Fascist States of America

This happened. During the inauguration of an American president. Trump "improved" on the redneck racist singing at his first inauguration.

Elon Musk's Nazi salute on the background of a saluting neonazi group

Episcopal bishop, Mariann Edgar Budde prays for those under attack by the Trump administration. He was right in front of her.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/washington-national-cathedra...

Alexa has been reprogrammed for some users

https://www.instagram.com/p/DFGVqWQv433/?igsh=eWdjZ3licWg4dnY3

So today I learned that Elon Musk was literally named after a Mars-colonizing technocrat in the sci-fi novel The Mars Project written by Wernher Von Braun. (Thanks to one Jim Stewartson)
https://www.mind-war.com/p/the-elon-how-a-nazi-rocket-scientist

As interviewed by Thom Hartmann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y-erGt0LsU

-------
Has anyone seen a full compilation of the Day 1 EOs and such? You'd think someone would be doing that work.
ETA:
Here we are. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/21/president-donald-trump-executive-orders-list

Officer Fanone (injured in the January 6 event) on CNN has what is either an forgivably emotional reaction to the release of insurrectionists from prison, or he is ringing the first alarm. Time will reveal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BXmMYsbjtw

Convicted US Capitol rioter turns down Trump pardon (BBC)

One of the people who served jail time for taking part in the US Capitol riot four years ago has refused a pardon from President Donald Trump, saying: "We were wrong that day." Pamela Hemphill, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 60 days in prison, told the BBC that there should be no pardons for the riot on 6 January 2021. "Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation," she said. "I pleaded guilty because I was guilty, and accepting a pardon also would serve to contribute to their gaslighting and false narrative." Hemphill, who was nicknamed the "Maga granny" by social media users - in reference to Trump's "make America great again" slogan - said she saw the Trump government as trying to "rewrite history and I don't want to be part of that". "We were wrong that day, we broke the law - there should be no pardons"...

Trump’s angry response to a viral sermon should worry all Christians

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-bishop-budde-sermon-truth-soci...

Predictably, Trump took to Truth Social to denounce the “so-called Bishop” as a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” and accusing her of bringing “her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way.” He dismissed her sermon as “nasty in tone,” “boring” and “uninspiring,” going so far as to demand an apology from her and her church.
——
One MAGA politician called for her to be deported.
Hmmm. It gets very ugly, very fast.

Last evening, on The Beat, Ari Melber’s first guest ended a discussion of Trump policies with the comment that “you and I may end up in camps.”
Melber stumbled for the first time since I’ve been listening to him and said “you can make a joke; it’s your time.”
Ah. His next guest was member of Trump’s new administration.

MSNBC is a target, I believe.

Here we go.
Tennessee Republican proposes amendment to allow Trump to serve third term
by Filip Timotija
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5104133-rep-andy-ogles-proposes-trump-third-t...

Of course, this goes nowhere. ...for now.

Mississippi bill would create bounty hunter program to hunt undocumented migrants

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2025/01/23/mississippi-bill-bounty-hunt...

The text also defines a crime of trespass by an illegal alien as a felony "for which the authorized term of imprisonment is life imprisonment without eligibility for probation, parole, conditional release, or release except by act of the Governor or the natural death of such person." That can change if the federal government takes custody of the person and deports them within 24 hours.

The law would also require anyone arrested on the charge to submit a DNA sample.

Exactly the same bill in Missouri
SB 72

https://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/1754923

>10 2wonderY: Patterrollers redux.

>10 2wonderY: It is interesting that the people proposing these sorts of things for the most part identify as Christians.

>12 kiparsky:

Both interesting and shameful. Fortunately there are many Christians, including the good bishop whom Trump described as nasty, who support the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in general. But it's a sad comment on how US culture wars have infected Christianity.

>13 John5918: I've never been much concerned with religion, but it seems to me that the shame is largely on the heads of the people who could clarify the Christian position for them, but haven't done that. I mean, you want to ask their church leaders a few questions, don't you? Such as, "what do you reckon would Jesus' position on immigrants be?"

Whenever the subject of religion comes up, people seem to give it a lot of credit as a tool for moral instruction. I'm just saying, I'm having a really hard time buying that at the moment, all things considered.

Elon Musk makes surprise appearance at AfD event in eastern Germany

“It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” Musk said. ...

“There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,” he said. ...

Musk spoke in favour of voting for the far-right party. “I’m very excited for the AfD, I think you’re really the best hope for Germany’s fight for a great future for Germany,” he told onlookers.

Weidel thanked him, said the Republicans were making America great again, and called on her supporters to make Germany great again.

Apparently "Alice fur Deutschland" is their slogan.

>15 kiparsky:

Fair comment. Although also to be fair, many church leaders are trying to "clarify the Christian position", recently including Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, Pope Francis, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury and his predecessors, Bishop Fernando García Cadiñanos (link), Cardinal Blase Cupich, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, Bishop Mark Seitz (link), Cardinal Robert McElroy (link), Bishop Dwayne Royster (link), and many other less well known priests and pastors.

>18 John5918: It's true, there are a number of honorable people in the Christian clergy and in the laity who are trying to do that work, and I've got a lot of respect for those people. I suppose I was thinking specifically of the people who stand up in the churches that people like Matthew Barton attend and give instruction and guidance each week. Surely it's their job to point out that Jesus was pretty clear on how we're supposed to treat the stranger on our doorstep, and that "put the boot in" was not part of his teaching.

>19 kiparsky: If people don't hear what they want to hear, they'll find someone who will tell them that. Freedom of religion means that a church needs to get donations to stay alive. So it needs to attract people, and most people aren't looking for someone who will challenge them. Preachers who tell people what they want to hear will be more successful. Preachers who offer unpopular political views will be asked to leave by the church board or have the church dry up underneath them.

Colombia agrees to take deported migrants after tariff showdown with Trump
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-colombia-migrant-repatriation-flights-1.7442...

Trump said the measures were necessary because Petro's decision "jeopardized" national security in the U.S. by blocking the deportation flights.

"These measures are just the beginning," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. "We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States."

Said the Convicted Felon.

>21 Cecrow: Autotranslated:
Gustavo Petro
@petrogustavo
https://x.com/petrogustavo/status/1883624818811236502

Trump, I don't really like travelling to the US, it's a bit boring, but I confess that there are some commendable things. I like going to the black neighbourhoods of Washington, where I saw an entire fight in the US capital between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me, because they should join together.

I confess that I like Walt Whitman and Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky and Miller

I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti, who have my blood, are memorable in the history of the USA and I follow them. They were murdered by labor leaders with the electric chair, the fascists who are within the USA as well as within my country

I don't like your oil, Trump, you're going to wipe out the human species because of greed. Maybe one day, over a glass of whiskey, which I accept, despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it's difficult because you consider me an inferior race and I'm not, nor is any Colombian.

So if you know someone who is stubborn, that's me, period. You can try to carry out a coup with your economic strength and your arrogance, like they did with Allende. But I will die in my law, I resisted torture and I resist you. I don't want slavers next to Colombia, we already had many and we freed ourselves. What I want next to Colombia are lovers of freedom. If you can't accompany me, I'll go elsewhere. Colombia is the heart of the world and you didn't understand that, this is the land of the yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remedios, but also of the colonels Aureliano Buendía, of which I am one, perhaps the last.

You will kill me, but I will survive in my people, which is before yours, in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea and of freedom.

You don't like our freedom, okay. I don't shake hands with white slavers. I shake hands with the white libertarian heirs of Lincoln and the black and white farm boys of the USA, at whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached after walking the mountains of Italian Tuscany and after being saved from Covid.

They are the United States and before them I kneel, before no one else.

Overthrow me, President, and the Americas and humanity will respond.

Colombia now stops looking north, looks at the world, our blood comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Cordoba, the civilization of that time, of the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that time, who founded the republic, democracy in Athens; our blood has the black resistance fighters turned into slaves by you. In Colombia is the first free territory of America, before Washington, of all America, there I take refuge in its African songs.

My land is made up of goldsmiths who worked in the time of the Egyptian pharaohs and of the first artists in the world in Chiribiquete.

You will never rule us. The warrior who rode our lands, shouting freedom, who is called Bolívar, opposes us.

Our people are somewhat fearful, somewhat timid, they are naive and kind, loving, but they will know how to win the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all of Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, today's Panama, formerly Colombia, which you murdered.

I raise a flag and as Gaitán said, even if it remains alone, it will continue to be raised with the Latin American dignity that is the dignity of America, which your great-grandfather did not know, and mine did, Mr. President, an immigrant in the USA,

Your blockade does not scare me, because Colombia, besides being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world. I know that you love beauty as I do, do not disrespect it and you will give it your sweetness.

FROM TODAY ON, COLOMBIA IS OPEN TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS, WE ARE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE AND HUMANITY.

I am informed that you impose a 50% tariff on the fruits of our human labor to enter the United States, and I do the same.

Let our people plant corn that was discovered in Colombia and feed the world.

Even with the translator hiccups, that's still pretty eloquent.

>23 Cecrow: It's not bad. Of course, then he backed down.

Trump is getting busy firing various members of the Justice Dept, over a dozen now. Anyone who was implicated in the cases against him. "Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges and argued the cases reflected a 'weaponization' of the legal system." (CBC News).

Either you believe the American justice system was corrupt and he's correcting it. Or you believe it was one of the last things in Trump's way and he's launching his assault to get that under his power, too. Which one is more dangerous to believe?

A message from inside the Office of Personnel Management

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFYW6ZjStEa/?igsh=MWxmNjU3cjAxMXozbw==

Federal employees got an email offering 7 months severance pay if they resign in the next week.

Senator Tim Kaine debunks the offer:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFZrev8xQDu/?igsh=MWNqdDljMzU4bms3Zg==

>27 2wonderY: Here's a Raw Story article on this

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-buyout/

From the article...

The buyout offer, which reportedly extends to every worker in the entire federal civil service, does not appear to actually entitle government employees to a compensation package without work; rather, it lets them take a "deferred resignation," where they can remain in their job for up to 8 months and be exempt from Trump's new executive order mandating federal employees return to full-time in-office work.

So, basically the deal is we'll let you keep working for awhile instead of firing you sometime soon

FWIW they did this at the Postal Service somewhere around 2012. Wanting people just to leave. Almost no one took them up on this. The next stage was to make things as miserable as possible for everyone. At our plant it was taking apart the automation machinery--metal, screws, plastic, wiring and plexiglass and throwing it all in a heap on the blacktop at the back end parking lot to be rained and snowed on and to rust out for the next 9 months or so. Kind of looked like a hoarders backyard. With that machinery out of commission they started exiling people to other plants. At first anywhere in a 50 mile radius and then they expanded that out to 100. Most of the workers in the plant ended up going here, there and everywhere. No doubt some of them eventually did quit. I wasn't among them. I had seniority. They needed about a dozen clerks, two or three mailhandlers and pretty much the entire mail carrier and maintenance end of things. When xmas came around then there was hardly anyone to work the mail. The bosses begged, they cajoled, they cried. It was always a shitshow. They still had this big ass building and they still do in 2025. About a year after there was an early out. I got $15,000 not tax free spread over two years and was grandfathered into social security to leave something like 7 months early at the end of Feb. 2013. I was going to retire at the end of Sept. 2013 anyway. I offer the above only as an example.

What Trump has in mind is closing down all kinds of government operations----it's not just picking on the post office. How he's going to accomplished that we'll see. People who can retire might retire. They could offer an early out package to those who are closer to retirement to push them along but that won't be right away. And a lot of these federal workers aren't unionized.

For the past 20/30/40 years I don't know how many times I've heard some knucklehead say 'anything the government does private business can do better'. Some people really believe that horseshit and it's repeated so often that I'd guess a good half of the people in this country believe it too. Lots of people also still believe our runaway oligarchic friendly capitalist system is the best thing ever invented and it seems only to have been an inevitability that these people would test out all these theories they have when given the chance. I expect they're going to fuck a lot of things up and look to blame others when their theories turn out to be shit but par for the course for a sinking and decaying empire that kind of lost it's way for the last half of a century anyway.

Tennessee SB6002

Immigration - As introduced, creates within the department of safety the centralized immigration enforcement division, to be administered by the chief immigration enforcement officer; establishes a grant program for purposes of promoting the enforcement of federal immigration laws; creates criminal penalties for officials who adopt sanctuary policies and subsequently requires their removal from office upon conviction; requires department of safety to issue lawful permanent residents a temporary driver license, instead of a standard license, to aid in determining voter eligibility for someone who presents a Tennessee driver license as identification.

https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=SB6002&GA=...

Video of discussion and committee vote:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFaXBnEuCcC/?igsh=MThva3kzNTE1M2ppeQ==

Bill on public labor unions passes Utah House
A bill that would prohibit public sector collective bargaining passed through the House on Monday and now moves on to the Senate

https://www.deseret.com/utah/2025/01/27/public-labor-unions-bill-passes-house/

The First Felon announced a desire to sent would be immigrants to Guantanamo, and has prepared something like a 30,000 bed facility.

That should alarm the daylights out of anyone, but I don't see, hear, feel any great outrage or pushback.

If he does it, who is to stop him?

And if he gets away with it, who do you think will also get "disappeared" to Guantanamo?

"Als sie mich holten .... "
(When the came for me, there was nobody left to protest)

You Bob Dog! You're next!

As we toured the area and came upon sad collections of buildings, none exhibiting the grandeur of Greece or even the victories of the Spartan armies, Devlan said "When I was in the United States I had the mournful feeling that eighty percent of your people would welcome a Spartan dictatorship if it promised to improve the schools, discipline the minorities, put women back in their place, install a religious supremacy and terminate the silliness of the Bill of Rights. Many modern Americans would leap at such an offer, it seems to me, which is why I wanted you to see Sparta. Because what you see here is what such a choice always leads to."

From The Novel by James Michener, published 1991. I just came upon it today.

It's a NY Times article,, accessing through library, can't link directly

Elon Musk’s Team Granted Access to Treasury Dept. Payment System

The Treasury secretary gave representatives of the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system, handing the team Elon Musk leads a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.

This is insane, right? A coup d'état, right? Like, this is the sort of thing, were it to happen in France, where no sooner done than gazillion of angry French would be out in the street protesting, right?

The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.

The system could give the Trump administration another mechanism to attempt to unilaterally restrict disbursement of money approved for specific purposes by Congress, a push that has faced legal roadblocks.

Mr. Musk, who has been given wide latitude by President Trump to find ways to slash government spending, has recently fixated on Treasury’s payment processes, criticizing the department in a social media post on Saturday for not rejecting more payments as fraudulent or improper. (...)

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is not a government department, but a team within the administration. It was put together at Mr. Trump’s direction by Mr. Musk to fan out across federal agencies seeking ways to cut spending, reduce the size of the federal work force and bring more efficiency to the bureaucracy. Most of those working on the initiative were recruited by Mr. Musk and his aides.

Similar DOGE teams have begun demanding access to data and systems at other federal agencies, but none of those agencies control the flow of money in the way the Treasury Department does.

Mr. Bessent granted access to the payments system to a handful of staff members affiliated with DOGE, including Tom Krause, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley company, Cloud Software Group, according to one of the people familiar with the change. Access to the system has historically been closely held because it includes sensitive personal information about the millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds and other payments from the federal government.

A Treasury Department spokesman, a spokeswoman for DOGE and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (...)

Mr. Wyden followed up on Saturday to express concern that access to the payment system had already been granted and pointed to Mr. Musk’s potential conflicts of interest.

“Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. All of it,” he wrote on social media. (...)

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-junta-establishes-him-as-head-of-govern...

Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government
Imagining how we'd cover overseas what's happening to the U.S. right now
Author
Garrett Graff
February 01, 2025 • Reading Time: 9 minutes

I’ve long believed that the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of Donald Trump if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where we’re used to foreign correspondents writing with more incisive authority. Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at just such a dispatch. Here’s a story that should be written this weekend:

Musk Junta Seizes Key Governmental Offices
February 1, 2025
By William Boot

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.

With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.

The G-7 country’s newly installed president, a mid-level oligarch named Donald Trump, appeared amid Musk’s moves to be increasingly merely a figurehead head of state. Trump is a convicted felon with a long record of family corruption and returned in power in late January after a four-year interlude promising retribution and retaliation against foreign opponents and a domestic “Deep State.” He had been charged with attempting to overthrow the peaceful transition of power that had previously removed him from office in 2021, but loyalist elements in the judiciary successfully blocked his prosecution and incarceration, easing his return to power.

Over the last two weeks, loyalist presidential factions and Musk-backed teams have launched sweeping, illegal Stalin-esque purges of the national police forces and prosecutors, as well as offices known as inspectors-general, who are typically responsible for investigating government corruption. While official numbers of the unprecedented ousters were kept secret, rumors swirled in the capital that the scores of career officials affected by the initial purges could rise into the thousands as political commissars continued to assess the backgrounds of members of the police forces.

The mentally declining and aging head of state, who has long embraced conspiracist thinking, spent much of the week railing in bizarre public remarks against the country’s oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, whom he blamed without evidence for causing a deadly plane crash across the river from the presidential mansion. Unfounded racist attacks on those minorities have been a key foundation of Trump’s unpredicted rise to political power from a career as a real estate magnate and reality TV host and date back to his first announcement that he would seek the presidency in 2015, when he railed against “rapists” being sent into the country from its southern neighbor....

The only difference between our recently-minted third world country and others on the globe is that we, as of now, have refrained from murdering our political enemies WITHIN OUR OWN COUNTRY.

>37 Molly3028:

I rather thought the USA has a record of murdering a lot of its political enemies. Didn't Trump order a strike on a Somali leader just last week (I'm travelling at the moment and can't check the details of that one)? One of the highest profile political enemies murdered by US forces was of course Osama bin Laden.

Retaliation.
Pure spite. https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/trump-criticised-for-dumping-g...

Climate scientist Peter Gleick said on Bluesky that water resources farmers had been "relying on" were "thrown away" by the Trump administration for the sale of "a photo op & a bragging media post." "This water will not be captured, will not be useful for cities or farms or firefighting," Gleick said. "It is now lost."

(cf. LA Times' neutered headline. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-01-31/trump-california-dams-opene... )

Politico:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/31/trump-california-water-00201909

ETA: Some good local TV coverage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-18E6hcSU

>38 John5918:

Thanks for reminding me how obtuse you are!

>40 Molly3028:

You don't believe the USA has been murdering its political enemies?

Peter Thiel Dreams of Empire
Dave Karpf (David Karpf) / Jan 17, 2025
https://www.techpolicy.press/peter-thiel-dreams-of-empire/

Perhaps the most famous piece of lore from the early days of the “PayPal mafia” is the time that Elon Musk took Peter Thiel for a joyride in his McLaren F1. Thiel asked Musk what the car could do. Musk said, “Watch this,” gunned the engine, lost control of the car, hit an embankment, and the car went airborne. The two men survived without injury, but the car itself was ruined. Musk, in his own words, “didn’t really know how to drive.” He also hadn’t bothered to insure the million-dollar vehicle.

That story happened almost 25 years ago, but it still offers a lesson for us today: Beware of tech barons and their newly purchased toys.

Musk and Thiel’s latest acquisition is, effectively, the United States government. Musk spent over $250 million in support of President-elect Donald Trump’s election effort. He has been glued to Trump’s hip ever since the election and has been tasked as cochair of the “Department of Governmental Efficiency” (DOGE/not an actual department of anything). with overhauling the entire federal bureaucracy to suit his personal whims. And JD Vance, the incoming Vice President, is a longtime Thiel protégé.

Last week, Thiel contributed a column to the Financial Times titled “A time for truth and reconciliation.” It’s a ludicrous, portentous piece of writing. But it also signals what Thiel thinks the US government can do if they really put the pedal to the metal and take it for a spin.
...
Peter Thiel and Elon Musk have effectively seized control of the US government now. The message we ought to take from Thiel’s latest public missive is that he is nothing if not a sore winner. Make no mistake: his next goal is to deploy the capacities of the US government to bring every other democracy that dares to stand up to the members of his groupchat to heel.

Beware of tech barons and their newly purchased toys. They tend to drive them over the railing without insurance.

>41 John5918:

What is in the water on the other side of the pond? This thread is about the country and people living between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

>42 davidgn:

Going forward, billionaires are going to be controlling everything in the USA. They will be at the controls in the power centers or they will be the puppeteers financially supporting and guiding the people at the controls in the power centers.

>10 2wonderY: Assuming vigilantes and bounty hunters would soon be baying on heels of people who might be illegal immigrants, I had "the talk" with son adopted from Thailand, who is sometimes mistaken for Mexican. He can handle himself, I think, but was truly saddened to learn of other parents terrified and trying to protect their autistic daughter should she get swept up. Both are American citizens.

Trump and Musk’s friendship takes a dark turn
MSNBC
Feb 3, 2025 #Trump #ElonMusk #Politics
Less than two weeks into Trump's return, it's clear that Elon Musk has had an outsized and unusual role: helping Trump wage a war on his own federal government. Musk is not a federal employee and has no clearances, yet has already gained access to highly sensitive information at the Treasury and USAID. And those who have tried to stand in his way have either been put on leave or forced to resign. MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin speaks with former Congressman Denver Riggleman and Democratic Strategist Julie Roginsky about how dangerous this is for U.S. democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVS_f3i2_Bo

‘It is really awful!’: Rep. Crockett explains terrifying reality if Musk has federal funds access
MSNBC
1,082,645 views Feb 2, 2025 #elonmusk #trump #fbi
The New York Times reports that billionaire Elon Musk and his aides have access to the Treasury Department’s payment system. President Trump has also taken aim at federal prosecutors and FBI investigators that were involved in January 6th cases. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, reacts to the New York Times reporting, Trump’s efforts related to January 6 cases, and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3YRAHDiQyY

>43 Molly3028:

This thread is about the fascist states of America. As we learned in the 1930s, fascist states' murder of people they disagree with is not confined within national boundaries, so noting the political murders carried out by the USA outside its borders does seem relevant to me, if not to you.

However as you have now edited your claim that you don't murder your "political enemies" to read "WITHIN OUR OWN COUNTRY" (it would have been nice if you could have made that clarification without the ad hominem insults, but each to their own), let me also challenge that claim. Four of your presidents have been murdered in office, presumably by their political enemies, and three others have survived attempts to murder them, including current President Trump. High profile public figures such as Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr were murdered by their political enemies. Paul Pelosi survived a murder attempt by his wife's political enemies, and Vice President Mike Pence also survived a concerted attempt by a mob of political enemies to lynch him, while some of the police who protected him were murdered. Doctors who work in reproductive health clinics and the CEO of a health insurance company are murdered by their political enemies. And thousands of ordinary black people, women, Muslims, migrants, LGBTQ people and other identity groups have been murdered over the years by people who consider them to be their political enemies WITHIN YOUR OWN COUNTRY. I would therefore respectfully suggest that the USA does indeed have a long record of political violence.

>47 John5918:

When I see your posts, I often recall the Proximity1 days in this forum. I wonder where that person is now.

>47 John5918: I would also add cases like the murder of Fred Hampton and the bombing of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. While Bari and Cherney survived the attack on them, it's hard to see how putting a bomb under the driver's seat of their vehicle was done with anything but lethal intent. Back in the 1980s Ward Churchill compiled a monumental history of the FBI's COINTELPRO operations including many more shameful attacks by our federal government on American citizens within US borders.

So the idea that the US government is averse to murdering its political opponents, regardless of the qualifications one puts on it, is historically false. If we divide political murders as >43 Molly3028: suggests we ought to, into those committed against US citizens on US territory and those committed against "others", "elsewhere", then to the best of my knowledge neither the previous Trump administration nor the current one have yet committed any of the former sort, but clearly the state apparatus has been willing to do so in relatively recent times. I don't know if they will be asked to do so again, or if they are, how they will respond.

Another scenario to consider, in line with previous fascist regimes, is the action of "volunteer patriots" who hear the dog whistles and obey. Based on no evidence, only intuition, I believe this is the more likely scenario - the Dear Leader calls yet again for the death of one or another civil servant, and someone steps up to comply.
The only question in my mind is whether that person gets the pardon they're expecting, and I'm very much afraid that they will.

>48 Molly3028: I'm not sure what your beef is, but I think John's point is both reasonable and on point. It might not have been precisely what you had in mind, but sometimes it's a good thing to get another perspective to expand our thinking. Peace.

>49 kiparsky:

I am tired of hearing and reading unending what-about arguments. GOP strategists and FOX News hosts have been playing that game 24/7 for a whole decade. And the dudes long dissertations do not impress me.

>50 Molly3028: Fair enough, but it's worth having a clear view of things. If we're talking about "killing political enemies", that's not a new behavior for the US government, and we should understand that. This is not "what-aboutism", it's being clear about the baseline that we're working from. The fact that previous, "respectable" administrations went to these lengths doesn't mean that the behavior is acceptable or should be tolerated, and I see no great benefit to ignoring those facts.

The other thing I want to suggest it is worth choosing your enemies carefully. You have lots of them available to you as an American of the left in this time, there's no need to go out and find more. I don't see anything here that you and John actually disagree on except that he wanted to broaden a subject beyond where you'd been wanting to focus it. That's probably something that can be dealt with without bringing in comparison to now-absent crypto-fascists.

>50 Molly3028:

Might I add that you yourself posted today in a parallel thread, "Militias would most likely be preparing for encounters, too". That sounds to me like Americans preparing to murder their political enemies within the USA, as has happened frequently in the past and also very recently.

>51 kiparsky:

Thanks. I also find it difficult to understand where Molly is coming from. As you say, she and I are both left of centre and agree on much. I'm not sure why she reacts with ad hominem attacks when someone broadens the conversation or challenges some aspect of her more hyperbolic statements. Such is life. As you say, peace, and my apologies if anything I have written inadvertently offends

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/03/a-coup-is-in-progress-in-america/
Mike Brock
A Coup Is In Progress In America
from the wake-up dept
Mon, Feb 3rd 2025 12:07pm - Mike Brock

A coup is underway in the United States, and we must stop pretending otherwise. The signs are unmistakable and accelerating: in just the past 48 hours, Elon Musk’s DOGE commission has seized control of Treasury payment systems and gained unauthorized access to classified USAID materials, while security officials who followed protocols were removed. Career civil servants across agencies are being systematically purged for having followed legal requirements during previous administrations. The president openly declares he won’t enforce laws he dislikes, while Congress watches in complicit silence. This isn’t happening through tanks in the streets or soldiers at government buildings—it’s occurring through the systematic dismantling of constitutional governance and its replacement with a system of personal loyalty to private interests. Those who resist are being removed, while those who enable this transformation are being rewarded with unprecedented control over government functions. The time for euphemisms and careful hedging has passed. We are watching, in real time, the conversion of constitutional democracy into something darker and more dangerous. To pretend otherwise isn’t prudence—it’s complicity.

I understand why many Americans are hesitant to accept what’s happening—acknowledging the reality of a coup in progress is frightening. But we must confront the facts before us with clear eyes: Donald Trump and Elon Musk are systematically seizing control of the federal government’s machinery through plainly illegal means. They are violating civil service protections established by law, shuttering congressionally mandated agencies without authority, and subjecting career public servants to ideological purges.

When security officials are removed for following classification protocols, when private citizens gain unauthorized access to Treasury payment systems, when civil servants are punished for having participated in legally required training—these aren’t isolated incidents or normal policy changes. They represent the coordinated dismantling of constitutional governance and its replacement with a system of personal loyalty.

The machinery of government—the actual systems and institutions through which public authority flows—is being captured by private interests operating outside constitutional constraints. This is precisely what the Civil Service Reform Act was designed to prevent. These aren’t abstract concerns about democratic norms—these are concrete violations of specific laws designed to prevent exactly this kind of authoritarian capture of government functions.

This is an emergency, and it demands emergency response from every American with power or influence. The window for effective resistance narrows with each passing day. History will judge harshly those who had the capacity to resist but chose instead to wait and see how things develop. The time to act is now, before the mechanisms that would allow effective resistance are completely dismantled.

The American Constitution represents more than just a system of government—it embodies humanity’s greatest experiment in self-governance through reason and law rather than force and will. When the Founders established our constitutional republic, they created something unprecedented: a government bound by law rather than personal authority, where power flows through democratic institutions rather than individual whim. This inheritance, paid for with the blood of patriots from Lexington to Normandy, gave birth to the very idea of modern liberal democracy.

Now we watch as this precious inheritance is being systematically subjugated to the personal authority of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The constitutional firebreaks designed to prevent the concentration of power—checks and balances, civil service protections, congressional oversight—are being dismantled not through revolution but through a calculated strategy of institutional capture. When private citizens gain control of Treasury systems, when security officials are removed for following classification protocols, when Congress abandons its constitutional duties, we’re witnessing the subordination of constitutional governance to personal power.

This isn’t just another political crisis—it’s an existential threat to the constitutional order that has secured human liberty for over two centuries. Every American who understands the value of this inheritance has a duty to resist its destruction. The Constitution doesn’t defend itself—it requires citizens willing to stand for the principles of democratic governance against those who would replace the rule of law with the rule of men.
...

The ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’ of the United States Government
Elon Musk’s bureaucratic coup is underway.
By Charlie Warzel
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-bureaucratic-co...

Elon Musk is not the president, but it does appear that he—a foreign-born, unelected billionaire who was not confirmed by Congress—is exercising profound influence over the federal government of the United States, seizing control of information, payments systems, and personnel management. It is nothing short of an administrative coup.

'The telltale signs of a coup': Musk's power grab draws outraged backlash
Rep. Jamie Raskin, who protested with fellow Democratic legislators, federal workers, and outraged Americans outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of USAID, speaking out against Elon Musk's seizure of federal databases and the Trump administration's dismantling of the U.S. federal government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=susB1fFE_pU

A good 1 AM hair-on-fire roundup of grassroots internet video media. The coup will not be televised. (Except a bit on MSNBC).
http://youtube.com/watch?v=dbwGhrosGmg

ETA: And C-SPAN. Schumer.
Sen. Schumer on DOGE: "An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2luQx9OWuuY

Gov. DeSantis announces 'Second Amendment Summer' gun tax holiday as part of budget proposal

https://www.wptv.com/news/state/gov-desantis-announces-second-amendment-summer-g...

Indistinguishable from reality.

Think Tank Called ‘The Himmler Institute’ Assures Nation This All Legal
https://theonion.com/think-tank-called-the-himmler-institute-assures-nation-this...

AMB. Chas Freeman : Trump and USAID.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=matczgR0wUw

Federal health workers terrified after 'DEI' website publishes list of 'targets'

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/federal-health-workers-terrified-dei-...

Federal health workers are expressing fear and alarm after a website called “DEI Watch List” published the photos, names and public information of a number of workers across health agencies, describing them at one point as “targets.”

It’s unclear when the website, which lists mostly Black employees who work in agencies primarily within the Department of Health and Human Services, first appeared.

I'm told Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin's #ResistanceLive is worth a follow.

So on paper, there's a temporary restraining order against the Waffentwerpen. What happens next indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvbaZsV0tzw

ETA: I get the feeling we're woefully behind the curve. Adding progressively to this list. This is madness.

Elon Musk’s Terrifying Plan For America's Future (Majority Report w/ Sam Seder)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLR1fPxZImI

So, Curtis Yarvin via network state. Fascism by blockchain.
Unfortunately, it's undeniable that the agenda is so far unfolding by the number. Uncannily so, actually.
Yeah, not great.

Cites and excerpts from:
DARK GOTHIC MAGA: How Tech Billionaires Plan to Destroy America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

Who in turn cites Gil Duran. Website:
https://www.thenerdreich.com/

The Network State Coup is Happening Right Now
Gil Duran
01 Feb 2025 — 4 min read

While the establishment press either cowers or kowtows, the architects of this takeover operate in broad daylight. Everything happening now has already been spelled out by the Nerd Reich tech bros manifestos, podcasts, and conferences: the tech CEO takeover of government, the institutional purges, crypto corruption becoming a dominant economic force, the quest for new territory. I didn't guess this stuff – I just listened.

The playbook is no longer theoretical. It's being executed step by step.

This network state coup isn't happening in secret. It's unfolding right in front of our eyes while our democratic institutions remain paralyzed in fear and/or denial.

Democracy isn't dying in darkness. The lights are on. We can see it all happening in real time. No, democracy is dying in silence.

https://www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-state-coup-is-happening-right-now/

--------------------
Dystopia
'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook
In 2022, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a “CEO”

Gil Duran
05 Feb 2025 — 7 min read
https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-doge/

Longtime readers may recall that back in September, the Heritage Foundation and particular San Francisco tech interests held a conference called "Reboot 2024: The New Reality."

The New Reality
Analysis: What once seemed like a fringe theory is now being carried out by the corporate powers that have wholly captured our government. While there are some minor differences between Yarvin's approach and Musk's, here's a summary of what they have in common:

1. Install a CEO Dictator

Yarvin’s Blueprint: Trump appoints a CEO to run the country like a private corporation, bypassing Congress and the courts.
Musk’s Moves: Acts as federal CEO, demands unilateral control over sensitive government programs, positioning himself as an unelected decision-maker as Trump stays in the background.
2. Purge the Bureaucracy

Yarvin’s Plan: “Retire All Government Employees” (RAGE) – fire career civil servants and replace them with loyalists.
Musk’s Moves: DOGE is gutting teams, demanding mass resignations, locking employees out of offices, and threatening mass layoffs in federal government. Meanwhile, DOGE is recruiting inexperienced young men who owe their loyalty to Musk/Thiel.
3. Build a Loyalist Army

Yarvin’s Blueprint: Recruit an “ideologically trained” army to replace experts and enforce the new regime.
Musk’s Moves: Surrounding himself with young, inexperienced loyalists who enforce his will without question. Project 2025 will also provide Republican cadre to run what's left of the federal government.
4. Dismantle Democratic Institutions

Yarvin’s Blueprint: Strip power from federal agencies, courts, and Congress, centralizing authority under the executive branch.
Musk’s Moves: Undermining the credibility of the federal government, downplaying legal oversight, and defying regulatory authorities. Dismantling government agencies and functions with no plan for their replacement.
5. Seize Media and Information Control to Maintain Power

Yarvin’s Blueprint: Take over government, journalism, academia, and social media to control public narratives.
Musk’s Moves: Buying Twitter, firing journalists, boosting propaganda, and promoting fringe narratives while attacking traditional media. Leading the hostile tech takeover as Trump’s “CEO.”
Did I miss anything?

Conclusion: There is a lot more to say. What surprises me most is how the political press generally fails to inform the public that Musk is taking a systematic approach, one that has been outlined in public forums for years. (Some press outlets, like the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, are owned by billionaires keenly interested in kowtowing to Musk and Trump.)

We are witnessing the methodical implementation of a long-planned strategy to transform American democracy into corporate autocracy. The playbook was written in plain sight and is now being followed step by step. Some dismiss the Yarvins of the world as unhinged nuts, but that's the point. These guys, with their bizarre and dangerous ideas, have gotten very far in 2025. Just look at the news.

Yarvin pitched his vision as a fictional or unlikely scenario. Unfortunately, it now appears to be our new reality. The press's failure to connect these dots isn't just a journalistic oversight — it's a critical missed warning about the systematic dismantling of democratic governance. By the time most Americans understand what's happening, the "reboot" – the destruction of government – may already be complete.

I'm going to go to sleep and wake up. Hoping that after that, the above will no longer appear plausible.
Otherwise, we will all want to get copies of The Network State by Balaji Srinivasan tout de suite. And then its unprettified source material: Moldbug.

What a sweet girl.

Trump’s New Attorney General Directs Prosecutors to Pursue Harshest Sentences Possible

https://theappeal.org/pam-bondi-attorney-general-memos/

Illegal immigrants, students who participate in pro-Palestinian protests

https://snyder.substack.com/p/of-course-its-a-coup
Of course it’s a coup
Miss the obvious, lose your republic
Timothy Snyder
Feb 05, 2025

Imagine if it had gone like this.

Ten Tesla cybertrucks, painted in camouflage colors with a giant X on each roof, drive noisily through Washington DC. Tires screech. Out jump a couple of dozen young men, dressed in red and black Devil’s Champion armored costumes. After giving Nazi salutes, they grab guns and run to one government departmental after another, calling out slogans like “all power to Supreme Leader Skibidi Hitler.”

Historically, that is what coups looked like. The center of power was a physical place. Occupying it, and driving out the people who held office, was to claim control. So if a cohort of armed men with odd symbols had stormed government buildings, Americans would have recognized that as a coup attempt.

And that sort of coup attempt would have failed.

Now imagine that, instead, the scene goes like this.

A couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives. Using technical jargon and vague references to orders from on high, they gain access to the basic computer systems of the federal government. Having done so, they proceed to grant their Supreme Leader access to information and the power to start and stop all government payments.

That coup is, in fact, happening. And if we do not recognize it for what it is, it could succeed.

In the third decade of the twenty first century, power is more digital than physical. The buildings and the human beings are there to protect the workings of the computers, and thus the workings of the government as a whole, in our case an (in principle) democratic government which is organized and bounded by a notion of individual rights.

The ongoing actions by Musk and his followers are a coup because the individuals seizing power have no right to it. Elon Musk was elected to no office and there is no office that would give him the authority to do what he is doing. It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights.

In gaining data about us all, Musk has trampled on any notion of privacy and dignity, as well as on the explicit and implicit agreements made with our government when we pay our taxes or our student loans. And the possession of that data enables blackmail and further crimes.

In gaining the ability to stop payments by the Department of the Treasury, Musk would also make democracy meaningless. We vote for representatives in Congress, who pass laws that determine how our tax money is spent. If Musk has the power to halt this process at the level of payment, he can make laws meaningless. Which means, in turn, that Congress is meaningless, and our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship.

Resistance to the coup is the defense of the human against the digital and the democratic against the oligarchic. If Musk controls these digital systems, Republican elected officials will be just as helpless as Democratic ones. The institutions that they voted to create can also be “deleted,” as Musk puts it.

President Trump, for that matter, will also perform at Musk’s pleasure. There is not much he can do without the use of the federal government’s computers. No one will explain this to Trump or to his supporters, of course.

A coup is underway, against Americans as possessors of human rights and dignities, and against Americans as citizens of a democratic republic. Each hour this goes unrecognized makes the success of the coup more likely.

AG Pam Bondi Targets DEI At Private Companies And Universities On Day One

https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/02/06/ag-pam-bondi-targets-dei-at-...

Bondi did not specify what civil rights legislation the department would use, but some conservative activists have used the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which outlawed racial discrimination in making and enforcing contracts, to fight DEI programs in court, and James Comer, R-Ky., has advocated for using Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race-based employment discrimination.

She also directed the Justice Department to work with the Department of Education to eliminate DEI programs at universities that receive federal funding, citing the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard Supreme Court case, which ended affirmative action in admissions.
————-
I’m personally concerned as I chose my community because it is centered on an historically DEI college.
Their motto is “God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth.”

What with the Brown Shirt tactics of this past week, can we expect a federal raid to confiscate property, records, assets and to arrest administration?

>67 2wonderY: I imagine raiding a small college in Appalachia is something less than a top priority at the federal level at the moment, but the day could well come. We are inside the snake, but digestion is a protracted process (albeit proceeding at a terrifying clip this time around). For the time being, I'd be more worried about the local militias who may find some reason to set themselves off.

>68 davidgn: Yes, I too am concerned about that. I hear a KKK unit is mobilizing two counties away.
And then look at our Senator Rand Paul and Representative Comer and what they are proposing in this moment. They, at least, have got their lists.

>67 2wonderY: Too many people willing to do Trump's work for him ... like that affords any protection ...

The Guardian fingers Musk as couping.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/09/while-trump-blathers-about-tarif...

The Nation:
The Courts Can’t Stop the Trump-Musk Coup
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/courts-cant-stop-the-trump-musk-coup/

For anyone who needed the obvious spelled out.

In theory, these orders should be effective stopgaps. The problem is that the court has no enforcement mechanism. It has no army, no police force, no power to impose its will. Instead, the executive—in this case the president—is supposed to enforce the court’s orders. But what if Trump doesn’t? There is little reason to believe that Trump will enforce an adverse court ruling against himself. There is no reason to believe he’ll enforce one against Musk. He’s clearly not interested in enforcing the court order (and, you know, the entire piece of legislation passed by Congress and signed by his predecessor) against TikTok.

Consider the constitutional crisis unfolding right now. Musk has reportedly seized access to the private information of every US taxpayer, and the payroll information of every government employee. He has no right to this information but… he has it. Who’s going to undo that damage? A court order released Thursday afternoon purportedly limited Musk’s access to Treasury files to two “special employees” with “read-only” access to the data. Musk has reportedly agreed to follow those rules. Who is going to make sure he does? Who is going to lead the crack team of forensic digital investigators to make sure that Musk is in compliance with this or any future court order? My guess is “no one.” Musk currently has a stranglehold on the government, and enforcement of his limitations is going to run on the “trust me, bro” system.

Or take the funding freeze. As of right now, according to the courts, Trump is not allowed to withhold funding to any organization or institution that receives federal money appropriated by Congress. But it’s not at all clear that Trump has turned the money back on. Trump is likely in violation of the TROs suspending his funding freeze as we speak, but the Trump-aligned media refuses to talk about it that way.

TROs and nationwide injunctions worked in the past only because other presidents agreed to be restrained by them. If courts tell Trump not to do something, he’ll pretend his cell phone dropped the call and keep right on doing it.

In response to this full blown crisis, rule-of-law aficionados, feckless institutionalists, and Democratic Party leaders will counter with something like “but the courts are all we have.” They’ll wave court orders around like they’ve won the day. Meanwhile, Trump and Musk will just laugh while their sycophants will crow about how their daddies “defy Washington elites” even when that “defiance” amounts to common thievery.

I’m not even sure the people who think the courts will save us have fully considered what “saving” will look like should it come from the Republican-controlled Supreme Court. It’ll be like being dragged out of a fire by a very hungry wolf. As a person who has read these people all of my adult life, please believe me when I tell you that, if the Federalist Society judges strike down some of these Trump executive orders, you’re not going to like how they do it.

Chief Justice John Roberts and his crew of legal arsonists will be thinking of a world post-Trump. Even in ruling against him, they can ensconce principles that will make it very hard for future generations of liberal lawmakers to undo much of what MAGA and the FedSoc are putting in place now. I predict rulings from this Supreme Court that narrowly limit what Trump can do while simultaneously expanding what unelected courts can do, specifically Republican courts, to frustrate a number of democratically passed laws in the future....

Trump and musk are employing private security “Triple Canopy” to bar entry to Federal buildings

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DF1y8-TxOww/?igsh=MTFyb2Roc2swMHExOA==

>72 2wonderY: That's not "private security." That's a PMC.

>73 davidgn: Mercenaries.

>71 davidgn: that article is spot on. The republicans have a long history of doing that on the state level. For example, in Ohio there were two previous attempts to end gerrymandering, the votes were in and the republican majority in the Ohio house and senate just ignored them. When the Ohio supreme court ordered them to comply the republican majority told the court to F off and nothing changed.

I hate to say it but I think in about 3-4 months there won't be anything left of the US that bears any resemblance to what we had this time last year. I don't think any of us now alive will see anything resembling our former democracy ever again.

>75 alco261: I'm afraid you're right. In my case I hold out some hope to see it again, but I expect I'll be a very old man.

As an outsider (albeit one who has lived and studied in the USA) it is incredible to see how quickly the checks and balances, the respect for due process, and the rule of law, are disintegrating in the USA. I think most of us had always admired and trusted in these institutional safeguards, but they have turned out to be rather flimsy.

>77 John5918: https://youtu.be/kXUJEWNHweE?si=mUVnxejxW5WeESm8&t=1097
John Ralston Saul On Corruption.

Unfortunately, the USA is following in the footsteps of all former seemingly advanced entities of the past because the self-destructive tendencies of human nature have remained a constant throughout history.

>75 alco261: Mystal is now appearing regularly on Sam Seder's Majority Report. Just out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXQL8Bhv-oU
Earlier (a propos of the The Nation piece): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY9SXm9oDP8

Meanwhile...
Europe's far-right parties rally in Madrid in display of force • FRANCE 24 English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIkjM_NMkGE
The next battle is against MEGA.

Maureen Dowd
NYT columnist reporting from DC

To elect one Emperor of Chaos is unfortunate. To let two run the government is simply asking for it.

Thousands protest against Trump’s war on immigrants after Ice raids: ‘Fight for our neighbors’ (Guardian)

Thousands took to the streets on Wednesday and Saturday last week following a series of dramatic raids by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) throughout Denver as protesters expressed solidarity with the undocumented and rage at Donald Trump’s war on immigrants. “We’re here to fight for our neighbors, to stand together and say no to the threats from the Trump administration”... “I think this is worse than in 2016, when we thought the GOP would stand up to Trump. Now they’re all Christian nationalist yes-men, and we’re up against something greater this time around. But it’s bringing this community together”...

>83 John5918: I have seen a couple of ICE alerts in community groups on social media.

I'm wondering how long until we get a story of an immigrant being hidden in someone's basement.

>85 Cecrow: At the moment, they're deporting them, not killing them. But wait till they figure out that killing them is cheaper.

>86 davidgn:, some are deported to Guantanamo, and we'll not find out what happens to them there.

>87 Cecrow: Well, shit. Yes, I see the terrorist designation of cartels and gangs being put domestic use as well as sovereign-violation-of-Mexico use. Bukele on steroids, or worse. And why stop with the gangbangers? Terrorists, of course, go to Gitmo...

Has anyone started offering odds on a Canschluss?

>89 davidgn:, I'd predict it's more likely to become heads-of-state becoming chummy, the PM of Canada happy to jump when Trump says so. Think Russia-Belorussia. Ship you free resources? Sure. Let you set up military bases in Canada? Why not. etc. Not a single shot fired, not a single law changed.

Memo: 'Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries'
Memo details how Elon Musk has orchestrated a stunning takeover of the U.S. government
Gil Duran
10 Feb 2025 — 5 min read
Memo: 'Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries'
https://www.thenerdreich.com/memo-capture-of-u-s-critical-infrastructure-by-neor...

On February 5, a group of anonymous researchers published a memo that reads like a techno-political thriller—except every word is real. The document, "Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries," details how Elon Musk—the wealthiest person alive and a man who once declared, "Government is the ultimate corporation"—has orchestrated a stunning takeover of federal power.

The details will sound familiar to longtime readers of this newsletter. I have no idea who wrote the memo, and I am incredibly hesitant to share anything when I don't know its provenance. But as someone who has covered this subject in-depth, I can say that someone has made a terrific effort to explain the situation very clearly, methodically, professionally, and thoroughly (with footnotes, even). It covers most of what I wrote in my Network State series for the New Republic but adds critical analysis of what's now taking place inside our government.

I encourage you to read the full memo yourself, which investigative journalist and researcher Dave Troy posted. Click here to read "Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries

"
Summary follows.

>86 davidgn: In some cases deporting them is as good as killing them.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5134262-musk-government-power-grab/

A tidal wave of resistance is coming for Elon Musk

Paradise Is a Police State: Examining the Techno-Optimism of Billionaire Silicon Valley Investor (And Unofficial Trump Administration Adviser) Marc Andreessen
Posted on February 10, 2025 by Conor Gallagher
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/why-are-our-tech-overlords-who-promise-u...

Can The Rule of Law SURVIVE Elon's COUP?! Vance and Musk Float Ignoring Court Orders to Stop Them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAwJxEbROcQ
Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin
Up to date with events, a bit behind the curve, but far ahead of the pack.

The view from Peru.

https://larepublica.pe/opinion/2025/02/10/mirko-lauer-se-va-abriendo-la-posibili...

OPINION
Alejandro Céspedes García
Mirko Lauer's recent column on the concept of the self-coup and its application to the U.S. context raises a disturbing comparison between the case of Alberto Fujimori in 1992 and what could be brewing under the leadership of Donald Trump. While the term emerged in Latin America, today economists and analysts, such as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, use it to describe the political phenomenon in the United States.

Krugman warns that Trump and Elon Musk are consolidating a power that could transform the United States into a de facto dictatorship. The idea of a self-coup involves the use of the legal and constitutional apparatus to dismantle democracy from within, a strategy that has already been tried in different latitudes with success for autocrats. From constitutional manipulation to the capture of institutions, control tactics are repeated with variations depending on the context.

YOU CAN SEE: Autogolpe, by Mirko Lauer

The parallel with Fujimori is inevitable. In 1992, the former Peruvian president shut down Congress and rewrote the rules of the game to perpetuate himself in power. Today, the fear is that Trump will do the same in the United States, accommodating the system to his convenience until 2030 or even beyond. Lauer suggests that this authoritarian drift in the world's leading power could serve as an excuse for other regimes to follow suit, further weakening democracy in the world.

Resistance exists, but it is fragmentary. Some judges and states have tried to curb the first signs of abuse, but in general terms, both Republicans and Democrats seem to have submitted to the dynamics of power without major objections. The slogan “Make America Great Again” could end up becoming the symbol of a resigned nation, trapped in its own indifference.

Beyond domestic politics, the global impact of an unfettered Trump worries. Recent history shows, for the noted columnist, that authoritarianisms tend to reinforce each other, generating networks of mutual support that facilitate their consolidation. In this sense, an institutionally weakened United States could pave the way for other governments to adopt similar strategies, eroding the international democratic order.

Lauer's analysis concludes with a warning: the inaction of the American people in the face of this process could be their greatest weakness. History teaches that the consolidation of authoritarian regimes tends to advance rapidly in the absence of strong opposition. If self-coup is the way, the question is no longer whether it will happen, but how long it will take to complete.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Interview with Marietje Schaake, author of The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley
by Hari Sreenivasan

“The Tech Coup:" Expert Warns of Silicon Valley’s Influence on Washington | Amanpour and Company
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lvUwrmMtFA

Now is historically the time when a significant figure appears at the head of opposition to what's happening (e.g. Alexi Navalny). There's a vacuum at the moment with the speed of Trump's actions catching everyone by surprise, but someone will emerge.

US constitutional crisis fears: Over half of Americans concerned

The results of a survey conducted by the international research firm YouGov are concerning. On 6th February, 1,106 residents of the United States were asked about the political situation. As many as 54% of Americans believe their country is experiencing a constitutional crisis, while 27% consider this assessment exaggerated.

***
I wonder which news networks the 27% watch on a daily basis??? FOX News outlets is my guess!!! At the FOX News outlets, a Trump "see, hear and speak no evil money-making scheme" exists.

Share with the kiddos. Gil Duran goes multimedia.
https://www.thenerdreich.com/silicon-valleys-playbook-and-the-ai-coup/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC629l-wZBQ

A little help from across the pond.

Elon Musk's main aim is 'world domination' | Lewis Goodall on LBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGntl6Ob6D8

>66 davidgn: holy yap

What Republicans really mean when they blame ‘DEI’

Referencing DEI is the new rightwing abstraction deployed by Republicans to conceal their anti-Black racism...

Robert F Kennedy Jr has mass appeal despite his extreme ideas. This theory explains why

In just a few years, Kennedy and his dangerously popular ‘diagonalist’ politics have gone from the fringes of the web to, perhaps, the White House... With hindsight, the Berlin speech he gave five years ago was the moment a dangerous new political phenomenon went global. It’s called diagonalism. Coined by the political theorist William Callison and the historian Quinn Slobodian, diagonalism describes the union of disparate groups across the political spectrum around a suspicion of all power being involved in conspiracy. Diagonal movements see big tech, big pharma, banks, climate science and traditional media as accomplices in totalitarianism, evidenced by Covid mandates through to innocuous intergovernmental proposals such as the “great reset” and 15-minute cities. For diagonalists, the control of electoral processes by powerful interests means that governments are de facto illegitimate. And so they advocate for distributed power – not to empower any community, but the individual. By definition they are susceptible to far-right radicalisation...

Both from the Guardian.

Curtis Yarvin's Cult For Billionaire Morons
Gil Duran interviewed on The Majority Report by Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRq14ZBYwus

Haven't verified the video, but kids parrot what their dads say.
What Musk's kid supposedly chirped to Trump in the Oval Office sounds a lot like "You're not the President. You need to go away."
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DF-hDuSuSFu/?igsh=ZzhiaWo4Y2locDZp

He has an estranged child who is transsexual. I'd imagine that relationship can only be worse now.

>106 Cecrow: I'd imagine that the special vitriol reserved for trans is his influence.

Historian Craig Johnson (upcoming book "How to talk to your son about fascism" from Routledge) has just done an AMA on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ioltxr/ama_craig_johnson_resear...

Craig A. Johnson, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism

Judd Legum ‪@juddlegum.bsky.social‬ | February 13, 2025 at 8:53 PM:
Trump's CFPB has set up a "tip line" where you can rat out any CFPB {Consumer Financial Protection Bureau} staff who tries to work
---------------------------------------

Kevin M. Kruse ‪@kevinmkruse.bsky.social‬ | February 13, 2025 at 10:39 PM
{Princeton historian}

“I saw this woman, and she was protecting me from predatory bank charges and hidden fees on my credit card bill and it was HORRIBLE!”

Peter Sterne ‪@petersterne.com‬ | February 13, 2025 at 8:40 PM:
Editor at City & State (cityandstateny.bsky.social). Previously at New York Focus (@nysfocus.bsky.social), Freedom of the Press Foundation (@freedom.press) and Politico (@politico.com).

Wow. The NYT reports that Acting Deputy AG Emil Bove coached Mayor Eric Adams' attorneys on what to argue in order to get the charges dismissed (namely, that the charges were interfering with the mayor's ability to cooperate with Trump's immigration crackdown):

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/nyregion/adams-lawyers-justice-department-dis...
EXCERPT
"The series of events — in which the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department seemed to guide criminal defense lawyers toward a rationale for dropping charges against a high-profile client — represents an extraordinary shattering of norms for an agency charged with enforcing the laws of the United States."

"It also sends a message that, under the Trump administration, the Justice Department will make prosecutorial decisions based not on the merits of a case but on purely political concerns, longtime prosecutors and defense lawyers said."

"Prompted by Mr. Bove, the mayor’s lawyers refined their approach until they landed on a highly unorthodox argument, records and interviews show — one that was ultimately reflected in Mr. Bove’s memo to prosecutors on Monday. That memo stated that the criminal case had “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’s ability” to address illegal immigration and violent crime. It also pointedly said that the decision had nothing to do with the evidence or the law."

Jaw dropped. Of all the shit the US is doing, this has got to be the most despicable:

Zelensky refuses to sign document on transfer of 50% of Ukrainian mineral resources to the US - WP

From THE HILL

GOP reps are planning to impeach judges who try to prevent the outrageous DOGE actions from continuing.

GOP reps from the McCarthy (1050's) and Nixon (1970's) eras must be spinning in their graves!

Well, that's it. The US government is openly pushing for fascism in Europe.

JD Vance breaks taboo by meeting with leader of Germany’s far-right party

>114 LolaWalser: Just fucking dandy.

Musk, Trump Establish New Era of Kleptocracy in America
A third dispatch comparing how the US media would cover this moment if it was happening overseas
Garrett Graff
February 15, 2025 • Reading Time: 13 minutes

American institutions, from the media to civil society to Congress and state capitals, continue to underreact to the unraveling of our democracy. If, say, this was all happening in the East African country of Ishmaelia, our media would not hesitate to call the events we’re living through a full-blown autocratic coup.

And yet, three weeks into an all-out assault on the foundations and stability of our federal government, most journalists continue to treat the daily headlines as “normal.” The front-page of the New York Times has yet to resort to any blaring large fonts, and too many journalists in too many outlets continue to both-sides coverage as usual. Most TV news remains tepid. Not even Donald Trump’s clear First Amendment assault on the Associated Press over its continuing use of “Gulf of Mexico” could rouse the rest of the White House press corps. The White House Correspondents Association’s statement in opposition couldn’t even be described as “sternly worded,” which would appear the lowest bar it should clear.

As a counterpoint, for the last few Saturdays, I’ve offered an attempt to document how a more clear-eyed correspondent might have covered these events overseas. (If you’ve missed the start of this series, here’s the initial installment, “Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government,” and last week’s follow-up, “White Nationalist Forces Consolidate Power Alongside Musk’s Junta.”) Without further ado, here is this week’s third news roundup from our intrepid foreign correspondent:

NEWS ANALYSIS: Musk, Trump Establish New Era of Kleptocracy in America
By William Boot

After seizing the capital in a fast-moving late January coup and with universal control of government ministries now seemingly assured by a quiescent parliament, South African oligarch Elon Musk spent his third week in power dismantling the legal constraints that would stop him — already the world’s wealthiest man — from turning the US government into his personal piggy bank....

https://www.reddit.com/r/WelcomeToGilead/comments/1ipzggg/article_today_in_dutch...
Article today in Dutch newspaper "Volkskrant", deepl-translated: 'Everyone is afraid': Dutch researchers in the US on science in times of Trump
Loss of Liberty
Banned meetings, withdrawn journals, chaos and suspicion: the Trump administration is drawing a trail of destruction through American science. De Volkskrant asked thirteen Dutch researchers in the U.S. about their experiences. 'What is happening here is censorship on an unprecedented scale.'

Maarten Keulemans, Ellen de Visser and George van Hal

George van Hal, Maarten Keulemans and Ellen de Visser are science editors.

February 15, 2025, 05:00

'They want to break things on purpose,' suspects a Dutch medical scientist working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. RIVM. 'The government is confusing everyone with strange ideas about building a Riviera in Gaza, for example,' he says, 'while in the meantime it is putting the chopping axe into science almost unnoticed.'

The researcher calls from his home phone and wants to talk only on condition of anonymity. 'We have been given gag orders, we are not allowed to communicate with people abroad,' he explains. Dry laughter: 'We are also not allowed to be in group calls. Only communication with one other person at a time is allowed. I haven't been able to find out why.'

In science, America is considered the promised land. No nation in the world that spends so much on research, no country that wins so many Nobel prizes. From all over the world, students and scientists flock to the country's authoritative laboratories and iconic universities.

And then now, in that guiding country, this upheaval, in less than four weeks. It is hard to imagine a greater contrast than that between the open, internationally connected nature of science and the introspective, vindictive politics of Donald Trump.

Barrage

Since his inauguration, President Trump opened the attack on what he calls “woke gender ideology” with a barrage of presidential decrees, among other things. He canceled cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) because Trump says the U.S. pays disproportionately to it, stepped out of the Paris Climate Accord and halted the disbursement of already-awarded research grants in order to have more control over what science does and does not receive funding.

And that's just a small sample of all the decisions. Scientists who try to follow them are growing weary. 'There is a lot of uncertainty and virtually no direct communication from the government,' says astronomer Benne Holwerda, affiliated with the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

'The world is upside down here. It's chaos,' says the CDC scientist. 'Everyone is scared. Normal rules don't seem to apply anymore.'

De Volkskrant contacted Dutch scientists affiliated with fourteen universities and research institutes in the US. Six of them did not want to talk at all. Thirteen, some of whom were anonymous, wanted to.

The hesitation to come forward is not surprising, now that the U.S. government, under threat of dismissal, is demanding that colleagues in government service, including scientists at national institutions, denounce each other when they continue to work on diversity policy, according to e-mails in the hands of de Volkskrant.

Tears in office

At some universities, the atmosphere has become increasingly grim since Trump took office. Silvie Huijben, a malaria researcher trained in Wageningen, recounts how on the campus of her Arizona State University, a group of Republican students stopped their fellow students, calling on them to be on the lookout for students illegally in the US. 'Imagine a call to turn in your fellow students. There were eventually counter protests. But this does make you think: Is this the country you want to stay in?'

'There is not such a nice atmosphere here at the moment,' the CDC researcher also judges. 'The Department of Health asked to send a list of the names of scientists who are in their probationary period or still on a temporary multi-year contract. Both groups are very likely to be fired. Yesterday, three of my people were told that they are on such a list. Good colleagues, who are very productive and two of whom have worked here for 15 years or more. So those were tears in my office.

He's been working in the U.S. for more than 20 years now, but he hasn't experienced anything as ballsy as he has under Trump. 'I've read a lot about World War II and I see a lot of similarities to 1930s Germany.'

Sander Breur, working at the U.S. particle accelerator laboratory SLAC, understands that association. He is the grandson of Aat Breur-Hibma, a well-known resistance fighter and draftsman who ended up in Ravensbrück concentration camp. In my youth I often visited places where the Second World War was commemorated. I never really understood how a country could slide into this kind of bigotry, but after what I have seen happen in the U.S. over the last six years, I think I finally understand.'

In doing so, he does not want to make a one-to-one comparison. 'If you call something fascism, it's hard to have any discussion anymore. But what we see happening here in the U.S., including what is happening now at universities, is very troubling.'

...

>117 davidgn:

I have no patience for positions like Breur's. Oh, "calling something fascism" makes "discussion" difficult? Wait until you discover everything that FASCISM makes difficult! Which is what is happening! Right now!

Not that one can expect much from dickheads in science when it comes to protecting the vulnerable. We've already seen how readily they folded at the NASA or wherever, super-ready to erase anything that might make women and minorities feel like they too might belong. Pigs.

Bluesky post by a climate change researcher, who was told to drop the word "climate":

https://bsky.app/profile/alerigolon.bsky.social/post/3lhtzz5kfqs2y

Democracy Now interview with Varoufakis, followed by another very important interview with a German lawyer and civil servant at 5:40 -ish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gob_PnR4fI

It doesn't matter how advanced a particular country appears to be. Human nature has been a constant throughout history. Unfortunately, bad outcomes can occur because of our human foibles. Sadly, a majority of Americans appear to be accepting the abnormal situation the country is now experiencing.

>121 Molly3028:, I doubt whether most of them understand the consequences of what's being dismantled. Once they experience it, it's generally too late.

>122 Cecrow:

Unfortunately, Americans' short attention spans make the corrupting of our democracy much easier.

DRUGS & games

Donald Trump Jr finances the Enhanced Games, a proposed competition where doping is allowed

Here's Robt Reich on the issue
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/say-what-it-is-a-coup

Money shot: There's a coup going on and the press had jolly well better say so.

I would think that the ongoing autogolpe qualifies as a "facty bit", am I mistaken?

https://www.benzinga.com/25/02/43760885/jeff-bezos-owned-washington-post-turns-d...

Jeff Bezos-Owned Washington Post Turns Down Ad Campaign That Asked, 'Who's Running This Country: Donald Trump Or Elon Musk?'

Is the turndown Musk or Trump related????

Who knew it would be so hard to tell which is the organ grinder and which the monkey.

I'm not the most astute observer of such things, as I usually need a "seeing eye" person to clue me in on who is doing what and with what and to whom, but with that disclaimer in place, it really does seem to me the the Elon has the First Felon by the short hairs.

JFK Library closed until further notice: Joe Kennedy III reacts (CBS Boston)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chbbP9tMCAs

This is fucking personal.

It reads that the library chose to shut itself down as a form of protest from the potential removal of 6 employees (depending on the accuracy) of the news report I read - a left leaning one I believe. They were also probationary ones - again the source above - which would indicate that the library had no need to do this depriving others of library access.

Joe Kennedy said 6 were critical to library operations - which maybe contradicts the probationary aspect - who is right ? Without knowing the actual positions it's hard to comment more accurately but any organization should have the resilience to handle this - those same 6 folk could be all off with the flu / going on holiday etc and as it's re-opening tomorrow? sounds like it's hardly mission critical - as it shouldn't be.

Very poor behaviour from the library in this regard if true.

As a reminder, South Korea…

https://www.instagram.com/p/DGQe_BRuLli/?img_index=9&igsh=MTV5dm4wdnAyN3pjYw...

Saw a short video describing this 2024 book as a right-wing tactic to demonize the left:

Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them)
The description certainly lends itself to that theory.
It’s being endorsed by Bannon, Vance, and Trump, Jr.

The review by member alanteder recommends reading it with a ton of salt handy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unhumans

Michael Tomasky
February 18, 2025
Before Our Eyes
JD Vance’s Debacle in Germany Exposes MAGA’s Sinister Global Endgame
Did you know that the United States is joining an international fascist network?
https://newrepublic.com/article/191622/jd-vance-germany-maga-fascist-global-endg...

>129 Ignatius777: The impression I got from the NPR report was that while the 6 were fairly low level they were a large part of the staff that actually did things and without them they couldn't open to the public.

I keep coming back to that little ditty from Cabaret.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv0jav4lNsk

>136 davidgn:

I love the old chap in spectacles and a black cap who resolutely refuses to stand up and join the mob. Maybe he's wearily seen it all before?

Oh, goody.

Trump Targets San Francisco's Presidio
As expected, Donald Trump is targeting San Francisco's Presidio for dismantling. Is the Network State cult making its move to claim this public land for one of its proposed Fascist Cities?
Gil Duran
20 Feb 2025 — 6 min read

This reader-supported newsletter is chronicling the most important political story in American history: the rise of Tech Fascism and its plan to destroy democracy from the inside. If you can, please become a paid subscriber so that I can continue to do the work that mainstream outlets simply can't – or won't – do.
-----------------
The Point: As expected, Donald Trump is targeting San Francisco's Presidio for dismantling. Is the Network State cult making its move to claim this public land for one of its proposed Fascist Cities? Sure seems like it.

The Back Story: In January, the executive director and the head of policy for the Charter Cities Institute called on Donald Trump to seize San Francisco's Presidio, a national landmark, and turn it over to private hands for development. Here's what they wrote in an article for Palladium Magazine, a reactionary tech publication:

The Presidio is federal land located in the heart of San Francisco at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. The 1500 acres are governed under a unique trust structure created by Congress after the Presidio’s closure as an active military base in the late 1980s. The Presidio Trust Act instructs how the area is to be operated, under a board of directors which includes the Secretary of the Interior and six members appointed by the President of the United States.

The existing trust structure could be reformed, and the board of directors reconstituted, to facilitate the development of the Presidio, or even just a portion of it, as a Freedom City which enjoys broad autonomy, a vastly improved regulatory environment, and preemption over extreme state and local restrictions on construction and emerging technologies. The urbanist embrace of incoming Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who has demonstrated a deep understanding of the history and economic effects of restrictive land use and zoning policies, bodes well for his role in the development of a Presidio Freedom City.

The term "Freedom City" comes from Trump's 2024 campaign agenda, which called for the creation of 10 new corporate-controlled cities on federal land. This idea fits squarely with the Network State cult, which seeks to create new autonomous territories outside the jurisdiction of American democracy, law and regulation. The idea can be more accurately described as Fascist Cities, which is how I will refer to them.

As I wrote back in August:

The basic idea – creating sovereign company cities with different laws to help a chosen few escape the problems of wider society – is clearly the same as Trump's little freedom cities. He announced the plan for these new cities as part of a "quantum leap" plan that also includes flying cars. This seems like a clear nod to the "accelerationism" movement sweeping certain parts of tech.

Trump's inclusion of Network State ideas in his official campaign platform raises many questions: Who will live in these cities? How will they be governed? Who will profit most from their creation? How will they deal with fierce, bipartisan community resistance like that which derailed California Forever? Where is this "American frontier" of which Trump speaks? How did this strange and dystopian cult idea make its way into Trump's campaign platform?

Read the whole piece here:

Trump’s weird ‘Freedom Cities’ and the Network State cult
Why do Trump, Thiel and Andreessen want to build new cities?

Now comes the news that Trump is working to eliminate the Presidio Trust. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The Presidio Trust, a federal agency charged with running and protecting the historic San Francisco park, should be “eliminated” because it is “unnecessary,” according to an executive order issued by the White House on Wednesday night.

The order calls for cutting all federal funding to the Presidio Trust that is not legally necessary.

Posted on the White House website under the heading “Commencing the Reduction of Federal Bureaucracy Ecexutive (sic) order,” the document lists four federal entities — the Presidio Trust, the Inter-American Foundation, the United States African Development Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace — as examples of federal “waste and abuse.”

Big coincidence, huh?
...

https://www.thenerdreich.com/trump-targets-san-francisco-presidio-network-state/

Show that you stand against Trump and Musk's neo-fascism on March, 22.

We call for a global day of action against racism and fascism, in towns and cities around the world, in both the global north and south, on and around Saturday, 22 March 2025, for UN Antiracism Day.
See https://worldagainstracism.org/#call2025

>128 davidgn: >129 Ignatius777: >135 jjwilson61:

So, talking about this with my partner, who has some inside knowledge of the JFK library, I have the following to offer:
- the definition of "probationary employee" in the federal government apparently includes anyone who has been in their current position for less than a year. So that would include new hires and anyone who's had a promotion in the last year.
- the people who take the tickets and do general customer service at the JFKL would be at bottom-tier GS grades, making pretty low money, and not expected to stay long in that position, so many of them would fall under the heading of "probabionary". Obviously, if you fire those people, you either close the library to public access or you have more expensive staff doing that work, or you stop charging admission, reducing the staffing overhead.

>139 Dilara86:

There is also the protest on February 28, calling for the economic boycott of companies that have complied with RAPIST potus trump's DEI policies:

Nationwide Economic Blackout on February 28: List of Stores Being Targeted

>141 LolaWalser: That doesn't seem quite accurate. He was arrested after declaring that he would engage in civil disobedience and instead of leaving the podium towards the public seating area after he was done, he headed towards the city council. It seems the arrest was hasty and unnecessary, but the words alone were not the reason he was arrested.

>129 Ignatius777: any organization should have the resilience to handle this - those same 6 folk could be all off with the flu / going on holiday

There are 17,278 public library branches in the US, and 136,851 paid staff, for an average of under 8 paid staff per library branch.* That is, the average public library branch would shut down if 6 people were off with the flu, and would not let 6 people go on holiday without a planned closure. (Those part of a larger library system may be able to call in support, but if 75% of their staff was out with the flu, everyone else is short handed, too.)

For a specific example, Greenfield Public Library lists staffing requirements: "A minimum of eight (8) staff members should be present during the weekdays between the hours of 9:30am-5:00pm."** They list fourteen staff. If six staff call out, they can't stay open M-F 9:30-5 (remember, staffers get a lunch in that period), much less their full opening period.

I'd like to point out that I worked at Wal-Marts. There were more than enough employees to run the store if six got sick. But the deli or pharmacy would shut down; the pharmacy has 7 employees, and not only that, only two pharmacists, without which they can't open. They'd likely find a pharmacist from another store, but that wouldn't happen instantly. You hit the customer service desk, or the pickup delivery with six people out, you might find the store manager filling that position. You massively overestimate the size and resilience of most organizations, especially as resilience costs money. If you can lose those six people without a problem, you were paying for six people you could do without.

To quote a more recent news article: https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/02/19/jfk-library-reopens-free-federal-layoff-tru...

"Alan Price, director of the library, was on site for the opening. He said the museum shut down after five probationary employees who worked in ticketing and other front-of-the-facility roles were fired.

No one else was trained to handle ticketing, which forced the closure, Price said.

Admission will be free until other staff is trained, he said."

* https://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet02 and https://libguides.ala.org/c.php?g=751692&p=9132142

** https://greenfieldpubliclibrary.org/p/28/Minimum-Staff-Requirements
*** https://greenfieldpubliclibrary.org/p/18/Greenfield-Public-Library-Staff

Elon Musk’s private security detail gets deputized by US Marshals Service

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/20/politics/elon-musk-private-security-deputized...

Pritzker invokes specter of Nazi Germany in rebuke of Trump administration
Gov. Pritzker of Illinois.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3qaPhMmoIk
Full transcript:
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-politics/full-text-illinois-gov-jb...

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned as Governor – there are no magic bean fixes. And each year there’s some difficulty that requires us to work hard to overcome it. This year the surfacing difficulty is Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s plan to steal Illinois’ tax dollars and deny our citizens the protection and services they need.

“Let me offer a few examples.

“20 million Americans, 700,000 of them here in Illinois, will lose healthcare coverage — if Congressional Republicans are successful in their effort to cut the Affordable Care Act — and rural hospitals across Illinois will be shuttered.

“The Trump administration cut off funding for food safety inspectors for nearly a month, impacting more than 70 meat and poultry facilities in Illinois. Without these inspectors, the supply chain collapses, prices go through the roof, from farmers to truckers to meat packers to retailers, jobs will be lost.

“Meals on Wheels programs — which home deliver 12 million meals per year to 100,000 seniors and people with disabilities in Illinois – are on the federal chopping block.

“This is real. The new administration and the Republican Congress and Elon Musk intend to take these programs away. For all the Illinoisans watching at home – let me be clear, this is going to affect your daily lives. Our state budget can’t make up for the damage that is done to people across our state if they succeed.

“There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

“I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

“As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

“The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

“The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

“As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

“I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

“The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

“I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

“I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

“All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

“I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.”

“My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

“If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

“It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

“Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

“Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

“Thank you.”

Some fantastic turns of phrase and quotes in that which really hone in on the issue at hand. I was beginning to fear there was nobody left in the United States who could (or would) speak like this governor.

But all for naught if insufficient numbers of average citizens listen in time.

I see there's big turnover beginning at the top of the US military, and Elon's private details being deputized. That's the next steps.

Here's a dispatch from the other side. Perennial victims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etYibS2jHA4

And a totally distorted view, based on anything I've seen as far as the tenor of the resistance organizing. But that goes without saying.

The comments section shows what we're up against. And this is relatively tame.

Joyce Vance runs a newsletter "Civil Discourse". The last paragraph of the latest one to hit my eMail INBox says:

"We’ve watched the Supreme Court cave to Trump. Congress has folded, at least for now. The press is still trying to appease Trump at the margins to maintain access. ..."

She goes on to soften the blow a bit with"

"But in each of those institutions, there are brave people who continue to try and hold the line until we can get to the point where the country can regain itself. We know that courage can be contagious. Now the question is, what will the military do?"

That second half sounds to me like an obligatory "Leave them on a positive note" rather than a realistic expectation of a better outcome; and yes the big question is "what will the military do?"

One suspects that the answer is obvious and not the least bit salubrious.

If the Turkish army, with it's tradition of being democracy's guarantor of last resort in their country, didn't stop Erdogan, what then should one think the US army with its tradition of non participation in politics will do?

Asif Kapadia with Mehdi Hasan : ‘The Whole World Feels Really Dystopian’: Filmmaker Discusses the Global Push to Authoritarianism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45gUZVp8Kxs

Film: 2073

Spotted on Imagur (@ChrisO_wiki)

Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels haven't aged well. For example, Moonraker - published almost exactly 70 years ago in April 1955 - features a villain who's a super rich industrialist and rocket-maker seeking to cause chaos because he's a secret Nazi. Such a silly idea!

>150 davidgn: Yes, if by "dystopian" you mean that we're having to cope with the end of the 20th century then the world is dystopian.

But the 20th century is dead. The period when we believed that internal combustion was a viable mode of powering vehicles is long done, with all of the ramifications we can draw from that, and the period when we believed that populations could rise without limit is also done.

Until we internalize those facts, yes, people will be miserable, which is fuel for dictators and tyrants, who can capitalize on your misery by promising you a painless (for you) solution - which will be a lie, but you'll believe one of them, because they'll frame their lies in terms of some belief system that you buy into.

Glenn Kirschner responds to bomb threats at Principles First Summit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFhunDschIo

cf. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/23/politics/principles-first-washington-dc-threa...
Political conference in DC interrupted by death threats against speakers critical of Trump

Curtis Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington; Politico reported he was "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize influence over the Trumpian right."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

CNN talks to Gov. Pritzker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-12a3eFgyo0

Trump Gaza #1!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybtb1nAghBM

>156 davidgn: Unbelievable, no?

It seems the autogolpe is moving along as scheduled.

To date, the opposition is informed, outraged, beautiful, brave, and minimally effective around the margins.

The torches and pitchforks are lyiing quietly in the shed.

>158 modalursine: The torches and pitchforks are lyiing quietly in the shed

And may they continue to lie there unused. Violence will not solve your problem, only make it worse. What is needed is organised, disciplined, committed, large-scale, long-term nonviolent resistance.

>159 John5918: Amen.

I understand the urge to violence in response to what feels like an apocalyptic and alarmingly successful attack on not only one country's democracy but really on the very idea of civil society. The desire to fight back in some way is natural, and we've all been carefully trained to believe that violence is a way to defeat "bad guys" (especially if your violence is accompanied by a clever wisecrack, or if you can get a nice shot as you walk away from the explosion towards the camera) - but as you say, violence cannot and will not bring anything but more harm.

So... Erik Prince wants more Gestapo contracts. I'm sure the private mass deportations business will be very lucrative.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/25/documents-military-contractors-mass-dep...
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/26/trump-deportations-private-sector-00002...

>161 davidgn: Just what we need, a vested interest to make money off deportation. (Not!) Like the pharmaceutical companies who made (Zyklon B ?) for the Nazi death chambers...

>161 davidgn: And those arrested and deported… don’t their assets then belong to the State? Or am I confusing this with a different story?

>163 2wonderY: Don't give them ideas. https://www.leelawusa.com/blog/2024/10/what-happens-to-my-assets-if-i-get-deport...

I don't doubt that that's coming.

Trump abandons West Virginia. Entire towns washed away, no FEMA. Democrats need to capitalize on this. Now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg_F_bS6NPY

>165 davidgn: WV disaster declaration

https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20250227/president-donald-j-trump-approves-ma...

>166 2wonderY: Thanks. I'm behind the curve.
To be fair, that comes more than a week late.

>167 davidgn: I know. Oddly, I was in a meeting yesterday with a gentleman from Welch; and he had photos.

5 days late, but...
https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/king-donald-i-accelerates-white-nationalist-pu...
"King Donald I" Accelerates White Nationalist Purge of Military Leaders
A suggested guide to how the US media should be bravely—and clearly—covering our national crisis
Garrett Graff
February 22, 2025 • Reading Time: 17 minutes

Welcome to the fourth weekly edition of my satirical dispatches from the embattled national capital of Washington, D.C., which I hope provides a useful frame and weekly news recap to recognize the big-picture reality of what’s happening in our country right now.

I’ve long believed that the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of wanna-be dictator Donald Trump if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where we’re used to foreign correspondents writing with more incisive authority. A month ago, watching Trump and Musk’s then-unfolding coup in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at just such a dispatch and show how I think the US media should be covering this troubling and world-altering story. (If you’d like to read those earlier dispatches from previous weeks, start here: The first installment, second, and third.)

Without further ado, I give you our fictional correspondent William Boot’s all-too-real latest report:

“King Donald I” Accelerates White Nationalist Purge of Military Leaders
By William Boot
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In a late Friday night purge, Donald Trump — America’s often ramblingly incoherent ceremonial commander-in-chief — fired three of this country’s top generals and admirals, the latest assault in weeks of efforts to install loyalists at top military and security posts and restore the primacy of the white male ruling class that has traditionally held power here since the country’s founding two centuries ago.

The purge included the nation’s groundbreaking and widely respected top four-star general, C.Q. Brown, who was the first of the country’s oppressed racial minority Black community to rise to head a branch of the military, and also removed the military’s top lawyers as well as the air force chief and the one female currently leading a military branch. The purge completes Trump’s removal of the both the first-ever and second-ever women to rise to the highest ranks of the military.

Traditionally, incoming US presidents remove precisely zero military leaders and the collective firings stand as all-but unprecedented in the 80-year history of the modern military, which prides itself on itself on studious political independence, but had looked increasingly inevitable since Trump installed a white Christian nationalist as defense minister who has been openly hostile to women serving in the military and who has cut back on recruiting Blacks to join.

Trump in his previous presidency had actually selected Brown to head the nation’s air force, until turning on him more recently as insufficiently supportive of the country’s ongoing political and corporate domination by a caste of mediocre white men — people historically unable to succeed on their own merits or competency — that includes Trump himself as well as the newly installed defense minister. (Unsurprisingly, Trump announced Friday his intention to replace Brown with a less qualified white male general, who had — unlike Brown — never attained the military’s top rank.)

With the ouster of Brown and the naval commander, Admiral Linda Franchetti, the remaining top military leaders—known as the Joint Chiefs of Staff—are once again all white and male, a particularly pointed power imbalance given the fact that the country’s racial and ethnic minorities make up nearly 40 percent of national forces and women constitute fully a fifth of the ranks.

A month after returning to the presidency after evading criminal charges for his attempted insurrection in 2021, and three weeks after a fast-moving coup by junta forces loyal to South African oligarch Elon Musk reduced him to a mere figurehead, Trump has seemingly embraced his new limited role as head of state. He has increasingly taken to styling himself as a “king” in recent official communications and begun talking openly that he will forgo constitutional limits on his tenure to serve as long as he wishes—although most capital observers wonder more how long the power-sharing agreement between Musk, the world’s wealthiest man who is operating as the head of government, and Trump, an increasingly senile mid-level oligarch who made his fortune in reality TV and real estate, will continue.
...

Don't be so literal minded.

Actual torches and pitchforks are for Dracula movies.
I was thinking something more along the lines of what Chenoweth is describing:

https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw

Unfortunately many in the USA are literal minded, and words need to be chosen carefully. As legend puts it, King Henry II muttered, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” and before he knew it, the Archbishop of Canterbury had been murdered. But I'm with you 100% on Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan's book.

Review of an intellectual touchstone of the Nerd Reich: The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg
https://www.thenerdreich.com/the-sovereign-individual-radical-bible-of-techs-cog...

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson begins with his assessment of the domestic coup near the top -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQJfDx0Rbsg

Continues with a strategic assessment of Eurasia, then assesses the Middle East at 41 minutes.

Have some laughter through tears:

The History of Wealth Throughout History (2.25 min)

Just launched at the Department of Education:

“The U.S. Department of Education is committed to ensuring all students have access to meaningful learning free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination. This submission form is an outlet for students, parents, teachers, and the broader community to report illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning. The Department of Education will utilize community submissions to identify potential areas for investigation.”

https://enddei.ed.gov/

Do not flood the site with silly, bogus reports.

>175 2wonderY: Who would ever do such a thing.

Alt National Park Service is reporting that the FBI is investigating EPA employees about grant disbursements

https://www.instagram.com/p/DGpbExlODwC/?img_index=1&igsh=MXZmODV6aTFuMHdsYg...

The Washington Post has an exclusive story, behind a paywall

But
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/02/27/trump-fbi-epa-grant-investiga...

https://www.newsweek.com/epa-freezing-green-groups-bank-accounts-reactions-respo...

O’Malley: DOGE cuts could soon trigger Social Security system ‘collapse’
by Ailia Zehra - 03/03/25 3:24 PM ET
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5173332-social-security-cuts-risk-co...

Martin O’Malley, the former commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), said Monday the recent cuts made by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the agency could result in the “collapse” of the Social Security system “within the next 30 to 90 days.”

Ex-Social Security head warns system could soon ‘collapse’ thanks to DOGE cuts
MSNBC
8.08M subscribers
Mar 3, 2025 #SocialSecurity #DOGE #ElonMusk
Former Social Security commissioner Martin O’Malley is warning that DOGE cuts will likely trigger the system to collapse “within 30 to 90 days.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal joins to discuss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HeLgZo9iwU

Very interesting that 60 Minutes does this story now. It's not news. CNN did a similar one in 2023.
Finding the plane used for Argentina’s dictatorship-era “death flights” | 60 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIruscdmHFs

Clearly not related, Vance's blurb for Posobiec and Lisec's Unhumans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/opinion/jd-vance-fascism-unhumans.html

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/trumpworlds-favorite-writer-says-the-right-m...
Nathan J. Robinson

Unhumans disturbed me because it seemed more than a little, well, fascist. It argues that leftist “unhumans” must be ruthlessly dealt with and praises dictators like Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, who were known for inflicting torture, terror, and death on dissidents. It argues that extreme measures, such as the banning of all teachers unions, should be carried out immediately. And it recommends “an eye for an eye” justice: “That which is done by the communist and the regime must be done unto them.” Posobiec and Lisec are not always clear who exactly they think is “unhuman” and what the limits of this ruthlessness should be. They say they are against violence, but they also openly endorse Pinochet’s tactic of conducting extrajudicial executions by throwing people out of helicopters. Lisec also says that certain “actions and ideologies”—note, ideologies—deserve to be met with “capital punishment.” I find it alarming that a book making this case is circulating among people so close to the executive branch.

>179 davidgn: not always clear who exactly they think is “unhuman”

It doesn't matter who exactly they think is “unhuman”. Any ideology which thinks that any human being is "unhuman", regardless of how abhorrent their actions and/or ideologies might be, is dangerous and should be shunned.

>180 John5918: The hard problem of decent politics is that decency requires that we treat people who hold such ideologies decently.

Boston's been busy.

Tesla sites hit by arson amid DOGE cuts, Elon Musk backlash

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/tesla-cars-power-station...

>181 kiparsky: Peaceful protest outside Tesla dealership in our liberal college town, Ann Arbor, MI. They plan to return.

Meanwhile, newly re-elected Ontario Premier Doug Ford tore up $100 m Starlink contract in respnse to Trump tariffs. Methinks not many Ontarians would use it now.

>182 davidgn:, he's lucky he doesn't deal in tea.

'Bursts of authoritarianism'
The United States is currently evolving into a Network State, says a military analyst who writes regularly on the subject.

Gil Duran
05 Mar 2025 — 9 min read

'Bursts of authoritarianism'
A respected military analyst sees Elon Musk "building a new control system."
Summary: The U.S. is shifting toward a Network State model driven by AI governance, says military analyst John Robb. He sees this change as inevitable but flawed. I analyze Robb's refreshingly forthright take on the subject. Part 1 of 2.

The Point: The United States is currently evolving into a Network State, says a military analyst who writes regularly on the subject. John Robb (2 - author of Brave New War --dgn), who publishes a small but influential newsletter called Global Guerillas, sees this as a positive development.

“We’re currently building a new control system because the old one isn’t providing us with high performance and/or cannot dampen instability,” he writes.

However, he predicts trouble: “The Red Tribe’s early alpha attempt to build a network state based on performance optimization will likely fall far short of a viable solution.”

(Note: "Red Tribe” is Network State-speak for Republicans. “Blue Tribe” = Democrats. “Gray Tribe” = new tech authoritarian faction.)

While I firmly oppose transforming the United States into a Network State, let’s explore the perspective of someone who supports the concept. At least, you will see another person talking about the Network State in a serious way.

https://www.thenerdreich.com/network-state-government-ai-tech-takeover-united-st...

Very useful lists of must-reads.
https://organizingmythoughts.org/must-reads-and-2/
Must-Reads and the Work of Unsettling
We must resist the impulse to settle in, and that will sometimes mean unsettling others.
Kelly Hayes
01 Mar 2025 — 7 min read

Incoming.

Could a Bombshell Discovery Render All of Biden's Presidential Actions 'Null and Void'?
Matt Margolis | 3:31 PM on March 06, 2025
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/06/bombshell-discovery-could-make-all-...

(Long story short: Heritage claims to have done a forensic investigation which determined that all of Biden's Presidential acts -- except his withdrawal from the 2024 race -- were signed by autopen.)

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is demanding that the Department of Justice investigate whether Biden's obvious cognitive decline allowed unelected bureaucrats to essentially run the government without presidential oversight. If this is true — and let's be honest, all signs point to yes — every executive order, every pardon, and every official action taken under Biden's name could be constitutionally void.

Bailey's letter to Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general of the Department of Justice, spells it out perfectly.

I write to request that you conduct a full investigation into President Biden's mental capacity in his final days in office. By now, Biden's mental decline is famous. Under the 25th Amendment, his inability to make decisions should have meant a succession of power. Instead, it appears staffers and officers in the Biden administration may have exploited Biden's incapacity so they could issue orders without an accountable President of sound mind approving them. That would explain why the Biden administration's orders were aggressively much farther to the left than any previous President. If in fact Biden's staffers were exploiting his mental decline, those orders are null and void.

>187 davidgn: Evil aren't they, those Heritage, Project 2025 types? Bad enough what they are doing in present, planning for future, but they want to rewrite history? 1984... Thank goodness there are all those witnesses and photos of Biden signing legislation, etc. Google images "Biden signing legislation."

>187 davidgn: More projection. Analysis of Trump's speech indicates sharp decline. Never mind, Project 2025 has already charted Trump's every move. And gaggle of very creepy staffers are willing to "make it so."

>187 davidgn: Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is demanding that the Department of Justice investigate whether Biden's obvious cognitive decline allowed unelected bureaucrats to essentially run the government without presidential oversight. If this is true — and let's be honest, all signs point to yes

Not really. All signs point to Biden being as healthy as any other eighty year old. Not necessarily as sharp as I'd want for president, but the debate showed a man who was getting old, not someone who was legally incompetent.

That would explain why the Biden administration's orders were aggressively much farther to the left than any previous President.

Facts be damned, huh? In a lot of ways, FDR through LBJ were further to the left than him. In the ways they weren't, the US public is often far to the left of anyone in those days. LGBTQ rights simply is not something stuck on the far left of the US.

>189 margd: Analysis of Trump's speech indicates sharp decline.

Even before his first term, I saw comparisons of Trump's speech then and back in the 1990s, and back in the 1990s, he was much better at using full sentences with complex sentence structure, whereas he'd get lost in sentences of the same length in the 2010s.

>187 davidgn:. Wonder how much longer Trump's tiny hands can generate those huge signatures?

Vance hints at possible 'invasions of Mexico' at eyebrow-raising border press conference
David Edwards
March 5, 2025 4:57PM ET
https://www.rawstory.com/jd-vance-2671275802/

Zevon time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48y-2wdlj6o

FL Gov has a FAFO moment mocking the idea of Canadians avoiding his state (National Post). Hopefully, when they do, Floridians will turn away from this ugly brand of Republicanism. (Wonder if any FL boycott will affect the stream of Cdn utility workers that descend from the Great White North after every hurricane?)

>193 margd: The question of utility workers (not to mention mutual assistance with wildfires) is a very good one.

Would you want to help a 'neighbour' who thinks that you have been 'cheating' them for decades? Who accuses you of introducing deadly illegal drugs into their yard?

In the case of Mexico, do you want your hard-working citizens being accused of being 'illegal immigrants' when they show up to fight wildfires for you?

>194 MsMixte: Apparently mutual help only just came under agreement -- was informal before. It's amazing that faraway Australia sends help to N Hemisphere and v.v. Providing needed help after disasters generates a lot of good will! It can be an efficient use of resources, but, as you say, depends on good will all round.

Below is article on DeSantis mockery. (GOP primary voters picked Trump over DeSantis in part because DeSantis had less personality than !!TRUMP!! I'm not looking forward to flashing my US license plates in Ontario this summer... Most Cdns seem friendly still to individual Americans, but there's sure to be a few who are NOT...)

DeSantis mocks '3.3 million' Canadians who visited Florida: 'Not much of a boycott'
Kenn Oliver | Mar 06, 2025
'Maybe they wanted to get a glimpse of what a Stanley Cup winning hockey team actually looks like'
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/desantis-florida-canada-stanley-cup

>195 margd: We live less than 50 miles from the Canadian border, and plan on going up there soon. But we'd be going through Osoyoos into British Columbia, and I suspect that the Canadians in BC might be a bit friendlier to those of us from Washington State.

>196 MsMixte: DeSantis is probably reacting to Canadians booing US anthem. Never mind that just before tariff threats began, Toronto fans chimed in to sing US anthem when audio failed... If I were him, I'd stay in FL for the next little while.

BC premier is looking to tax US trucks driving through to Alaska. Tough on Alaska, a traditional friend in that part of the country, and I'm sure BC would rather not, but seems like provinces are looking for a way to push back, on top of national response. In Ontario, Premier Ford removed KY bourbon, CA wines from shelves (LCBO is large(st?) single buyer) and is looking at surcharge for electricity sent to eastern US. Canadian sunbirds are headed to Mexico, etc., instead of FL. Alberta and Quebec supply a lot of energy to the US (one of the reasons for trade imbalance), but nothing yet from them.

Canadians are as exercised as ever I've seen them, but -- fingers crossed -- will welcome sympathetic anti-Trump visitors (or MAGAts who have the sense to leave their hats at home, and to keep their mouths shut?) I won't be surprised to be thoroughly inspected at the border -- both sides.

>197 margd: I'll try to remember to update our reception on both sides at the end of March. We're going to Penticton to check out book shops and also to purchase Girl Guide cookies.

I was just watching an interview with Heather Cox Richardson, when she threw out a causual remark to the effect that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are slightly to the right of Dwight Eisenhower.

Well, she's a historian so I have to take that remark seriously, but I don't know enough about the particulars of either Eisenhower or Harris/Walz to fill in the blanks.

It definitely has the ring of truth to my ears (I think Colbert would call that "Truthiness" ). Can you picture Kamala or Walz giving a speech about the miltary industrial complex? But boy! would I like the bill of particulars.

Can anybody help me out on that one?

>199 modalursine: Here's a start. https://www.quora.com/When-people-say-current-Democrats-are-to-the-right-of-Eise...

>200 davidgn: The list of eisenhower era Repuiblican policies, assuming they really meant it, on a par with current Democratic ones, not to the left of current Dems.

LGBTQ issues, I would argue, aren't a good case because there's been an across-the-board cutural shift, one might even say a cultural earthquake post Stonewall, so that in those days "everybody" was a dinosaur on LGBT.

And don't even talk about "Dixicrats" on the racial issue.

I'm also thinking that Republicans commitment to Social Security and to Union rights were always regressive, with maybe Eisenhower himself a bit of a maverick (if the he really did embrace the positions listed) and way far out as far as other Republicans were concerned. I seem to remember that the then right wing (John Birch Society?) of the Republicans were castigating Eisenhower as a "card carrying communist" or some such malarkey.

>200 davidgn: Stuff like that.

Racially and on LGBTQ, we've moved far to the left. Eisenhower called up Supreme Court Justice Warren to complain about Brown v. Board of Education, which nobody would explicitly object to today. It's said that when Eisenhower sent troops into Little Rock to enforce Brown, he was personally more racist than the Arkansas governor. LGBTQ... Stonewall happened in NYC in 1969. Even with surgery, the first case in the US to let a person change the gender on their documentation was 1977. The average American today would be heavily right wing on economic issues in 1955, heavily left wing on race, and off the charts on LGBTQ issues.

Thank you, Woz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck-f3qZVcWM
Steve Wozniak, folks.

>202 prosfilaes: If you look at a movie like Norma Rae today's United States is very much a hollowed out version of what it was 40 years ago. Back then it was a manufacturing and industrial juggernaut. Now most of that is elsewhere and we financialize debt---ours and everyone else's we can get our hands on. There are many who voted for Trump who think that world of 40 years ago can be recreated with the snap of the fingers. That takes vision, persistence and will though. FDR had those things and was able to turn around our economy in the 1930's with make work national infrastructural projects that in time morphed into bigger things. I don't see either party---particularly the one in power now at all interested in going that route. It's bluster and bullshit and more bluster and bullshit. If Trump and republicans were truly serious about getting our debt down they would be more creative about things like that. Instead we have deportations, tariffs/sanctions and the thinking that chopping down forests and drilling for more oil is going to do the trick and they won't have to give up an ounce of power and can grab even more. All the libertarian Ayn Rand crap.....it's been a bee in their bonnet so long for those on the right that we were eventually going to test these things out and they are going to fail and just put us deeper in the hole if not collapse the whole economy.

>189 margd: Unless I miss my guess, project 2025 is all about domestic stuff. The "align with Russia" stuff seems an extra add on.
There's a saying "All models are false, but some are useful".

I have no idea why Agent Orange is mostly acting in foreign affairs the way a Russian puppet would, but if we just assume that given a choice that's "pro-Putin" and one (or many) that are not so much, Agent Orange will walk through the "pro Putin" door every time, betcha our batting average will be phenomonally good.

How can anyone put any faith in the Democrats anymore, or even care for what they say, is beyond me... this is from The New Yorker newsletter today. My bold:

Among liberal intellectuals, however, there has been a clearer turn, against the avowed progressivism that often seemed to define the center-left, beginning in 2018. In the Times Magazine, David Leonhardt argued recently that Democrats should follow the model of the Danish Social Democrats and take a more measured approach to immigration; on Bill Maher’s show, Fareed Zakaria and Rahm Emanuel argued for a reconsideration of cultural progressivism. “We’ve gone through five years where people became way too permissive as a culture,” Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago and White House chief of staff, said. “And that is a disaster.”

lol -- with ulcerating pain in the stomach

What disaster, disaster for whom? The party, obviously.

And so they unironically propose to become more like the fascists.

>206 LolaWalser: Power, not principle.

>205 modalursine: You're probably correct about Putin. I think though ~ disentangling from NATO and from foreign wars was part of Project 2025, but I'd need to reread the screed to be sure.

>208 margd: From a pdf of the "Mandate for Leadership, The conservative promise " aka Project 2025

page 182

".....Regardless of viewpoints, all sides agree that Putin’s invasion of Ukraineis unjust and that the Ukrainian people have a right to defend their homeland. Furthermore, the conflict has severely weakened Putin’s military strength and provided a boost to NATO unity and its importance to European nations.

The next conservative President has a generational opportunity to bring res-olution to the foreign policy tensions within the movement and chart a new pathforward that recognizes Communist China as the defining threat to U.S. interestsin the 21st century. ... "

Of course, the people who wrote all that are such toadies and lickspittles that they may have done a Lindsey Graham on that one by now. "The leader is always right"

Accidentally Duplicated below.

Martin O'Malley: Musk wants to break Social Security so he can loot it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5EUeCn81Wg

We were warned.
American Politics | George Carlin | Life Is Worth Losing (2005)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOTAdvc1MJM

Expect a Russia-in-1990s scenario.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1992/08/30/looted-russian-treasu...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7mfr15/why_did_russian_life_expe...

And it will be worse for us.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collapse-gap-ussr-was-bett...
Not all of those slides aged well, but for the most part, they're pretty solid.

Okay, I'm running a pretty solid fever at the moment, but I expect I'll feel the same once I'm not. I've been expecting this type of collapse about as long, through one mechanism or another. I should have already left the U.S. long ago.

It's like those old nights in high school reading scenarios on exitmundi.nl. (Which later became Exit Mundi)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExitMundi.nl
ETA: via Wayback, https://web.archive.org/web/20241203154143/http://exitmundi.nl/
except for my own country specifically (with massive implications beyond).

So, turned out it would be accelerationist billionaire TESCREAL cultists in the end. Good to know.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/before-its-too-late-buddy/
https://davidzmorris.substack.com/p/what-is-tescrealism-mapping-the-cult

I have work I should do, but I've got my hostess' toy poodle curled in a ball behind my knees, and I'm going back to sleep.

>207 2wonderY:

And not even hiding it anymore.

Don't want to propagate the picture, but the White 4chan Edgelord Dreck House has posted a photo of the arrested Palestinian student with the caption SHALOM MAHMOUD.

>211 davidgn: Take care of yourself. There are some nasty bugs out there...

>213 margd: Yeah, sipping my tea. Thanks.

Trump Amplifies “No LGBTQ” Symbol Using Nazi-Era Imagery in Military Ad Post

https://meidasnews.com/news/trump-amplifies-no-lgbtq-symbol-using-nazi-era-image...
…
I bought some pink felt today and fastened a triangle to my lapel with a large safety pin.

>215 2wonderY: Like.

The small horrors cut deep.
Idaho teacher ordered to remove "Everyone is welcome here" sign from classroom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv18DtVhLmk

>217 davidgn: Bizarro world.

"Everyone welcome" How a awful! Where will end....."love thy neighbor as thyself" ? ....Oh the horror!

Trump’s FBI Moves to Criminally Charge Major Climate Groups

https://newrepublic.com/post/192660/trump-fbi-charge-climate-organizations

The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration.

>220 2wonderY:, and will nobody in the US react to this as a step too far? Surely if Trump had opened with a move like this it would be a blazing headline. But he's done the pattern of doing the forgivable/understandable/dismissible first and building up to this.

If these folks can be held criminally responsible simply for nothing more than accepting a government grant from a prior administration, and the American people let that stand, their country is done. Just done.

I'm bemused by my own reaction, but I suppose everyone has their tipping point where they know things have gone too far. Were I an American citizen, this would be mine.

Can't find a scrap of headline about it in any major news carrier. But I did find this incident of a Palestinian immigrant - full American citizen - who has been arrested simply for expressing his unpopular opinion. If this man's constitutional rights can be trodden on, anyone's can.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mahmoud-khalil-wife-1.7482335

I’m starting to see people identify April 20 as the day Martial law will be declared. And then anyone identified as an insurrectionist can be arrested (and their assets seized?)

How will insurrection be defined? My community is organizing a mutual aid group. Will this be deemed revolutionary?

>222 2wonderY: April 20

Is that a random date, or is it chosen because it is Hitler's birthday? If Trump were to choose to declare martial law on such a symbolic date, that would indeed be a statement of intent.

>223 John5918: It’s the 90th day stated in one of his first Executive Orders for a report from Homeland Security on their progress.

Doubtless the date was calculated in advance.
Discussed here. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1j82i43/whats_going_on_with_peopl...

>222 2wonderY: Which people? Martial law on Hitler's B'day sounds like a Proud Boy's wet dream and QANON fantasist's wish for "The Storm" to come true.

Not that Agent Orange and the Elon wouldn't love to do it, mind, but as to whether they would be ready to do that next month, color me sceptical.

The technique seems to be "Do something just outrageous enough to get the opposition tsk-tsk-ing and base cheering, but not so clearly toxic to the general welfare as to cause a million plus people to mass and threaten emeutes.

So far, it seems to be working a treat for them, worse luck.

>221 Cecrow: NYTimes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/nyregion/mahmoud-khalil-detention-hearing.htm...

Don't know if it's in the dead tree version, but there are a few articles about Khalil in the on line section.

The NYTimes seems to offer news and opinion more sharply critical of the Trumpistas and more firmly in supportof of constitutionality (all of that now coded as "liberal" for some perverse reason) more fully and earlier on the on-line platform , and later if at all, in the dead tree edition.

As to why that happens, "hypothesis non fingo"

Judge Luttig.
‘A full-frontal assault’: Judge Luttig on the attacks on the rule of law in Trump’s second term
Former Federal Judge Michael Luttig joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House to discuss Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law and him using the justice department and his own executive power to go after his political enemies, businesses and policies that he wants to punish and target.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9qUIRjTlaE

Lawrence on Trump's 'vile, antisemitic' attack on Schumer: Trump's mind is gone. It is shattered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n804BwrNwQo

And as O'Donnell points out, the NYT didn't even bother to report on this. We are all Palestinians now.

And from the comments:

"Do not forget that every nation deserves the government that it endures."
From the first pamphlet of the resistance group "The White Rose", 1942.

AFK. Just terribly sad. Weaponization of the Kennedy legacy.

Amaryllis Fox Kennedy: Former CIA Agent Tasked With Reining In Intel’s ‘Black Budgets’
By Philip Wegmann
March 12, 2025

A glamorous woman in an unglamorous job, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy sits in a cavernous office that is entirely empty other than the leftover computers and keyboards still scattered about from when the last administration vacated the premises, leaving old copies of federal budgets bound in blue, red, and grey, stretching back decades and stacked nearly from floor to ceiling.

It is not exotic like a dusty cafe in Karachi. It isn’t as chic as an art gallery in Shanghai. All the same, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, or AFK as aides now abbreviate her name, is happy with her new post.

“I like to be in the plumbing,” says the daughter-in-law of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Once the youngest female CIA officer at 22 and whose memoir of a life spent undercover was optioned to Hollywood, she adds, this place “is where you can have the most impact.” She is speaking from the Office of Management and Budget across the alleyway from the White House where, during her first interview since joining the new administration, the ventilation system can be heard kicking on and off.

The onetime spy is now the associate director for Intelligence and International Affairs at OMB, a first-of-its-kind position and an assignment that is as influential as her path to it is ironic.

President Trump had considered Fox Kennedy for CIA deputy director. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, intervened. Lawmakers worried that if given that role, AFK might shatter America’s premier espionage agency. Their fears were not entirely unfounded. Since leaving the agency in 2010, she has become a prominent CIA skeptic. She has made the declassification of the JFK assassination files a personal mission. She managed the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year as he promised to renew the work of his late uncle, President John F. Kennedy, who once vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

Any attempts to assuage concerns failed. Her call, and a subsequent call from the White House to set up a meeting with Cotton, went unanswered. She was torpedoed behind the congressional curtain.

Enter Russ Vought.

Rather than working inside just one three-letter agency to reform it, the director of the Office of Management and Budget asked, why not bring the entire espionage apparatus to the president’s heel? Fox Kennedy accepted. Passed over for a job at CIA, she now oversees the entire CIA budget as well as the budgets for the 17 other agencies that collectively make up the intelligence community....

https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/03/12/amaryllis_fox_kennedy_former_cia_a...
--------------------------

In service of?

--------------------------
The Purge of the Deep State and the Road to Dictatorship
Donald Trump’s dismantling of the deep state presages the formation of something far worse.
Chris Hedges and Eunice Wong (narrator)
Feb 23, 2025
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-purge-of-the-deep-state-and-the-440

The Trump administration’s war with the deep state is not a purgative. It is not about freeing us from the tyranny of intelligence agencies, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world, predatory corporations or the end of mass surveillance. It will not restore the rule of law to hold the powerful and the wealthy accountable. It will not slash the bloated and unaccountable spending — some $1 trillion dollars — by the Pentagon.
...
All revolutionary movements, on the left or the right, dismantle the old bureaucratic structures. The fascists in Germany and the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union, once they seized power, aggressively purged the civil service. They see in these structures, correctly, an enemy that would stymie their absolute grip on power. It is a coup d'état by inches. Now we get our own.

Rearguard battles — as in the early years of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany — are taking place in the courts and media outlets openly hostile to Trump. There will be, at first, pyrrhic victories — the Bolsheviks and the Nazis were stalled by their own judiciaries and hostile press — but gradually the purges, aided by a bankrupt liberalism that no longer stands or fights for anything, ensures the triumph of the new masters.

The Trump administration has expelled or fired officials who investigate wrongdoing within the federal government, including 17 inspectors general. Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, such as the FBI and Homeland Security, are being purged of those deemed hostile to Trump. Courts, as they are stacked with compliant judges, will be mechanisms for the persecution of state “enemies” and protection rackets for the powerful and the rich. The Supreme Court, which has granted Trump legal immunity, has already reached this stage.

“The original purge after the Shah’s fall sought to rid the ministries of senior-level holdovers from the former regime and to provide the revolutionary faithful with jobs,” reads a declassified CIA memo, dated Aug. 28, 1980, on the then newly formed Islamic Republic of Iran. “The second wave of purges began last month after a series of Khomeini speeches. Lower-level individuals who had been part of the Shah’s bureaucracy, those with Western training, or those who were deemed to lack full Revolutionary fervor have been retired or fired on an increasingly large scale.”

We are repeating the steps that led to the consolidation of power by past dictatorships, albeit with our own idiom and idiosyncrasies. Those naively lauding Trump’s hostility towards the deep state — which I concede did tremendous damage to democratic institutions, eviscerated our most cherished liberties, is an unaccountable state within a state and orchestrated a series of disastrous global interventions, including the recent military fiascos in the Middle East and Ukraine — should look closely at what is being proposed to take its place.
...
A few weeks after the announcement of X Money’s partnership with Visa, DOGE requested access to classified Internal Revenue Service data, including millions of tax returns. The data includes Social Security numbers and addresses, details on how much individuals earn, how much money they owe, properties they own and child custody agreements. In the wrong hands, this information can be commercialized and weaponized.

Musk is pursuing an “AI-first” agenda to increase the role of artificial intelligence (AI) across government agencies. He is building “a centralized data repository” for the federal government, according to Wired. Oracle founder, business associate of Elon Musk and longtime Trump donor Larry Ellison, who recently announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure plan alongside Trump, urged nations to move all of their data into “a single, unified data platform” so it can be “consumed and used” by AI models. Ellison has previously stated that an AI-based surveillance system will guarantee that “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on."

Trump has, like all despots, long enemy lists....These enemy lists will expand as larger and larger segments of the population realize they have been betrayed, widespread discontent becomes palpable and the Trump White House feels threatened.

Once the new system is in place, laws and regulations will become whatever the Trump White House says they are. Independent agencies such as the Federal Election Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Reserve System will lose their autonomy. Mass deportations, the teaching of “Christian” and “patriotic” values in schools — Trump has vowed to “remove the radicals, zealots, and Marxists who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” — along with the gutting of social programs, including Medicaid, low-income housing, job training, and assistance for children, will create a society of serfs and masters. Predatory corporations, such as the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, will be licensed to exploit and pillage a disempowered public. Totalitarianism demands complete conformity. The result, to quote Rosa Luxemburg, is the “brutalization of public life.”

The hollowed-out remnants of the old system — the media, the Democratic Party, academia, the shells of labor unions — will not save us. They mouth empty platitudes, cower in fear, seek useless incremental reforms and accommodation, and demonize Trump supporters regardless of their reasons for voting for him. They are fading into irrelevance. This ennui is a common denominator in the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. It engenders apathy and defeatism.

The “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act,” introduced by Congresswoman Claudia Tenny, is a harbinger of what lies ahead. The act would designate June 14 as a federal holiday to commemorate “Donald J. Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day.” The next step is choreographed state parades with oversized portraits of the great leader.

Joseph Roth was one of the few writers in Germany to understand the attraction and inevitable rise of fascism. In his essay “The Auto-da-Fé of the Mind,” which addressed the first mass burning of books by the Nazis, he counseled fellow Jewish writers to accept that they had been vanquished: “Let us, who were fighting on the front line, under the banner of the European mind, let us fulfill the noblest duty of the defeated warrior: Let us concede our defeat.”

Roth, blacklisted by the Nazis, forced into exile and reduced to poverty, did not delude himself with false hopes.

“What use are my words,” Roth asked, “against the guns, the loudspeakers, the murderers, the deranged ministers, the stupid interviewers and journalists who interpret the voice of this world of Babel, muddied anyhow, via the drums of Nuremberg?”

He knew what was coming.

“It will become clear to you now that we are heading for a great catastrophe,” Roth, after going into exile in France in 1933, wrote to Stefan Zweig about the seizure of power by the Nazis. “The barbarians have taken over. Do not deceive yourself. Hell reigns.”

But Roth also argued even if defeat was certain, resistance was a moral imperative, a way to defend one’s dignity and the sanctity of the truth.

“One must write, even when one realizes the printed word can no longer improve anything,” he insisted.

I am as pessimistic as Roth. Censorship and state repression will expand. Those with a conscience will become an enemy of the state. Resistance, when it happens, will be expressed in spontaneous eruptions which coalesce outside the established centers of power. These acts of defiance will be met with brutal state repression. But if we do not resist, we succumb morally and physically to the darkness. We become complicit in a radical evil. This, we must never allow.

I hope everybody who wanted TikTok brought to heel is happy now.

TikTok has removed as “hate speech” a BT clip of a student walkout for Mahmoud Khalil held at UC Berkeley. The video, which had thousands of likes already, portrayed signs and speeches and contained no bigotry whatsoever.

Many TikTok users have noted an increase in censorship of progressive content in recent weeks, speculating that the platform made some kind of deal with Trump to avoid a total ban.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiinSjWS3E0vtAa3DCvp7iA/community?lb=UgkxQEKFFn...

>231 davidgn: Manufacturing consent has been an ongoing project here for at least several straight presidential administrations. Back when I was still working I remember Brian Williams (from my hometown) when the United States was bombing a defenseless Baghdad going into raptures about the wonders of shock and awe and people in my workplace eating that shit up. Eating up a lot of other lies too and eventually lies have to be vomited. Eventually most people saw what a bunch of shit it was. Our govt. want us to be okay with collateral damage (even good guy Obama wanted us okay with that)---killing a 100 people to get to one 'bad' guy and that they have to do this because but we're still the 'good' guys and Israel can do it too. There's a Crass (anarcho/punk band from the late 70's) song---Banned from the Roxy which includes these lyrics 'My Lai, Hiroshima, know what I mean, same fucking lies with depressing frequency, say we had to do it to keep our lives clean, whose life, whose fucking life, who the fuck are they talking to? whose life, whose fucking life, I tell you one thing it ain't me and you.' They want us okay with all this still now too---here's Michael Pence the so-called hero of Jan. 6 and Nikki Haley the anti-Trump vote for him anyway republican presidential candidate putting their autographs on 2000 lb. bombs to drop on a defenseless civilian population with only some pretext that they might kill a 'bad' guy.

People are pissed enough they'll find a way to connect and be heard. But also I understand why even random actors like Luigi did his shit. I also wasn't chagrined when that shooter clipped Trump in the ear in Butler Pa. and if it had been Biden instead I wouldn't have been chagrined at that either. I think the horse is out of the barn as far as Israel or even us being good actors. It's not just the rest of world seeing it......it's also lots of Americans understanding it now too. That are own politicos deliberately act against the real interests of their own citizens just to further their own ends. I also think they're just speeding up things to the point of a collapse that will take a lot of themselves down too.

>232 lriley: I also wasn't chagrined when that shooter clipped Trump in the ear in Butler Pa. and if it had been Biden instead I wouldn't have been chagrined at that either

I am chagrined when anybody tries to kill anybody. It's not in the "real interests of their own citizens" to change their government by violence.

Now we're expelling the South African ambassador...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmj8ky3rvno

Don't know who said it first but I can get behind:
"I don't want anybody murdered, but there are some obituaries that I look forward to reading with great satisfaction"

>235 modalursine: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/mark-twain-didnt-say-thing-... Clarence Darrow, kind of.

Brown University Hospitals' transplant team is now strained after one of their transplant surgeons and assistant professors (with a valid H1-B visa) was deported upon arrival in Boston -- for no reason apart from ethnicity -- in violation of a federal court order.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/brown-medicine-doctor-deported-despite-165500217.html
https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2025/03/brown-professor-doctor-held-by-...

Sorry, too Arab.

“Imperialism and Totalitarianism Go Hand in Hand”: Gessen on Trump’s Policies at Home & Abroad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuM2xV6GQB4

More like this, please.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM633wuZEFc

>233 John5918: FWIW I wasn't sitting around hoping for someone to murder that fuck. All I meant to infer was I didn't mind that someone tried to. I was brought up catholic but I never clung to all these religious precepts/concepts you have. Violence doesn't solve anything? Sometimes it does. I look at some of our political leaders and the decisions they make directly and adversely effect sometimes thousands/millions of people and quite often they don't give a shit so I'm not going to give a shit about them either. The genocide in Gaza that Biden made possible and that Donald is more than happy to prolong is an example. They have lots of blood on their hands and the International community and courts haven't been able to do a thing to stop them. As a child I grew up watching the troubles unfold in the North of Ireland which is where my paternal ancestors came from. They tried to get some degree of equality and civil rights through peaceful means for a protracted period of time and all they ever got for all the effort were beatings and eventually bullets. It's why the Provisional IRA came into being and eventually some degree of civil rights happened after about 30 years. Without the Provos it would not have happened. The people who run the DUP and the UUP today are not very much different from those that held power in the 50's and 60's. They would never have given up a thing without force and the British state was just fine and dandy with that. South Africa would be another case. These things sometimes do have to happen.

>240 lriley: The fact that you might not mind someone being murdered doesn't make it a solution to any problem.

I agree there are some problems for which violence is a solution, but it's generally a temporary one at best: you can get someone to stop doing a thing as long as you're punching them in the face, but you need something more lasting if you want them to stop doing the thing when you're not there to punch them in the face. So, if Russia were to, say, invade some former Soviet republic, armed response might be a viable way to deter the aggression until some more lasting solution can be found. But if you hope that violent response on its own will solve the problem, then, well, I suppose we'll see what happens if that should ever happen.

As for Ireland, we can argue about what actually led to the current state of (checks) peace in the occupied six counties, but it's hard to ignore the fact that much of the violence was justified (at least according to the perpetrators) by the actions of counterparts - or partners in violence, as I generally see them. So you have a case where each side is committing acts that they know will provoke a "reaction" - after a time, you have to wonder if there's any motivation here apart from the desire for a reaction.

And of course after a time the goal of "liberation" becomes a fig leaf, and the violence becomes about maintaining local power, justified by an external threat - this has obviously been what's happened in Gaza and the West Bank, and it's what happened with your Provos. And when this happens, the parties claiming to "defend" their people become the biggest obstacle to peace (also something we're familiar with in those two cases) since peace is the end of their power.

Since you seem to be at least somewhat familiar with the events of "the troubles", I'm a little bit surprised that you'd want decades of factional murder here. Seems like it would be about the only thing that could be worse than what we're getting now, if I'm honest: you'd have all of the consequences of a Musk takeover - no amount of violence will change that - plus also random murder of your friends and family. Is that really what you're after?

>187 davidgn: In-come.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114175908922736427

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

The “Pardons” that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!
Mar 17, 2025, 1:35 AM

>242 davidgn: Must pardon mention name of individual? If so, wonder if those pudgy pink hands signed all 600 or so pardons for Jan 6 rioters?

>239 davidgn: Not a bad turnout all things considered, but if you look at the massive demonstrations in other countries the militancy of the American populace doesn't really stand out in comparison. Things could of course turn on a dime, but if mass turnout doesn't begin to exponentially swell, and soon, then it's pretty much all over and the thugs win by default.

>242 davidgn:

No evidence for Trump claim about 'void' Biden pardons and autopen (BBC)

Trump did not provide evidence for his claim - which was posted on Truth Social. BBC Verify has found several instances of Biden signing pardons by hand rather than by autopen. And a sample presidential signature is used on US government documents when they are stored in the Federal Register - a digital archive. This was the case under Trump as well as under Biden. Legal experts also told us that there is nothing in US law which would invalidate pardons signed by autopen...

Sadly, though, it seems that evidence and truth are no longer considered relevant in today's USA.

Doge breaks into US Institute of Peace building after White House guts board (Guardian)

USIP is a congressionally funded independent non-profit that works to advance US values in conflict resolution, ending wars and promoting good governance... “What has happened here today is an illegal takeover by elements of the executive branch of a private non-profit”... “I can’t imagine how our work could align more perfectly with the goals that he has outlined: keeping us out of foreign wars, resolving conflicts before they drag us into those kinds of conflicts.” Doge has expressed interest in the US Institute of Peace (USIP) for weeks but has been rebuffed by lawyers who argued that the institute’s status protected it from the kind of reorganization that is occurring in other federal agencies... The non-profit says it was created by Congress in 1984 as an “independent nonprofit corporation”, and it does not meet US code definitions of “government corporation”, “government-controlled corporation” or “independent establishment”...

Nor, apparently, is the actual legal status of any institution in the USA. I have worked alongside USIP for many years, and it is a very credible and reputable organisation.

>245 John5918: 'Credible and reputable organisation' is exactly why it is a threat to the current administration.

America's "Constitutional Crash"
This isn't "just" a crisis.
Garrett Graff
March 18, 2025 • Reading Time: 12 minutes

Welcome back to my newsletter Doomsday Scenario — a brief apology for the temporary hiatus, while I finished the manuscript for my next book (more about that later in the week) — and a special hello to the hundreds of you who have joined from Rick Wilson’s podcast. Onward to the news:

Donald Trump’s actions over the weekend to deport hundreds of people— we still, shockingly and horrifyingly, don’t really know who — without due process to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador against the direct and explicit orders of a federal judge is rightly causing much consternation. This, many say, is the constitutional crisis we’ve been fearing since January 20th , when the Trump administration set the groundwork to start ignoring court orders. And indeed Asha Rangappa put it, this is as basic a test of liberty as one gets:

And while there are so many levels to be worried about this El Salvador case — the lack of due process, the executive power grab, the clear ignoring of a judicial order, the wildly bad faith legal arguments to explain away how the White House isn’t ignoring the judicial order — but it’s also inseparable from all the other interrelated crises unfolding at the heart of government right now as we watch a would-be dictator attempt to push and bully his way past all of history’s guardrails. “Disappearing” people isn’t would-be-Orban-level abuse-of-power—this is Pinochet-in-Chile or Jorge Rafael Videla-in-Argentina-level abuse.

Our real problem is this: Trump wouldn’t be doing this unless he thought he could get away with it.

Certainly, we’re in a constitutional crisis, but that phrase also doesn’t quite feel like it captures what we’re living through right now. We’ve been in constitutional crises before, moments when the resilience and brilliant architecture of the US’s founding document have been tested by unexpected developments, like the election of 1876, the presidential corruption of Watergate, or, say, the afternoon of January 6th .

Instead, I think we’re living through something even more serious and more troubling.

“Constitutional crises” have come in many different flavors over the course of our country’s history and, for the most part, we’ve weathered them in something akin to good faith and with trust in the system. Traditionally, a “constitutional crisis” implies that there’s a tension in the system—that the various legislative, executive, and judiciary forces of Article I, Article II, and Article III stand arrayed against other, waiting for one to crack down on another after it has stepped out of bounds. Or that there’s some ambiguity in the language or political impossibility that’s calling into question the right way to move forward. In some ways, a “constitutional crisis” feels like the Cuban Missile Crisis, as Dean Rusk famously put it: “We're eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.”

But that’s not what we’re experiencing right now as a practical matter.

Instead, we’re watching what I think might be better named a “constitutional crash,” not in the plane crash or car crash sense, but in the medical sense—we’re living through the sudden, ER-style flatlining of the healthy biorhythms of our 249-year-old constitutional order. Our national system of democracy and shared responsibilities is already dead on the table, waiting to see if there’s a shock large enough and strong enough to jolt it back to life.

We’re not waiting for someone to blink. We’re waiting to see if there’s any sign of life at all.
...

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/america-s-constitutional-crash

‘American democracy died this weekend’, says US expert | LBC

LBC's Washington Correspondent Simon Marks speaks to James O'Brien.

Judges have been left 'ballistic' and 'incredulous' after Donald Trump's administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants, despite a court order.

The alleged gang members' ultimate destinatio was a mega-prison in El Salvador.

A judge then ordered the planes back, telling the government's lawyers verbally that they should do so "however that's accomplished — whether turning around the plane or not."

But the court order was never heeded, and the planes stayed the course.

Simon Marks joins experts warning that “America’s constitutional order has died”.

'It is absolutely chilling,' says James O'Brien.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSsvi-nTseg

Trump has 'declared war on the rule of law' in America: Fmr. Federal Judge J. Michael Luttig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty0_nV_Am88

America’s Constitutional Crisis (w/ Katherine Franke) | The Chris Hedges Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgx2xH8iMjM
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/americas-constitutional-crisis-w

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and detention in a Louisiana ICE facility is a harbinger for a new authoritarian era of the United States. Khalil’s arrest, the capitulation of Columbia University against dissent and protest by its own students and the Trump administration’s threat of stripping the university of $400 million in grants if it does not meet its requests is just one place where the tentacles of fascism tighten their grip.

Katherine Franke, a former law school professor at Columbia, is on the front lines of this assault. Her support for student protests and her condemnation of the university for not addressing the harassment of pro-Palestinian students has earned what she called, “a termination dressed up in more palatable terms.”

Franke joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to address the Constitutional crisis that faces the US, how it has manifested itself on university campuses and what are the next steps in challenging it.

“They're using immigration laws now to come after protesters or people who are voicing views that are critical of the Trump administration who are not US citizens. They'll come next for us, the US citizens, with the criminal law,” Franke warns.

As for universities and Columbia specifically, Franke points to the shift in institutional integrity within schools. Hedge fund managers, venture capitalists and corporate lawyers now run these institutions and their goals aren’t to maintain the principles of education and democracy, but rather the financial bottom line.

Franke says Columbia “is humiliating itself in this process of negotiation with a bully that will not end because it's that repeated proof of ‘I have all the power and you have none.’ That is what governance looks like at this point. There's no principle at stake here. It's about an abusive exercise of power accompanied by humiliation.”

‘We Won’t Know It’s a Different Country’
Trump is causing incredible harm. Whether we learn to live with it matters.
Andrew Egger, Cathy Young, and Jim Swift | Mar 20, 2025

... We humans are master rationalizers; we adopt the new normal faster than we realize...Trump and his allies know that, as they work to build a future that is smaller and crueller, more paranoid and more violent, human nature is on their side.

... Getting out of this starts with remembering. It was good to be a country that cared about babies born with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, that was willing to save their lives for pennies a day. It was good to be a country that cared about Ukrainian children torn from their families by a hostile power, that strove toward a future that saw them home. Maybe someday we can claw our way there again—if we remember.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/we-wont-know-its-a-different-country-trump-remember...

I have no trust in the white nationalist, male dominated GOP cult. At the present time, it is rewriting the history of the country in order to provide evidence backing up its long-held core belief in white male supremacy. Nothing good can come from the rotten seeds it is planting.

Well, on the "up " side, there's Erica Chenoweth with the cheery news that a full 53% of nonviolent resistance movements succeed. So all we need is one of those and the odds are in our favor.

Of course, there are "challenges" in the form of violent repression, internal division, and lack of strategic planning, but that won't happen here, right? So we're golden!

Run away!

>253 modalursine:

Yes, Erica's findings are indeed hopeful news. But do I detect a hint of irony in your second paragraph? Nonviolent resistance is not painless. There will be casualties, as Gandhi, Martin Luther King and other nonviolent leaders knew all too well. Those who stand up nonviolently for freedom, justice and human rights must be prepared to be killed, beaten, tortured and imprisoned for their beliefs - but they will maintain the moral high ground and will not themselves resort to killing, beating, torturing and imprisoning other human beings. Might be worth re-reading Gene Sharp's classic 1974 work Methods of Nonviolent Action to remind ourselves of the vast range of nonviolent options available, some higher risk than others.

Jasmine Mooney

I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-detained-us-immigration...

I'm generally not a big fan of Master Kung's; but one idea of his that I think is worth paying attention to: It's important to call things by their right names.

So what we're dealing with here is a rolling autogolpe whose nature our brave (ahem!) leaders are not willing, at least not in public, to acknowledge.

The formal constitutional arrangements meant to keep a president from becoming a "King" or dictator have failed.

The congress which could block appointments of crackpot chuckeheaded obsequious instruments of the presidents pleasure (indulge me, I love Hamilton's formula!) to high office and could in extremis impeach the dirty dog, has pretty much been neutered, with not much hope of fixing that in the House till the midterm elections, if then, and pretty much no hope at all in the near term in the Senate.

The Supremes have been captured; and while some of the lower court still has some spine and some hormones, the ultimate power rests with the afformentioined captured Supremes.

Worse yet, the power of the court rests on it's ability to call on the state's monopoly on the means of violence, a fancy way to say the police, which are controlled by ...oh you know who!

A competent professional bureaucracy, what Agent Orange liked to call the "deep state", could bog down the autogolpe, but as can see, "measures" are being taken to obviate that little problem.

That leaves us with one more possible actor that could upset the Marmalade Mussolini wannabe's applecart; namely the power of the people massed in opposition.

Will "victorious messenger" riding come before the window of opportunity closes?

Your guess is as good as mine (and neither are worth more than what you've just paid for them)

Stay tuned.

PS. Oh yeah! THere's also "State Rights". How's that for historical irony?

https://www.youtube.com/live/2vNshKeoaHA?si=WVW2nKPVxCzSS0YT
Today, we're talking about Trump's threat to deport anti-Tesla protestors to El Salvador for Elon Musk, Musk gets a top secret security briefing on China, a new EO dismantling the Department of Education, a major law firm caves to Trump, what SCOTUS could do with each EO, and more.

Spreading their vile tentacles across the globe...

From Nature:

Ideology ‘survey’ shocks researchers

Researchers in Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom and Canada who receive US funding have been sent a detailed survey asking whether their US-funded projects relate to topics denounced by President Donald Trump’s administration, such as diversity, equity and inclusion; and climate and environmental justice. It also asks whether the researchers’ institutions work with communist, socialist or any parties that espouse anti-American beliefs, and receive funding from China. The survey “is at the extreme end of foreign influence in a way that we have never seen from any of our research partners”, says Vicki Thomson, chief executive of the Group of Eight consortium of Australia’s leading research universities.quote>