#MAGA attack on the courts

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 20, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 21, 2025

It seems as if the Trump administration is rushing to tear apart as much as it can as opponents of its wholesale destruction of the United States government organize to stop them.

Today, members of the “Department of Government Efficiency” team showed up at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which helps to fund libraries and museums across the country and whose elimination Trump called for in an executive order last week. They sent employees home, swore in a new acting director in the lobby, and proceeded to cancel contracts and grants.

Even as this dismantling was going on, District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander was blocking the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing data at the Social Security Administration and ordering them to destroy copies of any personal information they have already accessed. “The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” Hollander wrote. “It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.”

Also today, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who said the government could not use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify sending migrants to a prison in El Salvador, appeared to be out of patience with the government’s obfuscation of what actually happened in the process of that rendition last weekend. Boasberg’s order today laid out that he had repeatedly asked the government to provide information about the flights but that the government had “evaded its obligations,” providing only general information about the flights and appearing to cast about for further delays.

“This is woefully insufficient,” Boasberg wrote. He required that the government explain by March 25 why its failure to return the flights as ordered did not violate the court order to do so. Far from backing down, the administration appears to be considering escalating its fight with the courts. Devlin Barrett of the New York Times reported today that lawyers in the Trump administration believe the 1798 Alien Enemies Act Trump used to deport migrants also permits federal agents to enter people’s homes without a warrant, an assault on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Trump White House and its MAGA supporters appear to be trying to cement their power to control the government by undermining the rule of law and the judges who are defending it. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt yesterday called Judge Boasberg a “Democrat activist,” although he was originally appointed by President George W. Bush, and badly misrepresented Boasberg’s order. She also attacked Boasberg’s wife for her political donations.

In Talking Points Memo this morning, David Kurtz recorded how MAGA supporters Elon Musk and Laura Loomer have attacked Boasberg’s daughter, and in Rolling Stone, Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng noted that that the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, accused Boasberg of “attempting to meddle in national security,” adding: “This one federal judge thinks he can control foreign policy for the entire country, and he cannot.”

Last month, Vice President J.D. Vance wrote that “[j]udges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” trying to obscure that it is the role of courts to determine whether or not the power the executive is claiming is, in fact, legitimate. On the Fox News Channel, “border czar” Tom Homan said: “I don’t care what the judges think.”

Kurtz noted that Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has promised hearings on the many injunctions against the Trump administration. Kurtz also noted that angry Trump supporters have called in bomb threats against judges who have stood against Trump’s excesses, including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and have sent anonymous pizza deliveries to the homes of judges and their relatives as a way to demonstrate that “we know where you live.”

Perez and Suebsaeng reported that the White House’s strategy is to “move fast” before courts can stop them. In the end, one source close to the president told them that the president’s ultimate power over judges comes from the fact that they do not command an army, while he does. “Are they going to come and arrest him?” the advisor asked, apparently confident that the answer is no.

The attack of Trump and his MAGA supporters on the courts and the rule of law has illustrated how quickly the United States is sliding from democracy to authoritarianism. “Honest to god, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky told Amanda Taub of the New York Times. Along with his colleague Daniel Ziblatt, Levitsky wrote How Democracies Die. “We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary and Poland and Turkey. And in a lot of respects, this is worse,” Levitsky said. “These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding.”

President Donald Trump’s attempt to undermine the courts, and thus the country’s legal system, appears to have kicked the alarm about the dismantling of the U.S. government into a new phase. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran op-eds today from law professors detailing the lawlessness of the Trump administration and warning that the courts will not be able to stop Trump and his administration from their authoritarian takeover of the government.

In the New York Times, Georgetown University professor of law Stephen Vladeck has faith that the courts will try to rein Trump in, while in the Washington Post, Harvard Law School professor Ryan Doerfler and Yale University professor of law and history Samuel Moyn are less convinced that the judges Trump himself appointed will stand against him, but all three of them warn that stopping Trump will require the people to demand “far more aggressive oversight from members of Congress,” as Vladeck puts it. Doerfler and Moyn wrote that “real resistance must take place in Congress, at government workplaces, and in the streets.”

That the courts are in the position of trying to stop a president who is ignoring the Constitution reflects that Republicans in Congress appear to have taken off the table impeachment, the political remedy the Constitution’s framers put into our system for such a crisis.

There has been remarkably little pushback from Republicans about the changes being made to the country in their names, but the news that dropped on March 18 that the administration is considering giving up a key role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has sparked public objection from Republicans who care about the nation’s global role. Since NATO organized, the role of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, known as the SACEUR, has been filled by an American.

Now the Trump administration is considering relinquishing that position as part of a massive restructuring plan that could save up to $270 million of the Defense Department’s $850 billion annual budget, or about 0.03% of it. The U.S. is also considering stopping its expansion and modernization of U.S. Forces Japan, which would save about $1.18 billion, according to Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold of NBC News, but would weaken the cooperation designed to counter China.

“For the United States to give up the role of supreme allied commander of NATO would be seen in Europe as a significant signal of walking away from the alliance,” retired Admiral James Stavridis, who served as SACEUR and head of European Command from 2009 to 2013, wrote to Kube and Lubold. “It would be a political mistake of epic proportion, and once we give it up, they are not going to give it back. We would lose an enormous amount of influence within NATO, and this would be seen, correctly, as probably the first step toward leaving the Alliance altogether.”

House Armed Services Committee chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) issued a joint statement saying they are “very concerned about reports that claim [the Department of Defense] is considering unilateral changes on major strategic issues, including significant reductions to U.S. forces stationed abroad, absent coordination with the White House and Congress. We…will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the Joint Staff, and collaboration with Congress,” they wrote. “Such moves risk undermining American deterrence around the globe and detracting from our negotiating positions with America’s adversaries.”

Their concerns about protecting their power to have a say in U.S. foreign policy and to make sure that policy serves the American people are unlikely to be assuaged by events tonight.

Eric Schmitt, Eric Lipton, Julian E. Barnes, Ryan Mac, and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that the Pentagon has scheduled a briefing tomorrow for billionaire Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s top-secret plans for any potential war with China. As the reporters noted, this information includes “some of the nation's most closely guarded military secrets.” Musk’s largest Tesla factory is located in China—Chinese lenders contributed $2.8 billion to it—and as Joshua Keating of Vox explained two days ago, China is the only EV market where Tesla sales are continuing to increase. Keating also pointed to a Financial Times report that Chinese investors have been funneling money into Musk’s other businesses.

After the New York Times story broke, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said: “The Defense Department is excited to welcome Elon Musk to the Pentagon on Friday. He was invited by Secretary Hegseth and is just visiting.” About an hour later, the reporters note, he posted on X: “This is 100% Fake News. Just brazenly & maliciously wrong. Elon Musk is a patriot. We are proud to have him at the Pentagon.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth chimed in: “This is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans.’ It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production. Gonna be great!”

Then Trump added: “The Fake News is at it again, this time the Failing New York Times. They said, incorrectly, that Elon Musk is going to the Pentagon tomorrow to be briefed on any potential ‘war with China.’ How ridiculous?’ China will not be even mentioned or discussed. How disgraceful it is that the discredited media can make up such lies. Anyway, the story is completely untrue.”

Shortly after Trump posted, Alexander Ward and Nancy A. Youssef of the Wall Street Journal confirmed the story, adding that their sources told them that Musk had asked for the briefing. They also reminded readers that Musk “has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close partner of China, the country that has supported Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Minnesota governor Tim Walz told Rachel Maddow tonight he was “speechless.” “I don’t know how to convey…how far out of the norm this is…. These are closely guarded secrets because our national and our global defense depends upon them…. I don’t understand where…are the Republicans? Where are Lindsay Grahams? Where are these people who know how this works? To not be terrified of where this is at…. Sharing our most guarded secrets on global conflict with a truly unstable private citizen who has no authority…. This is chilling…. Republican senators need to put a stop to this and pull this back.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[eugenedebs1920]

Politicians lie to get your vote. They bend the truth. They may even knowingly make a false claim. The Trump administration is the complete distortion of objective reality.

I am perhaps a bit too informed on current events, particularly the fall of American democracy. So far in this second round of Trump, I’m not sure if I’ve heard a single word of truth from him, those around him, or his propaganda networks.

It had been nonstop lies, corruption and criminality. Seriously! Not a single ounce of truth.

First thing he did was pardon the Jan 6th insurrectionist, claiming they had been treated very badly. Many of them beat the crap out of capital police, they stormed the capital looking to sting up Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. They stole documents, smeared feces all over walls, and defiled our nation’s capital. Many deserved the sentence they received.

Second thing was to blame all of Americas problems on people with brown skin, gay people, trans people, anyone who wasn’t a straight white man. Even when his stupid ass transportation Secretary had the first air crash in over a decade, that was because of minorities somehow. Funny. Pete Buttigieg is gay and not a single plane crashed during his whole time as Transportation Secretary.

Trump brings in the world’s richest man to make government efficient. Yet the first thing he does is dismantle USAID, a program that was less than 1% of the U.S. budget and gave food and medicine to the poorest people across the globe. Think of it! The richest man on the planet, taking food from the most impoverished people on earth. It’s unbelievably messed up.

The guy who spent almost $300 million getting trump elected then starts rummaging through every aspect of the federal government where, ironically, he starts dismantling and picking apart agencies that were investigating his companies. CFPB and SEC were looking into his electronic currency for X, dissolved or defunded. The FDA was looking into the brain chips he was working on, defunded drastically. The FAA was bringing charges against spacex for the rocket explosions that posed numerous dangers, massive funding cuts. You hear very little about this on “legacy” media.

Trump betrays Ukraine, goes so far as to call Zelenskyy a dictator but praises Putin! He has Jerkin Dicks Vance make some ABSURD speech condoning AfT rhetoric and berating our allies, we vote against condemning Putin’s war crimes, along with countries like, North Korea, Belarus, Iran, and of course Russia. WTAF!? And maga is cool with this? We joined the damn axis of evil! The just shameful ambush of Zelenskyy in the White House, it’s one of those things you can’t unseee. Just disgraceful…

The immigration enforcement is fascist to the core! Whatever you think about a country of immigrants immigration policies, a country which committed genocide against the native inhabitants, that made its initial fortune on the backs of enslaved peoples, that nation should have learned 250 years later that all people deserve to be treated with dignity and minimum respect at least. The only lawyer who spoke the truth in court over the administrative error which sent a Maryland man to a supermax prison in El Salvador, got fired by the administration for telling the truth! Lawyers are bound by a code of ethics (believe it or not) and swear an oath to uphold the law.

The tariffs. My god the tariffs. In 100 days America went from the best economic recovery of all developed nations after covid, to the stock market tanking and the contraction of the economy as a whole. Lie after lie about this too. Not simply about inflation or Wall Street, but telling us not to believe our lying eyes and empty wallets with claims that prices are actually down. I CAN CLEARLY SEE THAT THEY AREN’T! How dumb do they think we are!?

Then there’s the full on assault to the first amendment. It’s funny because the right has been setting the precedent that liberals have been attacking the first amendment for years now. (a good way to predict what corruption Republicans are planning is to listen to what they are accusing others of. Promise! It works every time) Why!? Because your Facebook post on how ivermectin cures covid was disputed and taken down? Cry me a river. Trump has attempted to dictate what university professors can teach and the curriculum offered. He has sued law firms for defending causes in conflict with his. He has instituted Christian defense orders. Sued and threatened multiple press organizations. We haven’t even seen the response to an enormous protest in DC yet. June 14th. Be there…

There is not enough time in my life to go over every lie that Trump and his administration have perpetuated, but I can tell you this. The proposed budget, the funding cuts, the degradation of constitutional rights, the immigrant hate, the installation of HIGHLY UNQUALIFIED loyalists in intelligence and defense agencies, defying the courts, discrediting the press, politicizing religion, going after universities, eliminating the department of education, using the DOJ as a personal retribution law firm, military parades, accosting our allies, aligning with autocratic regimes, ignoring due process, creating an alternate reality void from facts or data, where nothing one sees is what they’re actually seeing, distorting what’s real, what’s true, what’s objective, and not backing down from that fabricated story.

I could go on.

These are the actions of a dictator. These are the doings of autocrats. What is playing out in front of our faces is the destruction of the American democratic representative constitutional republic, and the inception of a fascist state. It’s been 100 days people!! This much damage has already occurred.

I posed a question the other day that stuck in my mind. Is it that maga believes the lies that are told to them, does nearly half the country lack the critical thinking skills to see past the propaganda? Or is it that their disdain and animosity towards liberals is so great they simply don’t care? The hatred towards their fellow Americans for having opposing political views is so strong, that they’re willing to burn the whole thing down just to “own the libs”?

I can’t answer that with clarity, but either way….

It’s not good

[wilwheaton]

Officials purporting to defend their person on the ground by offering some “push back” on the Trump campaign attack, but doing so anonymously while trying to keep it from “escalating.” Escalating into what? You’ve already been run over, so that leaves the only obvious conclusion: The Army itself is trying to avoid being the target of MAGA attacks. This is untenable acquiescence to bullying. Is that really going to be the end of the story? No consequences, no new measures to enjoin Trump from doing the same thing again at Arlington or another military cemetery, no price to pay for his thuggery. It’s a familiar pattern. The erosion of any kind of strong, unified, national, countervailing force to Trump’s public bullying and nastiness only enables and emboldens the thuggery that is central to his appeal and that he has already notoriously used on Jan. 6 to try to retain power. If you don’t think a Trump win in November will unleash a reign of thuggery against anyone who stands in his way – not just political foes but innocent bystanders and regular folks just doing their jobs – then I don’t know what else to tell you. He’s doing it right now, he’s promised to do it if he wins, and his minions are poised and eager to follow through. He’s not a schoolyard bully. He’s a public menace, and if he wins back the White House, he will be a public menace with vast official powers and Supreme Court-sanctioned immunity.

Cemetery Staffer Declines To Press Charges For Fear Of Retaliation

[moonlight26posts-blog]

Courtesy of Occupy Democrats:

BREAKING: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson boldly defies Donald Trump by publicly condemning his authoritarian attacks on judges which are "designed to intimidate."

The crowd went wild with applause as she dug in even more...

"Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs," Jackson said during an address to a conference of judges.

"And the attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity," she continued.

"The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law," she said.

"I do know that loneliness. It is very stressful to have to decide difficult cases in the spotlight and under pressure," she added as the room burst into applause. "It can sometimes take raw courage to remain steadfast in doing what the law requires."

"Other judges have faced challenges like the ones we face today and have prevailed,” said Jackson, comparing the current historic moment to past scandals like Watergate.

Not only has Trump defied a Supreme Court ruling by refusing to return innocent Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, he and his lapdogs have been constantly smearing and attacking judges for failing to fall in line with his fascist agenda.

They've gone so far as to suggest that judges who uphold the law rather than toe the MAGA party line should be impeached, demonstrating a deep disregard for the separation of powers.

If we let Trump gut the judicial branch there will be nothing left standing between us and his worst impulses. The time to make your voice heard is now.

[saywhat-politics]

Right-wingers attacked the Trump-appointed justice after she dissented against his use of the Alien Enemies Act — with some even targeting her kids.

Right-wing influencers are turning against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett after she voted against President Donald Trump’s use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants.

The conservative majority Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of the Trump administration on Monday, allowing it to enforce the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members, but limited its authority to allow the accused “reasonable time” to go to court and challenge the case against them.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Frank Vyan Walton at Dark Skies on the Horizon:

They told everyone they wanted to “Make America Great…. Again.” They said that they’d make America “Strong” and “Rich.” They said they would bring down prices for groceries and eggs. It’s becoming clear that all of that was a lie. All of it was a scam. All of it was bullshit. They only had one real plan — they only had one real goal — Revenge. They want revenge on the Dreaded Deep State that repeatedly told Trump “No” during his first term every time he suggested doing something illegal and fucking crazy like having Active U.S. Troops “Just Shoot and Crack (the) Skulls” of protestors. They told him “No” when he wanted to have an alligator moat and electric fence at the border. He wants revenge on the FBI for investigating his campaign staffers for their multiple unexplained communications with Russia. He wants revenge on the DOJ for 8 of his staffers and sycophants getting prosecuted and convicted for various crimes including 5 of them who were convicted of lying under oath about communicating with Russia during the 2016 election. He wants revenge for losing the 2020 election, revenge for sparking the Capitol attack on January 6 and the prosecution and conviction of thousands of MAGA morons who believed his lies. He wants revenge against Jack Smith, Fanni Willis, Alvin Bragg and Letitia James for suing and prosecuting him after he committed fraud, committed rape, committed insurrection and tried to steal the 2020 election with fake electors. He wants revenge on Black people for the 2020 Floyd protests, revenge for the Civil Rights Act — which is what enabled the government to sue him for discrimination in the 70s twice — revenge on Immigrants and revenge on Native Americans for getting in the way of God Given Manifest Destiny. Every day, it’s become more and more clear. Clear enough that even some MAGAs have noticed, but will it become obvious enough in time for the courts and Congress to stop him before it’s too late? Look, no one disagrees with reducing government waste. Nobody doesn’t want to remove fraud and unneeded bureaucracy that slows down the delivery of federal dollars in solving problems.

[...] They want revenge for Woke, DEI and CRT. It doesn’t matter that “Woke” is simply being awake and aware of Racism, DEI doesn’t affect hiring and the CRT is only taught in graduate school. They don’t care what the facts are or what the truth is. They just want to get even. They think thousands — no, Millions — of minorities have gotten some kind of special treatment that has magically catapulted them into undeserved, unearned positions.

[...] When there was a push to remove Confederate statues and monuments they argued that it was “erasing history” — even though none of those monuments were made following the Civil War to commemorate it, they were mostly built after 1914 and the rise of the KKK, and then again to oppose the Civil Rights movement after Brown V Board. Those were monuments to racism, segregation, subjugation, slavery and against Civil Rights and freedom — not to history and heritage. But let’s take the opposite argument now — if removing those statues reversed the commemoration of White Power in America, what does removing the factual historical accomplishments of Black and Brown Americans do? Doesn’t it deliberate further the goals of White Supremacy? Doesn’t it create a false narrative that only White Men have accomplished anything in this country? Doesn’t it stoke the fires of White Power? It’s basically impossible to ignore that this has nothing to do with making America “Great” in any possible way. This isn’t bringing down the price of eggs, or the price of gas, this isn’t helping people buy groceries, this isn’t helping people pay the rent, this isn’t helping anyone with their electric bill. It’s just vengeance. Pure vengeance. The question is, have enough of the MAGA faithful noticed this mendacity for them to be willing to help make a change? Perhaps. There are many MAGAs who now regret their vote for Trump and are starting to realize that it was a massive mistake. The Leopards are in face-eating mode.

The MAGA Cult is nothing more than a dangerous cult poisoning America.

[deadpresidents]

I just hope these next 4 years go by fast

This election isn't just about the next four years. With Trump in the White House and a Republican Senate at his side, the MAGA movement can pick up where they left off when it comes to packing the federal judiciary with right-wing judges who will control the Supreme Court and appellate courts throughout the country potentially for the rest of the lives of everyone reading this right now. It's the perfect recipe for them to continue stripping reproductive rights away from women nationwide and gives them the opportunity to turn their attention to the other issues that they have been dying to attack, from voting rights to gay marriage and every other extension of personal freedom that has been won by minorities and marginalized people in hard-fought battles over the past 60 years. This is the nightmare scenario that people have been warning folks about for the past few elections. It's here. And there isn't going to be a way to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

The consequences of this election will have a direct, negative impact on your life -- possibly on the entire remainder of your life. This country just re-elected a President with authoritarian tendencies who is the willing puppet of a dangerous Christian nationalist movement that figured out exactly how to manipulate him (through flattery) for their aims. They have created the perfect vehicle for a genuine cult of personality that they can use to achieve the goals they have been very clear about striving for over the past few years. And you can't blame anybody other than the American voters because they not only elected Trump, but they gave him a fucking mandate, with a Republican Senate and potentially a Republican House. They already have a right-wing dominated Supreme Court for the next few decades, and now they are going to ensure that the entire federal judiciary is in their control for years to come. And don't forget the fact that a few months ago, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that gave Presidents sweeping immunity for a broad (and conveniently undefined) range of "official" acts, so Trump is going to go into this second term knowing that not only does he not have to deal with the "guardrails" of responsible adults he had around him in his first term (Mattis, Tillerson, Kelly, General Milley, etc), but he knows he can get away with virtually anything and everything that he wants to do this time around. If you thought that Trump's first term was bad, just understand that they are prepared this time and now he's surrounded himself with people who will do his bidding -- people who are perfectly willing to let Trump be Donald Trump.

I wish there was a reason to cry foul, lodge protests, and challenge the election's results. But this wasn't a rigged election. There isn't any confusion about what the voters really wanted. The American people did this. People you know and care about and who say they care about you are the people who did this. We need to recognize that these elections aren't outliers anymore. Trump's supporters aren't simply chaos agents who got lucky on a bad day for the Democrats. That's the country we live in now and we have to find a way to resist it that actually makes a difference because now they have the keys to all the doors and all of the alarm codes. This country has normalized the conspiracy theories and nativism and racism that has powered the MAGA movement since the moment Trump came down the elevator at Trump Tower in 2015. He's given those people permission to be open with their hatred towards people who aren't like them, and it's actually become surprising to see how many Americans have been eager to take advantage of that. I didn't think I had any misconceptions about this country before Donald Trump because I recognized this nation's history, but I clearly had some misconceptions about people I thought I knew until I saw them wearing a red MAGA hat or noticed they had a gigantic flag with Trump's name hanging where their U.S. flag used to hang. Once that happened, it was like a switch went off with them and they started saying things in ways that I'd never heard them speak. I feel like that's happened to the entire country. It breaks my heart and it pisses me off.

For the past few years, I've been warning everybody about how elections have consequences. I imagine that there are hundreds of posts on this blog with that phrase in all caps listed with the tags. Now the elections have happened, and we have to live with real fucking consequences. And we're going to pass these consequences on to other generations because this is the one that you can't get a do-over on. When you give a movement like this the power and the mandate that this country just gave them, there is no easily rolling back the things that they end up doing. They are going to fundamentally change the lives of people in this nation and especially change the way the younger generations of Americans live and love and learn for years to come. And you have people in your life who made that happen. It's another disgusting day in America -- a prelude to another reprehensible four years (at the very least) -- and I'm ashamed of tens of millions of my fellow Americans because this one is on them. They know exactly who the man is that they voted for, and now we know exactly who they are, too.

[robertreich]

Why Trump Is Partnering With Christian Nationalists

Donald Trump is portraying himself as a religious savior. He says Election Day will be: …”the most important day in the history of our country, and it’s going to be Christian Visibility Day.”

Trump has repeatedly compared his criminal trials to the crucifixion of Jesus, promoted videos calling his reelection “the most important moment in human history,” and that describe him as a divinely appointed ruler.

He claims to be a holy warrior against an imaginary attack on Christianity.

TRUMP: They want to tear down crosses//But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration. I swear to you.

He’s even selling his own version of the Bible.

Trump is playing to a rising white Christian Nationalist movement within the Republican Party.

Christian Nationalists believe that the law of the land is not the Constitution, but instead the law of God as they interpret it. Under this view, atheists and people of other faiths (including Christians of other denominations) are all second-class citizens.

Trump’s supporters are increasingly overt in their calls to replace democracy with a MAGA theocracy.

The idea that the will of voters is irrelevant because God has anointed Trump was a recurring message in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In previous videos, I’ve highlighted how MAGA Republicans have embraced core elements of fascism. They reject democracy, stoke fear of immigrants and minorities, embrace a gender and ethnic hierarchy, and look to a strongman to lead and defend them.

The combination of fascism and Christian Nationalism is called Christofascism, a term first used half a century ago by the theologian Dorothee Sölle. Fascists rise to power by characterizing their opponents as subhuman. Christofascists take it a step further by casting opponents as not just subhuman, but actually demonic.

Framing opponents as enemies of God makes violence against them not only seem justifiable, but divinely sanctioned, and almost inevitable.

Christofascists want to strip away a wide range of rights Americans take for granted. Former Trump staffers involved in developing plans for a second Trump term have called for imposing “Biblical” tests on immigration, overturning marriage equality, and restricting contraception.  

And MAGA-aligned judges are already setting their dogma ahead of the Constitution. In his concurring opinion on the case that declared frozen embryos are people, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker cited God more than forty times and quoted the Book of Genesis and other religious texts.

Nothing could be more un-American than the Christian Nationalist vision. So many of America’s founders came here as refugees seeking religious freedom. The framers of the Constitution were adamant that religion had no role in our government. The words “God,” “Jesus,” and “Christ,” don’t appear anywhere in the Constitution. And the very first words of the Bill of Rights are a promise that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Christofascism, or any religion-based form of government, is a rejection of everything America has aspired to be — a secular, multi-racial society whose inhabitants have come from everywhere, bound together by a faith in equal opportunity, democracy, and the rule of law.

Beware.

[f1ghtsoftly]

All The Women’s News You Missed This Week

A sitting Congresswoman has been charged with assault at a detention center in New Jersey in what many (including this author) see as an abuse of federal power and an attempt to arrest and silence critics of the Trump administration. Conflict between Feminists and Islamists continues to rattle Bangladesh recently, a professor has been dismissed from her job after arguing for female property rights. A human rights lawyer and anti-corruption activist has accused the Tanzanian government of sexually assaulting her, alongside subjecting herself and a fellow, male, Kenyan activist to torture, highlighting how sexual assault is weaponized unequally in situations of war and detention against women. 

Susan Brownmiller has died, while her 1975 seminal work “Against Our Will- Men, Women and Rape” is still worthy of a read-if you haven’t checked it out yet you can purchase the book here. I found her treatment of Vietnam to be very useful. The purchase link is here (but forgive my goddess for it is Amazon). 

*’s indicate my favorite, or in my opinion, the most important, articles of the week. 

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Trump and MAGA’s Impact, US and Beyond

The SAVE Act Could Threaten Voting Access for Many Women—And Repeat History

Americans, Especially Women, Feel Less Free. They're Not Wrong. 

‘Keep the lights on’ for women and girls caught up in crisis 

Fact-checking Trump’s claims about Medicaid cuts in GOP bill 

*US congresswoman charged with assault outside immigration centre 

Women Resist: 

Keisha Lance Bottoms enters Georgia governor’s race, pledging to fight ‘the chaos of Trump 2.0’ 

AOC TO REINTRODUCE BILL COMBATING DEEPFAKE AI PORN 

Federal Court Considers Removing Medically Unnecessary FDA Restrictions on Abortion Pills 

The early frontrunner for the 2028 election? Kamala Harris 

Global Feminist News: 

*‘Stateless Overnight’: Kuwait strips over 37,000, mostly women, of citizenship 

Trial hearing for imprisoned Saudi Women’s rights activist: Manahel al-Otaibi (Saudi Arabia)

*Silencing equality: Women’s voices under attack (Bangladesh) 

*Several dozen people in Mali hold a rare protest against the army after massacre allegations (Mali)

Police guidance says women’s phones and apps can be searched after pregnancy loss (UK) 

'Life for our community is a living hell after court ruling' (UK)

Feminist professor loses job after Islamist group demands her removal (Bangladesh)

Ugandan activist alleges she was raped while in Tanzanian detention 

Of Interest: 

Who was Valeria Marquez, the beauty influencer shot dead during livestream (Mexico)

THE MINISTRY OF GENDER X SEXUALITY  (South Africa) 

Global study finds most people want gender-balanced government, even if quotas are needed

Tracing women’s rights through Islamic legal history

How a growing cohort of Black women are redefining doula care across New England  (USA) 

Legendary Female Free-Divers Reveal Evolution in Action on South Korean Island (South Korea) 

Inside Ukraine's last maternity ward in a region surrounded by Russian forces

*The digital re-domestication of femininity: What’s behind the viral rise of regressive gender ideals? 

Arts and Culture: 

*Victoria Review | Embodied Labour, Feminist Ethic: Reading Sivaranjini’s Victoria (Indian Cinema)

‘The Wave' Review: Sebastián Lelio's Rousing but Elementary Feminist Musical 

In Mexico, Songs for Women who Kill Their Abusers

'Heart Lamp' wins International Booker, with stories of India's Muslim women and girls  

Miss England Quits Miss World Pageant, Says She Felt Like a 'Prostitute' for Wealthy Male Sponsors 

 ‘They first come for great acts of culture’: Cate Blanchett sets up grant for displaced film-makers

Feminism in K-dramas: A growing voice or still a whisper? 

Feminist History and Legacy:

In the Face of Trump’s Erasure, We Must Write Women Back Into the Story 

* Susan Brownmiller, author of landmark book on sexual assault, dies at 90

Historic first: Women at the political forefront in Trinidad and Tobago

UN Women Sweden Breathes New Life into 100-Year-Old Protest Signs 

As always, this is global and domestic news from a US perspective, covering feminist issues and women in the news more generally. As of right now, I do not cover Women’s Sports. Published each Tuesday.

[contemplatingoutlander]

"Donald, this is not the Soviet Union. You can’t change the truth and you cannot silence us."

--Liz Cheney (Jan. 3, 2025)

Unfortunately, trump does want to "change the truth"--and he has succeeded for millions of his gullible MAGA followers.

The Soviet Union might no longer exist, but Trump wants to turn us into the next worst thing--Putin's Russia.

Looking on X at the MAGA hate to Cheney's response, there is still all sorts of disinformation about the January 6th committee, including information taken out of context by the GOP and Trump, and outright lies. Here's an AP fact check to refute all of that.

Below the cut are the full transcripts of Cheney's response to Trump, and Trump's original post railing against Cheney's receiving the Presidential Citizens Medal.

[edited]

LIZ CHENEY: Donald, this is not the Soviet Union. You can’t change the truth and you cannot silence us. Remember all your lies about the voting machines, the election workers, your countless allegations of fraud that never happened? Many of your lawyers have been sanctioned, disciplined or disbarred, the courts ruled against you, and dozens of your own White House, administration, and campaign aides testified against you. Remember how you sent a mob to our Capitol and then watched the violence on television and refused for hours to instruct the mob to leave? Remember how your former Vice President prevented you from overturning our Republic? We remember. And now, as you take office again, the American people need to reject your latest malicious falsehoods and stand as the guardrails of our Constitutional Republic — to protect the America we love from you.

DONALD TRUMP: Biden gave Liz Cheney a Medal yesterday, even though she has proven to be totally corrupt. She, “Bennie” Thompson, and the rest of the Unselect Committee, destroyed and deleted all evidence from their crooked investigation of January 6th. Cheney has the distinction of losing her Congressional seat by the largest margin in History! The people of Wyoming understood how bad for our Country she was, but Biden rewarded her only because she hated “TRUMP.” She’s a Warmonger of low intelligence. All she wants to do is kill people in “Endless Wars,” with no gain other than to defense companies. Liz Cheney, Cryin’ Adam Kinzinger, Bennie Thompson, and the rest of these dishonest Thugs have gotten away with horrible things under the pretense of January 6th. Nancy Pelosi refused to accept the help which was offered for security. She is responsible, and admitted as much, for all to see, on her daughter’s tape. They have destroyed the lives of many people, and are rewarded by getting Biden Fake Medals. This is not America. January 20th cannot come fast enough. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald Trump Truth Social 01:25 PM EST 01/03/25

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 28, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Apr 29, 2025

There has been a change afoot in the Democratic Party for a while now as its leaders shift from trying to find common ground with Republicans to standing firmly against MAGAs and articulating their own vision for the United States.

That shift burst dramatically into the open last night when Democratic Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker gave a barn-burning speech to Democrats in New Hampshire. After walking out to the American Authors song “Go Big or Go Home,” Pritzker urged Democrats to stop listening to “do-nothing political types” who are calling for caution at a time when Americans are demanding urgent action, and to “fight—EVERYWHERE AND ALL AT ONCE.”

Pritzker highlighted three ordinary Americans who are opposing the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” by building communities to protest, hanging an upside-down flag on the face of Yosemite National Park’s famous cliff El Capitan, and welcoming Vice President J.D. Vance to Sugarbush Resort in Vermont with a snow report calling attention to the administration’s attacks on veterans, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ Americans, immigrant workers, and people of color. He urged Democrats to lead with the same passion.

He listed the positions on which he wants Democrats to stand firm, beginning: “It’s wrong to snatch a person off the street and ship them to a foreign gulag with no chance to defend themselves in a court of law.” This is not about immigration, he said, but about the Constitution. “Standing for the idea that the government doesn’t have the right to kidnap you without due process is arguably the MOST EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN SLOGAN IN HISTORY,” he said. “Today, it’s an immigrant with a tattoo. Tomorrow, it’s a citizen whose Facebook post annoys Trump.”

Pritzker tore into the MAGA myth that Democrats want rapists and murderers on the streets, saying that Democrats do not want undocumented immigrants who are convicted of violent crimes to stay in the country. He called for “real, sensible immigration reform.”

But, he said, “Immigration—with all its struggles and its complexities—is part of the secret sauce that makes America great, always. Immigrants strengthen our communities, enrich our neighborhoods, renew our passion for America’s greatness, enliven our music and our culture, enhance understanding of the world. The success of our economy depends upon immigrants. In fact, forty-six percent…of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.”

Trump’s attacks on immigrants, he said, are likely to make the U.S. economy fail.

Indeed, he suggested, making America fail is the point of the Trump administration's actions. “We have a Secretary of Education who hates teachers and schools,” he said. “We have a Secretary of Transportation who hates public transit. We have an Attorney General who hates the Constitution. We have a Secretary of State, the son of naturalized citizens—a family of refugees—on a crusade to expel our country of both.

“We have a head of the Department of Government Efficiency— an immigrant granted the

privilege of living and working here, a man who has made hundreds of billions of dollars after the government rescued his business for him—who is looking to destroy the American middle class to fund tax cuts for himself. And we have a President who claims to love America but who hates our military so much that he calls them ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’ and who can’t be bothered to delay his golf game to greet the bodies of four fallen US soldiers. And we have a Grand Old Party, founded by one of our nation’s bravest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln—who today would be a Democrat, I might add—... so afraid of the felon and the fraud that they put in the White House that they would sooner watch him destroy our country than lift a hand to save it.”

He called on Democrats to “stop wondering if you can trust the nuclear codes to people who don’t know how to organize a group chat. It’s time to stop ignoring the hypocrisy in wearing a big gold cross while announcing the defunding of children’s cancer research. And time to stop thinking we can reason or negotiate with a madman. Time to stop apologizing when we were NOT wrong. Time to stop surrendering, when we need to fight.

“Our small businesses don’t deserve to be bankrupted by unsustainable tariffs. Our retirees don’t deserve to be left destitute by a Social Security Administration decimated by Elon Musk. Our citizens don’t deserve to lose healthcare coverage because Republicans want to hand a tax cut to billionaires. Our federal workers don’t deserve to have, well, a 19-year-old DOGE bro called Big Balls destroy their careers.

“Autistic kids and adults who are loving contributors to our society don’t deserve to be stigmatized by a weird nepo baby who once stashed a dead bear in the backseat of his car.

“Our military servicemembers don’t deserve to be told by a washed up Fox TV commentator, who drank too much and committed sexual assault before being appointed Secretary of Defense, that they can’t serve this country simply because they’re Black or gay or a woman.

“And If it sounds like I’m becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people that he has elevated, it’s because... I am. You should be too. They are an affront to every value this country was founded upon.”

Pritzker called on Democrats to be ��bold and our ideas fearless…. And we must deliver on that agenda for working families and for the real people who truly make America great.”

“I understand the tendency to give in to despair right now,” he said, “But despair is an indulgence that we cannot afford in the times upon which history turns. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now.

“These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box, and then punish them at the ballot box. They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact—because we have no alternative but to do just that—that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.”

“Cowardice can be contagious,” Pritzker said, “But so too can courage…. Just as the hope that we hold onto in the darkness, shines with its own...special light.

“Tonight, I’m telling you what I’m willing to do...is fight—for our democracy, for our liberty, for the opportunity for all our people to live lives that are meaningful and free. And I see around me tonight a roomful of people who are ready to do the same.”

“So I have one question for all of you,” Pritzker said. “Are you ready for the fight?”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[oldguardleatherdog]

Today's Wall O'Text:

GEAR UP AND GET READY TO ACT, folks. At least 100 executive orders are gonna be sprung on America right out of the gate, obscure unheard-of laws will be leveraged against us, these bastards will try to drown us in a deluge of shit. STAY STRONG. STAY SMART. KEEP YOUR HEAD TOGETHER. We will not lose heart, we will not give up, we will fight, we will endure, we will prevail.

From the article: "During a two-hour meeting with Senate Republicans, Trump said he plans to immediately enact his MAGA vision instead of waiting for Congress to act, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. He has already prepared about 100 executive orders, and he has no qualms testing the legal limits of presidential authority, he said. "For months, Trump’s aides have been looking at obscure laws passed about 50 years ago that he can invoke to unilaterally carry out his plans and bypass congressional funding limits. Instead of feeling preemptively constrained by constitutional checks and balances, he plans to do what he wants and take his chances with the courts, the Journal reported.

"For example, to help pay for his mass deportations, he plans to use the 1976 National Emergencies Act, which he also used to fund parts of his border wall during his first term. Previous presidents used the act to fund things like the response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks—not to fund something Congress had explicitly declined to pay for, the Journal noted.

"Trump is also eyeing a provision in the 1944 Public Health Service Act called Title 42 that lets the government expel migrants coming from countries with communicable diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used it to lock border entry during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now, Trump is disease-shopping to find a new excuse to invoke it."

[Emphasis added.]

Hunter Thompson's words come roaring to mind: no one wanted this, but it's here now, so let's get it on. ***

The statue of Congressman Phillip Burton of San Francisco, seen here at the Great Meadow of Fort Mason in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, reminds me of what it takes to get good things done in this country. From the NPS website: "Powerful, Profane, Brilliant, Fierce. Phil Burton wasn't a moderate man. Elected to Congress from San Francisco in 1964, he fought for workers' rights, for seniors and people with disabilities, and for the impoverished and under-privileged. Once convinced that creating national parks close to where people live would improve their lives, he fought for park legislation. He fought and he won." In the right pocket of his suit jacket, there's a note with a partial Burton quote visible: "The only way to deal with exploiters is to" -

the full quote: "The only way to deal with exploiters is to terrorize the bastards."

[photo: Gerald Winsor/Google Images]

[tomorrowusa]

« As a little girl in Chippewa Falls, I never thought I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin – and we won!

[ … ]

So today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy – that's right – our fair elections and our Supreme Court. And Wisconsinites stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price – our courts are not for sale. »

— Democratic-backed Wisconsin Judge Susan Crawford addressing an election night crowd upon winning a hotly contested race for Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. Elon Musk had spent millions of dollars and staked his prestige on trying to defeat Judge Crawford. He lost. 😁

Susan Crawford wins Wisconsin Supreme Court race as Democrats take stand against Donald Trump, Elon Musk - WPR

A big defeat for MAGA and a victory for democracy – and not only in Wisconsin.

There's no such thing as an unimportant election. When we vote, we win.

[mariacallous]

As German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck famously said, “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.” But as Bismarck also recognized, effective politicians define what is possible thorough their actions and strategies.

At this lynchpin moment in the history of the United States — with our democratic institutions and the rule of law under attack by an authoritarian in the White House — some leaders of the Democratic Party, the sole institutional opposition to the fascist assault, are falling down on the job. Their fundamental problem — evident from the catastrophic surrender by nine Senate Democrats to the GOP’s DOGE continuing resolution (CR) bill last week — is a lack of strategy.

Much of the discussion since Trump took office has been about the failure of Democrats in DC to yell loud enough and “break norms” of courtesy and decorum. But a lack of rudeness or ability to snark is not the fundamental problem here.

There are plenty of Democrats good at formulating creative insults and getting wide attention for making them. What has been missing for months in DC, however, is a unified Democratic strategy for publicly defining, and relentlessly opposing, the MAGA GOP’s battery of the nation and its most cherished institutions. And the absence of a strategy is all the more glaring given that the public’s tolerance for Trump’s course of illegal conduct is lessening by the day.

A bad hand

Certainly, Democrats find themselves in a tough spot as a result of last November’s elections, being in the minority in both houses of Congress, as well as losing the White House. But nonetheless, they have played their hand disastrously.

It was clear for months that the March 14 expiration of the continuing resolution that passed in December of last year was going to be the first big opportunity of 2025 — and potentially the last — for Democrats to use the legislative process to push back against the Trump assault. This was because a new CR had to pass to avoid a shutdown, and it would have to do so through a narrowly GOP controlled House and avoid a filibuster in the Senate (where the GOP holds only 53 seats), which requires a vote of 60 senators.

In recent weeks, the stakes for the March CR vote increased as the Trump administration’s illegal attacks on the government, the rule of law and the constitutional authority of the Congress became ever more audacious. These events made it all the more clear that Democrats had no choice but to try to score a win with their bad hand of cards.

Meanwhile, thanks to effective pushback from Democrats and others, Trump’s position was weakening. Most importantly, state and local leaders drew attention to Trump’s often nihilistic attacks on the rule of law and essential government services. And state attorneys general — working hand in glove with networks of legal advocacy groups — implemented litigation plans they had been developing and perfecting, in some cases for years, to challenge Trump’s illegal actions in courts throughout the country.

What has made this litigation effort so effective has been the extraordinary level of coordination, expertise, and strategic thinking that has gone into it. In many cases, illegal actions, like the mass firing of federal probationary workers, have been challenged in multiple venues (sometimes including both courts and administrative bodies) at the same time. This both increases the chances of success and the attention being paid across the country to the recklessness of the Trump administration’s use of their power to tear down American institutions. The result has been to place on the defensive not only Trump, but also the GOP elected leaders who have rendered themselves and their party into mere appendages. As a result, the court proceedings have played a key role in demonstrating that Republicans’ allegiance is to Trump and Musk, not the American people.

As the administration has become more openly antagonistic to the nation it’s charged with governing — as demonstrated, for example, by the mass firings of veterans, threats to Social Security benefits, and a House Republican budget resolution that will require gutting Medicaid — Trumpers are now placing themselves at direct odds with huge numbers of citizens, among them many of the the independent voters that decide elections.

While anger toward the Trumpers’ nihilism was growing, the March 14 deadline approached. The opposition outside DC reasonably assumed that Democratic leaders in the Senate and House had a coordinated plan in place to meet the moment, and to leverage the success opponents of Trumpism had in bringing public attention to the stakes facing the country.

They were wrong.

The seeds of failure

In attempting to explain away their surrender of last Friday, Schumer and some of his fellow Democratic senators have unintentionally confessed to their political malpractice — they viewed the March deadline entirely through the lens of budget battles as they have been fought in DC since the 1990s.

The surrendering Democrats based their game plan on the assumption that Republicans would not be able to pass a continuing resolution in the House without Democratic votes. It made sense if one operated with the assumption that history always repeats itself. The GOP has a minuscule House majority, and a number of purportedly “Freedom Caucus” Republicans have virtually never voted for a CR, especially if doesn’t massively cut the deficit.

Yet there were a number of warnings signs that such a principle was not worth much. The far right’s “commitment” to fiscal austerity long ago became nothing more than a pretense. And just days ago, almost every House Republican, including virtually the entire Freedom Caucus, voted for a profligate budget resolution that calls for increasing the debt limit and massive tax cuts while at the same time promising to impose huge cuts on the neediest and most vulnerable Americans.

As the budget resolution vote made all the more clear, loyalty to Trump — who now fully controls the GOP — is all that matters to elected Republicans. That development alone provided good reason for Democrats to question the assumption that their votes would be required to pass a CR in the House. Furthermore, Democrats in both the House and the Senate must have noticed the conspicuous absence of any effort by GOP leaders to open negotiations with them over the terms of a CR even as the days ticked down toward March 14. In sum, relying on the assumption that the usual rules would apply was foolhardy.

But the surrendering Democrats’ problems went far beyond that. Their key failure was a lack of strategy. There was no indication that Democrats in the two houses of Congress had unified around a goal they hoped to achieve as a result of the CR fight. That is, frankly, both stupefying and unforgivable.

The issue presented was clear: The rapid Trumpist dismantling of government is not only cruel and nihilistic, it’s also illegal and a direct attack on the constitutionally assigned authority of Congress. Trump was, and is, selectively gutting, and even shutting down, parts of the government that he (or Musk) dislikes, in direct defiance of the legislative prerogatives of Congress that established and funded the agencies he’s destroying.

At a minimum, Democrats should have set out to use the CR process — which was their one near-term opportunity to deploy the filibuster — to demand, and insist, on guardrails that would place a stop to Trump’s illegal course of conduct. Those bottom line demands should have been agreed upon and become part of a carefully planned campaign well before the March 14 deadline.

Some members of Congress – together with commentators including, for example, Brian Beutler — had been saying as much for weeks and offering up specific ideas, such as a short-term CR packaged together with mandates for ending the DOGE assault, that had to be satisfied for Democrats to vote for longer future funding periods. These proposals made legislative and political sense, because they offered a path by which Democrats could make clear that they were not seeking to shut down the government, as the GOP (including Trump himself) has done in the past, but rather were trying to prevent the ongoing lawless MAGA rampage. Furthermore, polling demonstrated that the public was likely to (properly) largely blame Trump and his captive party, not the Democrats, for any resulting shutdown.

Had Democrats offered up such a bill and presented a unified front in support of it ahead of March 14, Democratic senators would not simply have been in the position of deciding whether or not to vote in favor of a shutdown. Instead, they would have been able to wrong-foot their GOP colleagues about their support for a DOGE “dismantle government services bill” rather than their alternative “keep essential services intact” proposal.

The popularity of such a Democratic alternative would likely only have grown as the public dissatisfaction grew with Trump’s atrocious “management” of the government and his administration’s increasingly overt threats to, among other things, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and veterans’ benefits. But no such proposal was presented.

Having failed to develop a legislative plan to oppose the Trump coup scheme, Democrats rendered themselves into sitting ducks. They lost this crucial battle before Schumer announced his intention to not block the House Republican CR.

Trump, Musk, and Mike Johnson are atrocious legislative strategists. During his first term, Trump managed to be the first president to engineer a government shutdown. And last December, before Trump had even entered the White House, he and Musk almost bumbled into causing, and being blamed for, a government shutdown for no particular reason.

Yet even these legislative incompetents had little difficulty realizing that, by choosing a path of passivity, Democrats had left themselves open to a devastating defeat.

And MAGA leaders took their opportunity, using the complete political dependence of virtually every Republican legislator in the House on Trump as a lever to extract votes for a GOP-only CR. Johnson sweetened the pot for some of his members by including in the bill a gutting of the budget of Washington DC and an assault on programs for the needy. He also sold it as a mechanism to give Musk and OMB Director Russell Vought a clear runway for the next six month to complete their scheme to dismantle the federal government.

That was all it took to pass the CR on the same party-line vote that had just passed the budget resolution. Then Johnson called the House to a recess and dared Democrats to filibuster the House CR. While Johnson might not be particularly savvy, he calculated that Senate Democrats would ultimately surrender — and he was right.

Having chosen, over the previous weeks and months, not to take elemental political steps to prepare for the eventuality he and his colleagues were presented with last Friday, Schumer’s contention that Democrats were faced with no good options had a curious ring of truth. They left themselves with no good options, then justified their surrender on the ground that there were no good options.

In announcing the Democratic cave, Schumer emphasized the parade of horribles that would ensue if the government shut down. He asserted that a shutdown would have given Trump and his cronies license to do great damage to the government.

Schumer’s argument was both somewhat true, but also absurd. On one hand, it’s all but certain that Trump would have tried to leverage a shutdown to further his nefarious ends. But on the other, as the past two months have made clear, Trump does not need a shutdown to destroy the country. Put otherwise, Schumer and his colleagues voted to give Trump license to do just what Schumer was warning against.

So where do we go from here? One terrible option is for the Democratic Party to descend into an orgy of infighting. While this may be a tempting course of action for some, such division is just what Russia and Trumpers benefit from (as we saw most dramatically during the 2016 campaign) and use every tool at their disposal to foment.

In this dire moment for the nation and its democratic institutions, the most significant cleavage in the Democratic Party is not ideological but strategic. One cohort of the party is willing — despite the emergency presented — to continue forward in a reactive mode, biding their time with the expectation that Trump’s authoritarian project will peter out on its own. But the larger faction of the party understands, or is beginning to understand, that watchful waiting is neither a cogent nor responsible approach. This is not an argument for “breaking norms” as an end in itself. But it is an argument for taking chances based on rational strategies.

The surrender of March 14 should serve as a model of what not to do. While a key opportunity was needlessly lost, Democrats have a responsibility to the nation to avoid indulgent finger-pointing. They need to seize new the opportunities that will inevitably arise as Trump’s project to tear the United States continues, and to do so in a coordinated and strategic way. Reactive meekness must be a thing of the past.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that would give authority to the Treasury Department to revoke a 501c non-profit’s tax-exempt status if they’re believed to support terrorism.

House Resolution 9495, also known as the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act,” was sponsored by Rep. Tenney Claudia (R-NY) and passed through the house in a 219–184 vote. It has gone through multiple different forms since it was initially introduced in response to pro-Palestine organizers in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. According to anthropologist and legal scholar Darryl Li, who spoke to Democracy Now, this bill exists exclusively as a means for the right-wing to crush their political opponents, especially those who advocate for the rights of Palestinians, who were recently found by the International Criminal Court to be victims of war crimes enacted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “This bill is essentially a civil rights disaster, that … would allow the government to shut down nonprofits on the smear of being terrorist-supporting organizations…. This law requires an accusation with no evidence, but a tie-in. It’s an accusation that nonprofits are supporting a group on one of the existing international terrorism lists… The bill is essentially discriminatory by design,” he said. “Initially, it did have significant bipartisan support, because, of course, anti-Palestinian racism is one of the great bipartisan unifiers in Congress.”

Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) justified the bill as a plain way to defund terrorism. “We, as members of Congress, have the duty to make sure that taxpayers are not subsidizing terrorism. It’s very, very simple,” he said on the House floor.  Smith didn’t provide evidence that any major U.S. non-profit group has ever supported terrorism. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the only Palestinian-American in Congress, said of the bill, “I don’t care who the president of the United States is. This is a dangerous and unconstitutional bill that would allow unchecked power to target nonprofit organizations as political enemies and shut them down without due process.” The bill doesn’t just pose a danger to advocates for war refugees trapped in Gaza, but also possibly to LGBTQ+ nonprofits as well. As the Trump-Vance campaign spent record numbers on anti-trans ad spending, it is increasingly likely that they could use this bill as a pretense to attack the many nonprofits that advocate for LGBTQ+ individuals. Li details that this could be the case for just about anyone who is a political opponent of the ruling administration.

[...] “Right-wingers and white supremacists in Congress can support this bill, with the assurance that their allies, right-wing extremist groups, are highly, highly unlikely to ever be targeted by this bill, because there isn’t going to — it’s much less likely that they will be smeared with an accusation of being tied to an international terrorist organization that’s already on one of the government lists,” Li said. Groups that could be on the chopping block with this bill include the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, as well as nonprofit news outlets like Mother Jones or ProPublica.

HR9495 is an attack on nonprofit organizations, and Donald Trump and his allies can twist the definition of “supporting terrorism” to not only include pro-Palestinian groups, but also pro-abortion access and pro-LGBTQ+ groups (or any group that opposes the MAGA movement).

It’s time to kill this immoral bill in the Senate.

[thedialoguedilemma]

Donald Trump has yanked $400 million dollars in federal funding to Columbia University citing the schools refusal to handle antisemitic protests.

“Free Speech” was only a buzzword to the MAGA world. This will certainly be challenged in court against the First Amendment.

Trump doesn’t threaten to pull federal funding from states allowing Nazi rallies from groups such as The Proud Boys but all of a sudden Palestinian protests are the first targeted.

Trump released Jan 6th prisoners that attacked the Capitol Building and police officers at his bidding, no threats there at all.

Don’t let MAGA ever tell you they care about Free Speech. They don’t.