

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SEE REAL VICTIM

:

GGL AI 11 25}:

It is a core tactic of fascist and authoritarian movements to portray the dominant group as the true victims of an "enemy" or minority out-group. This narrative of false victimhood is a key component of fascist propaganda, designed to generate anger and resentment and justify the group's actions against others.

Key aspects of this dynamic include:

• Manufacturing a crisis: Fascists often flourish in times of anxiety and perceived decline, which they link to a narrative of "fake loss" allegedly caused by a specific enemy (e.g., immigrants, liberals, specific racial or religious minorities).

• Scapegoating: The "victim" claim is used to direct anger and blame toward a scapegoat group, allowing the aggressors to position themselves as the self-sacrificing heroes fighting against impossible odds.

• Reversal of roles: In this dynamic, those promoting fascist ideology present themselves as the persecuted, while labeling anyone who opposes them as the "real fascist" or persecutor.

• Strongman/victim duality: Authoritarian leaders often oscillate between presenting themselves as both superior (a "strongman") and as a victim of oppression, thereby gathering support from those who feel similarly disenfranchised.

• Undermining truth: This tactic is part of a broader strategy of pushing "Big Lies" and conspiracy theories to create a fraudulent reality that makes it difficult to have an honest discussion about the actual victims of violence and oppression.

Historically, this has been a feature of various fascist regimes, such as the "victim theory" in post-WWII Austria, which allowed former Nazis back into society by denying their past actions, and the Nazi's own claims of being victims of censorship while engaging in widespread censorship themselves. The goal is to manipulate narratives to fit their ends, pushing the real victims out of the spotlight.

//

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11 25

A new report published by former U.S. military officers this week decried president Donald Trump’s politicized use of the military and warned of the “eroding” effects his continued use of it will have, per a report from The Guardian.

Since returning to power in January, Trump has become increasingly reliant on domestic military deployments in furtherance of his agenda. This has most notably included the use of National Guard forces to aid in immigration enforcement efforts, particularly in major cities, like Chicago and Los Angeles, that are run by Democratic elected officials.

His administration has also seen numerous firings of high-ranking officers and lawyers who have been unwilling to support certain parts of the president’s agenda.

All of these issues are at the heart of a new report, titled “The Perils of Politicizing the U.S. Military,” which warned that Trump’s use of the military for partisan purposes are damaging to the separation of the armed forces from political matters and the public’s trust in it to act apolitically.

“The use of troops, bases, and ceremonies in partisan settings has blurred the line between military service and political messaging, eroding morale and public trust in the military’s apolitical character,” the report read.

Released on Monday, the report was authored by retired Navy Admiral Steve Abbot, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, former Army Secretary Louis Caldera, retired Army General George Casey, former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and former Navy secretary Sean O’Keefe.

The former officials continued: “When service members, senior leaders, or military symbols are perceived as aligned with political agendas, the public begins to see the institution as partisan rather than national – and once eroded, that trust is difficult to rebuild. This loss of trust makes it harder to recruit across the political spectrum, harder to retain talent, and harder to reassure allies and deter adversaries abroad.”

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GOOD ANALYSIS FLOOD ZONE --> FASCISM

AN TC 11 25

The headlines documenting President Donald Trump’s plan to send federal troops to San Francisco followed a familiar arc. “Trump claims ‘unquestioned power’ in vow to send troops to San Francisco,” The Guardian reported on Oct. 20, 2025. The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle blared: “S.F. threatens to sue if Trump brings in National Guard.” Then, on Oct. 23, “Trump reverses his decision to send troops to San Francisco,” as ABC News put it, after Trump posted that conversations with the city’s mayor and tech moguls had swayed him.

It was another example of how Trump’s shifting policy positions, racially inflammatory statements and threats frequently fuel a flurry of headlines, reflecting what some psychologists are calling “media saturation overload” or “Trump stress disorder.”

This barrage of information may seem like overcommunication from a hyperactive administration. But it is much more than that.

Scholars have found that the constant, often conflicting and at times false information coming out of the White House and shared via social media posts and the conventional news media causes members of the public to see truth and fact as relative and makes them more likely to dismiss those who disagree with them as untruthful. This leaves doubt about what’s real and what isn’t.

This citizen paralysis creates what philosopher Hannah Arendt described in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” as a general public “for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … no longer exist.” When lies are truth and truth is derided as lies, Arendt wrote, ordinary people lose their bearings and can be manipulated for totalitarian objectives.

Meanwhile, many journalists have openly acknowledged fatigue with the pace and nature of the Trump administrations’ news cycles, amid frequent newsroom layoffs, mergers and closures.

I am a longtime journalist and now scholar of journalism and race, trained to see the methods and aims behind political leaders’ press operations. And as I show in my forthcoming book, the Trump administration’s rhetorical strategies echo the playbooks of authoritarian and white supremacist organizations such as the Third Reich and some factions of the modern alt-right movement. They are intended to narrow the scope of who belongs as an American.

Headlines at ‘muzzle velocity’

The Trump administration’s rhetorical strategies include claiming victim status while often laying blame on immigrants or other scapegoats in ways that I believe betray racist intent. At the same time it has overwhelmed journalists and the public with breaking news.

This strategy was laid out by Steve Bannon, an influential Trump supporter and strategist in his first administration, during a 2019 PBS “Frontline” interview, when he described the media as “the opposition party.”

“They’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time,” he said. “All we have to do is flood the zone. … Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never – will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

Bannon has long been associated with the alt-right, a movement known for rhetorical tactics that minimize and obfuscate its true aims.

A strategy forged in Trump’s first term

As I detail in my book, “American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Representations of Identity and Belonging,” Trump and his key advisers have been developing, refining and ramping up their news media manipulation for a long time.

An early example of this is the way the administration used these tactics through Trump’s public responses to the fatal violence at the August 2017 Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The two-day rally was organized by a white nationalist blogger and attended by members of neo-Nazi, white supremacist and far-right militias protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a Charlottesville park. They marched with tiki torches, flew Confederate and Nazi flags and chanted antisemitic and racist slogans.

Amid violent clashes with counterprotesters on the second day, a neo-Nazi sympathizer drove into a crowd, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring many others.

My study of television news coverage of Unite the Right found that the majority of news reports focused on the contradictory and inflammatory statements that Trump made about the antisemitic and racist protesters. Trump’s Aug. 15, 2017, press conference remark about blame on both sides after what happened garnered the most news media attention: “I think there is blame on both sides,” he said. “You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides.”

Exploiting chaos

The uncertainty surrounding what he meant created a cycle of news stories implying and denying that he sympathizes with white supremacists.

This is-he-or-isn’t-he intrigue spurred a surge of what fits the description of Bannon’s “muzzle-velocity” news headlines: “Trump declares ‘racism is evil’ amid pressure over Charlottesville” followed closely by “Trump defends White-nationalist protesters” and “Why Trump can’t get his story straight on Charlottesville.”

With the focus on Trump’s comments and what he might have really meant, the news media ultimately missed covering at the time the long-term threat posed by these white supremacist and other extremist groups.

Echoing a playbook from the past

Scholars have identified the fascist roots of these “post-truth” strategies: strongmen leaders uninterested in establishing leadership through honesty and transparency.

A recent scholarly analysis of Trump’s leadership concludes that the second-term president is overwhelming the public into “organized despair” by pitting races against each other while targeting minority groups as scapegoats, a tactic that hearkens back to 1930s Germany.

A 2019 analysis of Trump’s narrative style describes how he presents himself as a “strongman” fighting invisible forces of censorship and suppression. It also points out that this was part of the appeal of fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler.

Researchers of Nazi propaganda identified key tactics in the German press such as name-calling and lumping together groups seen as opposition – communists, liberals and Jews – until public understanding of those groups blur into phrases like “enemies of Germany.” The messaging was constant and immersive, carried in local and national newspapers, radio, film and posters.

A key part of Trump’s rhetorical strategy is using race without directly referring to it. For example, Trump has described cities with large nonwhite populations such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago as “out of control” or “dirty,” contrary to actual crime statistics. He’s also questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity, suggesting she “happened to turn Black.” And referring to Black football players who had been protesting systemic racism by kneeling during the national anthem, Trump said, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now,” which many observers interpreted as racist because he was insulting people of color for the act of protesting racism.

This racial coding has been used by white supremacist groups to mask their true intent. They also use less overt labels such as “alt-right” or “pro-white” as a “rhetorical bridge” to the mainstream public.

In the case of the NFL protesters, the plausible deniability became an actual denial. Trump perfected this move when, during a 2020 debate with Joe Biden, he said, “Proud Boys – stand back and stand by,” referencing another group accused of thinly veiled racism.

Drowning in headlines

I believe that the endgame for this strategy is authoritarian power that greatly narrows the scope of who truly belongs and has rights in this country as an American.

This media saturation – drowning the public with a thousand Trump-generated headlines – allows his administration to keep dominating and controlling national attention.

But the media-consuming public can use the tools they have to encourage news outlets to better inform the public by identifying the media saturation strategy and reporting on why leaders are using it.

Otherwise, if news consumers let the headline overload do what it’s intended to do, and become overwhelmed and paralyzed, they become pawns in what I consider a ploy to make America less egalitarian and less democratic.

Angie Chuang, Associate Professor of Journalism, *University of Colorado Boulder

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

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:{:{---}:

RWW

11/13/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Fascist Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon calls on Trump to become "the American Caesar" and start arresting and imprisoning judges, mayors, governors and any other elected official who opposes his deportation policies: "He must cross the Rubicon."

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KPFA 11 10 25

The global rise of the authoritarian right has confounded classification and led to contentious debates on the left. Do politicians like Modi, Bolsonaro, Orban, and Trump represent an extreme form of right-wing populism? Or are they fascists, as some claim? Historian and scholar of populism and fascism Federico Finchelstein argues that we’re seeing something new — a phenomenon that blurs the lines between the two.

Federico Finchelstein, The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy UC Press, 2024

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OMFG I AM ALLOWED TO DO IT”

an 11 25 day after pardon 77 trump coup liars

One participant in the January 6, 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol is now calling on President Donald Trump to establish an armed vigilante squad that exclusively reports to the president.

During a recent appearance on the far-right Gateway Pundit podcast, Stewart Rhodes — who founded the "Oath Keepers" paramilitary group — told host Jim Hoft that not only was he relaunching the Oath Keepers, but issuing a direct call to Trump to deputize his loyal followers to enforce federal laws. Progressive group Media Matters for America noted that Rhodes explicitly urged Trump to use a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.

"President Trump, as commander in chief, always has absolute authority to call all of us up as the militia ... if he sees it necessary, especially for three purposes: to repel invasions, to suppress insurrections and to execute the laws of the union," Rhodes said. "... So from the bottom, from down the rank and file, we can let President Trump know that we're ready to serve, encourage him to do that, call us up as a militia, order us all to come together in our counties under his command, which gives you complete legal sanction to do what you're doing."

Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 of the U.S. Constitution specifically stipulates that Congress – not the president — has the power "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress." It's unlikely that the federal judiciary would allow Trump to do what Rhodes asked, particularly after a judge ruled earlier this year that Trump's deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (which prohibits the military from being used as a domestic police force).

Rhodes' insistence that his group be used as a private army to serve at the pleasure of the president is particularly ironic given the Oath Keepers' history. George Washington University noted that Rhodes formed the Oath Keepers in 2009 "in response to a perceived conspiracy by the U.S. government to facilitate total economic collapse, thereby providing the pretext to imposing martial law and a system of totalitarian control." But if Trump granted Rhodes' request, the Oath Keepers would in fact be used to impose the same martial law his group ostensibly opposes.

In 2023, Rhodes and another Oath Keepers leader were each sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for their role in the January 6 insurrection — the most serious charge given to all of the roughly 1,500 defendants. During Rhodes' trial, prosecutors played a recording of him on January 10, 2021 expressing regret that more January 6 participants didn't bring weapons.

"My only regret is that they should have brought rifles," Rhodes said, adding that his group could have "fixed it right then and there" if they were armed. Trump pardoned Rhodes and all other January 6 defendants on the first day of his second term.

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// CORRUPT // Fascism neuter courts

GENERAL AMNESTY FOR CRIMES

TIME MAG 11 25

President Donald Trump has ordered “full, complete, and unconditional” pardons for over 70 of his political allies who backed alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to the Department of Justice’s Pardon Attorney, Ed Martin.

In a social media post published in the early hours of Monday morning, Martin shared a signed proclamation of the list of names, which contains high-profile figures such as Trump’s former personal lawyer and one-time Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyers Sidney Powell and John Eastman, and more.

“Thank you, POTUS, for allowing me, as U.S. Pardon Attorney, to work with the White House, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy AG Todd Blanche, and Solicitor General John Sauer to achieve your intent,” Martin wrote, crediting the team who worked on the pardons. “Let their healing begin.”

You can see the full list, here:

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“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 presidential election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” reads the pardon signed by Trump on Nov. 7.

The pardon applies to those “for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities in, or advocacy for or of any slate of presidential electors… in connection with the 2020 presidential election.”

In a statement to TIME on Monday morning, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of the pardons: “These great Americans were persecuted and put through hell by the Biden Administration for challenging an election, which is the cornerstone of democracy.”

Read More: *Rudy Giuliani Once Fought Corruption, Now He Is Embroiled in It

Giuliani was held in contempt of court in January for failing to cooperate in the handover of $11 million of personal assets to Georgia poll workers he had falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani later reached a settlement in the dispute.

Trump, meanwhile, said in September that he would be awarding his former lawyer with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, days after Giuliani was injured in a New Hampshire car crash.

Trump has repeatedly made false claims that he, not former President Joe Biden, won the 2020 election. Rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, amid the fraught rhetoric.

In January, Trump pardoned almost 1,600 people convicted for their involvement in the Capitol Riots on Jan. 6, 2021, including commuting the sentences of violent offenders from the riots, such as Proud Boys leader Enrique Torrio, who was serving a 22-year sentence.

Former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, called the pardon “an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol.”

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AN 11 25

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) tells the New Republic that “we have all three key ingredients of a strongman state: a rubber-stamp Congress acceding to the president’s desires; a Supreme Court enhancing the president’s powers; and a power-hungry president … disregarding the laws and the checks and balances of our Constitution.”

In this environment, President Donald Trump is using 10 rules out of the “authoritarian playbook” to collapse U.S. democracy.

“The first rule … is to fire the government’s referees,” said Merkley, which Trump began when he fired 17 inspectors general and members of federal oversight commissions and regulatory boards without cause. The second rule is then to “pack your government with loyalists."

“The Senate is supposed to block confirmation of unqualified individuals,” but Merkley said that’s where that “rubber stamp” in the Republican majority comes in handy.

A third rule is to grab the power over the funding of programs from Congress so a single man can decide which programs to fund and at what level. Once you’ve grabbed the funding levers you can pursue the “fourth rule in the authoritarian playbook” by going after centers of power.

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“Trump is doing exactly that when he withholds research grants from universities or security clearances from law firms unless they restructure to his will,” Merkley said.

The fifth rule involves an autocrat pushing his influence over the press, which Trump is doing with “lawsuits and his power over broadcast licenses and corporate mergers to pressure newspapers and networks over the content of their reports and broadcasts, and even which late-night comedians they employ.” Merkley said Trump’s already destroyed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and defunded PBS, NPR, and even Voice of America, which was created specifically to counter disinformation from authoritarian regimes around the world.

Rule No. 6 is to disregard due process. “Democracies don’t have secret police,” said Merkley. “But now, unidentified masked federal agents are arresting people off the street … terrorizing communities, zip-tying children, and disappearing people overseas without a fair trial.”

Rule No. 7 — attack and diminish dissent by weaponizing the Department of Justice — is hot on the heels of that with Trump publicly naming enemies and pushing the DOJ to pursue them: James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, John Bolton.

Soon comes Rule No 8, which involves the “use the military to suppress domestic dissent.”

“Trump is activating Title 10 of the U.S. Code, section 12406, to federalize the National Guard and send them into American cities,” said Merkley. “… A district judge ruled against Trump’s effort to federalize and deploy Oregon National Guard members in Portland … but Trump may yet succeed, because some judges … are arguing that the courts should defer to the president’s discretion.”

“A ninth rule is to use the power of the government to spread propaganda,” said Merkley, which Trump is already doing with “banners with the president’s face hanging off federal buildings; video announcements at airports featuring Homeland Security Secretary Noem blaming Democrats for the government shutdown; federal websites spreading the president’s political messages,” all in violation of the Hatch Act and other rules.

A tenth rule in the authoritarian playbook — and the most dangerous rule of all, said Merkley — is to rig future elections. Trump is already trying to consolidate states’ voter registration files into a national database to make them easier to manipulate in the next election, and he’s gerrymandering states’ congressional districts to increase Republican power in the House of Representatives, possibly with the blessing of the Supreme Court in upcoming months.

It will take “strong citizen resistance” in the autocrat’s first year to derail his effort. After that, the struggle gets considerably harder, if not impossible.

“Let’s ring the alarm bells loud and clear and pass the election test in November 2026 with flying colors,” Merkley said.

Read the full New Republic report at this link.

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Senator Slotkin Delivers Speech on Trump's Authoritarian Playbook

no troops in str act 10 25

14,384 views Oct 29, 2025

I believe that Trump is ready to bring the full weight of the government against Americans he perceives as enemies. Why? Because he has one goal: making sure he and his ilk never have to give up power. Watch my speech on President Trump's authoritarian playbook.

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an 10 24

miller, basically a threat to any who oppose trump

Anger as 'Trump regime' lackey threatens to arrest Dem governor

Jessica Corbett gov prtiz, set up by fox/ question?

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an 10 25

Using case studies from dead democracies, theNew York Timeseditorial board compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied the collapse of democracies. According to the board, under President Donald Trump the United States is staggeringly similar to such cases.

First, a modern authoritarian stifles dissent and speech. Like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump and his allies have pressured television stations to stop airing comedians who hurt his feelings. He has also revoked the visas of foreign students for sharing their views on the genocide in Gaza and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups.

Second, autocrats use the power of law enforcement to investigate and imprison people who oppose them, similar to how Trump has ordered his Justice Department to target people who have made him angry with “dubious” accusations, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former F.B.I. Director James Comey. And Trump has also ordered investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), among others.

Third, a modern autocrat finds ways to neuter their nation’s legislature, similar to the way Trump commands a legion of lockstep allies in the modern Republican Party, who rubber stamp his every decision.

Number 4, according to the Times, is an autocrat’s need to use the military to control opposition in dissent. Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles, over the outcry of local leaders, and he has made similar attempts in Portland, Ore. and Chicago.

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Likewise, the Editorial Board draws similarities to Trump’s defiance of national courts and his penchant for declaring national emergencies to a push his agenda. Like despots elsewhere, Trump has “vilified transgender Americans and barred them from military service,” said the Board. “He has fired women and people of color from leadership posts and ended programs that promote workplace diversity.”

He has also labored to erase Black history by removing books on slavery and segregation from military libraries and pressuring Smithsonian museums to minimize those subjects.

“At the same time, he has suggested that white people and Christians are victims, which echoes the autocratic habit of claiming that majority groups are in fact oppressed,” said the Board.

Also, like a despot, Trump rails against accurate information to guide decision-making, and he works to suppress inconvenient truths. He has already fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for truthfully reporting disappointing job growth, and he has shut down federal data collection efforts related to climate change.

Throw that in with No. 9: An authoritarian’s predictable effort to take over universities and suppress dissident scholars, which Trump has also begun to do by cutting millions of dollars in school grants and attempting to dictate hiring methods and school policies.

Nos. 10, 11, and 12 involve an authoritarian’s cult of personality; his effort to use government levers to personally enrich himself and his family; and his unending crusade to manipulate law to stay in power.

“Authoritarians change election rules to help their party, and they rewrite laws — or violate their spirit — to ignore term limits,” writes the Board, and although Trump’s biggest attempt to follow this playbook failed when he was “unable to undo his election defeat” in 2020, the Board says “he has shown worrisome signs of using his power to entrench the Republican Party’s hold on the government” through gerrymandering extremes and an executive order to interfere with state elections.

“These moves increase the chances that Republicans will keep control of Congress even if most voters want to oust them,” the Board writes, creating a one-party government similar to the single-party misery of the U.S.S.R, which eventually led to Putin.

“The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse,” the Board said.

Read the New York Times report at this link.

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AN 10 25

For the last few weeks, Republican Party leadership has been carrying out a campaign to, essentially, classify the word “fascist” as hate speech against right-wingers. But while some Republicans shy away from the term, plenty of others, particularly among their base and their influencers, find it edgy and hip. Some have even begun to wear it as a badge of honor.

Most notably, last week, members of the Republican Youth—er, Young Republicans—were caught in a group chat declaring their love of Adolf Hitler and expressing fondness for his policy of mass extermination in gas chambers.

The incident caused some drama and led to some repercussions, but not as much as you might hope. Vice President JD Vance dismissed the story, saying, “Kids do stupid things, especially young boys… They tell edgy, offensive jokes. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a… very offensive, stupid joke is cause to ruin their lives.” By and large, that seems to be the tack most Republicans are taking, certainly from the top down.

Vance’s attempt to downplay the chats as just kids being edgy may work for some, but the truth is that many members of the chat were grown men well into their 30s, nearly Vance’s age, who occupied positions of political influence. Maybe they were joking, but it’s not clear where the irony or the punchlines were—and it’s a poor choice of comedic material if the party wants to shake the fascist label.

“Fascist” as Hate Speech

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Ever since President Donald Trump’s takeover of the GOP, Republicans have struggled with this fascist comparison. Actually, the left has used the term to describe far-right policies since long before Trump, but Trump’s Mussolini-like mannerisms, dictatorial ambitions, and cult of personality have made the term feel like a natural fit and brought it into more common use, especially in his second term.

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September, Republicans like Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) blamed the casual use of the word for inspiring Kirk’s murder and other acts of violence. Johnson said: “Calling people Nazis and fascists is not helpful… There are some deranged people in society, and when they see leaders using that kind of language… it spurs them on to action. We have to recognize that reality and address it appropriately.”

Simple compassion might, in fact, be regarded as an unlawful, anti-fascist, terrorist thoughtcrime.

It was also around this time that they began to escalate their campaign against “antifa,” characterizing it as a political organization and threatening to go after its organizers and funders. In truth, though, there is no formal group called antifa. Antifa is short for anti-fascism, and it exists only as an opposition to fascism. So Trump’s position of anti-anti-fascism, if you reduce the double negative, is simply fascism.

Maybe the most dramatic step so far in this anti-antifa campaign was Trump’s issuance ofNSPM-7, a presidential memo that accuses people of using the word “fascist” as an excuse to “justify and encourage acts of violent revolution,” and further identifies “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” as indicia of potential terroristic inclinations and activities.

One can only guess how the administration is defining these terms, but if their actions to date are anything to go by, simple compassion might, in fact, be regarded as an unlawful, anti-fascist, terrorist thoughtcrime, and anyone who holds such views can be subject to, at a minimum, investigation, surveillance, and harassment by law enforcement—all of which sounds like anti-anti-fascism, to be sure.

Fascism defined

At this point, it’s important to examine just what, exactly, fascism is. The term has certainly been abused in America. For many, “fascist” has just become shorthand for “someone I don’t like,” or, more specifically, “someone who’s making me do something I don’t want to do.” To wit: Speed limits are fascism. No-smoking signs are fascism. Mask mandates during a pandemic are fascism. Taxes are fascism. And so on.

Alas, few historians would describe such basic laws or civic norms as fascism. While the word doesn’t have any one universally agreed upon definition, and even self-identified fascist societies differ in significant ways, there are a few hallmarks that distinguish fascism from other philosophies. The more of these qualities a government or a society has, the more fascistic it is:

• The merger of state and corporate power.Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who coined the term fascist, said this was the philosophy’s most defining tenet.
• Authoritarian rule.Power concentrated in a leader with a devoted cult of personality, in whom people see a living embodiment of the nation.
• Police state.A militarized society, including citizen militias and police suppression of protests, speech, and other forms of dissent.
• Propaganda.Rampant propaganda that is rife with lies, conspiracy, and dehumanizing language.
• Censorship.Dissent or open disagreement with official narratives and state policies may be outlawed and punished violently.
• In-group vs. out-group.Hatred of “others,” especially immigrants, religious minorities, and the LGBTQ community, as well as any leftists and academics who support them.
• National and cultural mythology.Desire to preserve or attain “purity” of culture, language, or race and ethnicity, often through appeals to a mythical past.
• War.Jingoism and an aggressive foreign policy.
• Obsession with aesthetics.From architecture to attire, everything intends to give an air of magnificence, superiority, and national pride, no matter how superficial.

Any honest observer can see how much of the definition fits. Not all of it is unique to Trump, but he does tick more boxes than the average politician. Soon enough, though, simply pointing that out might land you in a heap of trouble. Unless, of course, Republicans shift gears and decide to embrace the term, as at least some of them are beginning to do.

Reclaiming Fascism as Something Edgy and Cool

Back in July, before Trump ratcheted up his campaign against antifa, Fox Newscomedian Greg Gutfeld went on a revealing rant about his feelings on the word Nazi and how it relates to him. Gutfeld said on his show: “The criticism doesn’t matter to us when you call us Nazis. Nazi this and Nazi that… We need to learn from the Blacks. The way they were able to remove the power from the n-word by using it. So from now on it’s, ‘What up, my Nazi?’”

Gutfeld’s show is intended as a comedy, though you might not recognize it as one. Still, it’s a peculiar joke to make, and frightening to consider who it might resonate with. And this attitude on the right is being more openly embraced: that fascism is hip or edgy and that all the progress made on freedoms and rights for gays, trans people, minorities, and women needs to be rolled back. For instance:

• The successful far-right influencer Matt Walsh calls himself a “theocratic fascist.” While Walsh has claimed it’s an ironic label used to troll his critics, if you pay any attention to what he says and compare it to what a “theocratic fascist” might say, you’ll find he fits the term quite comfortably.

• Another growing voice on the right, especially among the young, is Nick Fuentes, simply an unapologetic, loud and proud neo-Nazi who has dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

• Trump’s recent nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, recently had his text messages leaked where he espoused racist attitudes and said, “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.” Ingrassia’s nomination has since been pulled, a relatively rare rebuke from this administration of that kind of conduct.

• A cadre of right-wing influencers have also been trying to sanitize, justify, and even push for the return of chattel slavery. Chief among these is Joshua Haymes, a former pastor who counted among his congregation Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Haymes recently said, “The institution of slavery is not inherently evil. It is not inherently evil to own another human being. It is very important that every Christian affirm what I just said.”

Republican influencers and the MAGA base are racing to the bottom, fast. It’s known as vice signaling: Each one trying to outdo the next in depravity to prove they are as un-woke and un-PC as possible, even if it reverts them back to plain-old KKK and neo-Nazi hatred and barbarism. It’s hard to say what abuse, constitutional violation, or act of violence they won’t enthusiastically push for, as long as it’s coming from the right side and being inflicted on an enemy. These aren’t ideas we have to debate. This is fascism, and civilized society already won the argument against it in World War II.

Fascism in the USA

Sadly, fascism is probably appealing to a lot of Americans, even if most are still hesitant to embrace the term. It’s in our national DNA. Our Jim Crow laws and citizenship standards even provided a model for Hitler’s antisemitic campaigns. There have always been bigoted, violent people in this country, and they appreciate a ruler who reflects them. And just as they were in the 1930s, the giant industrialists who shape our politics and society are all too happy to ally themselves with fascist forces, because they know a repressive state can protect their own power from being challenged.

But there are also strains of anti-fascism in our DNA. My grandpa, a veteran of World War II, was antifa, as were many members of the Greatest Generation. And it’s heartening to see older folks and veterans, even in the face of Trump’s threats. It should be a source of pride that we’ve overcome many of our bigotries and xenophobias. Despite all the loud fascist voices in right-wing media and social platforms, I still believe the vast majority of people believe in basic human rights for all. The No Kings protests on October 18 were a good showing of this solidarity.

As this administration goes further off the deep end—deploying the military against American citizens; sending masked Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents to terrorize poor and immigrant communities; profiling, detaining, and abusing people, including American citizens, on mere suspicion of being “illegal;” and disappearing people with no trial to God-knows-where—it’s no accident that they have declared anti-fascism their greatest enemy.

Maybe those 38-year-old kids in the Young Republicans chat were just joking about gas chambers and loving Hitler. But given everything else this administration is doing and everything their propagandists are saying, it falls a bit too close for comfort to, “It’s funny because it’s true.”

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LITERALLY SHIT POSTING ON OFF WH SITES?

AN 10 25

A grim-faced President Donald J. Trump looks out at the reader, under the headline “LAW AND ORDER.” Graffiti pictured in the corner of the White House Facebook post reads “Death to ICE.” Beneath that, a photo of protesters, choking on tear gas. And underneath it all, a smaller headline: “President Trump Deploys 2,000 National Guard After ICE Agents Attacked, No Mercy for Lawless Riots and Looters.”

The official communication from the White House appeared on Facebook in June 2025, after Trump sent in troops to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. Visually, it is melodramatic, almost campy, resembling a TV promotion.

The post is not an outlier.

In the Trump administration, White House social media posts often blur the lines between politics and entertainment, and between reality and illusion.

The White House has released AI images of Trump as the Pope, as Superman and as a Star Wars Jedi, ready to do battle with “Radical Left Lunatics” who would bring “Murderers, Drug Lords … & well-known MS-13 Gang Members” into the country.

Most recently, on the weekend of the No Kings protests, both Trump and the White House released a video of the president wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet, from which he dispenses feces onto a crowd of protesters below.

Underpinning it all is a calculated political strategy: an appeal to Trump’s political base – largely white, working-class, rural or small-town, evangelical and culturally conservative.

As scholars who study communication in politics and the media, we believe the White House’s rhetoric and style is part of a broader global change often found in countries experiencing increased polarization and democratic backsliding.

White House style

In the past, national leaders generally favored a professional tone, whether on social or traditional media. Their language was neutral and polished, laced with political jargon.

While populist political communication has become more common along with the proliferation of social media, the communication norms are further altered in Trump White House social media posts.

They are partisan, theatrical and exaggerated. Their tone is almost circuslike. The process of governing is portrayed as a reality TV show, in which political roles are performed with little regard for real-world consequences. Vivid color schemes and stylized imagery convert political messaging into visual spectacle. The language is colloquial, down-to-earth.

Just as other influencers in a variety of domains might create an emotional bond by tailoring social media messages, content, products and services to the needs and likes of individual customers, the White House tailors its content to the beliefs, language and worldview of Trump’s political base.

In doing so, the White House echoes a broad, growing trend in political communication, portraying Trump as “a champion of the people” and using direct and informal communication that appeals to fear and resentment.

Trump White House social media makes no effort to promote social unity or constructive dialogue, or reduce polarization – and often heightens it. Undocumented immigrants, for example, are often portrayed as inherently evil. White House social media amplifies dramatic, emotionally charged content.

In one video, Trump recites a poem about a kind woman who takes in a snake, a stand-in for an immigrant who in reality is a dangerous serpent. “Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite,” Trump recites.

Talking to the base

While some scholars have called the White House social media style “amateurish,” that hasn’t resulted in change.

The lack of response to negative feedback is partially explained by the strategic goal of these communications: to appeal to the frustrations of Trump’s deeply disaffected political base, which seems to revel in the White House social media style.

Scholars identify a large number of these voters as “the precariat,” a group whose once-stable, union-protected jobs have been outsourced or replaced with low-wage, insecure service work. These workers, many former Democrats, can no longer count on a regular paycheck, benefits or work they can identify with.

As a result, they are more likely to support political candidates whom they believe will respond to their economic instability.

In addition, many of these voters blame a breakdown in what they perceive as the racial pecking order for a loss of social status, especially when compared with more highly educated workers. Many of these workers distrust the media and other elite institutions they feel have failed them. Research shows that they are highly receptive to messages that confirm their grievances and that many regard Trump as their champion.

Trump and the White House social media play to this audience.

On social media, the president is free to violate norms that anger his critics but have little effect on his supporters, who view the current political system as flawed. One example: A White House Valentine’s Day communication that said “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you.”

In addition, Trump and the White House social media use the president’s status as a celebrity, coupled with comedy and spectacle, to immunize the administration from fallout, even among some of its critics.

Trump’s exaggerated gestures, over-the-top language, his lampooning of opponents and his use of caricature to ridicule whole categories of people – including Democrats, the disabled, Muslims, Mexicans and women – is read by his political base as a playful and entertaining take down of political correctness. It may form a sturdy pillar of his support.

But prioritizing entertainment over facts has long-term significance.

Trump’s communication strategies are already setting a global precedent, encouraging other politicians to adopt similar theatrical and polarizing tactics that distort or deny facts.

These methods may energize some audiences but risk alienating others. Informed political engagement is reduced, and democratic backsliding is increasingly a reality.

Although the communication style of the White House is playful and irreverent, it has a serious goal: the diffusion of ideological messages whose intent is to create a sense of strength and righteousness among its supporters.

In simple terms, this is propaganda designed to persuade citizens that the government is strong, its enemies evil and that fellow citizens – “real Americans” – think the same way.

Scholars observe that the White House projection of the often comical images of authority echoes the visual style of authoritarian governments. Both seek to be seen as in control of the social and political order and thereby to discourage dissent.

The chief difference between the two is that in a deeply polarized democracy such as the U.S., citizens interpret these displays of authority in sharply different ways: They build opposition among Trump opponents but support among supporters.

The rising intolerance that results erodes social cohesion, undermines support for democratic norms and weakens trust in institutions. And that opens the door to democratic backsliding.

Andrew Rojecki, Professor of Communication, University of Illinois Chicago and Tanja Aitamurto, Associate Professor of Communication, *University of Illinois Chicago

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

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AN 10 25

President Donald Trump has been able to have the Republican-controlled Senate confirm the vast bulk of his nominees — with the lone exception of his appointees for U.S. attorney offices.

Now, Politico is reporting that the president is leaning on his party to bulldoze the last remaining obstacle preventing his handpicked prosecutors from being fully confirmed. Trump told a gathering of Senate Republicans Tuesday that the long-standing "blue slip" procedure — in which senators from a nominee's home state have to submit "blue slips" agreeing to their nomination before it can move forward — was a "problem" that should be scrapped.

"You know, I have 10 U.S. attorneys who are phenomenal," Trump said. "And the problem is, they’re not going to ever be confirmed, I guess. I put them in, they’ll be there for three or four months, whatever it is, and then they have to leave."

The "blue slip" process is done for nominees for U.S. District court judgeships as well as U.S. attorney nominees in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the committee, has so far refused Trump's demands, and promised to continue it indefinitely after the Senate gained a Republican majority after last November's election. The "blue slip" process has affected some of Trump's more controversial nominees, like Alina Habba for the U.S. Attorney's post in the District of New Jersey, with Sens. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) each declining to return a blue slip.

"Anytime you have a Democrat senator, not even two, just one, they’ll say, because of the time we’re in, ‘we’re not approving that person,'" Trump said during the Tuesday lunch with senators.

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“Because of blue slip, I have to tell the person after three months, I’m sorry you’ll have to leave and I’ll put someone else in,” he continued. “This is not constitutional. And I really, I hope you can look at that blue slip thing.”

Tuesday is just the latest example of Trump zeroing in on the "blue slip" tradition. In July, he called out Grassley on his Truth Social platform and slammed the "blue slip" procedure as a "hoax" and a "scam." He complained that despite being in the minority, Democrats had exploited the procedure to impose an "ironclad stoppage" on his nominees coming before the Judiciary Committee.

Click here to read Politico's full report.

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an badash 10 25

Following the launch of a massive federal interagency task force in partnership with state law enforcement, Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee pledged that the “Memphis Safe Task Force” would be a permanent fixture.

Last month, the White House published a presidential memorandum titled “Restoring Law and Order in Memphis,” which orders thirteen federal government agencies and offices to coordinate. It states the “objective shall be to end street and violent crime in Memphis to the greatest possible extent,” and lists actions including “hypervigilant policing, aggressive prosecution, complex investigations, financial enforcement, and large-scale saturation of besieged neighborhoods with law enforcement personnel.”

Memphis is among the most violent cities in the country.

“The Memphis Safe Task Force began operations on September 29, with the National Guard joining efforts this past Friday,” Action5 News reported on Monday.

Governor Lee told reporters on Tuesday, “we’ve just begun,” and said the program will last “for months,” before stating that in some form it will continue “forever.”

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“We do know that this is gonna last for months, and we have just begun. In fact, I will tell you that it will last forever,” he said. “Because what we believe will happen is the numbers of law enforcement agents from different agencies will change, depending on the mission at the moment.”

He described a “collaboration that is happening right now between U.S. Marshal Service and the Memphis Police Department, and the FBI, and the DEA, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol.”

“That collaboration will be here from now on,” said Lee. “So this operation, in some ways, may never end.”

Critics blasted the governor.

“As I predicted,” noted authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the “aim is a ‘domestic forever war.'”

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, wrote: “Fascist. Pure fascist.”

Columnist and “recovering attorney” Wajahat Ali added, “Forever occupation, eh?”

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MMA

October 13, 2025, edition of MSNBC's *The Weeknight

ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): So, Angelo, that is like how it played out here on Earth one. If you were watching the right-wing echo chamber, what were the last few weeks?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): Excitement. The vibes are great. They think that this is that, you know, there's this idea that Trump is doing comes to cracking down on these cities, that the backlash reinforces just how dangerous and lethal the Democrats are, liberals, the entire shadow network around them. The media is a big part of that according to them, and that this is Trump saying that he's gonna do what he's gonna do. It's a raw power grab. I think the one thing that is a takeaway, though, is there's this sort of new narrative that's percolating and being revised, something that's, to me, the most concerning piece about the story here.

It's not the excitement that I find disturbing. It's this thing that they've been introducing, this new concept called ordered liberty.

MENENDEZ: Ordered liberty?

CARUSONE: Ordered liberty is what they've been describing it as. That you can't have freedom unless you have intense structural order first or authoritarianism.

And it's this weird thing where they're actually trying to rebrand the notion of authoritarianism to their own people who are the ones that you would think would be the most reflexively opposed to it. That's been the weirdest part about it. That's been the one shift. They've been talking about this Insurrection Act for a long time. They've been fetishizing it since, you know, right after the 2020 election when Trump was still in office.

So five years now, this has been the thing they've been discussing. This is the first time they really meaningfully changed the story around it. And when you introduce a concept like that to an audience like this, that to me is a little bit of a concern because they're preparing them for something, to accept something that they ordinarily would not be willing to accept and giving them the tools to advocate and organize around it. Ordered liberty, it's a disturbing new trend in the right-wing media. So that's been what it's like for them.

...

CARUSONE: I think that if — it's not just — and we shouldn't be academic at this point. It's earlier too we talked about President Obama. If the one thing that people can do now, especially business leaders, is to make sure they're calling Trump, lot of them talk to him, and people that are connected to him and say, by the way, martial law is bad for business. Just make sure that he knows that point because that is a real big — if nothing else, at least he should be aware that that it's bad for business.

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// CRM, FASCISM

Right-wing media have long called for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, he's now considering it

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Research contributions from Reed McMaster, Jane Lee & Alex Kaplan

Published 10/09/25 MMA

President Donald Trump recently suggested he may be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act as protests continue in Chicago and Portland against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and deployment of National Guard troops.

Right-wing media figures have called on Trump to use the law — which allows the military to be used for domestic law enforcement activities — in response to various demonstrations since at least as far back as 2020.

Conservative media figures endorsed using the act to “put down” Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and “restore order” to cities where demonstrations were occurring. Starting in June of this year, right-wing media renewed their support for the act's use over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, and as similar protests broke out in Chicago and Portland, calls to “invoke” the act in Democratic-run cities grew.

Trump once again says he might invoke the Insurrection Act in Democratic-run cities

• • Protests in Chicago and Portland broke out as National Guard members were deployed to aid ICE officers.Authorities have used tear gas, pepper balls and more against protesters at ICE facilities in both cities. Several people were arrested in both cases, with some facing federal charges. PBS News, [10/6/25]

• • On October 6, while talking to reporters about the legal issues with sending in the National Guard to cities around the country, Trump said he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act.He stated, “I’d do it if it was necessary. So far it hasn’t been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason. … If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I'd do that.” He also said, “If you take a look at what’s been going on in Portland, it’s been going on for a long time, and that’s insurrection. I mean, that’s pure insurrection." NBC News, [10/6/25]

• • The Insurrection Act allows the military to act as a police force and make arrests.Reuters explained: “The law enables troops to take part in domestic law enforcement activities like making arrests and performing searches, functions they are generally otherwise prohibited from engaging in. The Insurrection Act can be invoked when there are ‘unlawful obstructions, combinations or assemblages or rebellion’ against the U.S. government's authority. When the president deems those conditions have been met, the law gives the president the power to use the armed forces to take actions ‘to enforce those laws or suppress the rebellion.’” Reuters, [10/7/25]

• • Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines during anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles earlier this year and called the protesters “insurrectionists,” saying, in response to a question about whether he would invoke the Insurrection Act, “Depends on whether or not there’s an insurrection.”Axios noted, “Without the Insurrection Act, the troops' mission is legally limited to protecting federal agents and property.” Axios, [6/10/25]

• ## Right-wing media figures are calling for Trump to use the Insurrection Act “more liberally” in Democratic-run cities, claiming protesters are “insurrecting”

• • Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe claimed Trump “should look at using the Insurrection Act more liberally in cities like Chicago or in cities like Portland, Oregon.” Boothe also remarked that “Portland is a hellhole. … Homeless everywhere, it’s disgusting.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [10/5/25]

• • Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson discussed his ride-along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Portland and stated, “I hope they invoke the Insurrection Act. I hope that's something that happens here because these people are clearly insurrecting.”Johnson also claimed that Portland “has been conquered by antifa.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [10/7/25]

• • Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Trump “should invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy military assets to protect life and limb and property.”Fitton reacted to protests in Chicago, writing, “This is an insurrection, and @GovPritzker is implicated.” Twitter/X, [10/4/25]

• • On Steve Bannon’sWar Roompodcast, right-wing pundit Jack Posobiec said that “the president has black-letter law, Title X authority to be able to deploy the National Guard” to “suppress an insurrection or a rebellion.”Bannon also claimed California Gov. Gavin Newsom is a “neo-Confederate” and claimed Los Angeles is also in “open defiance of the federal government about immigration laws, Jack. I mean, this is going to come down [to] we control the country, they control these big metropolitan areas.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [10/6/25]

• • Posobiec also posted, “If Trump were to invoke the insurrection act for reasons like the situation in Portland, Americans would support it.” Twitter/X, [10/6/25]

• • In response to a report of a hit put out on a Border Patrol commander, right-wing podcaster Tim Pool posted, “Insurrection Act.”Twitter/X, [10/6/25]

• • QAnon influencer Clandestine said of whether Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act: “I’d argue that we are already at that point, and this is soft disclosure of what is to come.” Telegram, [10/6/25; Anti-Defamation League, 4/5/22]

• • Fox News contributor Paul Mauro claimed Trump is on “very, very safe ground” to enact the Insurrection Act.Mauro claimed that the Insurrection Act is “a carve-out to posse comitatus. You can use it to protect facilities and you can use it when federal law is being obstructed — that's the operative phrase right there. ICE is trying to enforce federal law. If they’re being obstructed, you can do this. What it means is he’s on very, very safe ground.” Fox News, *The Five*, [10/1/25]

• • Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino said Trump would be “on pretty solid grounds” to invoke the Insurrection Act “if it is to protect the ICE facilities” from protesters.Gasparino added, “I would love to see federal troops in downtown Manhattan — I don’t care.” Fox News, *Fox News Sunday*, [9/29/25]

• ## In June, right-wing media similarly advocated for the Insurrection Act to crack down on anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles

• • Fox News host Laura Ingraham argued it would be Trump’s “right” and “obligation” to invoke the Insurrection Act if he feels the U.S. “is being threatened from within.”She said, “Now Democrats are pretending to be outraged about the prospect of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, which, of course, is his right. I’d say it's his obligation to do if — and it’s his call — if he feels the United States is being threatened from within by violent, seditionary forces.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [6/10/25]

• • Infowars host Harrison Smith argued for utilizing the act during anti-ICE protests in LA, saying, “The Constitution actually provides for solutions to this. It is the Insurrection Act.” He stated, “The Constitution is being destroyed by these people making it unsafe, depriving the people of LA of the ability to live their lives and express themselves, pursue happiness, and all the other freedoms that we're supposed to enjoy are being destroyed by these people. The Constitution actually provides for solutions to this. It is the Insurrection Act. It is shutting down what’s going on with rapidity and aggressiveness to uphold the rights of the American people against this invading foreign force.” [Infowars, American Journal, 6/9/25]

• • Students for Trump National Chairman Ryan Fournier posted, “TIME FOR THE INSURRECTION ACT!” in response to a post by Trump about LA.Twitter/X, [6/9/25]

• • Conservative podcaster Vince Coglianese said the way to crack down on anti–ICE protests in Los Angeles is “the president wielding the Insurrection Act.”Coglianese: “It strikes me that if we're going to crack down on this using law enforcement, it's just going to have to be the president wielding the Insurrection Act. He's going to have to go in and save American cities from the leadership that's betraying them.” Rumble, *Vince*, [6/9/25; RadioLink, 4/17/25]

• • Mackubin T. Owens wrote for Blaze Media that the Insurrection Act empowers the president “to act when mobs attack federal law” and the president “has the duty to restore order.”In a September opinion piece, Owens defended Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to LA, claiming he had the “duty -- and the power -- to act.” Blaze Media, [9/8/25]

• ## Right-wing media hosts and guests also advocated for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests in 2020

• • Ahead of the 2020 election, Fox host Mark Levin shared his hope Trump would win and then utilize the Insurrection Act to “put down” protests.On September 11, 2020, Levin speculated that if Trump wins “he will dust off the Insurrection Act” and “he will have to use it to put down the enemy. The enemy is antifa, the enemy is Black Lives Matter.” On September 15, 2020, Levin said protesters “need to be put down” and claimed, “It's not illegal, it's not unconstitutional, it's not unethical, it's not immoral for the President to use the Insurrection Act to put down insurrections.” On September 23, 2020, Levin stated, “I pray to God Donald Trump is reelected. And I pray to God that he uses the Insurrection Act and puts this down.” And on October 28, Levin said, “These lootings and riotings and arsons need to be put down. God willing the President will be re-elected, and he'll use the Insurrection Act to bring safety, and peace." Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [9/11/20, 9/15/20, 9/23/25, 10/28/20]

• • Writing for the National Review, Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy discussed the Insurrection Act — saying it “expressly” empowers the president “to suppress domestic violence” — and called on Trump to “restore order” to cities where Black Lives Matter protests were underway, “including by deployment of the military where that is necessary.”McCarthy dismissed concerns about federalism, writing: “Although the Constitution calls for a state to request federal assistance to combat domestic violence before the president acts, that condition is more apparent than real. … When it comes to violent uprisings, though, federalism concerns are beside the point. Washington has an express constitutional obligation to protect the people of the states, and the republican form of government, from attack.” National Review, [5/31/20]

• • Conservative lawyer Jeffrey Clark said onWar Roomthat former Attorney General Bill Barr “participated in using the Insurrection Act” in 1992 in LA and asked, “Why wasn’t that same aggressiveness used against the riots that were used all across the country in the summer of 2020?”Real America's Voice, *War Room*, [7/3/23]

• • Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson urged Trump to “invoke the Insurrection Act immediately” during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.Twitter/X, [5/31/20]

• • Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro suggested in 2020 that Trump should invoke the act if states failed to get protests under control.He said: “The Insurrection Act is generally invoked when local authorities are not doing their jobs and protecting the civil rights of their citizens. So the president does have the authority to do this sort of stuff. … And the president, by the way, didn’t say he was going to do it. He said if you don’t get your cities and states under control, then I will do it. And guess what? He should. He should. Because guess — because you're an American taxpaying citizen. You have civil rights. Your civil rights are being abridged and violated when you are locked in your home so rioters and looters can roam free.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [6/2/20]

• • Blaze Media senior editor Daniel Horowitz wrote that “Trump should use the Insurrection Act” and “deadly force” against Black Lives Matter protesters.Blaze Media, [6/1/20]

• • Ryan Fournier posted, “President Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act to stop the terrorism happening in Seattle.”Twitter/X, [6/11/20]

//

1. ### As Trump sends the National Guard into US cities, right-wing media celebrate and call protests “an insurrection”

10/08/25 1:26 PM EDT

2. ### Right-wing streamer calls for arrested protesters to be used for “compelled slave labor”

10/08/25 5:11 PM EDT

3. ### On Newsmax, Benny Johnson claims Portland “has been conquered by antifa”

10/08/25

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THREAT JAIL PRITZGER CHIC MAYOR

AN 10 25

'Wannabe dictator': Governor dares 'unhinged' Trump to carry out threat to jail him

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AN NO LNX

You cannot debate a liar like Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller, senior advisor to President Donald J. Trump, speaks during a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo

John Stoehr

October 09, 2025

Today, I have a few things to say about that putz Stephen Miller. First, he’s been on TV a lot lately, because that’s how he pours more poison onto the president’s already-poisoned brain. He doesn’t whisper lies into the ear of the old and demented sovereign the way Wormtongue does in Tolkien's epic. King Théoden didn’t have a TV. King Donald can’t stop watching his. So Stephen Miller delivers poison that way.

Over the weekend, the White House advisor wrote on Twitter there’s “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”

In the days since, Miller has repeated a variation of that “insurrection” theme during numerous TV appearances. Last night, for instance, he told a CNN anchor that ICE protesters are “actually, as we speak, trying to overthrow the core law enforcement function of the federal government. … ICE officers have to street battle against antifa, hand-to-hand combat every night, to come and go from their building.”

Every word here, including “and” and “the,” is a lie.

But today, we saw the fruit of Miller’s labor.

“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “Governor Pritzker, too.”

I have talked a lot before about how Trump has dementia and how growing public awareness of his disease could make him vulnerable to the allegation that he’s not really in charge – that malicious and unaccountable forces are pulling his strings. But I haven’t talked about how. Well, this is how. And Stephen Miller is doing it in plain sight.

The second thing I want to say about that putz is about his personality, specifically, about the character of a man who goes on TV to goad an old, demented president into invoking the Insurrection Act to impose martial law. (Miller seems to believe if he says “insurrection” on TV enough times, something in Donald Trump’s head will finally click.)

Before they lie to anyone else, liars like Stephen Miller lie to themselves. They must, because they cannot face the truth. However, I don’t mean just any old truth. I mean capital-T truth, which is to say, the whole truth about themselves. If they had to face it, they would die. (They believe they would die, because they have no faith.)

So they lie, as if their lives depend on it.

What truth? In Stephen Miller’s case, I can’t say I know for sure, but it’s probably that he’s a mediocrity. He’s neither exceptionally intelligent nor exceptionally gifted. Let’s say he’s bland-looking. He’s short by Washington standards. (He says he’s 5 foot 10.) Of course, there are plenty of men who are born of average appearance, talent and smarts, but who accept who they are and lead decent, honorable, happy lives.

Not Stephen Miller. Why? Titanic ego. The truth shall never be true! So he lies to himself, about himself. I would surmise that from a very early age, he began living his life as if he were surviving an endless series of traumatizing events. Do this long enough and you end up not knowing who you are, what you want or what you stand for. And because the lies you tell yourself, about yourself, literally prevent you from feeling joy or satisfaction, always present in life is a desperate, junkie need.

I would suggest this junkie need is the root of hatred. Miller looks around at others who are living their best lives according to the truth about themselves. He sees you doing you better than he’s doing him – and it makes him mad. You cannot do that to him. It’s an injustice. You must be stopped. Indeed, the only way he’s going to feel better is if you are forced to accept the lies he tells himself, about himself. The Stephen Millers of the world, including the president of the United States, are not mediocrities. They are not even human. They are gods. You shall obey. And if you refuse, they will “use legitimate state power.”

I’m dwelling on this facet of Stephen Miller’s personality, as well as on the nature of the totalitarian mind, for a reason. What he’s doing – goading an old, demented president through TV appearances into imposing martial law – is scary. But manipulating the president only gets Miller and the rest of the regime so far. If they are going to take control of the republic, which is their objective (make no mistake), they must convince the American people there’s no use in fighting back – that resistance is futile. And they are going to do that by lying.

During TV appearances this week, Stephen Miller made Donald Trump seem like a sovereign lord endowed by the law and the Constitution (and perhaps by God) with the divine right (“plenary authority,” Miller told CNN) to do whatever he wants in the name of his people, and that any opposition to his divine rule is not only pointless but punishable.

Greg Sargent put it this way. Miller “believes that if he supercharges the debate over Trump's abuses of power with enough propaganda, he can polarize it and force low-info voters to embrace authoritarianism.” (Greg’s latest in The New Republic is about how Democratic Governors JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are taking Miller’s “theory of fascist power politics” at face value and devising a strategy to combat it.)

In other words, Miller is lying in order to get you (and “low-info voters”) to give up. And he’s doing that, because surrender is strategically vital. That is, without surrender, Miller and the rest of the regime got nothing. They lie, believing that you will believe their lies, and you end up doing their work for them – by conquering yourself.

But they can’t conquer you if you don’t believe them.

The moment you stop believing them is probably their most vulnerable moment, as we saw when Stephen Miller was asked by a Fox host to respond to comments made about him by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In a stream for constituents, AOC discussed the critical role of ridicule in fighting fascism. For instance, she said:

“Laugh at them. Stephen Miller is a clown. I’ve never seen that guy in real life but he looks like he’s 4’ 10”. He looks like he’s angry about the fact that he’s 4’ 10”. He looks like he is so mad that he is 4’ 10” that he’s taking that anger out at any other population possible. Laugh at them.”

Fox’s Laura Ingraham played that clip, right there on live TV. The written word cannot do justice to the face Miller made while watching it. (You have to see it for yourself.) All I can say is he looked wounded, as if AOC had stabbed him, and that’s because the injury was very real.

She did the unforgivable: refused to accept the lies Stephen Miller tells himself, about himself, and she deepened that wound by daring to enjoy herself while doing it. She not only hurt him, emotionally and psychically, but she reminded him of his misery he endures daily.

I’ll close with this. You cannot debate a liar like Stephen Miller. You cannot persuade him with logic or facts. You cannot find common ground with him. There is no compromise. They are too weak to be worthy of trust, and therefore, they can only be opposed. Trump said JB Pritzker should be jailed. In reply, Pritzker said come and get me.

Low-info voters might not understand much.

But they can understand that.

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an 10 25

Inside Trump's plan to have red attack blue states — using a 200-year-old law

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AN 10 25}:

Barbara F. Walter, author of “How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, warned Sunday that democracy in the United States is in decline and President Donald Trump could create "fake emergencies" to intensify his campaign against his opponents.

Speaking ata podcast on*The Bulwark*posted Sunday morning, Walter said, "I think American democracy is in a really sad place, actually. It's in a place of democratic decline. It's probably likely in the near future to be in a place of economic decline. And these are things that are not going to turn around anytime soon. If you look at the underlying conditions for political violence, the United States, unfortunately, has all of them right now."

She continued: "Political violence tends to happen in countries with weak and declining democracy, especially democracies that are changing rapidly and moving more and more towards autocracy. We call those anocracies, and that's actually the most dangerous place to be. Full, healthy democracies almost never experience political violence."

She added that hardcore autocracies rarely experience political violence, and most of the violence happens in the middle.

"And since January 2025 of this year, America's democracy has declined faster than it ever has in its history. And it's declined faster than democracy in any other advanced industrialized democracy in the world," she added.

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Likening Trump to a "wannabe dictator," Walter said the president could use "fake emergencies" to "clamp down on citizens."

"These types of sort of fake emergencies allow these wannabe dictators to declare a state of emergency, declare martial law, and basically just clamp down on citizens so that citizens aren't allowed to leave their homes," she said.

She added: "There's curfews. Soldiers are now patrolling the streets. There's roadblocks. And this effectively ends democracy. So people were saying, okay, is theCharlie Kirk murder, and in particular, the Republican Party's reaction to it, that this is almost a declaration of war by the left. People were worried that that would be that type of situation."

Walter also warned that Trump does not see the American constitution as an impediment.

"I don't think Trump sees the Constitution as an impediment in any way. [Viktor] Orban did not see Hungary's Constitution as an impediment. He simply changed it. Netanyahu doesn't see Israel's Constitution as an impediment. You know, these guys are bullies and strongmen, and they just push their way through and see if anybody stops them," she said.

The analyst noted that following conservative activist Charlie Kirk's murder, many expected a war on the left by the Trump administration, but it didn't play out that way. The administration, she argued, is now looking for a bigger reason to ramp up its efforts to go after its opponents.

"The Trump administration isn't ready to declare a state of emergency and to basically take control of the potential hotspots for opposition. Those hotspots for opposition are going to be America's big cities," she said.

Walter added: "It's hard for most Americans to feel deeply threatened because an outspoken activist on the right was killed. They might be horrified by it. They might desperately wish it never happens again, but they don't feel personally threatened by it. And for people to be willing to give up their rights and freedoms to say, 'okay, martial law is okay with me.' They have to be, they have to truly believe that their and their family safety is threatened. And Charlie Kirk's murder didn't do that. So it's going to have to be something bigger than that," she said, noting that Trump is still trying to "create a situation" where he can "suddenly grab all power."

"That's where you have most of the people who disagree with Trump, feel threatened by Trump. And he doesn't have his soldiers in place there. He started to do that in Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles, and he tried to do that in Chicago. But he's not ready for the moment to sort of pull the trigger," she said.

Asked if this democratic backsliding could lead to a civil war in the U.S., Walter said, "So the main point I want to make is that citizens are much more powerful than they think they are. There's over 330 million of us. You know, think back to your time at school in the schoolyard. You know, everybody's seen bullies operate and and they see what happens when the you know, the kids in the schoolyard, dozens of them, just stand up."

She continued: "Bullies tend to wither. We have 300 and, you know, over 330 million Americans. And if we just in our own separate individual ways, simply just started silently and peacefully resisting, not voluntarily complying when we're told that to do something that's illegal .So there's a whole series of things. And then protest is the greatest tool," she added.

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NO LNX

Thom Hartmann

October 06, 2025

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” —Abraham Lincoln

“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people. To render us again one people, acting as one nation, should be the object of every man really a patriot.”—Thomas Jefferson

People are baffled. Why are Trump and his Republican lickspittles so intent on gutting our government, destroying our alliances and reputation around the world, and screwing working class people while transferring over $50 trillion to the morbidly rich?

Historian Kevin M. Kruse captured the zeitgeist brilliantly, reflecting widespread public bewilderment when he posted over on BlueSky:

“We’ve had ----ups in the White House before, but never a president who seemed so deliberately intent on being a ---up. It’s been said before, but if these people were actual agents of an enemy power seeking to divide, dismantle and destroy the USA they wouldn’t be doing anything different.”

So, let’s engage in a simple thought experiment. If you or I were hired by Vladimir Putin, an angry group of billionaires who want to end democracy, or a wealthy serial killer, and our orders were to tear our country apart and make us vulnerable to foreign takeover, what would we do? What steps would we take?

As I mentioned a few days ago, if we follow the Dictator’s Playbook there actually is a simple, 12-step formula to make that happen.

The first step would be to turn Americans from E Pluribus Unum (“Out of Many, One”) into hate-filled warring factions. Turn us against each other. Divide us by race, religion, gender, region, education, income, and whether we live in cities or rural areas.

In Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795), he described the first three strategies that “despotic moralists” use to rip apart the fabric of a society. They were Fac et excusa (“Act now, and make excuses later”), Si fecisti, nega (“If you commit a crime, deny it”), and Divide et impera (“Divide and conquer”). Jefferson perhaps inspired Kant when, in 1787, he wrote, “Divide et impera [is] the reprobated axiom of tyranny…”

When Hitler claimed that Jews, Gypsies, and queer people weren’t “real Germans,” he was invoking that principle. Joe McCarthy tried to divide us by political ideology. David Duke said we should be separated by skin color.

Its most recent invocation was just this week when Trump and Pete Hegseth told our nation’s generals that most Black, Hispanic, and female officers were only in their positions because of their gender or skin color. “Whiskey Pete” was blunt, claiming that Ronald Reagan’s invocation of America’s traditional belief that “our diversity is our strength” was an “insane fallacy.”

Next, we’d want to immiserate as many Americans as possible, creating a huge pool of mostly white men who are pissed off because they’d been left behind economically and feel locked out of the American Dream.

That strategy would include several steps:

Destroy unions that bind workers together with their employers and raise standards of living.

Gut programs that lift people out of poverty and into the middle class, including high-quality universal public education, low-cost college, and inexpensive access to healthcare.}:

Ship manufacturing overseas to low-wage nations while using incoherent, ever-changing whim-based tariffs to batter the domestic economy.}:

Build media operations that demonize “the other,” telling them Blacks, Hispanics, queer people and women are the cause of their troubles.}:

Ban books that embrace diversity and teachers who use them.}:

Spread hate and conspiracy theories via powerful social media and search engine algorithms that make them seem normal, coarsening the entire culture.}:

Throw people off programs offering healthcare, student debt repayment, and housing subsidies.}:

Third, we’d want to destroy people’s faith in straightforward news. Loudly proclaim that it all has a “leftwing bias” and can’t be trusted, that reporters are elite “enemies of the people,” and attack the media relentlessly.

Fourth, shatter people’s faith in reality itself. Challenge science and expertise. Flood the zone with conspiracy theories. Convince citizens to stop taking commonsense steps to protect themselves and their children including vaccinations, precautions against airborne diseases, or measures to slow climate change. Sow confusion until they no longer know who to believe, and then offer yourself as the only source of truth.

Fifth, deconstruct international alliances that go back centuries by alienating traditional friends and embracing openly hostile foes while tearing up norms of defense, trade, and commerce.

Sixth, fracture citizens’ faith in their elected officials and the government itself. Legalize the practice of morbidly rich people and giant corporations buying legislation and the loyalty of politicians with cash by claiming that “money is speech” and “corporations are persons.” Define opposition political parties as “radical,” “dangerous,” and “outside the mainstream.”

Seventh, turn the military and police forces of the nation against its own people, making them terrified of challenging armed, masked men in the streets, kicking in their doors at midnight. Start with vilified minorities like immigrants and, when they’re “under control,” turn those forces against anybody who dissents from the new single-party rule.

Eighth, demolish faith in the nation’s currency by seizing political control of the central bank while villainizing its leadership.

Ninth, run scams to accumulate as much wealth as possible in the hands of Dear Leader and his close cronies while refusing to raise the minimum wage so as to keep people in poverty.

Tenth, use the power of government to force institutions — corporations, universities, law firms — into complete submission and even explicit collaboration in the enshitification of the nation.

Eleventh, seize control of the legislative and judicial branches so your law-breaking, election-rigging, and bribe-taking is never held to account. Openly and brazenly break laws like the Hatch Act that forbids the use of any government agency or property for political or commercial purposes.

Force agencies to make illegal, partisan statements denigrating the opposition party and defy anybody who calls out that naked criminality. Sneer and laugh at those who demand that people committing crimes in office should be held accountable.

Twelfth, turn the nation’s premiere law enforcement agencies into tools for punishing political enemies while ignoring the crimes of friends of the regime, thus destroying faith in equality under the rule of law and terrorizing anybody who speaks out.

All of these 12 simple steps have been used by every despot in history, from the ancient Roman Empire through the kings of the Dark Ages to the fascists of early 20th century Europe to today’s strongmen including Orbán, Putin, Erdoğan, El-Sisi, Maduro, Netanyahu, and Modi.

Whether Trump has put America on this road at the insistence (or by the payment from) Putin, rightwing American billionaires, or just his own authoritarian impulses and with strategies he’s learned from Orbán and Putin, it doesn’t have to end with America resembling today’s Russia or Hungary.

The good news is that multiple countries have elected men to leadership who tried to run through this list and were stopped before they could finish the job. Instead of letting their leaders turn their nations into permanent autocracies, the people rose up and took the power back for themselves and their democracies.

They include Ukraine, the Philippines, Brazil, Poland, Zambia, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Peru, South Korea, Romania, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Gambia, Malawi, Moldova, and South Africa.

History shows that any democracy can fall into tyranny if its citizens grow cynical, give up, or look away. The question — the only question that matters now — is whether enough of us will choose to stand up, to act, and to reclaim what generations before us fought and bled to pass along, like the citizens of those countries listed above have done in the recent past.

If they can do it, so can we.

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WOLFF DEM AT WORK

9 25

TRUMP SYMPTOM, CAUSE CAP’LISM

SCOTUS SAYS MONEY = SPEECH, COST 1B$ TO RUN PRES.

Economic Update: American Style Fascism

In the second half of today’s show, Professor Wolff interviews attorney Michael S. Smith, co-author of the new book, “From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style.”

https://www.amazon.com/Flag-Cross-Fascism-American-Style-ebook/dp/B0FRG3QQV8}:

Has fascism arrived dressed in stars and stripes? This book offers a sharp analysis of American authoritarianism, how we got here, how to organize, and how to resist.

:{:{"Gangster capitalism," that's how Henry Giroux describes the system where a billionaire class controls the institutions that shape our lives—the media, corporations, universities, courts, and government. But does this centralization of power on behalf of the super-rich mean that fascism has taken over the United States? Certainly, the signs are there: Individuals not charged with a crime are picked up on the street by masked police and "disappeared."}:

Right-wing strongmen like Javier Milei of Argentina or Nayib Bukele of El Salvador are embraced warmly on the steps of the White House. The aptly titled Trump v. United States Supreme Court ruling just handed the president broad immunity for “official acts.” And Elon Musk, the president's unelected scourge of government inefficiency, gave repeated fascist-style salutes at Trump’s inauguration rally. His DOGE have fired tens of thousands of people, and illegally seized private personal data on millions of Americans.}:

So is this fascism, oligarchy, authoritarianism—or all of the above? Is there a special brand of American fascism? And, if so, what direction is it likely to take, and how can it best be resisted? In From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style, seven prominent American socialists explore these questions. They come at the issues from different angles in an enlightening spectrum of opinion. But on one point, they are in unison: Trump is not the disease. He’s the symptom. The real threat is a violent, deeply embedded system—fueled by capitalism, white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and authoritarian rule—that long predates the 47th president.

Contributors: Chris Hedges, Richard Wolff, Dianne Feeley, Henry Giroux, Bill Mullen, Margaret Kimberley, and Kshama Sawant.SEATLE COUNCIL 20 MIN WAGE?

ratner who killed che/ bk

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no lnx

Dictators have a playbook — but the media seems oblivious to it

Thom Hartmann

October 03, 2025

Most jobs have a “playbook,” a sort of instruction manual or checklist for how to do the job right, whether it’s running an assembly line, piloting an aircraft, or redoing a house’s plumbing.

Although our media seems oblivious to it, dictators have a playbook, too.

It’s one that’s been carefully followed in recent times by Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, and numerous initially-elected leaders of other smaller nations. In previous generations the Dictator’s Playbook was followed, step-by-step, by Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Ferdinand Marcos, Agustin Pinochet, Josef Stalin, and Hideki Tojo (among others).

And now it’s being followed by Donald Trump and JD Vance, who are a bit more than halfway through the list. Trump’s speech on Tuesday before our assembled generals and admirals — telling them they should use our American cities as “training grounds” for the military whose job is to “kill people and break things” — is getting us closer to the final steps.

“We are under invasion from within,” Trump said, “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms. … We’re under invasion from within.”}:

And who is this enemy that’s so bad, so evil, that Trump just declared war against? He was explicit that the “enemies” are his political opponents and average people who live in our big cities:

“The ones that are run by the radical left Democrats ... what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places. And we’re going to straighten them out one by one. This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”}:

What’s most astonishing about the reporting on this meeting is that none of the media I follow have even once mentioned that militarizing the nation’s cities is one of the most significant steps in the Dictator’s Playbook.

Combine that with the demand for absolute loyalty to the Dear Leader — Trump told the generals “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room” THEN ThREateded their careers? — and he’s declared himself the absolute ruler of America wielding the most lethal military in the history of the world against our nation’s own citizens.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow recently laid out five moves that dictators reliably make.

First, they identify an internal enemy to blame for social ills; Trump has spent years turning immigrants, big cities, and universities into scapegoats. Now, like every dictator listed above has done, he’s claiming that the opposition political party, the Democrats, are an “enemy within.”

Second, they turn security forces inward, exactly what Trump’s new call for turning our military against our cities represents. The moment a dictator turns military forces built to destroy foreign adversaries against his own people, the rest of the transformation becomes easier.}:

Third, they criminalize dissent and protest, insisting that when people show up in the streets it is not constitutionally protected free speech and the right “peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances” but a security “threat” to be crushed rather than heard and responded to.}:

Fourth, they intimidate or capture the press and punish truth-telling, as we’re seeing now with rightwing billionaires capturing virtually every major traditional and social media source in America.

Fifth, they seize control of independent institutions like universities, law firms, or the civil service to eliminate any professional standards that interfere with Dear Leader’s will.}:

Overlay that list with the work of historians and political scientists like Timothy Snyder, Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Jason Stanley, and M. Gessen. Their research on how democracies die all point to the same ingredients:

Deny or rewrite election results to delegitimize democracy itself.}:

Declare political opponents enemies of the state.}:

Turn independent institutions like the Department of Justice, the civil service, and the military into personal tools.}:

Flood the public square with lies so thoroughly (Steve Bannon proudly called it “flooding the zone with ----") that reality itself becomes negotiable.}:

Tolerate or celebrate political violence on behalf of the dictator, and demonize violence against his followers and mouthpieces as sedition and treason.

Demand personal loyalty instead of constitutional duty.}:

Invoke a mythic past and promise national rebirth if only the strongman is given total sovereignty.:

Use his office to rapidly enrich himself and his family while creating a patronage network of loyalists who owe their fortunes to him.}:

There is also the money. Autocrats rarely forget to convert state power into private wealth. Trump’s hotels, golf courses, and commercial properties brought in millions from foreign governments during his first time in office, as documented by House Oversight Committee findings.

His son-in-law Jared Kushner secured a two-billion-dollar investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund almost immediately after leaving the White House. Ivanka Trump picked up fast-tracked Chinese trademarks while advising her father in government.

Kleptocracy is not a side effect of authoritarianism or fascism: it’s essential, particularly when some of that fortune is shared with those willing to break the law to support Dear Leader. So far, according to reporting, Trump and his family have made at least $5 billion from his 9-month-long presidency. It’s a core feature of the Dictator’s Playbook.

And when people protest the theft of the nation’s resources and the personal enrichment based on handing out favors, dictators go after them in the most brutal ways imaginable. It begins with investigations, but never ends there. Just look at what he’s doing to James Comey and Miles Taylor.

And now Trump has issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum that essentially says Democrats, atheists, Muslims, Jews, socialists, and queer people are terrorists. Not because of anything they’ve done, but because of who they are or what they believe.

It directs the FBI, DOJ, and over 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces coordinated with police forces across the country to investigate anybody who meet it’s “indica” (indicators) of potential terrorism. They include, as Ken Klippenstein reported:

“[A]nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States Government, extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”

Do any of those sound like you? If Trump and Republicans continue down this road, get ready to have your life turned upside down as they tear apart your social media profiles, search your email and postal mail, surveil you, and one day bang on your door in the middle of the night.

And you don’t have to have actually done a thing. Trump’s order explicitly calls on the FBI and local police coordinating with them to “intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”

To go after you before you do anything, based entirely on who you are, who you love, what you believe, and what you say.

That is not the America our Founders, or the men and women who’ve fought and died to keep us free for 249 years, envisioned. And, again, the mainstream media almost entirely missed it while rightwing media ignored it altogether. Even though one day it may be directed against them if they say or do anything to offend Trump or his henchmen.

When Trump told the generals he would remove anyone who does not “agree with everything I say,” he also embraced the logic of tyrants who treat disagreement as insubordination.

Democracies rely on officers sworn to the Constitution, not to one man. Trump is trying to undo that distinction. He’s demanding personal loyalty backed by the threat of firing, demotion, or public shaming. Civilian control of the military that George Washington and James Madison insisted on becomes a hollow phrase when the civilian in charge demands the military serve his whims.

What once sounded like fringe rhetoric is now proclaimed loudly to the uniformed leadership of the United States. The generals who heard him are not hypothetical. They command forces, oversee operations, and embody the principle that the military does not exist to occupy American streets.

The notion that they should roll tanks into urban neighborhoods to harden troops for foreign war is not law enforcement: it’s preparation for ruling America by force, a force that may well be preparing for the November 2026 elections.

This is the kind of moment historians point back to later with disbelief. The warnings have been clear for years, but now the mask is off.

Even though our media insists on ignoring it, the Dictator’s Playbook has always included using a nation’s biggest cities as the stage for demonstrating power. It’s always required replacing officers and officials who follow the laws and traditions of a nation with loyalists who obey without question. It’s always depended on turning people against one another so Dear Leader and his lickspittles can step in as the only source of safety or authority.

Nobody can say this is a surprise: Trump pretty much campaigned on exactly what he’s doing now, and people from former intelligence, military, and FBI leaders to scholars of fascism warned us this was coming if Republicans suppressed enough votes for him to win. (Without the GOP having prevented 4.2 million registered citizen voters from voting or having their votes counted, Kamala Harris would have won and the House and Senate would today be under Democratic control).

The question now is whether Americans will accept a president who treats their hometowns as battle simulations and sees disagreement by generals and agency leaders as an offense punishable by firing, imprisonment, or exile.

As I point out in my new book The Last American President, it’ll depend on whether we’ll stand up and speak out. Or whether, like our media and so many universities, law firms, media outlets, and giant corporations, we’ll cower in fear and submit to Trump’s demands.

That is not law and order, and it’s not democracy in a free republic. It’s the language of autocracy that yesterday was spoken out loud in front of the armed forces of the United States and is echoed every time Trump attacks a reporter, media outlet, or one of his many “enemies.”

Will American democracy survive this onslaught, straight out of the Dictator’s Playbook? To a large extent, that will depend on you, me, and our elected officials summoning the courage to resist and protest loudly. And our media to call it out for what it is.

The clock is ticking, and these guys are racing for the finish line.

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an 10 25

In a sharply worded ruling delivered Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Young — a Ronald Reagan appointee — criticized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for their use of masks during operations, equating the practice to a tool of intimidation rather than protection.

In his ruling, he wrote that “ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence,” and added that “In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.”

Young ruled that the Trump administration infringed on the First Amendment rights of foreign students.

At the very start of his opinion, the judge reproduced an anonymous postcard he had received, followed by his written reply:

“TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS... WHAT DO YOU HAVE?”

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“Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works out in a specific case," he wrote in response to the threat.

The ruling comes amid growing debate over immigration enforcement tactics, the role of transparency in law enforcement, and the balance between security and civil liberties.

Critics of ICE’s methods have long raised concerns about accountability when agents’ faces are obscured during raids or other enforcement actions. Supporters of covert tactics argue that masking helps protect agents’ safety and prevents retaliation or harassment. Judge Young’s ruling signals a judicial pushback against the latter rationale, at least in this particular case.

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an 9 25

Filmmaker Ken Burns, whose latest documentary focuses on the American Revolutionary War, tellsthe New York Times that the greatest existential threat to the United States right now is sitting right in the White House.

"Jefferson says a few phrases after pursuit of happiness," Burns says, in reference to the Declaration of Independence. "He says, 'All experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable.'"

Burns says that Jefferson was referring to authoritarianism, the acceptance of which, he explains, has been around since the founding of the nation.

"He means that everybody heretofore has been subject to an authoritarianrule, and we’ve basically accepted it. It’s been the want of every authoritarian to make sure that people are uneducated, they’re suspicious, they’re a peasantry, they are subjects," Burns says.

When asked " how you think of just how significant the dangers are?" Burns replied, "the increase inexecutive power is perhaps the greatest existential threat to the United States right now."

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Burns, who has made over 40 award-winning documentaries about all facets of the American experience, says that this concept of authoritarianism is not new to us, but it is an increasing threat.

"The patriots, the rebels, were mainly selecting against a despot, against an authoritarian. They knew human nature. They knew someone would eventually come along like that, and they were trying to figure out how to guard against it," he said.

"Jefferson, writing from Paris to Madison, said: What if someone should lose anelection but pretend false votes and reap the whirlwind? They weren’t idiots. They were really smart, and they were trying to guard against exactly that," Burns said.

And while Burns does see the glass half full in terms of where the country is headed, he also says that there is cause for great concern.

"I think that in our democratic — small “d” democratic — DNA is everything we need to right the ship. I am optimistic, though I’ve never been as pessimistic as I am right now," he says.

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an 9 25

In between his highly publicized designation of Antifa as a domestic terror organization and his indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, US President Donald Trump signed a little-reported national security memorandum that gives law enforcement new tools to target his critics.

Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on Thursday. The directive, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” focuses exclusively on “anti-fascist” or left-wing activities, and mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”

“I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but the plain truth is that NSPM-7 is a declaration of war on anyone who does not support the Trump administration and its agenda,” journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote in a piece raising alarm about the directive on Saturday.

Klippenstein argued that the memorandum was worrying on several fronts. For one, its focus on preventing crimes before they are committed opens the door to rights violations.

“In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report,” Klippenstein wrote.

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For another, the memorandum casts a very wide net, targeting groups, individuals, funders, and “entities” and listing several protected beliefs as “indicia” of extremism.

These include:

• “Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity;

• Support for the overthrow of the United States Government;

• Extremism on migration, race, and gender; and

• Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

What’s more, the memorandum entrusts enforcement to the FBI’s over 4,000-strong Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), which removes the legal challenges to directing the National Guard or other military forces to quash domestic dissent.

“For the Trump White House, the beauty of using an already existing network is that it bypasses Congressional oversight and scrutiny and even obscures federal activity to governors and legislatures at the state level,” Klippenstein wrote.

The types of activities that will be targeted are also quite broad, with the document defining “organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder” as “domestic terrorist acts.”

The memorandum also targets any individual or group who might fund activity the administration deems terrorism and directs the Internal Revenue Service to “take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism,” which could be a means of threatening the status of nonprofits.

Finally, as Drop Site Newspointed out, the memo authorizes the attorney general to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations for the first time in US history.

“By targeting beliefs and protest activity, the directive positions dissent itself as a potential crime,” Drop Sitewrote.

The Trump administration’s focus on violence associated with left-wing beliefs and groups is not supported by the facts. National Institute of Justice data found that right-wing violence had led to 520 deaths since 1990 compared with 78 deaths due to left-wing violence. However, the administration removed that study from the Department of Justice website shortly after Charlie Kirk was killed, The Guardianreported earlier this month.

The administration’s efforts, while accelerated, build on processes that began during the US response to the September 11 attacks, as Klippenstein explained:

A “pre-crime” endeavor, preventing attacks before they happen, is core to the post-9/11 concept of counterterrorism itself. No longer satisfied to investigate acts of terrorism after the fact to bring terrorists to justice, the Bush administration adopted preemption. Overseas, that led to aerial assassination by drones and “special operations” kill missions. Domestically, it led to a counter-terrorism campaign whose hallmark was excessive and illegal government surveillance and the use of undercover agents and “confidential human sources” to trap (and entrap) would-be terrorists.

However, the Trump administration is expanding the War-on-Terror mandate with fewer guardrails.

“Now, with Donald Trump’s directive retooling the counter-terror apparatus to go after Americans at home, this means monitoring political activity, or speech, as an investigative method to discover ‘radicalism,‘” Klippenstein said, noting that the NSPM-7 breaks with post-Watergate national security documents by failing to mention the First Amendment rights to protest and organize.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is already eager to make use of the document.

“We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government,” he wrote on social media on Friday. “The JTTF has been dispatched by the Attorney General, pursuant to NSPM-7. All necessary resources will be utilized.”

In an interview with Greg Sargent for theNew Republic, Trump ally Steve Bannon confirmed that Miller and others in the administration were preparing to go after left-liberal groups and media whose criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could be interpreted as “goading” on violence against the agency.

Referring to Miller’s comments that calling ICE authoritarian incited violence and terrorism, Bannon responded, “Stephen Miller is correct—more importantly he’s in charge.

The threats of investigations put liberal and left-leaning organizations in a tough place. On the one hand, they want to prepare as best they can. On the other, they do not want to obey in advance.

“Officials at these groups tell me they must strike a balance between being clear-eyed about how bad this could get while not letting it discourage political activity,” Sargent wrote. “That latter form of surrender is exactly what Trump and Miller want. And under no circumstances should anybody willingly hand it over to them.”

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AN 9 25 THE CONV

There have been many questions raised about the intentions behind Donald Trump’s spate of radical public statements about Canada, in which he claims trade deficits amount to subsidies, massive amounts of fentanyl are flowing across the border and the country should become the 51st American state, among other things.

The U.S. president’s comments have fuelled speculation about what he means when he makes these kinds of false claims — or whether he means anything at all.

After all, rounded to the nearest percentage point, zero per cent of illicit fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada, trade deficits are not subsidies and annexing Canada is an absurd proposal.

So why say things that are so untrue?

Is Trump serious about any of this?

Ignore Trump? Or fear him?

The aggregate opinion seems to be both an unhelpful no and a yes, so the answer remains unclear.

If we take every provocation seriously, we’re falling for the “flood the zone” strategy as Trump spews out outlandish claims as a form of distraction.

If we shrug off his claims, we’re ignoring the potential danger.

But there are patterns and incentives behind Trump’s flouting of basic communicative norms. One illustrative example dates back to 2018 talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when Trump complained about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada. Later, he told prospective donors in Missouri that he’d made this claim up on the spot.

Why make up a claim like that? And, having done so, why admit and even brag about it, and then renew this knowingly false claim six years later?

My colleague Jennifer Saul and I are scholars in the political philosophy of language. We’re among those who cite this example of Trump bullshit in our work on bullshit in authoritarian political speech and how bullshit can succeed even though everyone recognizes that it is, in fact, bullshit.

Why Trump bullshits

Our notion of bullshit is a refinement of the term that was the subject of American philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s seminal 2005 book *On Bullshit*.

Most liars care enough about the truth to try to conceal it. But simply not caring either way is a different vice, which Frankfurt called bullshitting.

An example would be claiming a trade deficit without having any idea whether that’s true or false. Other examples include uttering falsehoods that are so obvious they couldn’t possibly be intended to deceive anyone.

Really obvious bullshit can succeed politically, we proposed, because there are many audiences in mass communication. Bullshit targeted at Audience A can be a big hit with Audience B, if B thinks A deserves it.

Then it becomes a display of power over A, with B enjoying the spectacle. This overt bullshitting lends itself to authoritarian politics for someone cultivating a strongman image. It marks an opponent for disrespectful treatment, and advertises that the bullshitter cannot be held to account.

So Trump’s admission that he bullshitted Trudeau in 2018 was a successful strategy because he revealed it to a sympathetic audience, who got to see themselves as part of the performance and not as its target. Asking: “Does Trump really mean this?” is often less revealing than: “How does this promote Trump’s image as an authority figure, and to which audience?”

Similarly, Trump falsely remarked in 2019 that Hurricane Dorian’s projected path included Alabama. He responded to fact-checking by showing an official storm track map that he literally altered by hand, with a marker.

Such a ridiculous invention couldn’t be meant to deceive. But it showed Trump’s base, many of whom distrust mainstream information sources, that he couldn’t be made to back down for reporters, no matter the facts.

Some claims appear deceptive lies to one audience and bullshit to another, like Trump’s recent claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator who started the war in Ukraine.

Some audiences might believe it. Others will see it as false and designed to be deceptive, yet recognize it as a threat to treat Ukraine as an aggressor with American demands for Ukraine’s rare earth minerals at stake.

Credibility matters in unexpected ways

Even conservative pundits initially worried that Trump’s propensity to bullshit would diminish the finite resource that is credibility.

They didn’t recognize that credibility is a dubious virtue in strongman politics. Its absence can even be an asset. Acting without credibility is a chance to flex — to show that you can compel others to take you seriously whether they believe you or not.

These incentives link frivolous outbursts of bullshit with very serious doubling-downs. Trump first spoke about Canada becoming the 51st state in a meeting with Trudeau in late November so offhandedly that it was not immediately mentioned in news reports.

Once Fox News seized upon it, Trudeau was forced to publicly dismiss the comment as a joke.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in November 2024. Trudeau apparently thought Trump was just bullshitting when he made mention of Canada becoming a 51st state during the dinner.(X/@JustinTrudeau)

VIDS

A more commentary revealed liberal-leaning Canadians and Americans were angry and even frightened by this sort of talk — conditions that made it attractive for Trump to double down rather than back down.

Combing through Trump’s speech and actions towards Canada to discover what he really means may just be an attempt to “sane-wash” them; meaning trying to figure out if they reflect a stable and sincere attitude, or even a stable and insincere negotiating strategy.

What makes Trump’s bullshit so dangerous is that it rarely reflects fixed, coherent meanings or convictions. It lurches from triviality to deadly seriousness, depending on how his various audiences provide the approval and the outrage Trump seeks for his performances of strength.

Tim Kenyon, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Brock University

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

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GUK 9 25

Trump issued a presidential memorandum on Thursday aimed at reining in what he has called a radical leftwing domestic “terror network” but which seemed likely to meet fierce legal pushback from critics depicting it as a licence for a broad crackdown on his political opponents.

Prompted by journalists, Trump suggested that George Soros, the billionaire Hungarian-born philanthropist who funds the Open Society Foundations, could be in his sights. He also identified Reid Hoffman, a billionaire venture capitalist, adding: “I hear about him. Maybe it could be him. It could be a lot of people.”

Earlier, the Open Society Foundations had hit back at reports that the justice department was planning to target the group and criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society”.

Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement: “After one of the most harrowing weeks for our first amendment rights, the president is invoking political violence, which we all condemn, as an excuse to target non-profits and activists with the false and stigmatizing label of ‘domestic terrorism’. This is a shameful and dangerous move.”

At a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, the memorandum was presented as aimed at “establishing a comprehensive strategy to investigate, disrupt and dismantle all stages of organized political violence and domestic terrorism”.

It was said to be part of an administration-wide response that would include the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforces, the Department of Justice and the Department of Treasury.

The ACLU said in a statement that joint terrorism task forces “already have a long history of investigations that wrongly target protestors, communities of color, and those engaged in dissent”.

Surrounded by members of his cabinet, Trump said the goal was to target “the funders of a lot of these groups”, some of whom he claimed to know. But he was vague when asked which groups he meant or who the funders were.

“These are anarchists and agitators, professional anarchists and agitators, and they get hired by wealthy people, some of whom I know, I guess, probably know,” he said. “You wouldn’t know at dinner with them. Everything’s nice, and then you find out that they funded millions of dollars to these lunatics.”

Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and former federal prosecutor, said the memorandum itself probably doesn’t carry much legal weight. “You can’t by executive order create new crimes. This does not create new crimes. This says you will use the Terrorism Task Force to go after things they would usually go after,” Richman said.

But, he added: “The concern is that this administration has made clear it is only interested in pursuing politically oriented terrorism that disagrees with its political agenda.”

The Trump administration does not need to create new crimes in order to do this, he said. Laws already on the books “have and continue to provide the ability to go after ideological opponents”.

Though the memorandum may not hold up in court, “I fear how far they are going to take this,” said Jason Charter, a former activist who faced charges during Trump’s first term in connection with efforts to tear down the Andrew Jackson statue in front of the White House. “Antifa is antifascism, and antifascism is a very widely shared thing, and being against fascism should not be illegal.”

“It’s trying to slap terrorism charges on people doing protected activities under the Bill of Rights,” Charter said.

The memorandum comes amid a rightwing clamor for retribution in the wake of the 10 September murder of the far-right pundit Charlie Kirk, which Trump and his supporters have blamed on an organized leftwing network, despite early indications that the suspect acted alone.

It also followed Wednesday’s deadly attack on a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Dallas that killed one detainee and injured two others. One of the bullets used in the attack was inscribed with the message “anti-Ice”.

The memorandum lumps together a series of apparently unrelated episodes, including a foiled 2022 assassination attempt on the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare in Manhattan last December, last year’s two failed attempts on Trump’s life, and unrest on the streets of Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.

Stephen Miller, the influential White House deputy chief of staff – who has been vocal in the administration’s previous calls for a crackdown – called the initiative “historical and significant”.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle leftwing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle the organizations that have been carrying out these acts of political violence and terrorism,” Miller said. The joint terrorism taskforce, a unit inside the FBI, would be “the hub” of the effort, he added.

He said “an entire system of feeder organisations” were funding “harassment, doxing, intimidation and, ultimately, attempted assassinations” of public officials.

“It is all carefully planned, executed and thought through,” said Miller. “It is terrorism on our soil. We are going to use the entire force of the federal government to uproot these organizations, root and branch.”

Trump and his allies have portrayed political violence as a phenomenon primarily associated with the left, overlooking recent incidents in which Democrats have been targeted by people who are believed to be rightwing extremists or incidents in which the perpetrator’s motives are unclear.

Postingon his Truth Social network on Wednesday, Trump clearly tied the Ice facility attack to the Democrats and their criticism of his immigration crackdown in a manner resembling his response to Kirk’s killing.

“This violence is the result of the radical left Democrats constantly demonizing law enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis,” he wrote. “The continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, must be stopped. ICE Officers, and other Brave Members of Law Enforcement, are under grave threat.”

But authorities on Thursday said that they did not find evidence that the suspect was a member of “any specific group or entity, nor did he mention any specific government agency other than Ice”.

In the wake of Kirk’s killing, Trump issued an executive order designating antifa, a loose network of groups that has been involved in confrontations with the far right, as a “domestic terrorist organization”.

The new memorandum states: “This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.

“A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies – including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them – is required.”

“Intimidation tactics against those standing up for human rights and civil liberties are sadly not new in the history of this country,” Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s national security project, said. “In an earlier era, civil rights movement leaders were also labeled security threats and investigated, monitored, threatened, and even arrested.”

*Lauren Gambino contributed reporting

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AHA HE LOOKS FOR THE EDGE OUTLIER MARGINAL AS STARTING PT?

an 9 25 the conv

“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail. No early exits. No nothing.” This is what US president Donald Trump in the Oval Office in the last week in August. Ever the master media manipulator, America’s communicator-in-chief issued this as an executive order. VID]

An executive order is issued by the president and doesn’t need to be passed by Congress. They are, however, expected to relate to existing law. Trump so far has signed 196. His latest directive, which aims to restore “respect, pride and sanctity” to the US flag, instructs the Department of Justice to investigate instances of burning the nation’s insignia under particular circumstances.

While the practice of flag burning as protest has a long history in the US, dating back to the US civil war, it is not a regular occurrence, and has been constitutionally permitted for decades.

The issue is already creating divisions among Republicans. There are three broad categories of GOP reaction. First, the Maga faithful are unlikely to complain. Unconditional support for their leader is a key trait of this group. And the executive order includes language with guaranteed appeal to those for whom terms such as “American patriots” and “foreign nationals” are predictable triggers. The president has long excelled at rallying his supporters on flag-related matters.

Beyond red-meat-for-the-base appeal, both the executive order and GOP support for it get a little more complex. Traditional conservatives, including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, are a group that may have strongly negative feelings about flag burning, but their adherence to the first amendment and associated freedom of expression would generally override this.

Those who hold constitutional principles in high regard are increasingly concerned about a president demonstrating his desire for expansive power. And, the US Supreme Court has clearly ruled on more than one occasion that the act, however distasteful, is constitutionally permitted.

Antonin Scalia, the late Supreme Court justice and noted constitutional textualist, famously stated that “if it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag”. But, he added: “I am not king.” Alongside the more centrist Anthony Kennedy, these justices upheld the right to burn the US flag in the 1989 landmark case of Texas v Johnson, despite Scalia’s personal distaste for the act. In his writings, Scalia differentiated between the form of expression that was flag burning, and an act of insurrection, which, he noted, was “something quite different”. The first amendment, as he understood it, allowed for symbolic political protests, regardless of how offensive such expressions might be to patriotic sensibilities.

Already, analysts have highlighted how the president’s efforts to sidestep the constitution are laden with problems. Executive orders cannot override a Supreme Court ruling. Even Donald Trump should know that.

Getting around current law

What the executive order does attempt to do is to get around the law that allows flag burning. To do so, it focuses on associated crime such as property destruction, open burning violations and disorderly conduct. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, was instructed to pursue cases against those who “incite violence or otherwise violate our laws while desecrating this symbol of our country”. So, when someone is (legally) burning a flag, they may be acting illegally at the same time by, for example, committing a hate crime. And this could trigger prosecution.

Donald Trump signs an executive order on flag burning.

Furthermore, the executive order nods to a key flashpoint of the current climate by leveraging immigration law, and potentially facilitating the deportation of non-citizens who engage in flag-burning. Beyond the smoke-filled headlines, what this ruling does is circumvent the core ruling of Texas v Johnson by focusing on the circumstances surrounding any flag burning, rather than the act itself. A further aspect will involve the extent to which the courts could expand existing first amendment exceptions. This can only make for nervous constitutional conservatives.

The third group who mostly reside on the Trumpian side of the partisan fence are libertarians such as Republican senator Rand Paul. In a similar vein to their conservative counterparts, their worldview would sit uncomfortably with the president’s foray into testing constitutional principles, and not standing up for more wide-ranging free speech.

Flags and freedom

Libertarians tend to feel strongly about freedom of expression. And when their president picks a fight with the first amendment for no apparent reason beyond a mention he made of it on the campaign trail, he may end up aggravating more supporters than he pleases.

Writing on Reason.com, libertarian journalist Robby Soave argued that Trump is the “last person who should confuse protected speech with incitement to violence”. He added: “Any administration that purports to care about freedom of speech should easily reach the conclusion that criminalizing provocative yet nonviolent acts of political expression is a violation of this principle.”

For a president who deliberately and controversially appointed “Scalia-like” judges during his first term, his latest executive order seems at odds with this vision. Such inconsistency, for what may involve more Justice Department smoke than actual fire, may not serve the president well if many conservatives remain uncomfortable with the move.

To misquote a famous phrase attributed to Voltaire, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that whatever a majority of the justices think of those who actually want to burn the US flag, they will all but defend to the death your right to burn it.

The waters are further muddied now that a self-described combat veteran has set fire to the flag in response to the executive order. It is unlikely he is a “sandal-wearing weirdo”. Hence, the president’s patriotic script may end up somewhat singed around the edges.

Clodagh Harrington, Lecturer in American Politics, University College Cork

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

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an 9 25

National Security Leaders for America, a bipartisan organization comprising former senior military, diplomatic and intelligence officials, has strongly condemned the Pentagon’s recent directive imposing restrictions on journalists. Thenew policymandates that journalists sign a pledge agreeing not to report any information — even if unclassified — unless it has been authorized by a Pentagon official, under the threat of losing their press credentials.

In a statement releasedto the press Monday, the organization's president and founder, Rear Admiral Mike Smith (Ret.) said: “Demanding journalists adhere across the board to state edicts about what may — or may not — be reported to the public does not project strength. To the contrary, it betrays unsettling insecurities about the legality and effectiveness of Pentagon actions, plans and priorities."

“Our membership includes many former senior Department of Defense political appointees, as well as general and flag officers; we know how frustrating it can be when plans get out before they’re ready. We know how crucial it is to protect classified information and material, especially when its release could put sources and methods at risk. But the idea that only state sanctioned information is all that can ever be reported to the public flies in the face of the crucial role journalism plays in ensuring our armed forces are accountable to the American people," Smith added.

Rear Admiral Tom Jurkowsky (Ret.), former Chief of Navy Information, said: “Journalists at the Pentagon play a critical role, and Secretary Hegseth is being shortsighted in demanding journalists make this pledge. The public has a right and a responsibility to understand what the military is doing in their name, and that is not possible without an aggressive, sometimes adversarial press.”

The statement from the organization called for a "healthy relationship between the fourth state and Pentagon officials," which it said was "essential to communicating critical information about American national security to the public and has, in rare circumstances, uncovered unacceptable activities that might have otherwise remained hidden." The group asserted that "unprecedented disregard for the Constitution, absent any national security considerations, undermines law, good order and effectiveness."

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Several journalists' groups and press freedom organization have sounded the alarm over the recent policy.

The Society of Professional Journalists called it “alarming” and said the move “reeks of prior restraint — the most egregious violation of press freedom under the First Amendment.”

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press pointed out ambiguous language in the policy: what counts as “authorized information,” what is “a security or safety risk,” which areas in the Pentagon are covered, etc. The organization warned that such vagueness can lead reporters to self‐censor rather than risk losing access.

Some groups are explicitly calling for the Pentagon to rescind the policy. Others are saying the implementation should at least be paused until the vague terms are clarified and possibly narrowed to avoid overreach.

Meanwhile on Sunday, President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether the Pentagon should decide what reporters can report. “No, I don’t think so," he replied.

He added, “Nothing stops reporters.”

Trump's statements appear to express disagreement with the Pentagon policy, but there is no public indication he has ordered it rescinded or formally intervened.

Last week, Trump escalated his rhetoric against media outlets he accused of bias, suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should revoke the broadcast licenses of networks that provide "negative" coverage.

This comment came a day after ABC suspended "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" following remarks by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel about conservative activist Charlie Kirk's murder.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, had earlier hinted that ABC's broadcast license could be at risk if the network did not take action against Kimmel.

But on Monday, Disney announced that Kimmel would returnto the air on Tuesday, six days after the suspension, citing internal discussions and business considerations. The decision to reinstate the show followed public backlash, including boycotts and protests, and concerns over press freedom and censorship.

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see CLETA SOVERIEGN EMERGENCY BORDER 9 25

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an 9 25

In an article for Salonpublished Sunday, the outlet’s executive editor, Andrew O’Hehir, argues that Americans have been given a harsh reminder: Democracy isn’t guaranteed, and beyond merely consenting to be governed, citizens must take an active role to defend it.

He warned that many of the formal institutions, especially the U.S. Constitution, are showing signs of decay, undermined “from within” by what he sees as encroaching authoritarianism.

O'Hehir writes that the confrontation over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show is presented not as just a media squabble, but a test case.

"Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation is a test case, designed to measure the breadth and power of the accelerating authoritarian coup now underway in America," he said.

Late-night comedy and other cultural institutions become battlegrounds, in part because they sit at the intersection of public opinion, dissent, and broad reach, he noted.

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O’Hehir added that large media companies, many now under oligarchic ownership or dominated by finance capital and big tech, are becoming more reliant on those in power.

"The MAGA assault on late-night comedy — which is doubly vulnerable, as both a fading cultural institution and the veritable definition of First Amendment-protected speech — represents a kind of pincer movement, bringing together multiple overlapping fascist tendencies," he wrote.

"On one hand, we see the consolidation of mainstream media companies, now increasingly under the oligarchic control of Big Tech and finance capital, and increasingly dependent on the corrupt Trump regime to approve their corrupt cartel-building mergers and acquisitions. On the other, we see the regime’s undisguised campaign to restrict and punish dissent, and to redefine 'free speech' as a conditional benefit conferred only on its most loyal grovelers and forelock-tuggers, and subject to revocation at any time.

He cited Sinclair and Nexstar as examples of companies that pushed against Kimmel, seemingly aligning with Trump-friendly narratives.

The editor argued that many of the pillars of democracy — courts, civil service, justice departments, regulatory agencies — are weakened, co-opted, or acting as enforcers of the regime rather than checks upon it.

"The Supreme Court has given Trump free rein, the FBI and Justice Department have become his enforcers, the civil service has been co-opted and subverted, the public health agencies have been conquered by moonbats and Republican state legislatures are doing their best to rig the midterm elections. As [Bill] Curry puts it, leaders at white-shoe law firms, elite universities and major foundations have repeatedly surrendered without a shot, revealing themselves as 'traitors, cowards, rank opportunists or simply inept.'"

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AN BADASH 9 25

In a fiery declaration, President Donald Trump announced he is designating "antifa" a terrorist organization. Some experts say he lacks the authority to do so and will struggle to enforce such a move — while others warn it could give him sweeping license to target groups or individuals he disfavors.

“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday evening. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

As many have noted, antifa is not an organized group. It simply means “anti-fascist,” or “anti-fascism.”

But Trump has taken the step anyway. Here’s what some experts say.

READ MORE: ‘Depraved’: Vance Scorched for ‘Reprehensible’ Joke About Military’s Deadly Boat Strikes

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BBC News reports that some legal experts have called into question Trump’s legal authority to declare antifa a terrorist organization.

“The existing rules do allow the government, specifically the State Department, to make a list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ which makes it a crime to give funds or other ‘material support’ to those groups.”

“But the key word here is ‘foreign,'” BBC notes, “and those experts we have spoken to pointed out that free speech rights under the US constitution’s first amendment would limit Trump’s ability to ban – or restrict funding for – domestic movements like antifa.”

Rumen Cholakov, an expert in US constitutional law at King’s College London, “told us that if the government were to use its powers against them in the US their actions would be ‘potentially susceptible to constitutional challenges’ in court for violating these rights.”

Professor David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, told BBC Verify, “Under the First Amendment, no one can be punished for joining a group or giving money to a group.”

Meanwhile, other experts have also weighed in.

READ MORE: ‘We’re Literally Sitting in the Building’: House Democrat Shreds GOP’s Spin on Violence

Attorney and MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski observed, “Since antifa is now designed as a terrorist organization it will be interesting to see how they determine who is a member and how they prove it is an organization.”

Politico senior legal affairs correspondent Kyle Cheney noted, “Trump says he’s designating ‘antifa’ a terrorist group and launching a probe into finding of antifa activities. The FBI has long said antifa doesn’t really have a centralized structure or leadership.”

U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), an attorney, told CNN Wednesday night that “there is no antifa organization.”

He added, “the point” is that Trump is “using the Charlie Kirk murder as a pretext to go after people that he disagrees with. He, on the very night of Kirk’s murder, you will remember, accused the left of committing the murder — when the murderer had not even been caught or identified. This is all a pretext, and it’s a shame, I think … that Charlie Kirk actually stood for free speech. And instead, they’re using his memory to attack free speech.”

Political scholar Dr. Michael Mackey issued this warning: “‘Antifa’ is an artifact of Russian information warfare and the Kremlin-sponsored MAGA cult. No such entity exists in American civil society. Trump is owned by Putin.”

Intelligence and foreign policy analyst Malcolm Nance, a terrorism expert, said, “You cannot designate an idea as a terrorist group.There is no organization called ANTIFA. There is no leadership or funding path. There is no membership.”

“What he is doing is setting the stage to designate ANY American as a terrorist,” Nance alleged. “That’s Fascism.”

CBS News national security coordinating producer Jim LaPorta, an award-winning journalist, wrote: “It’s unclear how Pres. Trump could designate a group inside the U.S. as a domestic terrorist group. The U.S. does not have a federal crime of domestic terrorism. Additionally, it’s been understood that the Govt. would run into 1st and 4th Amendment issues.”

But those hurdles aside, experts are still issuing warnings.

Olga Lautman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), an expert on Russia, and creator and co-host of the Kremlin File podcast series, expressed concern.

“So Trump is designating antifa as a terrorist organization,” she wrote. “Problem is he thinks all Democrats are this so called antifa. He is following Russia’s playbook step by step to crush opposition. Hope everyone wakes up.”

On Substack, Lautman expanded her warning.

She pointed to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s remarks on Monday, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Calling the “radical left” a “vast domestic terror movement,” Miller said: “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people.”

“It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” he vowed.

“Where have I heard this before?” Lautman said of Miller’s statement. “In Russia, where the Kremlin seizes upon every terrorist attack, bombing, protest, or act of violence (some of which they carry out in false flag operations) to justify new crackdowns, laws, and the systematic destruction of any semblance of independent opposition.”

Lautman continued her stark warning, writing, “what makes the current moment in America so perilous is how closely it now echoes this Soviet/Russian script, with the killing of Charlie Kirk already being transformed from an individual crime into the cornerstone of a supposed vast conspiracy of leftist violence — again, without evidence — a pretext for sweeping crackdowns that will not stop at violent actors but extend to protesters, grassroots organizers, and the infrastructure that sustains them.”

“Groups like Indivisible and MoveOn, platforms like ActBlue, that fund Democratic candidates,” she predicted, “will all be recast as pipelines of extremism, stripped of their democratic role.”

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AN 9 25

History’s path is never linear. But its turns can be very sharp.

It is rare to be able to identify the moment when we can say “this is the point at which everything changed”.

So have we reached the point where we can say the United States is in a constitutional crisis? Has American democracy failed? Has the US descended into authoritarianism?

If the answers to those questions weren’t clear already, they are now.

Yes. It is happening. Right now.

Not because of one incident, but a series of moments and choices, events within familiar historical structures, that are pushing the US over the edge.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the choices made by the administration in its aftermath, is one such moment. It was immediately clear the Trump administration would use Kirk’s murder as a pretext for accelerating its authoritarian project, weaponising it to destroy opponents, both real and imagined.

In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump blamed the “radical left” and promised a crackdown on “organizations” that “contributed” to the crime. His vice president, JD Vance,, effectively making it a tool of state-sponsored media. VID]

On that show, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller promised “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks”.

In the MAGA-verse, terms such as “radical left”, “networks” and “organisations” are code for any form of opposition or dissent – including the Democratic Party and traditional media. It is worth noting here that “radical left” is now shifting to terms as broad as “left-leaning”, progressive or, even more subversive, liberal.

The Trump administration is promising to go after the fundraising architecture of its opposition, broadly defined. And it will. It is already using the agencies of the federal government – including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service – to threaten, punish and obliterate those who oppose it.

And the moments keep coming. On Wednesday, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, appeared on another far-right podcast. Carr – a Project 2025 contributor – suggested that broadcasters running the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show were risking “the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC” due to Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death.

That night, ABC announced that Kimmel’s show would be suspended indefinitely.

Kimmel’s moment follows Stephen Colbert’s. It follows another moment earlier in the week, when Trump berated senior Australian Broadcasting Commission journalist John Lyons, aggressively telling him he was “hurting” Australia and that he would tell the Australian prime minster as much. The ABC has since been barred from Trump’s UK press conference, ostensibly for “logistical reasons”.

In the firehose of these moments, it can be difficult to see them in context. But they are all connected – part of a deliberate, carefully planned program to destroy anyone or anything that opposes or even questions Republican orthodoxy as defined by Trump.

The Kirk moment, the Kimmel moment, and all the rest, must be understood in that broader framework. This week, too, the Trump administration announced it was deploying the National Guard into Memphis, Tennessee. It will likely also send the National Guard into Chicago, as it has long been threatening. It has already despatched the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC.

Trump and his cronies are openly musing about other “Democrat cities”. The point is to sow fear and suppress dissent. It is working.

This month, in the aftermath of a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Trump promised to end mail-in voting. The Trump-aligned Supreme Court is poised to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act intended to prevent racial discrimination. The mid-term elections are still over a year away.

Incredibly, we are only eight months into the second Trump administration. But the moments will keep coming, and the speed at which they arrive will likely accelerate.

Taken together, they paint a very grim picture for the future of US democracy, constrained though it already is. The widespread, coordinated suppression of dissent – and the extended chilling effect that suppression has – are ripping apart the fabric of American political life.

It is here. It is happening. History is being made before our eyes.

This is a monumental change. For the United States. For the world.

Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, *RMIT University

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

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BONDI HARMEET D INVEST EMPLOYEE REFUSE PRINT KIRK FLYER

AN 9 25

A takedown of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche by a U.S. lawmaker and former federal prosecutor received acclaim by critics of the Trump administration on Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) slammed Blanche for suggesting that the loud protest of President Donald Trump at a D.C. restaurant qualifies for racketeering charges and prosecution.

“RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) is available to all kinds of organizations committing crimes and wrongful acts, not just organized crimes,” Blanche told CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins. “So … is it sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner and accost him with vile words and vile anger? … [I]s it completely random that they show up? Maybe. But to the extent that it’s an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States there’s potential investigation there.”

Trump spoke about being confronted by protesters at a Washington D.C. restaurant last week during a Monday press gaggle in the Oval Office.

READ MORE: Morning Joe predicts Trump’s rhetoric will lead to 'massive Democratic victories next year'

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“… [T]hey should be put in jail. What they're doing to this country is really subversive," Trump said of protestors railing against his federalization of law enforcement in the capital city and calling for an end to hostilities in Gaza.

Collins pushed back on Blanche’s claim during his interview. “Were they inflicting harm or terror and damage to the United States ... by shouting in his vicinity?”

“That cannot be a serious question, said Blanche, who was Trump’s personal attorney defending him against multiple criminal indictments, including a case in which Trump was found guilty of using campaign money to bribe a woman for her silence over an alleged sexual escapade.

“People can protest the president,” Collins told Blanche, and Goldman agreed.

“I charged RICO cases. Yelling at the President is not a racketeering act and cannot be the basis for a criminal charge,” Goldman posted on X. “Blanche knows better. He is corrupting the DOJ with ridiculous comments like this.”

READ MORE: 'This is insane': Conservatives demand Trump official’s removal over 'hate speech' blunder BONDI

Social media backed up Goldman’s claim, with one commenter saying on X: “Wondering when it dawns on these guys that Trump will soon be gone and I mean in the permanent sense and what will they do with their careers? Who could possibly take them seriously?”

“To suggest that [Blanche] knows better is naïve, commented another X user, while a third said: “This echoes Trump's 2024 campaign vows to jail opponents, blurring protest with organized crime and chilling dissent.”

Another commenter questioned Blanche’s scope of knowledge: “Maybe he doesn’t know better … His ineffectual defense of Trump at trial certainly suggests either a corrupt or inaccurate understanding of the law.”

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SOME EVIDENCE CRACKDOWN WAS IN THE WORKS, KIRK SHOOT JUST GIVES REICHSTAG PRETEXT?

AN 9 25

Last week's murder of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk has prompted President Donald Trump to use him as a "symbol" to promote his own "political religion," according to a historian and journalist.

In a Tuesday essay for Religion News Service (RNS), former Harvard University professor Mark Silk lamented that Trump was using the shocking public killing of Kirk as an excuse to crack down on his ideological opponents, and accused the president of creating a "political religion" centered around hate and division. He contextualized Trump's response to Kirk's murder in former President Abraham Lincoln's reflection that in the wake of tragedies, presidents should speak "with malice toward none, with charity for all ... to bind up the nation’s wounds."

"Trump has, unsurprisingly, done nothing of the sort in this time of crisis, transgressing civil religious norms with utter self-awareness," Silk wrote.

READ MORE:'Something is wrong': MAGA pundits say Trump is 'lying to us' about Charlie Kirk shooting

In his RNS essay, Silk reminded readers that during an interview with Fox & Friends, Trump passed up an opportunity to be a uniter and instead said he "couldn't care less" about bringing the country together. Silk contrasted Trump's approach with that of Italian historian Emilio Gentile, who said that government should seek to create a "civil religion" that is built on "a plurality of ideas, free competition in the exercise of power and the ability of the governed to dismiss their governments through peaceful and constitutional methods."

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"In place of a civil religion that sacralizes the political system to include those with whom we disagree, Trump has embraced a political religion that excludes them — one that, as Gentile put it, 'is intolerant, invasive, and fundamentalist, and ... wishes to permeate every aspect of an individual’s life and of a society’s collective life,'" Silk wrote.

Silk also drew a parallel between Trump's response to Kirk's death with the 1930 death of far-right German paramilitary leader Horst Wessel. After Wessel was shot, his death became a rallying cry for the far-right movement in Germany that led to World War II. Silk worried that Trump's actions were making Charlie Kirk into an American Horst Wessel, to be propagandized for today's far-right movement in the United States.

HIGH RANKING? SS ? OFFICERS SWORN IN ON FLAG WITH HIS BLOOD ON IT?

"Today, the canonization of Charlie Kirk proceeds apace. Tributes to him as a stalwart of free speech rights have come from expected and unexpected quarters, even as some are fired from their jobs for daring to criticize him. There are songs celebrating him as a martyr to a great cause," Silk wrote. "He is fast becoming the Horst Wessel of Trump’s political religion."

READ MORE:'Increasingly senile wackjob': Expert says Trump too broken to destroy democracy on his own

Click here to read Silk's essay in full.

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AN 9 25

404 Media reports the Department of Justice has taken down a study showing white supremacist and far-right violence outpaces “all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States.

The DOJ website hosted the study, conducted by the National Institute of Justice, until September 12, 2025.

In its place is the message: “The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance. During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

READ MORE: 'Increasingly senile wackjob': Expert says Trump too broken to destroy democracy on his own

The report What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism revealed “Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”

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The document reports “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists,” since 1990, “including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.”

In this same period, the report claimed, “far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”

“We don’t know why the study about far-right extremist violence was removed recently,” writes 404 Media reporter Emanuel Maiberg, “but it comes immediately after the assassination of conservative personality Charlie Kirk, accusations from the administration that the left is responsible for most of the political violence in the country, and a renewed commitment from the administration to crack down on the ‘radical left.’”

READ MORE: 'Something is wrong': MAGA pundits say Trump is 'lying to us' about Charlie Kirk shooting

The DOJ did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.

Read the 404 Media report at this link.

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uae chips deal?! LOOMER?! CORRUPT CRYPTO WORLD LIBERTY

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an 9 25

Far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist and self-described "proud Islamophobe" Laura Loomer was critical of Charlie Kirk near the end of his life. As Loomer saw it, the Turning Point USA founder wasn't pro-Donald Trump enough — even though Kirk was, in fact, an ardent Trump supporter.

In a July 13, 2025 post on X, formerly Twitter, Loomer wrote, "I don't ever want to hear @charliekirk11 claim he is pro-Trump ever again. After this weekend, I'd say he has revealed himself as political opportunist and I have had a front row seat to witness the mental gymnastics these last 10 years. Lately, Charlie has decided to behave like a charlatan, claiming to be pro-Trump one day while he stabs Trump in the back the next."

But after his fatal shooting, Loomer called for the imprisonment of anyone who criticizes Kirk — a proposal that former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan is calling out as "fascism."

READ MORE:'Didn't work for you': CNN analyst confronts Trump's favorite pundit on political violence

In a September 13 post on X, Loomer wrote, "I have to say, I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is, and I want the right to be as devoted to locking up and silencing our violent political enemies as they say we are. I've had enough of the Left only thinking we will defund them, prosecute them, lock them up and dismantle their power for generations to come. It just needs to happen."

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Hasan gave a forceful response to that post on September 17, tweeting, "If this isn't a call for open, violent, unadulterated fascism and authoritarianism, from a top adviser to the president, then what is it? Seriously, what the hell is it?"

Hasan isn't the only one on X who is sounding the alarm about Loomer calling for Trump to act like a "dictator."

Journalist Bastian Brauns posted, "It's already well past 10 after 12. 'I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is.' This is written by Laura Loomer, the woman who is allowed to personally whisper to Trump which 'traitors' he should fire from the government next."

READ MORE: 'I'm the one asking the questions': CNN host cuts off Ted Cruz after he shouts over her

Iowa-based writer Raymond Baker tweeted, "You know @LauraLoomer has never studied history nor does she understand what drives men like Stalin, Putin, Kim Jong II, Pol Pot, or Donald Trump. Authoritarian dictators are cruel and once they assume power, they no longer want or need supporters like Loomer."

Activist William Richards wrote, "Laura Loomer wants Trump to be a dictator? She wants to lock up the Left because she believes they are all violent. Mirror politics & projection is what Laura is up to! It's easily demonstrated that the Right are the purveyors of violence in our Country, not the Left.

READ MORE:'Undisputed idiot king': Former NBC journalist calls Eric Trump 'the epitome of stupidity'

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AN 9 25

In an article for Democracy Docket published Tuesday, election attorney Marc Elias argued that President Donald Trump has begun using the machinery of the federal government to target his political opponents, and that these actions threaten democratic norms.

"Trump is quickly changing the nature of politics from adversarial contests to weaponized governance. A president using the power of the state to punish critics — or to condition basic government services on political fealty — is not merely rough politics. It is aimed at crushing dissent and free and fair elections," he wrote.

Elias noted that as soon as Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 election, he warned that the administration would use its various tools — political appointees, career officials, government contracts, IRS audits and criminal investigations — to harass those who opposed him. He added that what he predicted has begun to happen.

READ MORE:'Increasingly senile wackjob': Expert says Trump too broken to destroy democracy on his own

According to Elias, there have been threats and intimidation of elected officials, journalists, institutions and media outlets. He also argued that universities, law firms, nonprofits and the media are being offered ways to gain favor or risk punishment, observing that prosecutors and federal agencies are bending toward political ends rather than functioning as neutral arbiters.

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Elias reported that White House officials are discussing measures such as revoking tax‑exempt status for nonprofits, deploying anticorruption statutes, using federal agencies to target groups seen as hostile, and issuing executive orders that undermine voting rights.

Elias framed these steps as explicit efforts to suppress dissent and weaken opposition rather than merely an aggressive political strategy.

Elias claimed Trump’s broader goal is to prevent the political opposition, particularly progressive and Democratic groups, from gathering strength ahead of midterm elections. He pointed to efforts such as redrawing electoral maps, undermining voting rights through executive orders, planning to go after progressive groups and their donors, and using fabricated stories to divide opposition.

READ MORE: British historian explains why he was 'shaken every day' during US visit

He warned that democracy is already showing strain: guardrails are weakening, rule of law is fraying, the fabric of democracy is being torn. But he said the worst is yet to come: targeting of donors, organizations, opposition leaders, with lies intended to make each seem uniquely bad, to divide supporters.

"The idea of an explicit government crackdown on thought and speech would have been unthinkable in the past. A president doing so as part of an election strategy would have been so extraordinary at any other time in our nation’s history it would have led to calls for impeachment," Elias wrore.

He added: "It’s as close to Orwellian as we’ve come. The 'Thought Police' is no longer a fictional warning, but our new, stark reality."

Elias called on those who defend democracy to treat attacks on any Democratic campaign, group or organization as attacks against all, to refuse division among progressive actors, and to stand together in defense of free and fair elections. He argued that preserving elections is the greatest vulnerability of the administration’s efforts to consolidate power, and that these must be protected at all costs or democracy itself may fail.

"Donald Trump’s attack on free and fair elections has only just begun. It is not only his biggest target, but also his greatest vulnerability. We must protect them at all costs. If we succeed, we will likely survive this dark period with democracy weakened but intact. If we fail, we may not have a democracy to come home to," he warned.

READ MORE:Trump’s AG scrambles to do 'damage control' after conservatives rage against free speech threat

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rww

09/15/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Brenden Dilley is a overtly racist, unapologetically misogynistic, and gleefully amoral Trump cultist who has established close ties to the Trump administration and the president himself, thanks to the role he plays in leading a "troll army" that relentlessly promotes Trump and attacks his enemies on social media.

Dilley has openly stated that he doesn’t “give a fuck about being factual” and will “make shit up” if doing so furthers Trump’s political agenda, pledging to "lie, cheat, [and] fucking steal" on behalf of Trump. For this, he has been repeatedly rewarded with meetings with Trump and invitations to the White House.

Dilley has openly issued threats against Trump's enemies, declaring that Trump supporters had better "start developing a stomach for death," proclaiming that his mission to just keep "keep curb-stomping these motherfuckers," and warning that he and others MAGA activists are just waiting until Trump "gives us the green light" to take to the streets and start gunning down activists.

Ignoring his own history of violent rhetoric, Dilley reacted to the murder of Charlie Kirk by calling on Trump to become a dictator and impose martial law on the nation until those on the left whom he deems responsible for Kirk's death have been rooted out and destroyed.

"The time for words is totally over, man," Dilley declared. "The only thing I wanted to hear [from Trump is,] 'Here's what I'm doing to make sure that this shit stops instantly.' I wanted to wake up today and have all of the media outlets banned temporarily; executive order. I'm pulling the licenses of Fox, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, and all other mainstream media until we can sort out what is going on."

"They've been calling Donald Trump a dictator for 10 years," he added. "You already got the name. One man's dictator is another man's patriot. Go full Abe Lincoln; suspend habeas corpus, introduce martial law. Let's actually cut out the cancer from the mainstream media."

"What is it going to take us? 90 days?" Dilley asked. "All I know is that whatever the response is to Charlie's death—and Charlie's death is horrific—must be 100 times more aggressive, deliberate and well-executed. It has to be. Whatever the government's response is to this has to be shock and fucking awe."

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09/15/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Larry Taunton declares that Democrats wanted Charlie Kirk to be assassinated: "These are sleeper cells that they're creating and setting loose into the culture."

• William Cook says Kirk's murder was "a faint illustration of reasons America is facing Divine judgement": "America will be 'overthrown' if we fail to vanquish abortion, sodomy and sexual perversion from our shores."

• Mark Meckler cheers on the right-wing effort to get people fired for mocking Kirk's death because "they're not decent human beings."

• Elijah Schaffer announces that he'll be launching a tour of colleges to "honor Charlie Kirk's legacy."

• William Wolfe uses the transitive property: "Marxists are violent revolutionaries. Democrats are Marxists. Therefore Democrats are violent revolutionaries."

• Auron MacIntyre lays out his vision for what he wants to see in response to Kirk's death: "Raids, doors kicked in, agents swinging through windows. Leftists ripped out of their beds and thrown in leg irons. The leaders, the foot soldiers, the NGO funders. Get them all."

• Finally, Mario Murillo proclaims that, in the wake of Kirk's murder, "it is high time for a total repudiation of the Left—especially the Democratic Party": "We must weaken them to the point where they lose every election. Why? Because they are no longer a political party. They are deranged radicals. There is no question their rhetoric instilled hatred and murder in thousands of young hearts. And finally, there is Donald Trump. He is the only one out of the last four presidents not beholden to the global elites. That means he has the power to destroy those monstrous pawns of Satan. I pray he does! I pray he does not compromise his destiny! I have asked God to use the assassination of Charlie Kirk to light an unquenchable fire in Trump!"

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AN 9 25

In an article for The Hill published Sunday, Kellye Y. Testy, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools, and Austen Parrish, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, argued that the U.S. judiciary faces a growing crisis of legitimacy, driven by increasingly intense threats, political attacks, and efforts to delegitimize judges.

They warned that these pressures aren’t just parties complaining about decisions, but rather a deeper assault on the independence of the courts — something essential to democracy.

"American judges are under attack. Approximately one-third of the federal judiciary have received threats over the last year, and the U.S. Marshals Service reports more than 500 threats were made against federal judges over the past 11 months, with a noticeable spike in recent months. The sheer number of threats, including to judges’ families, are unprecedented," they wrote.

READ MORE:How Christianity’s 'kook' fringe went mainstream in Trump's MAGA world

Testy and Parrish argued that many of the attacks come from high‐ranking executive branch officials when courts rule against administration policy, and from Democrats and Republicans alike when they believe justices have acted beyond their preferred political lines. These attacks, they insisted, are not just garden‐variety political heat, but part of a darker escalation in rhetoric, public delegitimization, and disregard for constitutional limits.

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They further argued that the implications go far beyond the most visible federal or Supreme Court cases. They pointed out that tens of millions of cases are handled each year in state courts and family courts, contract and property disputes, criminal law, wills, insurance, traffic violations — matters that touch almost every American’s life.

The authors noted that when the judiciary is seen as politicized, under attack, or as lacking legitimacy, trust erodes even in those local and everyday contexts, with ripple effects for individuals, businesses, governments, and for social order more broadly.

To counter this trend, Testy and Parrish urged not just condemnation, but active defense of judicial independence. They called on lawyers, legal educators, bar associations, law firms, and legal organizations to more forcefully correct misinformation, reject ad hominem attacks and violent threats, emphasize competence and integrity rather than ideology in judicial appointments, and help law students and the public understand the importance of courts operating impartially under the rule of law.

READ MORE:'Deciding his own fate': Trump and the GOP want to banish this one Republican

The legal experts argued that ongoing attacks discourage qualified people from seeking the bench, worsening vacancies and undermining fairness of outcomes.

"Make no mistake: what’s occurring in high-profile cases risks having ripple effects in other federal, state and local courts. Our legal system depends on judicial independence and integrity, and it doesn’t function if judges are targets of crass political opportunism. Attempts to intimidate and undermine judges threatens a crisis of legitimacy even on issues that have nothing to do with national politics, jeopardizing well-functioning courts serving families, local governments, organizations and businesses of all sizes," they wrote.

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AN 9 25 CLAIM NO SUPPORT

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was Vice President JD Vance’s guest on Monday’s edition of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” just days after the right-wing political commentator was assassinated. The suspected gunman’s motives and political beliefs remain unclear, but the vice president pinned the blame for Kirk’s murder on “left-wing extremism.”

“While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies,” Vance declared, “it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far-left.”

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The vice president did not define “lunatics,” but statistics from the Cato Institute show that the vast majority of political violence comes from the far-right.

Guest-hosting for the late organizer and activist, Vice President Vance viewers, “I wanted to zoom out and talk with Stephen [Miller] a little bit, and talk about all of the ways that we’re trying to figure out how to prevent this festering violence that you see on the far-left from becoming even more and more mainstream.”

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READ MORE: Homeschooling, Religion and Politics Trump Science in Parents’ Vaccine Resistance

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The vice president—who placed blame at least in part on the left for Kirk’s death—said, “we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years, and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”

“We’re gonna talk about how to dismantle that,” he continued, “and how to bring real unity, real unity that can only come when we tell the truth and everybody knows that they can speak their mind about the issues of the day without being cut down by a murderer’s gun.”

Miller, who is considered by many—including some highly respected conservatives—a skilled propagandist, on Friday spoke out against what he called left-wing violent extremism.

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“I’ve not shared with anybody, but the last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his Creator in heaven was, he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence.”

“That was the last message that he sent me before that assassin stole him from all of us.”

READ MORE: Trump Teases Threat to Defund NYC After Governor’s Endorsement for Mayor

“And we are gonna do that,” Miller vowed. “Under President Trump’s leadership, I don’t care how—it could be a RICO charge, a conspiracy charge, conspiracy against the United States, insurrection—but we are going to do what it takes to dismantle the organizations and the entities that are fomenting riots, that are doxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism, and that are committing acts of wanton violence.”

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“It has to stop,” he declared, “and my message is to all of the domestic terrorists in this country spreading this evil hate? You want us to live in fear? We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile. Because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.”

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rww

09/11/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Mark Meckler reacted to the assassination of Charlie Kirk by declaring that "the nation got a taste of the utterly senseless violence radical leftism can — and inevitably will — unleash."

• Todd Starnes blames Democrats for Kirk's murder: "I hold all them responsible for what happened today. They all have blood on their hands today."

• Virginia state legislator Nick Freitas vows that "there will be a reckoning": "My Christian faith requires me to love my enemies and pray for those who curse me. It does not require me to stand idly by in the midst of savagery and barbarism...quite the opposite."

• Brenden Dilley proclaims that "the mainstream media and Democrat party killed Charlie Kirk."

• Finally, Ali Alexander is calling on Trump to "[seize] powers not normally exercised" and use them to ensure that "10% of the left-wing [are] arrested, charged, detained, or made to flee" in reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

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DEFUND LEFT SOROS PAID PROTESTERS domestic TERRORISTS

mma

On the killing of Charlie Kirk, political violence, and the right’s response

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 09/12/25

Charlie Kirk, a powerful right-wing activist, popular podcaster, and close friend and ally to President Donald Trump, was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah on Wednesday. Politicians of both parties and commentators across the spectrum, including myself, have responded with condemnations of the act as both the tragic murder of a young husband and father and an act of political violence that must be anathema if we hope to preserve our country as a liberal democracy.

Rational people on all sides of the political spectrum abhor political violence and want to ratchet down the temperature, but this requires an honest assessment of what is happening: There have been far too many cases of political violence in recent years, and the targets are not limited by party, ideology, or creed.

Yet within the right-wing media bubble, long before there was even a suspect in custody, commentators cited Kirk’s killing as proof the left is at war with them. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on Thursday called out right-wing pundits who took Kirk’s death “as an opportunity to say we're at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this.” He added: “It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you're a leader of a conservative movement.”

Tillis cited two commentators in particular, but such rhetoric has been a staple throughout the right-wing media ecosystem since news broke that Kirk had been shot. It is what right-wing audiences are hearing right now — and what they have been hearing, to one extent or another, for quite some time.

“They are at war with us!” Fox News star Jesse Watters said on The Five, his network’s most-watched show, shortly after Kirk’s passing was announced.

“Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us,” he continued. “And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we’re just gonna have to ask ourselves.”

“THIS IS WAR,” posted Libs of TikTok. “Civil war,” was Andrew Tate’s take. “This is war,” commented Ian Miles Cheong. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” Alex Jones said on his livestream. According to Steve Bannon, “We are at war in this country.” “We’re not supposed to say this,” posted Shaun Maguire. “But the truth is we’re at War.”

Many on the right were Kirk’s friends and are mourning his death. Some of them may fear for their own safety. But the narrative they have constructed relies on ignoring the recent spate of attacks targeting Democrats, the gruesome contemporaneous response to those attacks from some of the most influential voices on the right, and the chorus of Democratic officials who have condemned Kirk’s assassination.

There is no war, no righteous, violent struggle between a “left” and a “right.” A man was killed. His killer deserves to be brought to justice. Turning that into a “war” can only make the situation worse.

Terrorists have targeted political leaders of both parties

It is not true, as Eric Trump and both claimed in right-wing media interviews since Kirk’s slaying, that violence is “only going one way,” or, as right-wing radio host Dana Loesch put it on Watters’ prime-time show, that “it's not the right killing the left, it's the left killing the right.”

It seems both pointless and morally inappropriate to try to weigh attacks against one another to determine who has it “worse,” but it’s impossible to have a conversation if we can’t agree that political violence goes both ways.

The ideology of people who attack political figures doesn’t always map neatly onto a political party, in no small part because the assailant typically suffers from some form of mental illness. But Democrats have certainly been the targets of political violence in recent memory: In October 2022, a man broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeking to kidnap her, and brutally assaulted her husband, Paul. In June, an assassin allegedly murdered a Democratic state legislator and her husband and wounded a second and his wife in Minnesota. Last month’s lethal attackon the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by someone who authorities say “wanted to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines” should also be placed in this category.

It’s worth revisiting how right-wing media covered those domestic terror attacks, as it speaks to how its audience likely interprets them in an increasingly fragmented media landscape in which people can pick and choose news sources that confirm their biases.

After a man broke into the Pelosi residence and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, MAGA influencers claimed based on effectively no evidence that the attacker, who turned out to be a deranged individual steeped in right-wing fever swamp conspiracy theories, had actually been let into the speaker’s house by her husband for the purposes of sex and subsequently attacked him as part of a lovers’ quarrel.

Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo of a pair of briefs and a hammer on a bed with the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”

For months afterwards, Fox hosts including Watters alluded to such wild claims on their nationally broadcast programs, undeterred by body camera footage from the scene of the attack or basic human dignity.

Prominent MAGA social media influencers likewise responded to the Minnesota shootings by spinning up a false profile of the killer — in reality a Trump supporter who railed against abortion and the LGBTQ community — as a far-left supporter of Gov. Tim Walz. Laura Loomer and Mike Cernovich even suggested Walz might have orchestrated the attacks as political hits.

Fox’s right-wing propagandists, meanwhile, all but buried that story. There were no soul-searching reflections about political violence targeting the left on the programs of Watters, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Greg Gutfeld — instead, discussion on those shows the week after the attacks was limited to correspondent reports and headline reads. The week after the CDC shooting, those programs didn’t cover it at all.

Looking further back, the leading lights of the right-wing media aggressively sought to minimize and sanitize the Trump mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, and they alternatively blamed “incivility” from the left for a Trumpist sending mail bombs to a host of left-wing and Democratic targets and suggested those attacks were a “false flag.” And that’s to say nothing of other attacks apparently fueled by right-wing extremism that targeted Jewish, Latino, and Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, New York; and El Paso, Texas.

If you downplay right-wing violence against left-wing targets, it’s much easier to convince your viewers that the violence is all going in the other direction.

• ### MAGA wants “the Left” to be “crushed with the power of the state”

While the repeated declarations that they are at “war” with a murderous left are obviously corrosive, there have not been widespread direct calls for retaliatory violence from prominent right-wing media figures. But many are urging President Donald Trump, his administration, and congressional Republicans to respond with widespread political repression of the left and the Democratic Party.

“We can honor him [Kirk] and honor his memory and make it a living thing that we use this to take down the apparatus that's well-funded that is at the core of this anti-Americanism,” Steve Bannon said on his streaming show Friday. “It has to be a all-of-government approach. ... Let's go kick down some doors and perp walk some folks today.”

Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist and streamer who has Trump’s ear and regularly gets federal officials fired for insufficient demonstrated fealty to the president, declared Wednesday, “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization.” She later added: “All of the Leftist groups that pay for these radical protests need to be prosecuted. … More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.”

MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich demanded “congressional hearings now” on Wednesday, which he said should include “every billionaire funding far left wing extremism,” naming George Soros, Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman. He also called for “massive RICO investigations now” to scrutinize “every dollar” and tagged Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Former GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters echoed Cernovich, adding, “Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments” violence, “or it will destroy us.”

Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, posted Wednesday that “the Democrat party is a domestic terrorist organization” and “terrorist Democrats will not stop. … And until they are stopped—until every single nutjob inciting this madness and cheering it on is held accountable and removed from civil society—it will not stop.” His outlet published a piece which declared that Democrats “need to be treated like the domestic terrorists they are.”

“The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo said. “It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”

YouTuber Benny Johnson claimed that “the modern Democrat party is a terrorist organization” and that the left-wing movement must be “ripped root and stem from our American republic and thrown into the fire where it belongs.”

Some are even suggesting that because the threat to the right is so clear, if Republican leaders don’t respond with such steps, the result will be some on the right taking matters into their own hands.

Davis posted on Thursday that if congressional Republicans don’t take “proper action” to protect “a population being hunted for sport,” then the result would be “improper reaction,” which he described as “a response that cannot be contained once it is out.”

Likewise, Cernovich wrote: “I’m choosing my words mindfully, don’t twist them. This is a prediction, not a preference. If Congressional GOP and Trump don’t act swiftly and ferociously, there will be retaliatory actions due to lawful means not being used. This is always what happens. RICO these fucks now!”

Trump appears to be responding to these demands for political retribution.

• ### The elephant in the room

It is impossible to have a rational conversation about topics like lowering the political temperature and pushing back against the spread of political violence when the president of the United States is interested in those issues only as a cudgel against his political opponents.

On Wednesday evening, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal urged Trump, himself the victim of two assassination attempts, to take advantage of “an opportunity for leadership” by seeking to lower the tenor of political rhetoric.

Any other president would not need to hear such advice — but Trump’s previous responses to attacks on Democratic targets demonstrate his lack of interest in bringing the country together. He mocked the brutal assault against Pelosi, said following the Minnesota shooting that it would be a “waste of time” to call Gov. Tim Walz because he is “so whacked out,” and completely ignored the CDC attack.

In an Oval Office address a few hours after Kirk was killed, Trump characteristically ignored the Journal’s counsel. He offered a testament to Kirk’s life and promised that the shooter, who at that point had not been publicly identified or taken into custody, would be brought to justice.

But he also attributed blame far beyond the person who took Kirk’s life, saying that the “rhetoric” of “the radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” He went on to promise that his administration would go after the individuals and organizations he said “contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” adding that “radical-left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

Trump did not name the targets of the action he promised to carry out. But a “straightforward reading of his rhetoric,” as The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait noted, is that “the president of the United States is treating the political opposition as accessories to murder and threatening to use the full power of the government to attack it.”

On Friday, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt pointed to “radicals” on both the right and left and asked the president, “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?”

Trump’s response made clear that he is uninterested in doing so. He excused “radicals on the right” as people who “don’t want to see crime,” saying, “They don't want these people coming in, we don't want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.”

“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they are vicious and they are horrible and they are politically savvy,” he added, before running through a litany of grievances with his critics.

That message is echoing across MAGA media, a powerful information apparatus with a rare and unmediated grasp on its audience. It will fuel more vitriol, making it harder, not easier, to have honest conversations and reduce the threat of political violence in this country.

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AN 9 25

'Why we mounted a revolution': Backlash as Johnson tells Dems to 'yield' to Trump

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AN 9 25

'They will take what they want': 7 ways Trump is already planning to disrupt the midterms

Carl Gibson

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MMA

The Gateway Pundit's Joe Hoft calls for the National Guard to remove judges and “throw them behind bars”

Hoft: “You cannot have the rulings that these judges have and and be of a sound mind. And you're a criminal. And same with Jerome Powell.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 09/05/25

Jim Hoft's website, The Gateway Pundit,“is one of the worst purveyors of false information on the internet.” The website — to which Hoft's brother, Joe, is a contributor — reportedly became “a favorite news source” of President Donald Trump after it “pushed false claims of a stolen election“ for years following the presidential election of 2020.

During Trump's second term, the website has enjoyed access to the administration. In August, Jim Hoft interviewed Vice President JD Vance, during which Vance said the far-right website was “so important,” and a Media Matters review found that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called on The Gateway Pundit 5 times at press briefings during the first three months of Trump's second term, more than The Washington Post (4) or The Associated Press (3).

On September 3, Joe Hoft appeared on For the Love of Freedom with Danielle Walker and said that judges, who he alleges are “sabotaging our legal system,” and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell are “criminal” and need to be held accountable.

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From the September 3, 2025, edition of For the Love of Freedom with Danielle Walker, streamed on Rumble

JOE HOFT (THE GATEWAY PUNDIT): We have to deal with our judges. We have to get rid of these corrupt judges. We have to remove them from office. If it means, in my opinion, and I don't care what people say, if it means we need to send the National Guard in to remove these people from their office and throw them behind bars, then we have to. These people are not working for the country. They are sabotaging our legal system, destroying it by making these judgments that are grabbed out of nowhere because the judge just is a radical, radical, nonethical, disgusting human being. I think the same thing with Jerome Powell.

...

The judges need to be removed from office, and I think it charged. They need to be, we need to hold them accountable. You cannot have the rulings that these judges have and and be of a sound mind. And you're a criminal. And same with Jerome Powell. He's costing this country a trillion dollars a year by not lowering these rates.

Trillion dollars to every, you know, split amongst all Americans. Trillion dollars because he won't lower those rates, which should be lowered significantly to the point that we'd save a trillion. And that would really help the economy. It helped the housing industry and all this. I don't know why real estate agents aren't screaming for this guy to lower the rates.

And he won't because he's a vile, disgusting human being. He did the same thing with Trump his first term, raised the rates, kept raising them, and just crashed the, almost crashed the economy himself. And so these kind of people, we just cannot allow them to continue. They're too damaging and the damage is too severe.

20-Plus Times Jim Hoft And The Gateway Pundit Were Absurdly Wrong

01/25/17

2. ### Former Trump aide: “Gateway Pundit was one reliable place he knew he could go for validation, and maybe even some new ideas”

01/03/24 12:58 PM EST

3. ### By the numbers: As Trump snubs legacy media, data shows his press briefings elevate right-wing outlets

04/25/25

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Citing state policy on tenure, elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and the cost of living, Florida faculty laid out their frustrations in a recent survey.

In a Faculty in the South survey conducted by various conferences of the American Association of University Professors, 31% of Florida respondents said they have applied for a job outside of Florida since 2023. That number was 25% among all survey respondents in the South.

The same, 31% of Florida respondents, said they plan to seek employment in another state during the next hiring cycle.

“The governor of Florida threatens at every turn to take funding away so administration at colleges don’t stand up to him or board of education. I no longer have any motivation or creativity to make courses better,” a tenured professor at a public community college wrote.

The survey focused on policy affecting employment, including whether faculty would recommend working in their state to up-and-coming academics, and trends in applications for faculty positions. It included nearly 200 responses from Florida faculty among its nearly 4,000 responses across Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

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The survey concluded with an open-ended question asking faculty to provide examples of how “attacks on higher education are directly impacting your work.” It did not report respondents’ identities beyond basic demographics like gender, race, tenure status, years of experience, and type of institution they teach at.

‘Walking on egg shells’

“Students report any classroom discussion they don’t like directly to the Governor’s office. Everyone is afraid all the time,” one woman teaching at a public four-year school wrote. “I have stopped teaching books that might be in any way controversial. I don’t open up general discussion in class but ask only direct questions that will elicit non-controversial answers. I need health insurance so I can’t just quit.”

The state scanning course materials for disfavored viewpoints was a widespread stressor for many faculty.

Florida DOGE to ‘deep dive’ into state universities, ‘prune’ ‘ideological study stuff’

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“Most of the courses I’ve taught for decades now violate state and university mandates,” a man teaching at a Florida tier-one research university said.

As of earlier this year, Florida institutions’ general education courses no longer contained “indoctrinating concepts,” State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues proclaimed in January.

Florida universities have conducted a review, required by a 2022 law, of general education courses to ensure that they do not “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.”

“I’m continually worried that the content of my clases [sic] will be flagged as “DEI” because I am a historian of the Caribbean, a region mostly populated by non-white people,” one professor said.

One women’s studies professor described the effect as “Constant anxiety, walking on egg shells trying to anticipate what would be used against me/us.”

More than a third, 34%, of Florida respondents said administrators have questioned syllabi or curricula choices for their courses. Among all states surveyed, half as many, 17%, indicated administrators questioned their curricula.

One professor said that since the state and federal government have made illegal “a wide range of Constitutionally protected components of speech and expression,” “I must break the law in order to tell the truth. Because I’m hired to tell the truth, and because I’m much more committed to the truth than to the law, I break the law. This means I am expecting to be arrested in front of a classroom any day, for actions that are illegal only as a result of the right-wing fad of the most recent decade.”

Nearly three in four, 71%, of faculty in Florida who were surveyed said they would not encourage a graduate student to seek employment in Florida.

“I am going to take early retirement despite a great job and salary. The threats are real and I am exhausted, between fighting this and fighting AI and poorly prepared, lazy, unethical students,” a tenured professor at a four-year public university wrote.

Higher education funding cuts have been the subject of nationwide political debate, including Florida State University reporting that it lost $100 million in federal grants, although $83 million of that has since been reinstated, the school’s president said last week.

About one-in-10, 11%, said they have had a federal contract ended by the Trump administration.

“The loss of vital federal grants has removed opportunities from me and my colleagues,” one professor wrote. “Attacks on LGBTQ students, immigrants, and diversity have also made it difficult to recruit promising graduate students or to guarantee their health and safety. Florida colleges being forced to remove diversity languages has destroyed years of valuable work, overturned an incredible general education curriculum, taken power and governance away from faculty, and wasted a lot of valuable time.”

Tenure troubles

Since 2023, professors in Florida with tenure have been subject to post-tenure review, graded on standards crafted by university trustees relating to research performance, teaching, service, and compliance with state laws and university policies.

Of the nearly-one-third who recently applied for an out-of-state job, tenure and DEI issues, academic freedom, the political climate, and cost of living were among the most common concerns.

Respondents said the number of applications for coworkers’ positions, as well as the quality of applicants, have decreased.

“Our department is trying to improve, but we have had several failed searches in recent years because candidates don’t want to move to Florida because of the broad political climate and the fact that tenure protections functionally no longer exist here,” a tenured public university professor said.

Some faculty said they have not experienced problems with “attacks on higher education,” one stating, “I haven’t felt any — Florida is great!.” Another said, “They’re not, and freedom in the classroom still persists, and I am at a public university in… wait for it… FLORIDA…”

“I find that I’m having to spend more time explaining to students why they need to use evidence to support their views and why clear arguments are important,” a professor at a private institution wrote.

One professor complained that “our board of trustees stacked with heritage foundation members, our president was forced out and replaced by a republican politician.” Course materials face heightened scrutiny, this professor added.

“The climate of persecution, retaliation, and ideological imposition makes it impossible to teach my discipline accurately or well without opening oneself to disciplinary measures,” that professor said. “While New College got a lot of headlines, similar invasions of public universities are happening with no national press, leaving those of us who work here isolated and vulnerable to attack.”

‘Academic freedom is on life support,’ say professors surveyed on tenure, censorship

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Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a shake-up of the University of West Florida Board of Trustees in a more conservative light earlier this year and that institution is now led by a former GOP lawmaker.

Results for the survey were collected throughout August and more than 60% of respondents said they are tenured. Last year’s iteration of the survey featured responses from about 350 Florida professors.

“There is a lower threshold of critical thinking because everyone is fearful about what is ‘allowed’ vs. ‘banned’ by law. The fear and the self-censorship is widespread. Our administration, now saddled with a governor-imposed, unqualified hire as a President, is understandably more cautious rather than vocal about protecting academic freedom,” one professor wrote.

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Behind Trump's latest purge — and why MAGA's no longer pretending

Thom Hartmann August 22, 2025

In his novel 1984, George Orwell warned, “Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future.” Today, Donald Trump and the GOP have weaponized that prophecy, twisting it into the foundation of their crusade to Make America White Again.

What they are building is not a political movement but a parallel nation — a MAGAstan — where loyalty oaths replace truth, history is scrubbed clean of slavery and racism, and authoritarian obedience is demanded in the name of patriotism.

This is America’s homegrown Taliban, and they’re no longer pretending to hide their intentions.

When the Oklahoma Department of Education rolled out its new “America First” MAGA certification exam for teachers, designed with the help of a rightwing propaganda outlet, it wasn’t about improving education. It was about making sure that any teacher who dares to acknowledge the realities of race, gender, or American history is shut out of the profession.

Applicants from California or New York now must take a test that appears to demand perfect answers on questions about civics, chromosomes, religion, and so-called gender ideology. It’s not an exam, it’s a political loyalty test, and it fits neatly into the larger pattern we are seeing in Republican politics today. They aren’t hiding their racism or misogyny anymore. They’re reveling in it.

That reality was underscored by Trump’s latest tantrum against the Smithsonian and other museums. On his Nazi-infested social media platform, Trump complained that our museums are “out of control” because they talk about “how bad slavery was,” racism, and the struggles of the downtrodden. He whined that there is “nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future”

What he really means is that America should stop teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and ongoing systemic racism and instead return to a whitewashed myth of national greatness that erases Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized voices.

His words are a plain translation of the GOP’s broader war on what they call “woke.” Being “anti-woke” is just a thinly veiled way of saying, “We’re okay with racism and misogyny.”

And Trump is the perfect avatar for this reinvention of the Confederacy, as I detail in my newest book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink.

Trump’s and his GOP’s pro-racism neofascist purges go far beyond education and museums; they’ve also gone after the federal workforce with a vengeance. They canceled the government’s annual employee survey, gutted DEI programs across every agency, and are mass-firing federal workers, particularly in agencies that employ large numbers of Black women.

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency — run by a Nazi-saluting white South African immigrant — put more than a quarter of a million jobs on the chopping block, devastating communities where civil service has long been the pathway into the middle class.

Black Americans, particularly Black women, have disproportionately relied on those jobs for stability and upward mobility. Taking them away isn’t about saving taxpayer money: it’s a targeted attack, designed to roll back decades of progress.

At the same time, groups aligned with Trump are publishing watchlists of federal workers they call “subversives,” lists overwhelmingly filled with women and people of color. Those people are now being hounded, relocated, or forced out altogether.

Senior women and Black leaders in the military are being fired or pushed into retirement. Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, NATO’s only woman on its military committee, was removed. Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, who had led military healthcare, was forced to resign after 32 years of service.

These purges are political, not professional. They’re designed to restore the military to a largely all-white, all-male leadership structure. And at the same time, Trump and his enablers are working to rename bases after Confederate generals and restore monuments dedicated to traitors who fought against democracy to preserve slavery.

And now Trump is claiming — against the statistics — that crime in Washington, DC is “out of control.” This is Nixon’s Southern Strategy — blame crime on Black people while turning the country into a police state — on steroids.

Racism is the thread that ties all of this together.

When five Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Republicans wasted no time enacting voter suppression laws that disproportionately disenfranchised Black voters. When Republicans on the Court blessed partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, Republican-controlled states immediately redrew maps to diminish the power of Black communities.

This is about keeping power in the hands of white conservatives, no matter the cost to democracy.

And the cruelty isn’t limited to our own citizens. The Trump administration has begun deporting Afghan translators who risked their lives working alongside American troops, even as they continue to apply for legal protection through Special Immigrant Visa programs. ICE agents recently detained one such interpreter — someone who had helped U.S. soldiers survive the war — because the new GOP priority is to get as many brown people out of the country as possible.

This is not patriotism. It’s ethnic cleansing by bureaucracy.

I used to believe that maybe 20 percent of white Americans were openly racist. That was based on my experience growing up and on the way racism was often hidden behind polite code.

But looking at today’s voting patterns, at the cheering crowds for Trump’s open bigotry, it seems more like 55 to 60 percent. When a majority of white voters willingly support a party that strips voting rights from Black citizens, erases slavery from classrooms and museums, fires Black leaders from government, and deports brown allies, that’s not a fringe problem. That’s a national crisis.

This kind of “othering” of racial and gender minorities is a classic hallmark of fascism. It’s what we saw in Germany in the 1930s and what Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin are doing in Hungary and Russia today. You dehumanize groups of people, define them as enemies of the state, and then strip away their rights until they no longer have the power to resist.

Trump and the GOP are running this playbook right out in the open. And far too many in the media are still treating “anti-woke” rhetoric as a culture-war issue instead of what it really is: a naked declaration of racism, misogyny, and authoritarian intent.

Democrats and people of good conscience cannot let this language go unchallenged.

Every time Republicans sneer about “woke,” it should be called what it is: they’re defending racism and misogyny. They’re trying to drag us back into a world where straight white men hold all the power and everyone else is erased. This is not just an ideological disagreement. It is an attack on the very idea of equality and democracy.

Woke people must stop playing defense and start organizing. We need mass mobilizations — marches, protests, and direct action — to show that Americans will not tolerate a return to white supremacy dressed up as patriotism.

We need to pressure Democrats to go on offense, to stop using mealy-mouthed language and start telling the truth: the GOP is running on racism, period.

And we need to demand that the media stop laundering Republican talking points and call out this agenda for what it is: a fascist project to make racism great again.

The stakes are nothing less than the future of American democracy. If we fail to rise to this challenge, they won’t just win the next election; they’ll win the power to define who counts as an American, whose stories matter, and who has a right to belong.

This is the GOP’s vision of MAGAstan: a land where truth is outlawed, history is erased, dissent is punished, and democracy is reduced to a hollow slogan.

It’s not conservatism. It’s not patriotism. It is the same naked pursuit of power through racism, misogyny, and authoritarian rule that we’ve seen in one country after another throughout history.

And here’s the brutal truth: they’re telling us exactly who they are and exactly what kind of dictatorship they want.

The only question left is whether the rest of us will stand by in silence while America is dragged into its darkest chapter or whether we will rise up, speak out, and refuse to let our country become the authoritarian nightmare Trump and the GOP are building in plain sight.

NOW READ: Trump just crossed a line no other president ever dared to

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LEGAL/JUDICIAL SUPPRESSION?

NOTE COTTON CORNYN SIC FBI ON THEM; REPS LOCKED IN BLDG, DOGGED BY DPS TO GO TO CVS FOR TOOTHBRUSH, PERMISSION SLIPS LIKE hs

AN 8 25

One Democratic state representative in Texas speaking out against the Republican effort to redraw congressional district boundaries was just threatened with a felony charge for speaking to journalists.

That's according to a Wednesday article in the Houston Chronicle, which reported that Rep. Nicole Collier (D) had to abruptly end a press conference she joined from a bathroom at the Texas State Capitol. A video of the moment posted to X shows Collier being interrupted mid-speech while on a Democratic National Committee video stream with California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) while speaking to police.

"Sorry, I have to leave. They said it's a felony for me to do this," Collier said. "Apparently I can't be on the floor or in the bathroom — well, you told me I had to be here in the bathroom — no, hang on. Bye, everybody. I've gotta go."

READ MORE:'Baby out with the bathwater': Red state Trump voters speaking out against this key policy

After Collier left the call, Sen. Booker called it "outrageous" that the Texas Democrat was being forced to stop talking to the media.

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"First of all, let me tell you something. Representative Collier in the bathroom has more dignity than Donald Trump in the Oval Office," Booker said. "...What they're trying to do right there is silence an American leader. Silence a Black woman. And that is outrageous. I hope everybody took note of that."

"The fact that she can't even let her voice be heard is freakin' outrageous. And this is what we're fighting for," he continued. "This is ultimately what this is about. What we just witnessed: Them trying to shut her down and say it's illegal for her to be in the bathroom and on this call? This is the lengths that they're going to in Texas."

Watch the video of the moment below, or byclicking this link.

READ MORE:Aides sat 'helpless' as 'incoherent' Trump

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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller lashed out at Washington, D.C. residents protesting President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department and his deployment of more than a thousand federal agents — including FBI, DEA, DHS, ATF, and ICE — to patrol the Capital’s streets. In striking remarks, Miller cast the demonstrators as white and the victims of crime as Black. His charges conflict with a new survey just released that shows the vast majority of D.C. residents oppose the Trump administration’s takeover and feel safe in their neighborhoods.

Miller told reporters that the people protesting the Trump administration’s federal takeover of the city’s streets are “elderly white hippies,” “stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old,” and, “crazy communists” who “have no roots, they have no connections to the city, they have no families they are raising in this city, they have no one that they are sending to school in this city, they have no jobs in this city, they have no connections to this community at all.”

Those people, Miller alleged, are “the ones who’ve been advocating for the one percent: the criminals, the killers, the rapists, the drug dealers.”

READ MORE: Trump’s Border Wall to Get $500M+ ‘Hot’ Makeover Experts Say Won’t Work

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Whereas, Miller claimed, “residents who lived in Washington, D.C. their entire lives, their parents lived here, their grandparents lived here, and they have lived for generations in intolerable conditions of crime and decay.”

“There are hundreds of residents of this city who are shot in street violence every single year, making [it] one the most violent cities on planet Earth,” he claimed, which is not supported by evidence.

“And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C are Black,” Miller alleged, inaccurately. About 43 percent of D.C.’s residents are Black.

“This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens, for generations,” he claimed. “And President Trump is the one who is fixing that with the support of the Metropolitan Police Department to support the National Guard and our federal law enforcement officers.”

“So we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.,” Miller said.

READ MORE: ‘They Want Control’: Pirro Slammed for Ending D.C. Rifle Law Enforcement

A damning Washington Post poll released Wednesday, however, found 79 percent of D.C. residents oppose Trump’s decision to take over the Metropolitan Police, and to deploy National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents onto D.C. city streets.

“On Monday, Trump said Washington had been ‘the most unsafe place anywhere,’ but 78 percent of residents say they feel very or somewhat safe in their neighborhoods,” the Post reported.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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When people use the term “Orwellian,” it’s not a good sign.

It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power.

It’s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past.

In his second term, President Donald Trump has revealed his ambitions to rewrite America’s official history to, in the words of the Organization of American Historians, “reflect a glorified narrative … while suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups.”

This ambition was manifested in efforts by the Department of Education to eradicate a “DEI agenda” from school curricula. It also included a high-profile assault on what detractors saw as “woke” universities, which culminated in Columbia University’s agreement to submit to a review of the faculty and curriculum of its Middle Eastern Studies department, with the aim of eradicating alleged pro-Palestinian bias.

Now, the administration has shifted its sights from formal educational institutions to one of the key sites of public history-making: the Smithsonian, a collection of 21 museums, the National Zoo and associated research centers, principally centered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

On Aug. 12, 2025, the Smithsonian’s director, Lonnie Bunch III, received a letter from the White House announcing its intent to carry out a systematic review of the institution’s holdings and exhibitions in the advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

The review’s stated aim is to ensure that museum content adequately reflects “Americanism” through a commitment to “celebrate American exceptionalism, [and] remove divisive or partisan narratives.”

On Aug. 19, 2025, Trump escalated his attack on the Smithsonian. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was…” he wrote in a Truth Social post. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen.”

Such ambitions may sound benign, but they are deeply Orwellian. Here’s how.

Winners write the history

Author George Orwell believed in objective, historical truth. Writing in 1946, he attributed his youthful desire to become an author in part to a “historical impulse,” or “the desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”

But while Orwell believed in the existence of an objective truth about history, he did not necessarily believe that truth would prevail.

Truth, Orwell recognized, was best served by free speech and dialogue. Yet absolute power, Orwell appreciated, allowed those who possessed it to silence or censor opposing narratives, quashing the possibility of productive dialogue about history that could ultimately allow truth to come out.

As Orwell wrote in “1984,” his final, dystopian novel, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Historian Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska has written about America’s bicentennial celebrations that took place in 1976. Then, she says, “Americans across the nation helped contribute to a pluralistic and inclusive commemoration … using it as a moment to question who had been left out of the legacies of the American Revolution, to tell more inclusive stories about the history of the United States.”

This was an example of the kind of productive dialogue encouraged in a free society. “By contrast,” writes Rymsza-Pawlowska, “the 250th is shaping up to be a top-down affair that advances a relatively narrow and celebratory idea of Americanism.” The newly announced Smithsonian review aims to purge counternarratives that challenge that celebratory idea.

The Ministry of Truth

The desire to eradicate counternarratives drives Winston Smith’s job at the ironically named Ministry of Truth in “1984.”

The novel is set in Oceania, a geographical entity covering North America and the British Isles and which governs much of the Global South.

Oceania is an absolute tyranny governed by Big Brother, the leader of a political party whose only goal is the perpetuation of its own power. In this society, truth is what Big Brother and the party say it is.

The regime imposes near total censorship so that not only dissident speech but subversive private reflection, or “thought crime,” is viciously prosecuted. In this way, it controls the present.

But it also controls the past. As the party’s protean policy evolves, Smith and his colleagues are tasked with systematically destroying any historical records that conflict with the current version of history. Smith literally disposes of artifacts of inexpedient history by throwing them down “memory holes,” where they are “wiped … out of existence and out of memory.”

At a key point in the novel, Smith recalls briefly holding on to a newspaper clipping that proved that an enemy of the regime had not actually committed the crime he had been accused of. Smith recognizes the power over the regime that this clipping gives him, but he simultaneously fears that power will make him a target. In the end, fear of retaliation leads him to drop the slip of newsprint down a memory hole.

The contemporary U.S. is a far cry from Orwell’s Oceania. Yet the Trump administration is doing its best to exert control over the present and the past.

Down the memory hole

Even before the Trump administration announced its review of the Smithsonian, officials in departments across government had taken unprecedented steps to rewrite the nation’s official history, attempting to purge parts of the historical narrative down Orwellian memory holes.

Comically, those efforts included the temporary removal from government websites of information about the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The plane was unwittingly caught up in a mass purge of references to “gay” and LGBTQ+ content on government websites.

Other erasures have included the deletion of content on government sites related to the life ofHarriet Tubman, the Maryland woman who escaped slavery and then played a pioneering role as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom.

Public outcry led to the restoration of most of the deleted content.

Over at the Smithsonian, which earlier in the year had been criticized by Trump for its “divisive, race-centered ideology,” staff removed a temporary placard with references to President Trump’s two impeachment trials from a display case on impeachment that formed part of the National Museum of American History exhibition on the American presidency. The references to Trump’s two impeachments were modified, with some details removed, in a newly installed placard in the updated display.

Responding to questions, the Smithsonian stated that the placard’s removal was not in response to political pressure: “The placard, which was meant to be a temporary addition to a 25-year-old exhibition, did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.”

Repressing thought

Orwell’s “1984” ends with an appendix on the history of “Newspeak,” Oceania’s official language, which, while it had not yet superseded “Oldspeak” or standard English, was rapidly gaining ground as both a written and spoken dialect.

According to the appendix, “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”

Orwell, as so often in his writing, makes the abstract theory concrete: “The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds.’ … political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.”

The goal of this language streamlining was total control over past, present and future.

If it is illegal to even speak of systemic racism, for example, let alone discuss its causes and possible remedies, it constrains the potential for, even prohibits, social change.

It has become a cliché that those who do not understand history are bound to repeat it.

As George Orwell appreciated, the correlate is that social and historical progress require an awareness of, and receptivity to, both historical fact and competing historical narratives.

*This story is an updated version of an article originally published on June 9, 2025.

*The Smithsonian is a member of The Conversation U.S.

Laura Beers, Professor of History, American University

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

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todd blanche ordered arrest of nj mayor

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New Republic reporter Timothy Noah said seven out of the ten top donors to the presidential race last year gave to Trump — and now their favored president is turning on them

“… The White House keep[ing] scorecards measuring the loyalty of 553 corporations to President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful reconciliation bill demonstrates that the relationship between private wealth and this presidential administration isn’t as happy as you might think,” said Noah.

Trump is certainly making corporations happy by “chucking health care for the poor so it can cut taxes for the rich,” said Noah, and he’s also “dismantling regulatory agencies created to check corporate power.” Trump lowering taxes and deregulation “are what oligarchs desire more than anything else,” Noah adds, which is why “people like Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, and Miriam Adelson supported Trump in 2024.”

READ MORE: 'Complete 180' and 'hot mic moment': Brutal CNN supercut reveals how Trump got played by Putin

However, “Trump’s pathological attachment to high tariffs, his never-ending threats to destabilize the Federal Reserve, and, increasingly, his demands that corporations bend the knee are all more than these plutocrats likely bargained for,” Noah said.

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Even as Trump dismantles regulatory agencies legitimately created by Congress, he is introducing a new, “more chaotic regulatory regime dictated by his own whims,” said Noah. “Trump appears intent on ripping up business regulations" and “replacing them with himself.”

Consider the president allowing chip-maker Nvidia to sell AI chips to China. Trump had previously blocked those sales on national security grounds, but Noah said Trump changed his mind and allowed sales, providing Nvidia turned over 15 percent of the resultant revenues to the United States Treasury.

The Constitution does not grant a president the right to demand Invidia surrender a portion of its revenues from Chinese sales to the U.S. Treasury, said Noah, “Nor does the Constitution encourage a president to tell Goldman Sachs to fire its chief economistor Intel to fire its chief executive."

READ MORE: buckle up: Former Trump attorney Alina Habba may be in office for awhile

And then there’s the issue of Trump approving the merger of Nippon and U.S. Steel — provided the federal government retain a “golden share” that allows it to veto certain future actions affecting workers. Language in that agreement refers unnecessarily to Trump by name,which strikes Noah as “unsettlingly authoritarian.”

And now comes the news that Trump has loyalty “scorecards” on corporations that rank their support as “strong, moderate, or low” based on whether and how they supported passage of the Big Beautiful Bill through “social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, ads, [or] attendance at White House events.” The most obedient companies, said Noah, appear to be AT&T, Airlines for America, Cisco, Delta, DoorDash, the Steel Manufacturers Association, Uber and United.

“[I]f history is any guide, businesses don’t fight fascist corporatism; they just grope their way toward accommodating it,” writes Noah. “That’s certainly what we’re seeing thus far. Even when Trump bullies American oligarchs, they can’t see their way to judging him anything other than their guy.”

Read the full New Republic report at this link.

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Trump's cult of loyalty breeds incompetence and corruption - Alternet.org

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'Authoritarian personality cult': MAGA lawmaker slammed for vying to 'give Trump a third term' - Alternet.org

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Salon Senior Writer Chauncey DeVega says President Donald Trump’s DC takeover is just Trump doing exactly what he’d planned to do all along.

“During the 2024 election, Donald Trump promised to be a dictator on ‘day one.’ Seven months after his return to power, he is earnestly expanding that promise,” writes DeVega.

Trump’s concerns about “law and order” in DC are “self-interested and wholly circumstantial,” said DeVega. He noted that Trump did not deploy the DC National Guard when an armed mob was laying siege to the U.S. Capitol in 2021 to try to help him hold on to power.

READ MORE: Trump's worst crimes and destructions haven't even happened yet

DeVega went on to write that, similar to other authoritarians, Trump is willing to manufacture statistics and public emergencies that do not exist. There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia, he writes. Violent crime in DC is at a 30-year low, and is down another 26 percent so far this year.

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But autocrats and demagogues use false claims of crime and disorder as pretexts to “declare a permanent state of emergency and to suspend the rule of law, along with civil rights and liberties," writes DeVega. Salon democracy expert Katherine Stewart called the tactic “one of the most frequently telegraphed stunts in the authoritarian canon.”

Trump’s war on the homeless and the poor is yet another example of an authoritarian at work, says DeVega, explaining that they are “human proof of how a government and its leaders have failed the people,” and they are “a form of narcissistic injury to an authoritarian who presents himself as being all-powerful and perfect.” He referenced Trump’s social media announcement of the DC takeover, in which he promised “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN!”

“Inconvenient” and “disposable” people must be removed or erased because “they are an affront to the Great Leader, the Party and the myth of national greatness,” says DeVega, adding it’s a category that “inevitably expands to include political ‘enemies.’”

READ MORE: 'Not plausible': Trump-appointed judge hands him major loss in court

DeVega added that simply “being American” may not be the antidote that political observers hope it will be.

Read DeVega's full Salon essay at this link.

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rww

08/12/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Michael Luciano @ Mediaite: After Trump Deploys National Guard in D.C., Jeanine Pirro Declares, ‘This Is Just the Beginning’

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said on Monday night that President Donald Trump is just getting warmed up when using federal agents and troops in Washington, D.C.

• Janna Brancolini @ The Daily Beast: Fuming Loomer Goes Nuclear on Marjorie Taylor Greene in All-Night Attack

The far-right influencer, who has the ear of President Trump, called the Georgia lawmaker a “lying fake Christian whore.”

• Michelle Goldberg @ The New York Times: A Right-Wing Influencer Tried to Be a Tradwife. It Almost Broke Her.

Being an antifeminist, it turns out, is no shield against abusive male power.

• Ben Makuch @ The Guardian: Trump stirs far-right rage despite FBI deprioritizing extremist threat

Donald Trump has faced an onslaught of criticism from opponents and Maga diehards alike, on issues such as Jeffrey Epstein, the war with Iran, and his steadfast alliance with Israel in the face of genocide. But among the ever dangerous far right, which has generally applauded Trump’s efforts to deport thousands of people a day, his actions of late have stirred rage among a group experts say has benefited greatly from his administration’s law-enforcement pivots.

• Tess Owen @ Wired: The Trump Administration Is Using Memes to Turn Mass Deportation Into One Big Joke

Memes shared by the White House, DHS, and ICE have used catchy TikTok tunes to normalize mass deportation and Christian nationalist narratives. Experts say that’s the point.

• Jemar Tisby: Douglas Wilson’s Theology Predicted Today’s Politics

What happens in politics is downstream of what happens in the church.

• Dan McClellan: Responding to Frank Turek & Charlie Kirk slavery BS

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RWW

08/11/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Devin Dwyer @ ABC News: Supreme Court formally asked to overturn landmark same-sex marriage ruling

Ten years after the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same-sex couples nationwide, the justices this fall will consider for the first time whether to take up a case that explicitly asks them to overturn that decision.

• Katie Francis @ The Daily Beast: Laura Loomer Stuns MAGA Vets With ‘Despicable’ Rant Against Medal of Honor Recipient

Republicans raged against the conspiracy theorist after she targeted a former U.S. Army captain.

• J.D. Wolf @ MeidasTouch Network: GOP Oversight Member Suggests Smithsonian Hiding Bones of Giants

In June, Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican serving on the House Oversight Committee, appeared on BlazeTV’s Prime Time with Alex Stein, where he discussed his belief that giants once existed. Burlison told Stein he was scheduled to be at “NephCon 2025,” a conference focused on fringe topics including the biblical Nephilim —figures in Genesis that some interpret as the giant offspring of angels and human women.

• Ian Word @ Politico: The Online Right’s Favorite Nativist Slogan Is Gaining Traction in the Real World

Daniel Boone, burial plots and no birthright citizen: Welcome to the MAGA world of “Heritage America.”

• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Trump to deploy the National Guard to D.C., place local police under federal control

If crime rates in the nation’s capital are already at their lowest levels in decades, why is the White House launching yet another power grab?

• David Edwards @ Raw Story: 'Roll in the tanks!' Charlie Kirk goes full fascist in support of Trump's DC takeover

MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk encouraged President Donald Trump to deploy tanks and Marines onto the streets of Washington, D.C.

• Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling @ The New Republic: Trump Warns Fascist D.C. Takeover Is Just the Beginning

Donald Trump has seized control of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.

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Bonhoffer.tv - resist

dublin jial shut dn for bad conds; not so many arrests in BA

million marg okuzumi sp bruce Hahne 8/11/25

www.nokings.org/rise indiv

jrnl charge felony rioting; 50?

uk tourist leaving arested/jailed eliz? burke?

loomer 65 mill gator meals

ice raid church ~ lawsuits

doj sys no birthrt cit nat am

= 1937 germany

slave labor “owner responsibility” ~ snyder ceo pledge

ct ruled nj cd not block pvt prisons

gaza tech thermal drone, fac recog, unlock phone

doj wants state voter rolls

bias monitors in media corps?

martial law DC

anti slav soc 1k chaps 150k ppl = 1% of pop

Bonhoffer.tv - teslatakedown

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SEN ALEX PADILLA FLOOR HANDCUFF AT PRESS CONF NOEM, nyc comptroller

NOEM SAID PURPOSE OF NG USMC WAS LIBERATE FROM SOCIALIST GOV

TRUMP FLA SHERIFF PROTEST MET W/ VIOLENCE 6 25

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MMA

August 11, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): This is President Donald Trump saying once we liberate DC — and by the way, I guarantee the crime's gonna go whoop. It's gonna go way down.

And then the media will say, oh, it's only going down because he brought in the military. Exactly. We need full military occupation of these cities until the crime desists. Period.

We need a desisting of crime in our cities. We're not gooing to put up with it. I want to be able to walk Magnificent Mile in Chicago without having to look over my shoulder. Do you know crime is so bad in Chicago that if you get a fender bender — there's a new thing that the youths are doing. Remember, we have a big teenage problem of crime in our country, that teenagers will bang the back of your car as a fender bender. You come out to go trade insurance, and then they steal your car. In Chicago, the new guidance is that if you get a fender bender, drive to the nearest police station to trade insurance just in case they're there to steal your car. It's a real thing. It's happening all the time. By the way, get a burner. We advertise it all the time here on our program.

I don't want to live in that country. You shouldn't either. Simple fix. You steal a car, 25 years in prison. I don't care if you're a teenager. I don't care if — well, I was raised without a dad. Well, you're going to go meet a new dad in jail. We're done. We're not putting up with it. We need more prisons, and we need more prisoners.

:{:{Enough of this — and I honestly you know, I was once part of this whole prison reform thing. I look back at it, and I just cringe at myself. It's a totally wrong premise. We are soft on crime in this country. We need discipline. We need — honestly, we need the humiliation of criminals. We need order. You don't live in a nation if you can't walk the streets of San Francisco at night. You don't live in a country when young teenage girls can't walk the streets of LA. How is that a free society? You are appeasing the criminals.}:

Stop coddling criminals because they happen to be a protected class. We don't believe in protected classes anymore, by the way. We're done with that. Game over. No more protected classes. We are all citizens made in the image of God. Oh, you're protected class because, you know, different skin color. Wrong. That regime was defeated back in November. That whole worldview was gone. Over. Done. Kaput. Sayonara. Instead, a new worldview has ascended, which is we're not going to make accommodations for criminals. We're going through mass deportations. If you're Black and commit a crime, you go to jail. If you're white and you commit a crime, you go to jail. Human equality, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter your background. We are all treated equal under the law, and that is a biblical principle.}:

So once we liberate Washington DC, and we will liberate it. Now, again, I want to say, President Donald Trump, he's gotta go play to win here. The one piece of caution we'd have to say is that if we just kind of do this symbolically, we will lose. The criminals will win. We got to go hard. We gotta go big league. We're talking national guard, tanks — every street, you need military.

And if people are afraid, oh, well, Donald Trump is a fascist because he's bringing the military. Well, you're an anarchist. We're not fascist. We're order. Call them a name right back. You're an anarchist. You want the criminals, the thugs, the gang members, and the worst of society to run the streets of DC. We're not going to put up with it.

By the way, spare me the lecture. You guys militarized Washington DC after January 6, but you wouldn't move them a couple blocks north to the criminals because you acted as if, oh, all the people in on January 6 are the greatest threat ever because they went in with a pocket Constitution to go say a prayer in the US Capitol. Once we liberate DC, you better believe it — Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco. We got a big military. We should be willing to use it.

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https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/yale-history-professor-torches-trump-s-political-war-on-american-history-244558405971

mSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, historian, and Yale University professor David Blight who is calling out Donald Trump's attacks on the facts of U.S. history and the flawed scholarship of Kevin Roberts of the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, who is behind Project 2025 that is seemingly guiding many of the Trump administration's actions.

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AN 8 25

NO LNX

The one big reason why most Republicans are acting irrationally — without consequences

Sarah Davis of Lincoln, Nebraska, shouts after asking U.S. Representative Mike Flood (R-NE) a question during a town hall in Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S., August 4, 2025. REUTERS/Scott Morgan

John Stoehr A ugust 07, 2025

If you consume mainstream news, you might think the Republicans are in trouble ahead of next year’s congressional elections. In a recent report by CNN, for instance, Republican Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska is met with a barrage of boos and jeers at a town hall.

They should be in trouble. Though the president’s policy agenda is dramatically unpopular, Flood and the Republicans have gone along with him. Donald Trump’s net approval is now -15 percent, according to the latest numbers by The Economist, with 55 percent disapproving. Gallup’s are worse. His rating among independent voters is 29 percent.

You’d think a congressman like Mike Flood, who represents a district that’s evenly split, would at the very least pretend to be contrite, knowing that being on the good side of voters is the key to remaining in office. You’d think he would behave like he knows he’s in trouble.

But he’s not. In that CNN report, Flood gives the impression that the opinions of his constituents, whose outrage is abundantly clear, are immaterial to his goal of staying in power – which is to say, he’s behaving as if he has no fear of democracy holding him accountable.

In that, he’s following the president’s lead. In a recent CNBC interview, as Joe Walsh put it, Trump said that “won the 2020 election (he didn’t). He has a 71 percent approval rating (he doesn’t). The jobs numbers were rigged (they weren’t). I could say something funny here, but I won’t. It’s just so damn dangerous to have him in the White House.”

In the same interview, Trump said he would “probably not” run for office again, understanding full well that the Constitution limits presidents to two terms, whether or not those terms are consecutive.

Walsh is often right, but here he’s doubly so. It’s so damn dangerous when a president and his party act like democracy doesn’t matter.

In 2009, after they passed into law the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama and the Democrats faced the prospect of a wipeout in the following year’s midterms. The law started out unpopular and grew more unpopular by the day. But they didn’t try to change the rules of democracy to avoid the consequences of their choices, even though the consequences were catastrophic. The Democrats lost 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate. Obama’s presidency never recovered.

Donald Trump and the Republicans, however, are trying to change the rules of democracy to avoid the consequences of their choices. I don’t think there’s any one source of disapproval, like the ACA used to be for the Democrats. Instead, public ire seems to have multiple layers, with the deepest being the gigantic sales tax, in the form of tariffs, that the president has unilaterally imposed on everyone. And Trump knows it. That’s why, in anticipation of a wipeout, he asked legislators in Texas to redraw its congressional districts to give his party five more seats.

This should be damning. And the Republicans should be running from the idea, in the same way that some Democrats ran from Obamacare. But most are doubling down. Texas is going to try gerrymandering its districts to give Trump the advantage, as likely will any state controlled by the GOP that has at least one big blue city in it. (Perhaps this is why Mike Flood can shout down constituents with impunity. Nebraska Republicans could choose to redraw his district to ensure reelection.)

But the Republicans are doing more than changing the rules of democracy. They are creating the conditions for criminalizing it.

Democratic legislators in Texas left the state to deny a quorum for Republican efforts to redraw its congressional districts. The state’s attorney general declared the move illegal. The state’s governor ordered state law enforcement agencies to arrest and return them. Texas has no jurisdiction in Illinois, where some Texas Democrats decamped, but that didn’t stop vigilantes from issuing bomb threats.

This is in addition to the Justice Department opening an investigation into alleged tampering of the 2016 election by Barack Obama and his administration. (The allegations are completely imaginary.) There is, moreover, the fact that two Democrats have been arrested and are pending trial; two Democrats were manhandled and arrested; one Democrat was assassinated; not to mention the president ordering the (short-lived) military occupation of the city of Los Angeles. More recently, three House Democrats were “in essence, incarcerated,” after a masked ICE agent locked them in a room at a detention center.

The goal is silencing dissent, and elected Democrats are not the only targets. All of us are. Even as Trump and the GOP do things that make people angry – like taking away their food money, taking away their vaccines, taking away their jobs, all while forcing them to pay more and more for the essentials of life – people can’t vent their anger.

The heart of democracy is our ability to petition the government for a redress of grievances. But the Republicans are creating conditions nationally, after having done so locally, in which that’s not possible.

They are either gerrymandering voters out of existence, their judges are narrowing the right to vote to the point of extinction, or they are preparing to prosecute people for their opinions. At the rate we’re going, it won’t be long before being a liberal is a criminal offense.

The only Republicans acting rationally are those who represent districts in blue states. “What Texas is doing is wrong and I’m opposed to it,” New York Congressman Mike Lawler told Politico, adding that “he’s sponsoring a bill with fellow blue state Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley of California that would ban gerrymandering nationwide.”

But they are only acting rationally, because their party cannot change the rules of democracy to avoid being held accountable by their constituents for their choices. Blue states like New York and California are now considering redrawing their congressional maps in reaction to potential moves by Texas, Florida and others to do the same. In other words, blue-state Republicans have an immediate incentive to behave themselves while the rest of the GOP, including its leader, does not.

That fact alone should be damning.

NOW READ: 'Really strange vibe': Visitors to bizarre Island say 'skeevy' Epstein gave them the creeps

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an 8 25

What could possibly go wrong?' Outrage as Trump admin recruits teens to join 'the Gestapo'

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AN 8 25

FASCISM

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has agreed to a request from U.S. Senator John Cornyn to locate the Texas Democratic state lawmakers who exited the state in an effort to deny Republicans a quorum—part of a broader attempt to block Governor Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump’s push to redraw congressional maps and boost GOP-held House seats, the Texas Republican announced Thursday.

“We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Senator Cornyn said in a statement that referred to the Texas Democrats as “supposed lawmakers.”

Axios reported that “Texas issued civil warrants for the Democratic lawmakers, but local law enforcement can’t make arrests outside the state.”

The Texas Democrats are in Illinois, according to that state’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker.

READ MORE: Governor Wants Maps to Reflect State’s ‘Christian Conservative Majority’ Says GOP Lawmaker

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Legal and political experts are blasting the move.

“There’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation. None,” Governor Pritzker Jessica Yellin on Wednesday, according to Axios.

“The key question here is on what grounds would the FBI be doing this,” wrote MSNBC Justice and Intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian. “What is the crime they are investigating? The FBI can’t just use its vast surveillance powers to locate random citizens. In fact, that’s what conservatives have long been so concerned about re FISA authorities.”

“This is a patently unlawful, unconstitutional abuse of federal power,” constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis said on Thursday.

READ MORE: Trump Revives Constitutionally Conflicting Census Overhaul Plan

“We are in a deeply dangerous, illiberal place in America when the federal government will deploy law enforcement to force state legislators to act on legislation that’s contrary to their conscience and an attempt to undermine free elections,” Kreis added.

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, addressed Senator Cornyn: “John, I understand your need to tilt crazy right to counter your lunatic primary challenger. But calling on the FBI to act illegally and wrongly to go after Texas Democrats is beneath you, and simply shameful. You used to believe in the law and the Constitution.”

Asking what “criminal interest” the FBI could have in this, U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) called it “yet another disgusting partisan abuse of power by the FBI,” and said that “any agent asked to assist should refuse to do so.”

Watch video of Governor Pritzker below or at this link.

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AN 8 25

The ironic term "Good Germans" is used to describe Germans who, during the 1930s and 1940s, didn't actively support Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime but looked the other way and downplayed or ignored the atrocities that were taking place. Often, "Good Germans" would argue that sure, Hitler is brash, but his opponents are overreacting to his inflammatory speeches.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega, in an article published on July 18, fears that in 2025, too many "Good Americans" — not unlike the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and 1940s — are downplaying the most disturbing parts of Donald Trump's second presidency.

"I have studied accounts from people who lived through authoritarian and fascist regimes in places like Chile, Argentina and Germany," DeVega warns. "One of the common threads is how citizens compromised their ethics and, in the end, were stained in ways both large and small. For some, this took the form of actively working with the regime against their family, friends and neighbors. They raised high the banner of patriotism! Law and order! The Dear Leader is always right! Other denizens chose denial and willful ignorance, turning inward to a fantasyland where, somehow, everything was normal, even when it was not."

READ MORE: 'People are going to be shocked': Backlash predicted for GOP as disaster looms

DeVega continues, "Those 'Good Germans.' How could they ever do such things? We 'Good Americans' will, in all probability, not be much different."

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Americans, DeVega laments, "are being intentionally spun out of control by Trump and the larger right-wing anti-democracy movement."

"These last few weeks have seen Trump's reign as a wannabe king and aspiring dictator made even more secure by a series of decisions by the right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court, who have neutered the ability of the federal courts to slow down the (Trump) Administration's assaults on the rule of law and democracy," DeVega observes. "In violation of decades — and centuries — of norms and precedents, Trump has expanded the use of the military and federalized National Guard as part of his mass deportation campaign. He is also claiming the right to nullify and generally ignore any law he does not agree with."

DeVega adds, "According to a recent whistleblower report, Justice Department official Emil Bove, who Trump has nominated for a federal judgeship, suggested telling courts that ruled against the (Trump) Administration 'f——— you' and then 'ignor(ing) their orders.' This is part of a much larger pattern where Trump, his staffers and other mouthpieces have argued he does not have to obey the Constitution and its protections for civil and human rights. The president and his agents are becoming even louder with their threats to arrest and imprison members of the Democratic Party for 'crimes.'"

READ MORE:'Worse by the day': Analyst reveals how Trump is rapidly losing backing of far-right media

Despite the massive No Kings Day protests of June 14, DeVega observes, the Trump Administration's "attempts to end multiracial pluralistic democracy" are "accelerating with little effective resistance from civil society or the mass public."

"To ignore these dimensions of our current national emergency is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the existential danger we are facing," DeVega explains. "To wit: Public opinion polls, focus groups and other data consistently show that the vertigo we are experiencing during this Age of Trump is getting worse…. Ultimately, Americans are quickly running out of time to stop our democracy and society from spinning out of control. However the Age of Trump may end, I fear it will show that too many Americans, along with their 'responsible' mainstream leaders and other elites, did not pay close attention when the flight crew told them about the escape doors and flotation devices."

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AN 7 25

According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures released on Friday, August 1, U.S. employment was at 4.2 percent in July. The U.S., according to economists, still isn't in a recession, but the BLS report was a disappointment in terms of job creation.

According to BLS data, "Among the unemployed, the number of new entrants increased by 275,000 in July to 985,000. New entrants are unemployed people who are looking for their first job…. In July, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 179,000 to 1.8 million. The long-term unemployed accounted for 24.9 percent of all unemployed people."

Trump responded angrily to the report, firing BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer and accusing her of "rigging" the data against him.

READ MORE: Donald Trump just debunked his own lie — and it should get him sued

In a sobering article published on August 5, Salon's Chauncey DeVega warns that thanks to "MAGA's culture of cruelty and gangster capitalism," Americans are likely to suffer economic pain in a variety of ways in the months ahead — from rising unemployment to inflation to a weakened safety net."

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"On Friday," DeVega explains, "the bleak economic figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the truth about what is happening in Donald Trump’s America…. Friday's numbers indicate the likelihood of stronger economic turbulence that would impact all of us, from the middle-class to the men I encountered on the street. They, and so many others like them, no longer have much of a social safety net. In an economy strangled by inflation, low wages and rising inequality, the number of homeless Americans will almost certainly grow."

DeVega continues, "The (Trump) Administration seems to be preparing for that possibility. In a grossly underreported story, on July 24, Trump signed an executive order designed to remove people from the streets, including institutionalizing or sending homeless people to mental health or addiction treatment without their consent, marking a policy shift away from 20 years of a housing-first approach."

To make matters worse, DeVega laments, millions of Americans are expected to lose their health insurance.

READ MORE: Trump official reminds the world that the US now has a 'national position' on a single word

"Based on all available evidence and historical precedent," DeVega warns, "the Big Ugly Bill, along with the (Trump) Administration's other cuts to the social safety net, looks likely to trigger a sharp rise in homelessness. The legislation strips away billions of dollars in food assistance. Nursing homes and end-of-life hospice care will face funding shortfalls. With the Big Ugly Bill’s cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, it has been estimated that nearly 12 million Americans will lose their health care. That number will likely rise: In 2026, more than 24 million Americans will see their premiums increase, with some facing spikes as high as 15 percent, according to the nonpartisan health policy and advocacy organization KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation."

DeVega argues that Trump's economic policies are designed to promote an "authoritarian" agenda.

"A healthy democracy depends on a humane society — and a robust social safety net. Autocrats and authoritarians know this," DeVega writes. "That’s why they attack and attempt to destroy social programs. They want to eliminate every possibility of a real social democracy to cement their rule forever. Donald Trump is well on his way."

READ MORE: 'Desperation': Nicolle Wallace says Trump’s been poked at 'his greatest political weakness'

*Chauncey DeVega's full Salon article is available at this link.

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7 25 note no f word but he got there

neoconservative writer Bill Kristol says President Donald Trump’s firing of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics over her department’s accurately reported numbers was moving the U.S. into “third world” territory.

“My alarm scale is pretty high,” Kristol told podcaster Tim Miller. “It’s been pretty high for quite a while, but it’s ticking higher.”

The furious president fired Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a dismal June jobs report showing only 73,000 new jobs added and downward revisions of more than 250,000 for April and May.

READ MORE: Donald Trump just debunked his own lie — and it should get him sued

“She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “… The Economy is BOOMING under “TRUMP.”

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Kristol said past presidents often spun bad numbers with claims that ‘it’s complicated” or "these adjustments are a little bigger than usual."

“That would’ve been a normal political reaction,” Kristol said. “But spin is not OK anymore. I guess we just have to have pure propaganda. You can’t report the facts if they run counter to the narrative of America First, that everything is fantastic, everything that Trump does has instantaneously great results and there will never be another disappointment or a down month in the economy as long as Trump is president.”

Read more: 'Uncle Sam owns it now': Michigan auto CEO says Trump 'roadblocks' could kill his company

“The numbers weren’t even outright recessionary,” added Kristol, but now Trump has amplified them to shake confidence in everything now coming out of the administration.

Miller called the firing a "don’t believe your lying eyes-authoritarian creep" and agreed that McEntarfer lost her job “because she reported the facts.” This will signal that nobody will now be able to take as truth any “facts” coming from the administration, whether it’s economic numbers or the details of a hurricane.

“The economy is based on trust and the belief that institutions will pay their bills, that the numbers they report will be accurate and there will not be a corrupt scheme that hyperinflates or deflates the value of the dollar,” said Miller. “This is the reason the U.S. has the world’s reserve currency, why the U.S. is still la trusted world harbor for investment for people around the world It is because our institutions are strong and legitimate. If you delegitimize our institutions that puts you on a path of having an economy that looks like Argentina.

Miller asked why anybody would invest in the U.S. if they suspect the government is going to put out “fake numbers to please the despot.”

READ MORE: Trump official reminds the world that the US now has a 'national position' on a single word

And it is to please the despot, said Kristol. The abrupt nature of the firing proved that.

“They want the intimidation. They want the sense that the whole government works for Donald Trump,” Kristol said, adding that the all caps “Trump” in Trump’s Truth Social post was “revealing.”

Hear the Bulwark podcast at this link.

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SEE PRESS SUPPR 1ST AMEND SULLIVAN COURTS 4

an 7 25

former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California) hasn't been shy about filing defamation lawsuits that many legal experts considered frivolous according to the standards outlined in U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan. In April 2023, U.S. District Court Judge C.J. Williams threw out a Nunes lawsuit against Esquire. And in 2020, Judge John Marshall ruled that Nunes couldn't sue two parody accounts on X, formerly Twitter (one of which was named Devin Nunes' Cow and mocked him from the perspective of a fictional cow).

Nunes also sued NBC/Universal in response to comments from top-rated host Rachel Maddow. But on Friday, August 1, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel dismissed that lawsuit, ruling that Nunes failed to show actual malice.

In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Warren Court ruled that libel has to involve actual malice — a ruling that, 61 years ago, countless journalists and legal experts hailed as a major victory for the First Amendment and freedom of the press.

READ MORE: Don't 'have any other choice': Outrage grows in the midwest as political crisis spirals

Castel's ruling is generating a lot of comments on X, formerly Twitter.

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Reuters Jonathan Landay noted that Nunes' lawsuit involved "a comment by Rachel Maddow about his dealings with a suspected Russian agent."

X user EJW commented, "Perpetual Loser Nunes — loses again."

Another X user, Sadie NYC, wrote, "Sucks to be you dude. Trump Media CEO Nunes loses defamation lawsuit over Rachel Maddow show."

READ MORE:'Middle-aged Manson girls': Far-right 'bloodthirsty' MAGA women mocked in scathing take-down

Politico's Josh Gerstein observed, "BREAKING: Judge tosses fmr Rep. Nunes' libel suit re MSNBC report on handling of package from Russia-linked legislator. Maddow & producer said they relied on POLITICO report suggesting Nunes sat on package, didn't see later 1 saying he gave it to FBI."

X user Bill Thatcher wrote, "@DevinNunes Such an insecure little weenie. Did she hurt your little feelings?! Devin, the continuing poster boy for thin-skin, low IQ, politically deaf white boys."

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an 7 25 fired labor stats

'Banana republic territory': Krugman says Trump's latest move follows dictator 'playbook'

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MMA

After Steve Bannon called for “a MAGA Republican” to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump fired its commissioner

Trump took this action following a weak jobs report with major downward revisions. Economists say this move will create mistrust about economic data.

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 08/01/25

On the August 1 edition of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, he and Heritage Foundation’s E.J. Antoni called for getting rid of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner following a weak July jobs report.

Hours later, President Donald Trump said and NBC News confirmed that he had fired BLS Commissioner Dr. Erika McEntarfer. Economists quickly spoke up about how this action, which would decrease confidence in economic data and seriously risk politicizing it outright, poses a grave threat to the entire American economy.

The BLS reported this morning that in July, only 73,000 jobs were created, and job creation in May and June were revised downward by a combined 258,000 jobs.

In response, Bannon claimed to be concerned about “whether we get accurate numbers” from the BLS, adding: “What in the hell is going on there? And have we put in our own person into BLS? Is a MAGA Republican, that President Trump knows and trusts, are they running the Bureau of Labor Statistics yet?” Antoni replied, “No, unfortunately, Steve, we still haven’t gotten there. And I think that’s part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems.” Antoni also talked up a previous BLS commissioner, and added: “He’s been replaced by someone who, frankly, I think is incompetent. And that shows with the fact that the problems in the statistics — that first became evident all the way back in the spring of 2022 — those problems are still there.”

Video

Citation

From the August 1, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Hours later, citing the July jobs report and a conspiracy theory about the BLS from the 2024 election cycle, Trump posted on Truth Social: “I was just informed that our Country’s ‘Jobs Numbers’ are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory. … I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.”

Economists reacted to Trump’s firing of the BLS commissioner by explaining that the revisions weren’t political, and that Trump could damage trust in the accuracy of economic statistics moving forward.

Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics for Yale’s Budget Lab, wrote: “Every economist who knows the 1st thing about labor data knows this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the challenges of real-time jobs estimation in the world's biggest economy.”

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Navy Federal chief economist and Washington Post columnist Heather Long wrote: “This is basically unprecedented and will raise concerns about US data integrity going forward.”

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Employ America executive director Skanda Amarnath wrote: “Even if nothing in BLS processes actually changes, public trust is permanently harmed when the BLS commissioner is fired after one bad jobs report. The optics are terrible and collective perception matters. So does reality.”

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MEF Associates senior research associate Matt Darling simply replied: “Banana Republic hours.”

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Some conservative economists also expressed alarm over Trump’s action.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jessica Riedl wrote: “Trump firing the BLS director for a bad jobs report - days after demanding the Smithsonian remove him from the list of impeached presidents - is banana republic stuff.” She added in a follow-up post: “Trump just ensured that we should not trust any government data coming out of his administration. Why should we trust data from agencies in which the director's job depends on altering any bad economic news? Any Republicans with a spine need to speak out.”

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American Enterprise Institute director of economic policy studies Michael R. Strain wrote: “Erika McEntarfer has devoted her career to public service. She has conducted herself as BLS Commissioner with great integrity. There is no evidence whatsoever that BLS data are politically biased. By incorrectly asserting that the data are biased, President Trump is undermining the integrity of the information that policymakers, businesses, households, and investors use to make important decisions that affect the welfare of the nation. It is imperative that decisionmakers understand that government statistics are unbiased and of the highest quality. By casting doubt on that, the President is damaging the United States.”

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NO LNX

This new capitulation to Trump is grotesque — and the most dangerous yet

Thom Hartmann July 31, 2025

The media’s job in a democratic society is to speak truth to power, not to suck up to it. But last week, CBS and its parent company Paramount waved the white flag, handing Donald Trump a $16 million bribe and agreeing to censor their own newsroom to curry favor with a twice-impeached, multiply-indicted rapist authoritarian who lost the popular vote twice.

That is not journalism. That’s capitulation. And it’s devastating to democracies.

The Paramount merger with Skydance should never have been a political issue. In normal times, regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) operate independently, applying laws without fear or favor. But these are not normal times.

Trump’s FCC — under the control of far-right ideologue Brendan Carr, who helped draft the fascism-friendly blueprint known as Project 2025 — made it clear they’d block the deal unless CBS “cleaned house.”

Carr even bragged on CNBC that the merger only went through because Skydance promised to remove “bias” from CBS News. By “bias,” of course, he means “truth.”

Trump and Carr appear to be demanding that CBS stop telling the truth about the GOP’s fascist drift, stop investigating corruption, and stop airing facts that make Trump and the MAGA movement look bad. And CBS didn’t just roll over: they cut a personal check to Trump for $16 million, reportedly threw in an equal amount in free advertising, canceled Stephen Colbert’s show to eliminate critical comedy, and agreed to install a literal “monitor” in their newsroom to hunt down and eliminate so-called “leftwing bias.”

This is not just grotesque. It’s dangerous.

Installing government-friendly “monitors” in newsrooms to silence dissent is one of the first things authoritarians do when they take power. It happened in Hungary under Viktor Orbán. It happened in Russia under Vladimir Putin. In Germany in the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler handed control of the media to Joseph Goebbels and banned reporting that contradicted Nazi talking points.

What Trump and Carr are doing is textbook fascism: co-opting the press, criminalizing dissent, and demanding personal loyalty above all else across both government and the media.

The problem, of course, is that reality has a well-known leftwing bias. That’s because reality, unlike rightwing ideology, is rooted in facts. For example:

Trickle-down economics has never helped the working class — it’s a scam to transfer wealth to the rich.

Immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes — they’re less likely.

Late-term abortions are rare and almost always involve severe fetal abnormalities or risks to the mother — women don’t “love getting abortions” or do so with little thought.

Unions raise wages and reduce inequality — they don’t “steal from workers.”

Climate change is real and accelerating, and fossil fuel companies and Republicans have known it — and spent billions to cover it up — for decades.

Renewable energy is cheaper than coal, gas, or oil in most of the world.

People on public assistance are usually not “lazy” but are either disabled, working or actively seeking work, or living in areas where there is no work.

Raising the minimum wage doesn’t increase unemployment — it boosts the economym, which increases employment.

Universal healthcare works in every other developed nation — it’s not “impossible” to implement here in America.

The U.S. was not founded as a Christian nation, but as a secular republic.

Yet when these facts and others become “too political” for CBS to air — when truth is treated as liberal bias — we’re in real trouble. If CBS can’t push back on obvious lies because it’s afraid of offending Trump’s FCC, how long before every newsroom falls in line?

This is exactly how freedom of the press — and then freedom for everybody — dies: not with a bang, but with a checkbook and a veiled threat. When media companies start self-censoring to avoid regulatory retribution, they become lapdogs, not watchdogs.

And Trump isn’t even trying to hide this. He’s bragging about it.

Last week, the White House even released a full-on tantrum of a statement attacking South Park for mocking Trump. The show dared to suggest that combining the powers of the presidency with lawsuits and bribes might be a bad thing for democracy. In response, Trump’s staff accused the show of being “irrelevant” and “desperate for attention.”

Can you name any other president in American history who issued a press release attacking a cartoon?

But Trump’s not just punching down with his words: he’s using the full weight of the federal government to go after anyone who defies him. He’s already targeted universities, law firms, prosecutors, and journalists with bogus DOJ investigations and regulatory harassment. Now he’s turned the FCC into his personal censorship bureau.

The bribes paid by CBS and ABC weren’t one-offs, they were the first installment in a classic protection racket.

That’s not America. That’s a mob state being run by a man who behaves like a mob boss.

So what do we do? First, we must stop pretending this is normal. It’s not. CBS didn’t make a “business decision,” they submitted to a political shakedown. And the rest of the media should not let them get away with it.

Second, we must speak out, loudly and relentlessly. Let CBS know that rolling over for a wannabe strongman is unacceptable. Tell your local stations you want truth, not Trump-approved propaganda. Support independent journalism and media outlets willing to tell the truth even when it’s unpopular. Subscribe. Donate. Amplify their work.

And finally, we need to get serious about defending our democracy. That means voting like our freedoms depend on it, because they do. It means rejecting candidates who would silence the press and stack the courts and install “monitors” in our newsrooms. It means recognizing authoritarianism when it’s right in front of us and calling it what it is. It means getting inside your local Democratic Party and fighting for real progressive change and the survival of our republic.

Trump has shown us, again and again, that he will use every lever of power to silence his critics and punish his enemies. Now he has the FCC and a major news network doing his bidding. If we stay silent now, we may not get another chance.

Democracy dies when people stop caring. Let’s prove that we still do.

NOW READ: 'You guys made this happen': Dems find a way to stick it to a furious GOP

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NOTE LEGACY MEDIA CNN NBC ~ OBAMA TRAITOR BS

As Trump struggles to deflect from reporting on his Epstein ties, MAGA media set their sights on the press

It’s getting really bad out there

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 07/23/25 MMA

Six months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, an unhinged MAGA media is infested with calls for the arrest of former President Barack Obama — and one prominent right-wing commentator is even floating legal consequences for journalists who debunk their twisted rationale.

On July 18, amid a Trump administration effort to stave off a MAGA revolt over its handling of disclosures related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents she claimed proved the existence of “a treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration following the 2016 election against Trump, claiming she had asked the Justice Department to investigate further. The president piled on in remarks to the press on July 22, claiming that “we caught Barack Hussein Obama” and accusing him of “treason.”

This argument is based on either malice or stupidity. Gabbard is conflating the findings of a December 2016 document showing that the intelligence community did not assess that the Russian government had hacked election systems and changed vote totals to benefit Trump with those of a January 2017 assessment that the Russian government had sought to influence the campaign to benefit Trump by, among other things, hacking Democratic email servers and releasing the contents.

Based on that faulty premise, Gabbard accused Obama and his advisers of subverting the intelligence community for political aims. But the December 2016 assessment is consistent with what the Obama administration was saying publicly at the time, while the findings of the January 2017 assessment were reiterated in Trump administration reports by the Justice Department as well as a Senate committee helmed at the time by current Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Indeed, that committee reviewed the January 2017 intelligence community analysis and concluded it was an “impressive accomplishment” that “reflects proper analytic tradecraft” and “provides a proper representation of the intelligence” and that the analysts who produced it faced “no politically motivated pressure.”

Members of the right-wing media ecosystem, with few exceptions, do not care about these facts, and they are using incredibly demagogic language to rile up their audiences as they call for political retribution.

Benny Johnson is floating a “military tribunal” for Obama; Mike Davis says the former president should “lawyer up”; Charlie Kirk wants “perp walks”; Liz Wheeler is demanding that the charges be not “perjury” but “treason”; Jesse Watters is asking a U.S. senator whether Obama should “go to prison.” They have apparently learned nothing from overpromising on Epstein only for the Trump administration to under-deliver when the facts couldn’t match the MAGA narrative.

Indeed, according to Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist and a Fox contributor, even typing the preceding paragraphs casting doubt on the validity of Gabbard’s argument should expose me to legal exposure. In a July 22 thread, she described Gabbard’s “revelations” as “the biggest scandal in our history” and condemned media outlets for “ignoring” and “downplaying” it.

“Every time the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Times, Margaret Brennan, The Atlantic, etc., lie and say this story is not a big deal, they are perpetuating their seditious conspiracy,” she added. “Creative minds should think about what legal exposure they have for their role in this.”

Hemingway went on to describe those outlets and journalists as “co-conspirators” in the alleged plot. She did not identify the legal consequences she believes they should face. Nor is it clear what this legal argument would mean for conservatives like her Fox colleague Andrew McCarthy or Eli Lake, who criticized Gabbard’s conclusions, or the right-wing outlets which published their assessments, Rich Lowry’s National Review and Bari Weiss’ The Free Press.

It should go without saying that the idea of “creative minds” dreaming up ways to punish journalists for producing reporting which contradicts the views of the president, his administration, and its propagandists is an affront to the First Amendment and basic principles of free speech and a free press.

Unfortunately, right-wing dreams of frog-marching journalists may not be far-fetched

We warned in December, after Trump campaigned on threats to jail reporters and pull the licenses of critical news outlets and won, that a coalition of elite right-wing figures were “using wealth, lawfare, and government power to silence the press and carry out their political agenda unimpeded.” And the last six months have demonstrated the president’s determination to use his power to bend the press to his will.

Trump has sought to put financial pressure on news outlets in order to chill speech critical of him. He filed lawsuits that experts found frivolous over reporting he disliked from ABC News and CBS News, then successfully leveraged the threat or use of corrupt regulatory actions to secure eight-figure settlements. He is currently pursuing similar lawsuits against the Pulitzer Prize Board, The Des Moines Register, and the corporate parents of The Wall Street Journal. The president has threatened additional lawsuits against The New York Times and CNN and called for the firings of their reporters.

Corporate owners of media outlets appear to be buckling to this pressure. “Executives at major media outlets are reportedly instructing their newsrooms to temper their coverage of President Trump and his administration amid growing fears of political retribution,” Axios reported in May. Indeed, Trump has gloated to reporters about the effectiveness of his strategy.

Beyond personal lawsuits, Trump has floated federal criminal investigations into news outlets over their reporting. That is no idle threat given his pattern of launching Justice Department probes into his political enemies via executive order and given the reality that the top ranks of federal law enforcement are stocked with people who are comfortable functioning as an extension of his personal desires.

Indeed, federal law enforcement officials appear more than willing to participate in Trump’s assault on the free press. His attorney general terminated rules which restricted prosecutors from seeking records and testimony from journalists as part of leak investigations. Several noncitizens have faced detention by the Department of Homeland Security over their public writing. And a former lawyer for January 6 defendants is running a DOJ “Weaponization Working Group” whose purpose appears to be weaponizing the government against Trump’s foes.

Trump’s diverse right-wing coalition and the fractured media ecosystem he unified during his campaign may be breaking apart over his handling of the Epstein case. But he seems to recognize that one thing that brings them together is their shared hatred of Democrats like Obama and the free press, and he’s been acting accordingly. And that means that just an eighth of the way through his second presidency, we’re already in very dangerous territory.

//

Trump’s latest attempt to defuse the Epstein revolt: Point supporters at common enemies

07/21/25 2:38 PM EDT

2. ### Misinformer of the Year: Anti-media intimidation

12/23/24 9:59 AM EST

3. ### Freedom of the press is about more than access

05/28/25

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AN 7 25

Progressive firebrand and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan recently debated "20 far-right Republicans" as part of the Jubilee series "Surrounded." One of them went way beyond identifying as conservative and admitted to being an outright "fascist."

When Hasan asked Connor, who goes by "Pinesap" online, if he considered himself a fascist, he replied, "Yeah, I am."

Connor also told Hasan he supports "autocracy" and said, "I, frankly, don't care being called a Nazi at all."

READ MORE:This White House lie shows they know Trump is in trouble

According to the Daily Beast's Ewan Palmer, Connor says he was fired from his job after publicly making those statements and "has launched a fundraising page on GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding site" that has "faced criticism for hosting extremist causes."

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On his GiveSendGo page, Connor writes, "I'm raising money as an emergency fund and for other expenses while I look for a new job. Unfortunately, voicing fully legal traditional right-wing political views results in real consequences. This is cancel culture and political discrimination on full display."

Connor's fundraising campaign is drawing a lot of responses on X, formerly Twitter.

Attorney Ari Cohn wrote, "The pathetic grifty crybabyness of 'I said I am a fascist and lost my job, give me money' is just wild. So f—————— soft. Have fun not getting any insurance/benefits from the government because you're too busy begging for handouts instead of applying for a new job, loser."

READ MORE:The implications of Rupert Murdoch toppling Donald Trump are head-spinning

X user Chris America mockingly posted, "OPer: I was fired for going on Jubilee and saying that I was a facist! My first amendment rights! Business: Thanks to the same GOP, we can fire you for any reason to protect ourselves. GOPer: The woke people did this to me! I need to raise money now! Grift. Grift. Grift."

X user Keith Edwards tweeted, "The literal fascist who got exposed on Jubilee has been fired from his job. Love that for him."

Edwards also wrote, "he doesn't believe in the First Amendment, so."

Another user Stanislav Birko posted, "This loser coming out as fascist on television thanks to Hasan and then raising more than 20 grand (seemingly in much less than a day) due to getting fired perfectly encapsulates the political moment we are living in."

X user Kennedy Pivnick wrote, "Ok but the actual answer is that unless he worked for the government or a company running a company town, no it isn't First Amendment stuff."

Similarly, Rob Braun posted, "First Amendment protects your right to free speech, he won’t be arrested or jailed. But most states are at will employment and can fire you for any reason they see fit."

READ MORE:'Frantic' Karoline Leavitt suggests new scapegoat to take the fall for Trump’s Epstein mess

*Watch the Mehdi Hasan video below or at this link.

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AN 7 25

The Trump regime’s battle with Harvard University will be aired in court today when a federal judge hears arguments in Harvard’s lawsuit challenging Trump’s attack on it.

At stake is not just $2.2 billion in grants for scientific research, but the larger question of whether Trump can impose his agenda on independent universities in America — forcing them to bring their admissions, disciplinary procedures, academic hiring, and curricula in line with his priorities.

With the Trump regime ramping up its attacks on colleges and universities across America — using the pretexts of “DEI,” antisemitism, and transgender athletes to undermine academic freedom — it would seem more important than ever for universities to join together to stop him.

There is strength in solidarity. If each college and university seeks only to protect itself, the dictator-in-chief can pick off one after another — as he’s trying to do with law firms, the media, judges, and every other institution of civil society.

Which brings me to Dartmouth College.

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I graduated from Dartmouth in 1968. It gave me a wonderful education. I was also a Dartmouth trustee in the 1980s when its president, James O. Freedman, who was Jewish, endured the antisemitic barbs of an ascendant right-wing student group that included such people as Laura Ingraham, Dinesh D’Souza, and Harmeet Dhillon.

Now, Dartmouth is headed by Sian Beilock, who has turned Dartmouth into a Trumpy academic outpost.

Beilock declined to join more than 600 other academic institutions —including all of Dartmouth’s Ivy League peers — in signing a letter in defense of Harvard, which proclaimed “one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.”

This March, as Trump escalated his threats against universities, Beilock hired the former top lawyer at the Republican National Committee, Matt Raymer, as the college’s general counsel. (Raymer is a Dartmouth alumnus who, as recently as January, argued in a conservative online publication called The Federalist that Trump was right about birthright citizenship.)

Around the time Beilock declined to sign the letter defending Harvard, Beilock met with Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s recently confirmed assistant attorney general for civil rights, who posted on X after their meeting: “I was so impressed to learn how Dartmouth (my alma mater) is getting it right, after all these years. Kudos to Dartmouth!”

In 1988, as editor of The Dartmouth Review, Dhillon became momentarily notorious for publishing a column depicting Dartmouth’s then president Freedman as Adolf Hitler under the headline “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Freedmann” — a play on a Nazi slogan, “One Empire, One People, One Leader,” but substituting and misspelling Freedman’s name for “Fuhrer.”

Using the analogy of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the column satirically described how “Der Freedmann” and his associates rid the campus of conservatives. The column referred to the “‘Final Solution’ of the Conservative Problem” and to “survivors” of the Dartmouth “holocaust” and described Dartmouth conservatives being “deported in cattle cars in the night.”

A drawing on the cover of the following issue, on October 26, also depicted Freedman, who had been critical of The Review, as Hitler.

As I said, I was a trustee of Dartmouth at the time. I saw up close how much Dhillon’s publication hurt Freedman. The student newspaper The Dartmouthtook The Reviewto task: “The column is anti-Semitic; its impact rings through this community today and will remain long after its publishers have completed their stints in Hanover.”

Several faculty members wrote to outside advisers of The Review, asking them to reconsider allowing their names to be associated with the publication. The regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, in Boston, condemned the column.

Now, twenty-seven years later, as assistant attorney general for civil rights, Dhillon is investigating most of the Ivy League for antisemitism. Notably, she is not investigating Dartmouth.

Dartmouth has so far avoided the sort of threats Trump has leveled against Harvard, which are being litigated today. In fact, Dartmouth is the only Ivy aside from Yale to escape targeted attacks to its funding.

Presumably that’s because Beilock has appeased Trump, at least for now.

This week’s New Yorker contains a piece by Rob Wolfe titled “How Dartmouth Became the Ivy League’s Switzerland.” I don’t think the analogy holds. Dartmouth isn’t like Switzerland, which stayed neutral in World War II. It’s more like Neville Chamberlain’s Great Britain just before the war, which sought to appease the tyrant.

As the world painfully learned, tyrants can’t be appeased. Tyrants view appeasement as weakness, and always want more.

Were it not for FDR’s United States and Winston Churchill’s Britain, Hitler might have won, and both Dartmouth and Harvard might now be teaching Nazi versions of history, science, and everything else.

Which is why Sian Beilock gets this week’s Neville Chamberlain award.

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NO LNX

The first victims of Trump's hit list

Thom Hartmann January 17, 2025

It may seem counter-intuitive, given that most people think of dictators as bad guys themselves, but the simple reality is that without proclaiming enemies — larger than life enemies — dictators have a hard time hanging onto power and accomplishing the things they want to do.

Hitler had Jews. Mussolini had the Italian Socialist Party. For Duterte it was drug dealers. Stalin vilified the “Kulaks” (wealthy peasants) as a threat to the Soviet Union. Mao blamed the bourgeoisie. Pol Pot said intellectuals were the enemy and so ordered everybody who could read killed. Idi Amin blamed Indians and Asians for the problems of Uganda. Robert Mugabe said white farmers were destroying Zimbabwe. Slobodan Milošević pointed to the Kosovo Albanians. Pinochet blamed the trade unions for Chile’s struggles.

Trump has flirted with condemning several different groups over the years, primarily using brown-skinned immigrants as his bogeymen, although the GOP has also vilified queer people, Black people, academics, journalists, teachers, and liberals to motivate the hatred of their base.

I learned about the importance of a good enemy when taking a creative writing class from the late Robert B. Parker in the 1970s. At the time, he was working on his third Spenser novel and hadn’t yet really hit it big, so a few of us who signed up for his weekend seminar were able to sit at his feet and learn from the man who became one of America’s great masters of fiction.

While the hero of the story is important, Parker told us, it’s the antihero — the bad guy or antagonist — who makes real for the reader the goodness of the hero.

He said that Superman, for example, would have just been a boring guy who stopped bank robberies if it weren’t for Lex Luthor. Batman would only be a rich guy with a fancy car and a weird outfit if it weren’t for the Joker. Without Moby Dick, Captain Ahab was merely another whaler. Sherlock Holmes would have been a weird but boring private eye were it not for Professor Moriarty, “the Napoleon of Crime.”

You get the idea. The hero can only be as good as the bad guy is bad. Every superhero requires a super-antihero. A larger-than-life bad guy. Genuine evil.

Even beginning novelists and screenwriters know this. And so does every dictator, including wannabe dictator Trump. It was a lesson George W. Bush learned and used after 9/11 to lie us into two unnecessary wars, make billions for Cheney’s near-bankrupt Halliburton, and destroy our reputation around the world.

Today, it’s why the GOP is making such a big deal about Laken Riley, the white woman killed by an Hispanic “illegal” immigrant, going so far as to name legislation after her. See how terrible these “invaders” are? They try to rape white women and when they don’t get their way, they kill them!

It’s why Trump, when he first announced his candidacy in 2015, characterized Latino immigrants as rapists and murderers. Its why Nancy Mace is constantly talking about “predators with penises” being in women’s restrooms. It’s why rightwingers claim books in our schools are “indoctrinating” our children. It’s why Trump still claims the Central Park Five should have been executed.

When a dictator wants to rally the people — particularly so they’ll support him in doing something dreadful — he must first convince them that the common enemy he’s identified is super evil.

To successfully claim to fight evil, he must first identify that evil in terms everybody understands. And it can’t be ordinary evil; his opponents must be super-evil incarnate: Monstrous. Depraved. Malefic. Diabolical. Satanic.

When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 the first group he and his Nazis went after weren’t the Jews or even the communists. There were supporters of both groups across the country at the time, and he needed a genuinely “other” minority group to attack first, one that only a small handful of people would ever rise to defend.

So, he went after trans people. The famous book-burning picture is from in front of the Berlin Institute of Sexology, where Magnus Hirschfield was supporting trans people undergoing the first sexual reassignment surgeries in the modern world.

Fascists always start by declaring themselves the victims of evil “others.” Victimhood is essential to the fascist worldview; it’s at its core. And it’s their excuse for destroying other people’s lives.

They then cast the weakest and least popular minorities in a society as the victimizers of the fascists. Fascism is never directed against the rich or powerful, but always against those least able to defend themselves. It’s bullying turned into a political movement.

Trump has gone after multiple groups during his political career, including trans people, Black Haitian immigrants, Central- and South American immigrants, teachers, librarians, Muslims, Black Lives Matter protestors, the media, and Democrats generally.

To really turn America into a hotbed of violence and retribution, though, he’s going to need to infamize groups one at a time.

Where will he begin? Who will he turn into the first super-villains?

Will it be members of the press, dragged before congressional committees and subject to millions in lawsuits? Will he join Nancy Mace in demonizing queer people? Will he join Putin in calling Ukrainians Nazis? Can he convince enough people that Democrats are a danger to America that elected officials will shut up and hide the way so many did in 1930s Germany?

Trump and his bully boys have big plans for America, and getting people behind more tax cuts for billionaires, mass deportations, killing Obamacare and Medicaid, imprisoning the press, and gutting our civil and human rights will be a big lift. He’s going to have to identify his enemies in terms that are so stark that few Americans will dare speak up.

So, where do you think he’ll begin? Who will be his first victims, justifying his going beyond the law and the Constitution?

Post your thoughts below in our comments section.

NOW READ: A new ugly streak in American politics

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MSN

https://substack.com/@kimlanelaw

jimmy kimmelfrom

framing comes from Professor

Kim Lane Scheppele

of Princeton, whose work on authoritarianism has helped me—and so many others—make sense of what we’re seeing. Because we’re not watching this happen in theory. We’re living it.

Step 1: You have a free and fair election—but it’s the last one. Because once that person wins, they have no intention of letting go of power. Not for anyone. Not ever.

Step 2 :They exceed the bounds of executive power. You’ll see a flurry of executive orders, each one claiming new and expansive authority that goes well beyond what the Constitution allows.

Step 3 :They weaken competing powers. Congress forgets it has a job to do. The judiciary becomes either complicit or irrelevant—because courts don’t have enforcement power. If the executive stops playing by the rules, the judiciary can’t force them to.

Step 4 :They gut the government. Fire the experts. Dismantle agencies. Break public trust in the institutions people rely on every day—until democracy no longer feels worth defending.

Step 5: They install loyalists. Not public servants. Loyalists. People who will follow orders, not the law. People who won’t hire anyone who dares to think independently. And they place them in powerful positions across the system.

Step 6 :They go after the media. First, they demonize and discredit legitimate journalism, so the public loses trust. Then they build an echo chamber, pumping out propaganda and calling it truth—even when it’s not. Especially when it’s not.

Step 7: They pick scapegoats and weaponize DEI because it protects us. Women. Children. People of color. Immigrants. The disabled. Anyone who looks or thinks differently becomes the villain. It’s intentional. Because if we’re fighting each other, we’re not fighting for democracy.

Step 8: They target civil society that exists to defend our rights. Sue the lawyers. Attack philanthropies. Dismantle universities. Smear community organizers. Undermine the very people doing the work to hold the line.

Step 9: They incentivize private violence. Maybe they send in the National Guard or militarize federal agents. Maybe they abduct protestors or arrest elected officials in the opposition. The goal is the same: make people afraid to speak up. Make civic participation feel dangerous. Make silence feel safer than truth.

Step 10: And then—it’s over. Step 10 is the endgame. You make sure no one ever votes again. Because now, people are scared. They’re poor. They’re exhausted. And the autocrat has all the power.

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AN 7 25

After just six months into his second term, President Donald Trump has already left a significant mark on American society and severely crippled the ability of institutions like Congress and the courts to check him. But some experts say democracy is still far from over and maintain that Trump is still vulnerable.

On Tuesday, New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall detailed the various ways Trump has eroded traditional democratic checks and balances, wielded the executive branch's power against his political opponents, fired government employees who aren't fully on board with his agenda and demoralized the opposition. University of Toronto political scientist Lucan Way — along with Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt acknowledged that "the cost of opposing the government" has risen significantly under Trump, meaning that the United States may have very well "crossed the line into authoritarianism" under Trump.

However, one of the various academics and experts Edsall interviewed emphasized that Americans who believe in democracy still have many tools at its disposal.

READ MORE:(Opinion) Stick a fork in him: Trump finally faces the threat of retribution – from MAGA

Harvard professor of government and sociology Theda Skocpol told Edsall that Trump had created a new governing system called "competitive sycophancy," in which various interests attempt to curry favor with the administration through flattery and manipulation. He also described it using the phrase "patrimonial corruption."

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"Thanks to the fawning of the GOP and of most elite-run U.S. institutions, he already basically has this system in place," Skocpol said. "One part of it that is a possible route to pure coercive authoritarianism is the new ICE-centered private army run without limits by Stephen Miller — and there will be constant efforts to push that into a centralizing and terrifying threat against all political opposition."

However, Skocpol noted that Trump critics have an adherent advantage due to the "sheer inefficiency and incompetence" of top administration officials. He also stressed that Trump's actions now are likely to harm both him and his party in the long run.

"Trump owns it all now; that is the silver lining in all of this," he said. "Let him get all the blame for the messes that will unfold, let his childish efforts to shift blame look more and more desperate, silly and weak. Weak is the key."

READ MORE:'Good evidence': New data shows the 'surest sign' Trump policies are making inflation rise

Click here to read Edsall's full column in the Times, or by clicking this link (subscription required).

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NO LNX

A cult leader shows how Trump is taking America to a very dark place

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Thom Hartmann July 13, 2025

Former FBI agent Michael Fienberg has gone public, pointing out that the agency, under the leadership of Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, is purging itself of people who are not members of the Trump cult (my phrase, not his).

Similar cult-like behavior is on vivid display with the White House press secretary, the head of DHS, and the head of the Department of Justice — among numerous other administration officials and elected Republicans — regularly spouting lies and half-truths that target women, immigrants, and Democrats.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is implying that the children who died in the Texas floods were the victims of a nefarious plot — presumably by Democrats or Jews who operate space lasers — to modify the weather, completely ignoring the fact that Republican-aligned fossil fuel billionaires have been engaged in a half-century-long scheme to sabotage our atmosphere with their carbon dioxide emissions in exchange for trillions of dollars in profits. Some of which, no doubt, have been shared with Greene or her campaign.

Multiple administration officials, elected Republicans, and rightwing media cult leaders on platforms like Fox “News” have been amplifying the racist, antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory,” that wealthy Jews are paying to “replace” white people in America with Blacks, Mexicans, and other people of color. This has led to ICE becoming the largest police force in America, with a budget larger than that of the entire Russian military, soon to be sweeping a neighborhood near you in their never-ending hunt for brown-skinned people.

Donald Trump didn’t need to lure his followers into a remote jungle, like Jim Jones did in Guyana. He didn’t need to physically isolate them from the rest of the world. Instead, Trump built his Jonestown right here at home, within the boundaries of our republic, brick by brick. He did it using over 30,000 documented lies, fear, rage, and the intoxicating promise of belonging.

Today, tens of millions of Americans are trapped inside Trump’s reality-warping cult. And just as Jones’ followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid believing it was salvation, Trump’s followers have swallowed his Big Lies and are now willing to sacrifice our Constitution, our democracy, and our future on the altar of one man’s insatiable ego.

This is an old story in new packaging.

Jim Jones wasn’t always a madman. In the beginning, he offered something people desperately wanted: community, belonging, equality. He drew in the lonely, the marginalized, the disillusioned. He offered them meaning, dignity, and the hope of a better world. But slowly, he twisted that hope into a tool of control, weaponizing his followers’ trust for his own wealth, power, and self-aggrandizement.

Donald Trump followed a similar cult leader’s path.

He didn’t invent the grievances he exploited. For decades, America’s middle class was gutted by Reaganomics and neoliberal trade policies. Jobs were shipped overseas. Unions were crushed. Wages stagnated while billionaires like Trump amassed obscene wealth.

Trump didn’t cause that pain, but he channeled it. He told working-class Americans that he alone could restore their lost greatness. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, he bellowed: “I alone can fix it.”

That wasn’t a campaign promise. It was a cult leader’s declaration. Like Jones, Trump positioned himself not as a servant of the people, but as their savior, the one indispensable man without whom all hope would be lost.

All cults, whether religious or political, thrive on division and a sense of victimhood. Jim Jones taught his followers that outsiders were out to destroy them, that they were surrounded by enemies, traitors, and saboteurs. He warned that the CIA, the media, and shadowy conspirators would annihilate Jonestown unless his people followed him without question.

Trump operates from the same playbook.

His enemies list is long: immigrants, Black voters, Muslims, women, Democrats, journalists, scientists, the “deep state,” election officials, even members of his own party who dare to tell the truth. He has spent years feeding his followers a steady diet of paranoia, victimhood, and grievance, convincing them that the only thing standing between them and ruin is him.

And just as Jones’ followers were taught to see dissent as treason, Trump’s followers are conditioned to see any criticism of him as an attack on themselves. They’ve surrendered their own personal identities to him and his cult. When he tells them that an election they lost was stolen, they believe it; not because the evidence says so, but because Trump says so. And in a cult, the cult leader’s word is truth.

Jones kept his followers in a physical jungle, cut off from the outside world. Trump does the same psychologically with the help of billionaire-backed media. His repeated attacks on the press as “the enemy of the people” are no accident: they are a deliberate strategy to isolate his followers in an information silo, where only his voice matters.

Fox “News,” Truth Social, MAGA podcasts, and a network of social media influencers form the walls of this new Jonestown. Alternative facts replace real ones. And when reality intrudes — when courts reject Trump’s lawsuits, when audits confirm his losses — his followers simply double down. “That’s just what the enemy wants us to believe.”

It’s classic cult behavior. And it’s why millions remain convinced that Trump won in 2020, that the COVID vaccine was a hoax or a plot, that January 6th was “legitimate political discourse.” Like Jones, Trump has taught his followers to see the world not as it is, but as he tells them it is.

When Jones’ utopia began to crumble — when defections and investigations threatened his power and a congressional delegation arrived to expose his lies and manipulations — he led his followers into mass suicide. Over 900 men, women, and children perished, drinking poisoned Kool-Aid to prove their loyalty.

Trump, faced with the reality of defeat in 2020, incited his followers to violence rather than admit loss. January 6th was America’s political Jonestown: a desperate, delusional last stand to keep their messiah in power. Trump didn’t just sit back as the Capitol was attacked. He watched with satisfaction, refusing to act for hours, while the very heart of our democracy was desecrated in his name.

And to this day, he defends that insurrection, calling those convicted of violent crimes “hostages,” giving pardons, and encouraging more violence if he’s indicted or loses again. Jones destroyed his followers; Trump is willing to destroy our nation.

I wrote about this back in the summer of 2023 in an article titled, “Will America Face “Narcissistic Collapse” as Trump Descends into Legal Hell?” Narcissistic collapse is what happens when psychopathic narcissists face defeat and humiliation and strike out against the world around them.

Think Hitler in his bunker when my old friend Armin Lehmann, then a 16-year-old Hitler Youth, handed him the news that the war was lost. Armin wrote a book about his experience, In Hitler’s Bunker: A Boy Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer’s Last Days, which we discussed extensively when he was writing it and during the three years we traveled the world together, lecturing mostly across Europe and the Far East.

Hitler, in those final weeks — Armin told me and the historical record verifies — actually welcomed the destruction of Germany by American and Soviet bombs and tanks.

He hadn’t failed: his narcissism and the cult he had created and surrounded himself with wouldn’t let him confront that.

Instead, in his mind, the German people had failed, his generals had failed, his soldiers had failed. They had failed Germany, but, more importantly they had failed him and his cult — and he wanted them punished for failing him.

When he was finally pushed into full-blown narcissistic collapse — those final days that Armin spent with him — he succumbed to the fate of many severe narcissists who experience a failure so undeniable that it provokes full-blown narcissistic collapse: he killed his wife and then turned the gun on himself.

In the final stages of narcissistic collapse, long before suicide becomes an option, first comes the blaming and the attempts to punish others.

We see this now with Trump blaming the media, the courts, and the Democrats he now openly brags that he “hates” and encourages his cult followers to hate as well.

Historians and political scientists have long warned us about men like Trump. In Strongmen and on her Lucid Substack newsletter, Ruth Ben-Ghiat traces the path of authoritarians like Mussolini, Putin, and Trump: they all consistently cultivate a cult of personality, demonize opponents, destroy the press, capture the courts, collaborate with oligarchs, and use violence as a political tool.

Trump has followed that playbook to the letter.

Jason Stanley, in How Fascism Works and on his Forward Substack, identifies Trump’s tactics: appeals to a mythic past, relentless lying, glorification of violence, and the creation of a “victim” identity for the dominant group. Steven Hassan, one of America’s foremost experts on cults, calls Trumpism a “destructive political cult” in his book The Cult of Trump and on his Substack newsletter Freedom of Mind.

These aren’t wild theories. They’re the sober assessments of professional scholars and historians who’ve studied how democracies fall and how cults rise.

It’s easy to see Jones’ Kool-Aid as the symbol of his evil, but let’s not forget: Trump’s lies have already cost real lives.

His downplaying of COVID, his undermining of vaccines and masks, his promotion of quack cures like hydroxychloroquine and bleach weren’t just irresponsible: they were deadly. Hundreds of thousands of Americans would be alive today if Trump hadn’t turned public health into a culture war battlefield.

And now, his Big Lies about the election and the “deep state” are poisoning faith in our democracy itself. In poll after poll, a majority of Republicans say they believe Trump won in 2020. They believe it so deeply that they’re passing laws to suppress votes, installing loyalists to oversee elections, and preparing to reject any future result that doesn’t favor their Dear Leader. The poison is spreading and fast.

So what comes next?

Jim Jones didn’t start out plotting mass suicide. He got there one lie, one power grab, one act of cruelty at a time. Trump’s path is no different. His first term tested the boundaries. His second is breaking them.

Already, Trump openly promised dictatorship “on day one.” He’s already pursuing “retribution,” purging the government, and rounding up immigrants into camps. He’s gutted the civil service, weaponized the justice department, and is today using the military for domestic crackdowns.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s all on the record. And it’s what happens when a cult leader gains the reins of state power, as the world has seen repeatedly throughout history.

We don’t have to follow Trump into the abyss. We can refuse the poison. We can choose the hard work of repairing our democracy, telling the truth, and holding this would-be strongman accountable.

But time is short. The cult is deep, and its leader is relentless.

History tells us where this path ends. Jonestown. Berlin 1933. Rome in 1922. Moscow in 2020. The question is whether we have the courage to change course before it’s too late.

Trump may not have led us into a jungle, but he has led millions into a psychological wilderness, where lies are truth, enemies are everywhere, and only he can lead the way out. Jim Jones led his people to destruction, all in the name of salvation. Trump is leading America down the same road.

We must say no. We must tell the truth. And we must do it now.

NOW READ: The most dangerous guy at Fox News is probably not who you think

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AN SN 7 25

Do you think concentration camps are cool?

Does your heart fill with mean-spirited joy at the thought of human beings stuffed into tents and FEMA trailers parked on a disused airstrip in the heart of the Everglades in the middle of a Florida summer?

Do you get off on the idea of alligators and snakes killing people and admire bully capitalism hawking camo beverage coolers, stickers, and T-shirts with grinning reptiles proclaiming, “Nowhere to Run; Nowhere to Hide”?

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier certainly does: He’s raising campaign cash on his own little merch site.

Other paid-up members of the Cruelty is the Point cult do, too.

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Celebrating the erection of Florida’s own gulag, known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state Republican Party bosses trilled, “Don’t forget to pick up your swag to support our efforts to undo all of Joe Biden’s failures!”

We are ruled by sociopaths.

This prison, parked in the middle of Big Cypress National Preserve, has already received hundreds of detainees, packed into rough-and-ready structures that have not had to meet any building or environmental codes and may not be able to withstand a tropical storm.

Cult leaders can’t decide if the place is Devil’s Island or a charmingly rustic resort.

Showing Donald Trump around the place, Ron DeSantis pointed to the razor wire, iron bunk beds, and bright new Astroturf on the ground.

The first batch of detainees don’t seem especially grateful. Those who’ve managed to make a phone call to the outside world say the guards have served them maggot-laced food, refused them medical attention, kept bright lights on all night, and either crank up the air conditioning until the detainees freeze or cut it off and let them swelter.

One alleged foreign malefactor says guards confiscated his Bible.

Gators in ICE caps

Trump loves this. He fantasizes about terrified detainees chased by Burmese pythons and “cops that are in the form of alligators.”

The White House has put out a Trump meme with a gaggle of gators in ICE caps.

The Trump administration is proud of this latest monument to hatred and gets very upset if anyone criticizes it.

Stephen Miller, architect of Trump’s immigration policy, flew into a tantrum the other day when a reporter told him inhabitants of the human world were calling the South Florida stalag “dehumanizing.”

“American citizens are stripped of their rights and their liberties by the invasion of illegal aliens!” he replied. “What’s ‘dehumanizing’ is when Democrats let illegal alien rapistsinto the country to attack our children. That is ‘dehumanizing’!”

He failed to explain exactly how people fleeing murderous dictatorships in Venezuela, El Salvador, and Nicaragua take rights and liberties from citizens.

As for those hideous assaults alleged by Miller, American citizens commit far more crimesthan undocumented immigrants.

The administration knows this. Until a few weeks ago, a Department of Justice website contained information confirming it.

Attorney General Pam Bondi shut down the website for “review” in “accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance.”

Why let data get in the way of propaganda?

‘Not safe’

Miller, Trump, and DeSantis insist the people ICE rounds up are “the worst of the worst, the most heinous of the most heinous.”

Again, the data show this is not true. Only 8%of undocumented detainees have been convicted of violent crimes.

This country is still — nominally — a nation of laws, and everyone thrown into an ICE dungeon is entitled to due process.

Even our supine Supreme Court agrees.

But Florida’s tropical tent prison makes it nearly impossible for detainees to consult with attorneys, meaning they could be deported without fair hearings.

A group of lawmakers, including Rep. Anna Eskamani and Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, tried to visit the facility a couple of weeks ago. Inmates from the Orange County jail — which is in Eskamani’s and Smith’s districts — had been transferred there without being charged with anything.

Legislators pointed out Florida Statute 944.23 allows them to visit state facilities “at their pleasure.”

But DeSantis’ people insist the Everglades prison camp is not technically a state facility, not under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections.

Even though the state of Florida’s paying for it.

‘Emergency’ powers

Actually, the Trump administration admits it’s a state facility.

In a filing asking a federal judge to deny a request by Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biodiversity to halt construction in Big Cypress, the administration argues the plaintiffs’ claim depends on showing a final federal “agency action,” which they can’t because the feds haven’t “implemented, authorized, directed or funded Florida’s temporary detention center.”

Indeed, they insist, “Florida is constructing and operating the facility using state funds on state lands.”

DeSantis, Uthmeier, and Pam Bondi need to get their stories straight.

By last Saturday, legal problems had been overcome and the gulag had miraculously become “safe.”

A group of legislators got a curated tour, during which what you saw depended on who you were—and whether you gave a damn about the human beings locked up in there.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) took a thermometer with her, reporting an indoor temperature of at least 83 degrees.

Another Democratic lawmaker said some detainees were shackled to benches.

Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia insisted it’s pretty nice: “I actually laid down in one of the beds and it was really comfortable.”

Sure. And everybody’s talked to a lawyer, there are no mosquitoes, and tropical storms? No problem!

Meanwhile back in reality, DeSantis’ vanity project has already flooded at least once.

Big Cypress is 96% wetlands. It’s wetlands’ job to flood.

When Ron DeSantis, claiming “emergency” powers, seized 39 square miles of Everglades land (nearly 25,000 acres) he claimed, “The environmental impact will be zero.”

DeSantis and the attorney general contend they’re merely taking over what Uthmeier calls “an old, virtually abandoned” airstrip.”

That airstrip is abandoned for a reason. It’s a relic of one of the most boneheaded ideas anyone in Florida ever had.

The Phoenix’s own Craig Pittmanrecently recounted how in 1968 a really stupid plan to build a huge airport in the Everglades galvanized support for preserving Florida’s River of Grass.

Fun fact: It was Florida’s then-Gov. Claude Kirk and his top aide Nathaniel Reed — who went on to help pass the Clean Water Act in 1972 and co-write the Endangered Species Act in 1973 — who led the fight to save Big Cypress.

Both were Republicans.

Vandals

Back then, some conservatives wanted to conserve, not destroy.

DeSantis and Uthmeier belong to a new generation of environmental vandals.

They want us to believe Big Cypress is wasted space with a few snakes, some bugs, a cadre of demonic alligators programmed to chase brown folks.

Inconsequential. Nothing to see there.

The ignorance is embarrassing.

To the Miccosukee and the Seminoles, the land is holy: “We live here. Our ancestors fought and died here. They are buried here,” said one tribal leader. “The Big Cypress is part of us, and we are a part of it.”

The land is not empty, or “abandoned.”

Manatees and dolphins give birth to their young in the estuaries on the eastern side. Mullet, trout, grouper, silver perch, spiny lobster, oysters, and clams thrive amongst the mangrove roots.

The mangrove branches harbor herons, pelicans, and egrets; there are red cockaded woodpeckers, fox squirrels, and Florida panthers in the pinelands, and some of the world’s rarest orchidsin the cypress swamps.

The land is a vital ecosystem for plants and animals and humans, too. Its water flows are essential to the aquifer on which South Floridians depend for their drinking water.

DeSantis likes to cast himself as the savior of the River of Grass and waxes petulant if you suggest his pet prison will damage the ecosystem: “I’m the governor who’s poured more money into Everglades restoration than anyone!”

And now he’s poured more money into Everglades destruction than anyone.

The camp will cost $450 milliona year to run.

Don’t be gaslit

Don’t let the man gaslight you: Claims they’re not desecrating Big Cypress are complete rubbish.

Friends of the Everglades has aerialphotographs showing the building of new roads and paving once-wild areas.

Runoff from asphalt pollutes. The huge trucks lumbering in and out of the site, carrying construction materials, also pollute.

You can’t house and feed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, without terrible damage to already fragile nature.

They’ll need pesticides to keep the Everglades’ vigorous mosquitoes at bay; they’ll need generators and microwaves and machinery to pump out the sewage.

The gulag is even sullying the night sky.

One of the lawsuitsfiled by conservation groups points out the huge prison lights make the place “look like Yankee Stadium, visible from 15-miles away.”

Big Cypress has been designated an International Dark Sky Place. You used to be able to see the Milky Way arching over the marshes and hammocks like a necklace of diamonds and pearls.

Trumpists probably don’t look up at the heavens. They don’t look down at the wonders of the earth.

So why would they care if one of Florida’s greatest treasures gets trashed?

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

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AN 7 25 ROBT

I keep asking myself when Trump’s authoritarian fascism will become so intolerable to the vast majority of Americans that they rise up against it — not only massively protest but put enough pressure on Republicans in Congress that they join with Democrats in impeaching and convicting him.

In other words, what’s the tipping point for ridding us of this menace?

I thought we’d reached that tipping point when he went to war with Iran without congressional approval. Or when he sent active military troops into Los Angeles. Or when he imposed tariffs on all products imported to the United States, essentially raising taxes on Americans. Or when he forced out the president of the University of Virginia for insufficiently rooting out DEI. Or when he attacked major law firms for employing lawyers who once tried to hold him legally accountable.

Obviously, we haven’t reached the tipping point yet. So what will it take? Several possibilities come to mind:

1. He raises tariffs 25 percent on almost all products imported into the United States, resulting in substantial price increases across the economy.Americans who pay no attention to politics now find they’re struggling to pay the bills.

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2. He stations active military troops in every major American city to “protect” ICE agents who are going house to house, apartment to apartment, demanding proof of citizenship.Americans who haven’t before been affected by Trump’s police state are now aware of it, as many of their relatives or friends get caught up in the dragnet.

3. He builds a gulag of detention centers across America into which he sends Americans who criticize him, prior to revoking their citizenship and expelling them to prisons in foreign nations.Americans who haven’t been concerned about his actions against immigrants now find that he is silencing all criticism about him or his regime.

4. He announces that the Supreme Court is intruding on presidential powers and he is therefore not bound by the court.Americans who haven’t paid attention to his lawlessness are now forced to confront his constitutional coup.

Hence today’s Office Hours question: What actions by Trump and his lackeys do you believe will trigger such a massive upheaval in America that even Republican lawmakers who have supported him will join with Democrats to impeach and convict him? Where’s the tipping point?

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an 7 25

A network of former intelligence, military, and national security officials on Tuesday launched the Profiles in Cowardice Award and urged the public to vote for nominees who are "silent in the face of the country's descent into fascism," a march led by U.S. President Donald Trump.

"We are in a constitutional crisis," says the Eisenhower Media Network's (EMN) website for the award. "Trump is amassing power in the executive branch, ignoring Congress and the courts. Meanwhile, leaders who have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution are sitting on their hands."

The new honor is the inverse of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, created by the late president's family "to recognize and celebrate the quality of political courage that he admired most." This year's recipient is Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence, "for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on January 6, 2021," when Trump incited an insurrection and his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

"We, the American people, are here to remind them of who they serve, and that it's time to do their constitutional duty by standing up to this administration and its authoritarian bent."

Nominees for the inaugural Profiles in Cowardice Award are former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), retired Gens. David Petraeus and Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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"The 'Profiles in Cowardice' Award was created to call out those weak souls who are failing to engage in efforts to keep our country from sleepwalking into fascism," said EMN's director, retired Maj. Gen. (ret.) Dennis Laich, in a statement.

"These leaders, both past and present, took an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,'" he noted. "Through their actions, or inaction, they are violating that oath. We, the American people, are here to remind them of who they serve, and that it's time to do their constitutional duty by standing up to this administration and its authoritarian bent."

The public can vote at ProfilesInCowardice.org until August 1, after which the award will be presented to the winner "at the most inconvenient time possible," according to the website.

The site lays out why people were nominated as "cowards." For example, "Bush has a long and storied history of cowardice" and "is solidifying his legacy" by retreating rather than serving as a leader in the Republican Party and standing up to Trump.

In Congress, "Mace is a one-woman culture war content machine—exactly how the military-industrial complex and mainstream media like it," the site continues. Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, "has chosen to push through Trump's agenda of unfettered militarism and confirm unqualified MAGA loyalists like Pete Hegseth," the defense secretary. Republicans on that committee also "rubber-stamped Pete Hegseth to cater to Trump and his blindly loyal MAGA cronies."

Among former military leaders, the site says, "Milley attempted to make a principled stand after the January 6th insurrection—but cowardice won out in the end," and Petraeus said at a conference that "the world was in for 'exciting times' under Trump."

"The Joint Chiefs of Staff are tasked with defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," the site notes. "But as reckless U.S. military actions push the world closer to nuclear catastrophe, they've chosen silence over service. No resignations. No public warnings."

As for Blinken, who served under former President Joe Biden, "he ignored a flood of real-time reports detailing Israeli human rights violations—and now we know his public claims of 'working overtime' on cease-fires were outright lies," the site adds. "With American diplomacy in free fall, Blinken chose complicity and cover stories over truth and action."

Christian Sorenson, EMN's associate director, said that "it takes courage to do the right thing... It takes even more courage to do the right thing when the system itself fosters militarism and war profiteering."

"Targeting 'leaders' in the nation's capital, Profiles in Cowardice highlights the craven and the pushovers, as well as those who eagerly abet authoritarianism and nonstop war for personal and professional gain," Sorenson added. "Virtue and public service will arrive in D.C. one way or another. Profiles in Cowardice is part of that broader effort."

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an 725

President Donald Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz” on Tuesday, the federal immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades that boasts alligators as part of a natural escape barrier. Now, Trump is vowing to renovate the original Alcatraz, just off the coast of California, a former federal maximum security prison that he claims is, or will be, “surrounded by sharks.”

Before jetting off to Florida, Trump joked with reporters (video below) about detainees facing deportation who would have to navigate around the alligators in the Everglades should they try to escape.

Later in the day, Trump posted to his social media website about his new inspiration.

“Because of the Violence and Criminality I have seen due to the Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden, in particular allowing millions of people into our Country who shouldn’t be here, I wanted something representative to show how we fight back, and then, it happened,” the President wrote.

READ MORE: ‘This Is Fascism’: Trump Sparks Fury After Calling to Deport U.S. Citizens

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“I saw a picture of ALCATRAZ looking so foreboding, and I said, ‘We’re going to look into renovating and rebuilding the famous ALCATRAZ Prison sitting high on the Bay, surrounded by sharks. What a symbol it is, and will be!’ Conceptual work started six months ago, and various prison development firms are looking at doing it with us. Still a little early, but lots of promise!”

CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere remarked, “the president says he’s looking into spending federal money, in part, to put sharks into the San Francisco Bay.”

If Trump actually wants Alcatraz to be surrounded by truly dangerous sharks, as Dovere notes he may have to bring them there. The ones currently surrounding the tiny island reportedly may not be especially dangerous, according to the Pacific Open Water Swim Co.

Other critics blasted Trump’s remarks.

Investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze remarked, “So we’re rebuilding Alcatraz based on… a vibe?”

“Trump saw a moody picture of a defunct prison and decided that’s the future of immigration policy, locking up desperate families on a shark-surrounded island like a Bond villain with zoning permits,” he added. “This cruel and reckless governance is nothing but a cinematic cosplay with real human lives at stake.”

READ MORE: Trump Pushes Census Do-Over to Exclude Non-Citizens — and to Immediately Redistrict House

Another social media user wrote: “Trump wants to bring back Alcatraz. Not to house mob bosses or war criminals, but to make a ‘symbol’ out of locking up desperate migrants. Sharks and spectacle. This isn’t immigration policy. It’s a twisted cruelty straight out of a 1930s Germany. You don’t rebuild a prison for the camera unless cruelty is the point. That’s not ‘fighting back’, that’s feeding fear and hatred to your base and calling it leadership. History already wrote this playbook, and it ends in concentration camps, not justice. We are better than this, no?”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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no lnx

The danger of getting used to the unthinkable

Thom Hartmann June 18, 2025

It wasn’t all at once (although sometimes the last three months seem that way). Authoritarianism never is. It happens drip by drip, crisis by crisis, until people forget what normal even felt like.

This is how fascism seduces a nation: not by storming the gates, but by wearing down our ability to be outraged. And Donald Trump, more than any political figure in modern American history, has weaponized this steady march into moral and civic numbness.

Ten years ago, if you’d told Americans a U.S. president would attempt to overturn an election, openly praise dictators, take naked bribes from both foreign potentates and drug dealers, call the press the “enemy of the people,” cage children, pardon traitors and war criminals, and promise to act as a dictator on his first day in office, they’d have laughed. They would’ve told you, “That can’t happen here.”

But it did. And now the real danger is that we’re getting used to it.

Let’s not forget:

— When Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in 2020, the political class gasped. Now it’s barely discussed.

— When he orchestrated an attempted coup on January 6, 2021, it was the top story in the world. Today, most Republicans call it “a protest” or a “tour” of Congress.

— Had any previous president invited an immigrant billionaire who promotes fascist memes to rip the guts out of the Social Security Administration and shut down USAID (handing our soft power to the Russians and Chinese) there would have been hell to pay. Now Elon Musk’s extraordinary damage to our government is barely discussed.

— When Trump began calling undocumented immigrants “animals” and labeling judges and prosecutors as “scum,” it horrified the media. Now it’s part of the daily churn.

— When a federal judge’s son was murdered by a Trump campaign volunteer it shocked America; now judges are routinely threatened and Republicans won’t even give the judiciary control over the US Marshall’s Service to protect them.

— When Trump praised Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán and suggested suspending the Constitution, the headlines flared, but then faded fast.

— When he arrested a Tufts University student for having co-written an op-ed in the student paper critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and threw her into prison for months, the country was appalled. Now he’s rolling out loyalty tests for civil servants and investigating the social media posts of American citizens returning to the country and nobody’s even discussing it.

— When ICE agents showed up in Portland in 2020 in unmarked vans without uniforms and their ID missing, kidnapping people off the streets without warrants, Americans and the media were shocked. Now seeing jackbooted thugs with masks covering their faces and refusing to identify themselves has become “normal.”

This is the playbook. Fascism doesn’t arrive with jackboots; it arrives with media and voter fatigue. As the political theorist Hannah Arendt warned, the very banality and ordinariness of evil is its greatest weapon.

Victor Klemperer, a Jew who converted to Lutheranism and chronicled the rise of Nazism in Germany, saw how average people learned to live with, to adapt to, to bear the unbearable. In his 1942 diary he wrote:

“Today over breakfast we talked about the extraordinary capacity of human beings to bear and become accustomed to things. The fantastic hideousness of our existence... and yet still hours of pleasure... and so we go on eking out a bare existence and go on hoping.”

Sebastian Haffner, another German observer, noted in Defying Hitler that even he, a staunch anti-Nazi, found himself one day saluting, wearing a uniform, and marching (and even secretly enjoying the feeling of authority associated with it). As the historian Robert Paxton wrote:

“To resist seemed pointless … finally, with astonishment, he observed himself raising his arm, fitted with a swastika armband, in the Nazi salute.”

And Milton Mayer, in They Thought They Were Free, described how good, decent Germans came to accept fascism. He was a Chicago reporter who, following World War II, went to Germany to interview “average Germans” to try to learn how such a terrible thing could have happened and, hopefully, thus prevent it from ever happening here.

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security....”

He wrote about living there and the ten Germans he befriended: I found his description of a college professor to be the most poignant. As Mayer’s professor friend noted, and Mayer recorded in his book:

:{:{“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...}:

“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. One day it is over his head.”}:

In this conversation, Mayer’s friend suggests that he wasn’t making an excuse for not resisting the rise of the fascists, but was simply pointing out what happens when you keep your head down and just “do your job” without engaging in politics.

“You see,” Mayer’s friend continued, “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.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows…

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked — if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33.

“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.

“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.”

Sound familiar?

Stephen Miller’s recent musing about suspending habeas corpus to lock up immigrants and even protestors without trial? That would’ve sparked emergency hearings a decade ago. Now it’s barely a blip.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a blueprint to purge civil servants and replace them with regime loyalists in complete defiance of the Pendelton Civil Service Act (and the reasons it came into being), should be setting off alarm bells. Instead, it’s getting the same treatment Trump gave COVID and his multiple defiances of the law and the courts: denial, deflection, delay.

It all comes back to normalization, as M. Gessen so brilliantly chronicles in The New York Times:

“And so just when we most need to act — while there is indeed room for action and some momentum to the resistance — we tend to be lulled into complacency by the sense of relief on the one hand and boredom on the other.“Think of the trajectory of the so-called travel ban during Trump’s first term. Its first iteration drew thousands into the streets. The courts blocked it. The second iteration didn’t attract nearly as much attention, and most people didn’t notice when the third iteration of the travel ban, which had hardly changed, went into effect. Now Trump’s administration is drafting a new travel ban that targets more than five times as many countries.”

When we stop being shocked, we stop reacting. And when we stop reacting, democracy dies.

But there is a path forward.

The antidote to normalization is resistance. Not just in voting booths, but in the streets, in courtrooms, in classrooms, in boardrooms, in pulpits, and at dinner tables.

Thucydides, who had one of the clearest eyes in history about the dangers faced by democracies, said:

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet nonetheless go out to meet it.”

We must regain our vision and resensitize ourselves. We must reclaim our capacity to be appalled.

That means when Trump calls Democrats “vermin,” we don’t say, “That’s just Trump being Trump.” We say: “That’s fascist rhetoric.”

When he promises to use the military against American citizens and sends out immigration officers dressed up like soldiers at war, we don’t shrug; we organize.

When Project 2025 tries to turn federal agencies into tools of vengeance, we don’t wait and see. We fight back now.

When armed federal agents hide their identification and their faces the way terroristic police do in dictatorships as they kidnap people off our streets, we call them out.

History won’t forgive us for sleepwalking into tyranny. And our children won’t either.

This is the time to remember that democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires outrage. It demands vigilance. And sometimes, it needs us in the streets with our fists in the air and our boots on the pavement.

If we still believe in this republic, in its ideals, and in the sacred value of a free and fair society, then our answer to Trump’s authoritarianism must be more than words. It must be peaceful action.

Don’t get used to fascism.

Get loud. Get active. Get in its way.

NOW READ: White House has insiders convinced Trump is unfit for job: whistleblower

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AN 6 25

In his 2022 book "The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future," Canadian journalist/author Stephen Marche argued that the U.S. was on its way to becoming a far-right dictatorship. And his view of the United States' political environment hasn't grown any more optimistic since then.

Marche, in an op-ed published by The Guardian on June 16, points to the weekend of June 14-15 as a troubling demonstration of the "political violence" that is accelerating in the U.S. And he views President Donald Trump's military/birthday parade as an example of threatening imagery.

"Do not confuse Trump's debased parade with a joke or an innocent piece of entertainment," Marche warns. "The Trump parade took place in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota state representative. While it was underway, security forces were firing teargas on protesters in Los Angeles. Violence is coming to define American political life — spectacular violence, including the parade and real violence like the assassination of Hortman."

READ MORE:'We held our ground: CA health clinic describes close encounter with Trump's agents

Marche continues, "Political destabilization is arriving far too quickly to be perceived in its entirety. So much is happening so fast that it’s impossible to keep track of the decline. Increasingly, the question is becoming: when are we going to start calling this what it is?"

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According to Marche, "American political life" is "moving away from discourse altogether."

"Don't like what the senators of the other party are saying? Handcuff them," Marche laments. "Don't like protestors? Send in the Marines. Don't like the makeup of the House of Representatives in Minnesota? Kill the top Democrat."

The Canadian journalist/author adds, "The political purpose of the parade, from Trump's point of view, was to demonstrate his mastery of the means of violence. He needed to show, to the military and to the American people both, that he can make the army do what he tells it, and established traditions and the rule of law will not alter his will. But the primary effect of the parade was to demonstrate an immense weakness, in Trump and in the American people."

READ MORE:Trump and the 2020 election: We’re witnessing the rewriting of history in the making

*Stephen Marche's full op-ed for The Guardian is available at this link.

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an 6 25

Navy vet shakes with rage over 'grotesque MAGA merchandise'

D. Earl Stephens June 14, 2025 }:}:

By now, you have most likely heard of the disgraceful appearance by Donald Trump at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Tuesday.

The convicted felon’s remarks to Army personnel were partisan, incendiary, anti-American and belong in a dumpster and/or Mar-a-Lago, not a United States military base.

Except it was even worse than any of us thought ...

Thanks to some stellar reporting by Military.com, we are learning today that U.S. taxpayers essentially funded a vulgar MAGA rally at a U.S. Army facility.

The appearance by the president of the United States of America had NOTHING TO DO with the morale and good order of our troops and everything to do with HIM, as he stirred these young men and women into a partisan frenzy.

Things were so out of hand, that there were actually booths set up to sell grotesque MAGA merchandise and memorabilia to our troops. This didn’t just cross a line, it obliterated it, and was against myriad Defense Department regulations.

From military.com reporting:

substackcdn.com

I am admittedly shaking with rage as I type this, friends, because as a veteran I could have never conceived of something like this in my lifetime. These are the kinds of things that happen in other troubled countries — many of which WE actually have helped to liberate with our blood in the past.

I want to keep this missive brief, because I encourage you to read and share widely the comprehensive piece that I linked to above. Please do this.

As the retired managing editor of Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper that serves the troops and their families overseas, I want to commend the continued good work the folks at Military.com are continuing to do stateside. I assure you they are experts on the military, and wedded to top-notch journalism. Their work has never been more important as the U.S. slides toward fascism.

We are in the most precarious moment in our nation’s history since the beginning of the Civil War. Anybody who is not reporting it this way is dangerous, completely out of their depth, and should not be taken seriously.

Since day one of this anti-American administration I have been warning with some precision that we were heading toward this terrible juncture, and I wish nothing more than to report to you that I was wrong.

Turns out, I actually underestimated the pace of our descent into authoritarianism. Unless there is some significant pushback by our military, fellow citizens, the press, the Democrats and the reprehensible Republican Party, it is hard to see how we survive this.

Before signing out, I am again calling on our military leadership past and present, and fellow veterans everywhere, to speak out loudly against this ongoing attack THAT WE KNOW IS WRONG.

For now, stay strong, lean on each other, and call your political representatives (202-224-3121) to make your voices heard.

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AN 6 25

On Thursday, June 12, many Democrats — and quite a few Never Trump conservatives as well — were horrified when Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) was physically removed from a briefing by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Although Padilla was not threatening in any way, he was thrown to the ground and handcuffed. Padilla, however, was released and is not facing any charges.

After the incident, Padilla commented that if MAGA Republicans are willing to treat a U.S. senator that way, imagine the fear that farm workers are feeling as the Trump Administration carries out aggressive deportation raids.

The incident with Padilla comes during a time of considerable tension in the United States, from the ongoing protests in Downtown Los Angeles to the military/birthday parade President Donald Trump is planning in Washington, DC on Saturday, June 14. Countless "No Kings" demonstrations in opposition to the parade and Trump's policies will be held in cities all over the United States.

READ MORE:'I have to go through hell': Trump complains about 'No Kings' protests during his parade

During a presidential historian Jon Meacham pointed to the treatment of Padilla as a prime example of why so many Americans are feeling a sense of "menace' during Trump's second presidency.

[VID]

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Meacham told MSNBC's Willie Geist, his colleague Katty Kay and Never Trump conservative David French (who was also featured as a guest), "It is a real tactile sense of menace in the country…. The last time it was this bad — not to shake everybody's Friday morning even more than it's already shaken given what's going on — was the pre-Civil War period. You had an extraordinary amount of political violence. And we know how the 1850s turned out. And so, there are signs of a deeper condition within the country — which is a fraying, I believe, of a kind of consensus not about policy, but about politics not as total war, but as a mediation of differences."

The historian addressed fears of growing political unrest in the U.S.

Meacham told the panel, "That's what a democracy, that's what a constitutional system should be. And the prevalence of violence is politically useful for, in this case, the (Trump) Administration, and very dangerous."

READ MORE:'Scams, corruption and cover-ups': Republicans just declared 'open season for wealthy tax cheats'

*Watch the full video below or at this link.

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OMG 6 25

"Sen. Alex Padilla is forcibly removed from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's news conference in Los Angeles," NBC News, June 12, 2025

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-alex-padilla-forcibly-removed-dhs-sec-kristi-noems-press-conferenc-rcna212688

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MMA

Right-wing media call for “overwhelming force” and arrests in LA protests

Written by Chloe Simon & Reed McMaster

Published 06/12/25

Protests in Los Angeles have been ongoing as Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids continue to target migrant communities. In response, right-wing media have urged the Trump administration and law enforcement to crack down harder on protesters, called for Democratic officials to be arrested, and suggested the protesters were funded by outside groups.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham and others encouraged President Donald Trump to employ the Insurrection Act against protesters while Daily Wire host Matt Walsh said Trump should use “overwhelming force.” Fox host Sean Hannity and War Room host Steve Bannon have called for arrests of Democratic officials, and The Daily Caller blamed a “Pro-Chinese Communist Millionaire” for funding the protests.

Protests erupted after the Trump administration conducted ICE raids in LA and sent in troops

• • In late May, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller demanded ICE officials begin targeting migrants at places of work, specifically noting stores like Home Depot and 7-Eleven. In an emergency meeting, Miller reportedly berated officials, according to three current and former immigration officials. One told The Washington Examiner, “They’ve been threatened, told they’re watching their emails and texts and Signals. That’s what is horrible about things right now. It’s a fearful environment. Everybody in leadership is afraid. … There’s no morale. Everybody is demoralized.” One official said Miller asked, “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” Washington Examiner, [5/30/25]

• • Protests erupted in LA following ICE raids on businesses in the area on Friday, June 6, and have continued after the Trump administration sent in the National Guard and Marines. The protests spread from the garment district, where agents were first spotted searching for migrants, and have been “largely peaceful.” The New York Times, [6/11/25]

• • CNN reports “Trump is building a political case to use American troops not in a foreign conflict, but at home, to bolster his mass deportation sweeps.”CNN described Trump’s strategy as “conjuring a narrative of invasion and insurrection,” adding: “He’s exaggerating disorder in the relatively contained unrest, looting and protests in Los Angeles. And he’s implying that, to keep the country safe, he’s ready to deploy soldiers across the country.” CNN, [6/11/25]

• ## Right-wing pundits urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, arrest protesters, or utilize “overwhelming force” to put down protests

• • Fox News legal analyst Kerri Kupec Urbahn suggested the protests could give Trump a path to invoke the Insurrection Act. She claimed, “What the Trump administration could do, and there’s gonna be a lot of conversation about that publicly and I'm sure it’s happening right now behind the scenes, is invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the United States government to send in military when there is an obstruction happening of federal law enforcement with or without the state's consent. So I think that may be where this is headed if this doesn't quiet down.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [6/9/25]

• • In an op-ed for The Daily Wire, host Matt Walsh wrote, “The only solution, of course, is to treat them like the terrorists they are. Use overwhelming force to put down the riots.” He added: “Charge and convict the rioters and send them to prison for years. … Any illegal foreign invader involved in a riot should be shipped immediately to Guantanamo Bay.” The Daily Wire, [6/9/25]

• • Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk suggested invoking the Insurrection Act. He claimed, “Los Angeles does not feel like a protest, what's happening there. It's an entire city that's declaring open rebellion to American sovereignty and authority.” Rumble, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [6/9/25]

• • Fox News host Laura Ingraham argued it would be Trump’s “right” and “obligation” to invoke the Insurrection Act if he feels the U.S. “is being threatened from within.” She said, “Now Democrats are pretending to be outraged about the prospect of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act. Which, of course, is his right. I’d say it's his obligation to do if — and it's his call — if he feels the United States is being threatened from within by violent, seditionary forces.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [6/10/25]

• • White nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes urged the Trump administration to use the protests “to federalize a National Guard and send it into the cities. Take over law enforcement. And above all else, use it to arrest thousands of people every day to be deported.” He also added, “If we're not doing that, then we're wasting our time here. It's just a big stunt.” Rumble, *America First with Nick Fuentes*, [6/10/25]

• • Zach Hoyt, one of Twitch's most popular streamers who goes by “Asmongold,” called for the Trump administration to enact martial law and put protestors in “little camps.” Hoyt stated, “They just need to completely fucking, like, stomp this shit out.” He added, “Bring in the military, bring in the National Guard, fucking martial law, curfews — arrest all these people. Make the little camps where you can hold them in. Do the entire fucking thing.” Twitch, ZackRawrr, [6/9/25; The Atlantic, 4/25/25]

• ## Some commentators demanded Trump arrest Democratic politicians such as Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass

• • War Roomhost Steve Bannon called for Bass’ arrest and accused officials of “getting in between ICE and other law enforcement.” He stated, “Right there, LAPD. The mayor is involved in this and having the stand down. She ought to be arrested today. Immediately.” Real Americas' Voice, *War Room*, [6/9/25]

• • On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity said Newsom “should be arrested for obstructing U.S. immigration law.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [6/9/25]

• • In an interview with “border czar” Tom Homan, Trump ally Laura Loomer asked if he would criminally charge Democratic politicians like Newsom or Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for “obstructionist behavior.” Loomer: “Are you having any discussions with DHS, with the DOJ, or with the Trump administration to possibly bring criminal charges for harboring of illegal aliens by people like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, or mayor Karen Bass, or people like Nancy Pelosi or Maxine Waters, because this would really fit the bill of what you described as obstructionist behavior. It's incitement, in my opinion. They are inciting violence by fanning the flames of violence against ICE officials and people like yourself. What qualifies as obstructionist behavior, and will we see any Democrat lawmakers or the governor himself be criminally charged?” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [6/9/25]

• ## Some right-wing figures also suggested the protesters were paid and funded by China, billionaires, or church groups

• • Fox & Friendshost Brian Kilmeade alleged that “the opposition” in Los Angeles includes groups “supported by the state, the government, and the Chinese government.” Kilmeade later claimed that “they are getting paid.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [6/10/25]

• • Bannon: “This thing is organized, it’s another huge thing financed by the Walton family and all these billionaires.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [6/10/25]

• • On Bannon’s podcast, conservative personality Ben Bergquam claimed Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services are behind the LA protests. He stated, “As soon as you start going after the organizations that are behind this, whether that's Catholic Charities, or Lutheran Social Services, or any of these organizations. The communist groups in our country that are working intentionally to undermine this nation, the liberation theology pastors in our country, all of this, that's the root of it.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [6/9/25]

• • The Daily Caller published an article headlined “Group Stoking Anti-ICE LA Riots Tied To Pro-Chinese Communist Millionaire.” The piece went on to allege that the “Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) spoke out in support of the mob rioting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the weekend, posted to X to call for more action on Sunday and created signs that protesters were seen carrying. The PSL shares personnel overlap with groups funded by American tech mogul Neville Singham, whom The New York Times described in August 2023 as sitting at the center of a ‘lavishly funded influence campaign’ promoting pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda.” The Daily Caller, [6/9/25]

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an 6 25

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reportedly requested that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth grant law enforcement powers—including the authority to detain and arrest—to the thousands of military troops President Donald Trump deployed to Los Angeles to suppress anti-deportation protests. Such powers are typically barred under federal law, and experts warn the move marks another step toward the administration invoking the Insurrection Act.

In a memo, Secretary Noem alleged protestors included "invasive, violent, insurrectionist mobs that seek to protect invaders and military aged males belonging to identified foreign terrorist organizations, and who seek to prevent the deportation of criminal aliens,” as the San Francisco Chronicle first reported.

"The military is generally barred under federal laws from taking part in domestic law enforcement. Noem’s request may be a step toward the administration sidestepping those laws by invoking the Insurrection Act, two legal experts said in interviews," the Chronicle added.

RELATED: ‘Looking for an Excuse’: Trump Under Fire for Violent Slogan as He Sends Marines to LA

Syracuse University Professor of Law Emeritus William Banks told the Chronicle that Noem's move is "a grave escalation" that "may presage the invocation of the Insurrection Act.” Professor Banks is an internationally recognized scholar on constitutional law, national security and counterterrorism law, as well as emergency powers and government surveillance and privacy, according to his biography.

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Secretary Noem also requested “drone surveillance support” and weapons and logistics assistance. President Donald Trump has ordered 700 U.S. Marines and federalized up to 4,000 National Guard troops to go to Los Angeles to help tamp down the protests.

The Associated Press on Monday suggested the protest area itself was small: “Protests over the president’s immigration crackdown spared much of Los Angeles from violence. Weekend clashes swept through several downtown blocks and a handful of other places.”

Other experts weighed in as well.

READ MORE: House Republicans Quietly Slip Anti-LGBTQ ‘Religious Freedom’ Clause Into Funding Bill

Vermont Law and Graduate School professor emeritus Stephen Dycus, an expert in national security law and the Insurrection Act, told the Chronicle that "this could be viewed as a preparation for invoking the Insurrection Act, or it could be viewed as part of a larger effort to frighten people who otherwise would exercise their first amendment guarantee of free speech and protest.”

California Democratic state Senator Tom Umberg, a retired Army colonel and JAG officer, "said he found the letter’s requests alarming."

“It looks like a preparation for a military assault,” Umberg said. “This looks like a subterfuge to create some sort of rationale for some sort of invocation of the Insurrection Act.”

Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration expert and senior fellow at the American Immigration Council explained that the "reason that there is civil unrest in multiple cities throughout the country is because the Trump administration ordered ICE to engage in near-indiscriminate arrests, rounding up otherwise law-abiding people with no criminal records."

Political scientist Dr. Norman Ornstein, a contributing editor for the Atlantic, wrote, "this is a prelude to invoking the insurrection act and declaring martial law."

READ MORE: ‘Completely Obliterated’: Trump Claims LA Saved From Ruin by His National Guard Action

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scot g kara pivot US brkup into econ zones 6/ 10/ 25

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AHA STRICT FR MACHO BS FASCISM

ice PROTESTS LA

mma

1. ### Sean Hannity says Gavin Newsom “should be arrested”

:{:{06/09/25 }:

2. ### OutKick's Dan Dakich says Simone Biles “showed her stupidity” by defending trans inclusion in sports

:{:{06/09/25}:

3. ### While calling for the military to be deployed to Los Angeles, Charlie Kirk uses a chart sourced to a white nationalist website

:{:{06/09/25}:

4. ### Theo Von calls AI provision in GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill “really sketchy”

:{:{06/09/25}:

5. ### Laura Loomer praises Chinese government for recognizing “the threat of Islam”

:{:{06/09/25}:

6. ### Charlie Kirk responding to protests in Los Angeles: “We must be unafraid to declare the Insurrection Act of 1807”

:{:{06/09/25}:

7. ### Steve Bannon calls for the arrest of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass

:{:{06/09/25}:

18. ### Sean Hannity calls for mandatory military service for every American

:{:{06/04/25}:

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AN 6 25

President Donald Trump's critics, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, are deeply troubled by his response to the tense protests that are rocking Downtown L.A. in response to immigration raids being carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

Trump ordered 2000 California National Guardian troops to the area, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is talking about sending in 500 U.S. Marines. According to Trump's critics, he is crossing a dangerous line by federalizing National Guard troops — whose deployment to Downtown L.A., they argue, should only be ordered by Newsom if he decides it is necessary.

New York Times national security reporter Helene Cooper discussed the [VID] volatile situation during a expressing fears that things could turn ugly if Trump uses the military against civilians.

READ MORE:'Can't you just shoot them?' Inside Trump's threat to deal with 'radical left thugs' in America

During his first presidency, Cooper noted, traditional conservatives in the White House would push back against his worst ideas—whereas now, he is surrounded by loyalists who encourage him.

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Cooper told "Morning" host Mika Brzezinski, "I'm a little worried this is not heading anywhere good…. President Trump doesn't have (former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman) Mark Milley or (Defense Secretary) Mark Esper or any of the people from his previous administration who sort of acted as the brakes on this. Pete Hegseth…. sort of made up that Marines are on high alert, which is not necessarily a formal thing. He tweeted that on Saturday, (June 7) and then doubled down on Sunday, saying Marines are standing by."

The Times reporter continued, "We know that to put active-duty troops on the streets…. President Trump would have to — most likely have to — invoke the Insurrection Act, which to my knowledge, he has not done yet."

During the interview, Cooper drew a distinction between the "political Pentagon" and Trump loyalists like Hegseth and the "military people and career Pentagon."

READ MORE:Trump's latest move is a danger to all of us

Cooper told Brzezinski, "The Pentagon was sort of scrambling last night to figure out what to do. The last thing they want is active- duty troops taking on protesters on American streets. They fought mightily against that during the George Floyd protests…. There's a very real worry, again, among the career and professional military of this sort of look that we are militarizing the country…. If you get to the point where American troops are being asked or tasked with shooting protesters, you will then see this discomfort manufacture in public."

Cooper noted that Los Angeles is heavily Latino and that the military is also racially diverse.

Cooper told Brzezinski, "Right now, the orders are lawful. Right now, they have not been asked to do anything that I can see that could be interpreted as an unlawful order, but I think things could come to a head pretty quickly. You talk about the demographic demographics of Los Angeles — well, the demographic of the American military is pretty diverse, despite all of Pete Hegseth's attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion and DEI and so-called woke policies. You're looking at one of the most, if not the most diverse, institutions that America has. So, you know, there's going to be a lot of conflict there when you start dragging troops who are not prepared to do law enforcement, domestic law enforcement on the streets of America into this."

READ MORE:'It's pathetic': Right-wing red state Republicans are being ripped apart — by football

*Watch the full video below or at this link.

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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.

READ MORE: 'Can't you just shoot them?' Inside Trump's threat to deal with 'radical left thugs' in America

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.

READ MORE: 'I didn’t vote for this': Pro-Trump Appalachians are 'living on the edge'

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.”