#Orbán says

[tranzghuleh]

if ghost comes to hungary, i will celebrate by assassinating our prime minister

[tomorrowusa]

Trump Republicans no longer observe the norms of the rule of law. They have become a semi-fascist cult which worships the Dear Leader Donald Trump. 

The chaos of the Trump presidency has given way to a period of rethinking on the right, the result of which is a political and intellectual infrastructure determined to carry out his despotic impulses in a more systemized and, its supporters hope, victorious fashion. They may not call it fascism or semi-fascism, but this is only because the word has become a universally recognized slur since World War II. To most Americans, fascist simply means “bad,” and nobody self-identifies as “bad.” People imagine democracy and fascism as a simple binary, leaving them unable to acknowledge political systems that reside in the vast space between the two. But this middle ground between Reagan and Mussolini is where the Republican Party’s most influential ideologists and power brokers are consciously heading.

There are still some people who think that the GOP is recoverable and that all this authoritarianism will go away once Trump leaves the scene. There is no evidence to support this, it’s simply wishful thinking.

Nobody expressed any fear that a right-wing state dedicated to endless political warfare might violate anybody’s rights. The only rights they respected were those of red America. The only risk that concerned them was losing.

To understand what the post-Trump GOP would espouse, consider Ron DeSantis and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Attendees at the recent National Conservatism Conference in Miami are certainly giving a lot of attention to that pair.

Attendees were entranced by his war on the left and particularly admired his retaliation against Disney for having criticized his restrictions on LGBTQ+ discussions in schools (which critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” law). DeSantis had had the guts to punish one of the state’s most powerful firms and, the conferees believed, shown how all of corporate America could be brought to heel.

The other model was Orbán’s Hungary.  One attendee came away impressed with the “seemingly ubiquitous Hungarians.” (I now have a copy of the latest issue of Hungarian Conservative.) These Hungarians were greeted as liberators, and Orbán’s regime, which has taken control of the judiciary, the press, and the universities while using corruption to pressure major businesses to support the government, was the object of widespread envy.

Given the Hungarian angle, perhaps a good name for this ideology would be Goulash Trumpism.

These people are quite serious about their intentions. If we are not serious about voting and personally getting others to vote then they will be writing the next chapter in American history.

[alexjcrowley]

I can never just "write a love story" I always gotta discuss the inherently unethical existence of billionaries or the 2008 stock market crash

[spreddable]

Ow.

God put the bones in my feet the wrong way round so I guess I thought I'd go full grand designs/extreme makeover.

[szajmonsays]

Sztrít fájter bézikli.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sign of the Day... in Greenwich Village...

(Mary Elaine LeBey)

* * * *

Kamala Harris meets the moment!

September 11, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Kamala Harris’s debate performance exceeded the unfair and asymmetrical expectations imposed on her by the press and pundits. She was terrific—in command of the facts, unfazed by Trump's bluster, personable, sincere, and likable but strong. That is a difficult mix to maintain in the face of a torrent of lies shouted by a bully who could not be controlled by the moderators. For those who were worried about the possibility that Kamala Harris would somehow stumble and harm her electoral prospects, put those worries aside. The reverse happened. She soared while Trump collapsed into his hollow shell.

Kamala Harris was confident and at ease. Trump sputtered and dodged in a futile effort to avoid answering the moderators’ questions.

I was struck by judgments delivered during the debate by two preeminent historians. I follow both Heather Cox Richardson and Michael Beschloss on Twitter. Near the end of the debate, the historians posted the following comments, which encapsulated the debate for me:

Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump is proving world leaders like him by citing Viktor Orban. Dear heavens. She is walking him like a poodle.” Michael Beschlossos: “From start to end, Kamala Harris has just delivered what is easily one of the most successful Presidential debate performances in all of American history.”

First, I hope HCR writes a book or starts a rock band with the name, “Walking Him Like a Poodle.” HCR’s comment gets to the pith of the debate: Kamala Harris was in charge, leading Trump into traps he knew were traps but could not avoid. In the instance cited by HCR, VP Harris chided Trump, saying that world leaders laugh at him and military leaders believe he is a “disgrace.” Trump responded by citing Viktor Orbán as a leader who respects him. As HCR said, “Dear heavens.” Trump was outmatched and outclassed—bigly.

Michael Beschloss’s comment is significant because it ranks Harris’s performance in the historical context of presidential debates. The precise ranking of her performance matters less than the fact it will be near the top, according to one of the nation’s preeminent historians.

There is too much to cover in tonight’s newsletter, so I will focus on the major newsworthy positions revealed in the debate. I will return later in the week to additional subjects when transcripts and analyses are available. Of note:

Harris presented herself as a candidate offering “generational change.”

Harris advocated for the middle class and small businesses.

Harris promised to sign a bill enacting the protections of Roe v. Wade.

Harris promised to sign the border bill that Trump convinced Republicans to kill.

Harris promised to reinstitute the child tax credit and institute a $6,000 credit for families with newborns

Trump refused to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election.

Trump refused to express any regret for anything he did or failed to do regarding the January 6 insurrection.

Trump refused to say whether he would veto a national abortion ban.

Trump repeatedly claimed that Democrats advocate for the execution of babies after birth.

Trump refused to say why he urged Republicans to defeat the border bill.

Trump claimed that tariffs are “taxes on foreign nations.”

Trump refused to say whether he hoped Ukraine would defeat Russia war of aggression.

Trump said he didn’t have a plan for healthcare after nine years but has only “concepts for a plan.”

Trump repeated a racist slur that Haitian migrants are stealing and eating pets them in Springfield, Ohio.

No one who watched the debate could believe anything other than the fact that Kamala Harris is smart, capable, and up to the challenge of serving as president and commander-in-chief. Moreover, the debate served as a hyper-charged “media interview”—complete with hostile questions and an obnoxious heckler.

One of the first commentators to publish a review of the debate is David Frum in The Atlantic, How Harris Roped a Dope | She stayed human when Trump went feral. Per Frum,

Vice President Kamala Harris walked onto the ABC News debate stage with a mission: trigger a Trump meltdown. She succeeded. Former President Donald Trump had a mission too: control yourself. He failed. Trump lost his cool over and over. Goaded by predictable provocations, he succumbed again and again. Trump was pushed into broken-sentence monologues—and even an all-out attack on the 2020 election outcome. He repeated crazy stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs, and was backward-looking, personal, emotional, defensive, and frequently incomprehensible.

One final note: During the debate, I received outraged emails from readers about the moderators' failure to control Trump or treat Kamala Harris fairly. While true, let’s not make the debate about the moderators. That is what Republicans are doing tonight—to avoid talking about Trump's meltdown. Let’s focus on Kamala Harris’s ability to show Americans that she is up to the job of being president. That’s the story; let’s not bury the lead.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[probablyasocialecologist]

What is unique, at least since the era of open colonialism and its genocides, is the unity this carnage has inspired among political elites in the Global North, and to some extent beyond it. After all, when fascism rose in Europe the 1930s, it had powerful supporters in our political classes, but it also had powerful opponents. That is far less true today. All across what passes for a political spectrum, from the rabid far right to the mealy-mouthed centre left, we have witnessed powerful actors putting their partisan differences aside to come together in active support of these crimes against humanity. Far from fracturing our political class, this iteration of fascism has united it: Donald Trump agrees with Joe Biden; Rishi Sunak with Keir Starmer, Emanuel Macron with Marine Le Pen; Justin Trudeau with Giorgia Meloni; Viktor Orbán with Narendra Modi. And so, we must ask: On what precisely do they all agree? What are they uniting behind? What are they all defending when they speak of Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’? It’s too simple, I’m afraid, to say they are united in defense of a single state. They are, of course, but they are also united in defense of a shared belief system. Amidst the reality of global economic apartheid and accelerating climate breakdown, they are united in a shared supremacist vision of safety and security for the few. This vision is the flip side of their steadfast refusal to in any way address the underlying drivers of these crises: capitalism, limitless growth, colonialism, militarism, white supremacy, patriarchy. As Sherene Seikaly puts it, we are ‘In the age of catastrophe’ and ‘Palestine is a paradigm’. 

[mariacallous]

In recent days, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has capitulated to the far-right anti-immigration agenda of Marine Le Pen. In July, in an electoral pact with the left, he sought a firewall against her. Now he has turned rightwards, giving her an effective veto over prime minister Michel Barnier’s new government.

By the end of the month, the Austrian Freedom party (FPÖ), founded by two former members of the SS, Anton Reinthaller and Friedrich Peter, is expected to form an anti-immigration,pro-Russian government. It will cement a new hard-right axis across Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, and more importantly, Italy, where step by step the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni (who met Keir Starmer on Monday), is accused of taking control of the press and the judiciary.

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has just won the east German regional elections in Thuringia and came second in Saxony. This is despite Germany’s domestic intelligence agency listing the AfD in three states as an “extremist” organisation, reflecting concerns about the Holocaust denial and links to far-right political violence of some of its members – and their invoking of banned Nazi slogans, for which the party’s Thuringian leader, Björn Höcke, has twice been found guilty in German courts.

But while Germany’s centre-right opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, who last year supported coalitions with the AfD in local government, has now refused to enter any national or regional coalition with the AfD, he has come closer to much of its anti-immigration agenda. He now wants “to talk about the issue of repatriation” of existing residents.

Now Höcke is openly mocking what he calls the “dumb firewall” against him, forecasting that it will not last. And last week the German coalition government reacted to the AfD’s success by tightening control of its bordersin an effort to curb irregular migration.

Another lurch rightward came with the decision last month by the Dutch health minister, a member of Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party, to refuse requests from African countries for urgent help in the fight against mpox, even when the Dutch stockpile runs to 100,000 boxes of unused vaccines – many of which will pass their use-by date next year.

The spectre haunting Europe is not communism, as Karl Marx once wrote, but far-right extremism. And not much is left of the cordon sanitaire that was to keep out the far right. Europe now has seven governments with hard-right parties in control or in coalition, with Austria likely to be next, as once-immovable barriers to contamination are swept aside by centre-right appeasers.

“Breaking point” was the slogan on a poster that Nigel Farage deployed in 2016 during the Brexit referendum campaign, portraying bearded and dark-skinned migrants appearing to march in droves towards us. The exact same photograph was later replicated in Hungary, with the caption changed from “Breaking point” to “Stop”.

Similar slogans include “Stop the invasion” (“Stop invasione”), used by Matteo Salvini’s Italian League party; and “Close the borders” (“Grenzen dicht”), adopted by German far-right groups the AfD and Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West).

A few years ago, when the now-imprisoned former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon attempted to form a global coalition of anti-globalists, he managed to herd together a number of Europe’s rightwing leaders, from Nigel Farage to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. He was involved in setting up an “Academy for the Judeo-Christian West” in Italy. And Trump’s “America first” Republican party is now one of many to adopt the “my country first” slogan.

Spain’s far-right Vox party has used “Primero lo nuestro. Primero los españoles”; Italy’s League, “Prima gli Italiani”; Hungary’s Fidesz party, “Nekünk Magyarország az első”; Germany’s AfD, “Unser Land zuerst”; Austria’s FPÖ, “Österreich zuerst”; and the Swiss People’s Party, “Die Schweiz zuerst”.

Outside Europe, “Önce Türkiye” (“Turkey First”) is promoted by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party. The far-right Japan First party marches under the banner of “日本第一” (“Japan first”). “India first” has been adopted by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party.

Variations on this theme include “Polska dla Polaków” (“Poland for Poles”),used by nationalists in Poland, Vox’s slogan “España viva” (“Long live Spain”), and “Brasil acima de tudo” (“Brazil above everything”), used by Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro.

In all, about 50 countries have already gone to the polls in 2024. “Fears that this year would reflect the global triumph of illiberal populism have so far been proved wrong,” Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy and the author of the End of History and the Last Man thesis, has concluded. “Democratic backsliding can and has been resisted in many countries.”

He can, of course, point to the return of Labour in Britain, the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission, the shift away from the far right in Poland and the setback for Modi in India. But the Polish and Indian results tell me no more than tolerance of rightwing extremism can ebb when the electorate finds out that the nationalist demagogues are good at exploiting grievances, but bad at eradicating them.

And so we must not forget what has happened in countries from Indonesia to Argentina, the knife-edge fight for power in the US and – what Fukuyama misses in Europe – the insidious surrender of the centre to far-right prejudice.

Of course, there are ways to frustrate the onward rush of rightwing populists. Not only did the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, defeat the right in national elections last year, but he has skilfully engineered a split between Spain’s centre-right People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox over the fate of vulnerable child migrants. Until July the two were in coalition in five key regions: Valencia, Aragón, Murcia, Extremadura and Castilla y León.

But it was not the centre-right PP that abandoned the extreme-right Vox; it was the extreme right that walked away from the centre right. And as long as the so-called moderates continue to play with fire – believing that by keeping their opponent close, they can eventually tame the beast – they will continue to lose. Sooner rather than later, the far-right poison will have to be countered with a progressive agenda focused on what matters to people most: jobs, standards of living, fairness and bridging the morally indefensible gap between rich and poor.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Current times in the U.S. are NOT as similar to 1776 as they are to 1932 Germany

I've been saying for a long time that America is currently in its Weimar Republic stage, and if we don't stop the creeping neofascism now, we will go the way of earlier fascist nations. Probably, we will never be as extreme as Nazi Germany, but we might very soon look much like a neofascist contemporary nation like Viktor Orbán's Hungary.

Given this, I was happy to see the comment below made in response to an opinion column in the WaPo by Charles Lane: U.S. institutions are polling about as well as King George III did in 1776

"No, not 1776 at all. Far more like Germany in 1932, when a demented clown and his party of bigots and bullies told millions they’d been stabbed in the back by liberals and socialists, that they could make Germany great again and have anything they wanted, that everything they wanted made sense — if they would only elect a demented, debauched political party and its scheming head to lead the country and join in a hysterical campaign of demonization and vilification of less than 1% of the population. "These same people pretended to be a movement espousing family values, where a woman’s place was solely in the kitchen, raising children and going to church. They held mass rallies where they encouraged their followers to jail their opponents and use violence against people who got in their way. Once in power they outlawed abortion, homosexuality, and jazz, suspended constitutional and legal rights, and claimed only white, blue-eyed people were deserving of life and liberty. "Democracy is so very fragile. Turns out it only takes only a witches brew of fear and demonization to undo in a flash what institutions and constitutions have worked to create and sustain over many generations. When brutish, loud-mouthed bullies promise to make your country great again, this is really what they have in mind." --cbl55 Sylvester the Cat, commenting on a WaPo opinion column: U.S. institutions are polling about as well as King George III did in 1776

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Learn from an autocratic dictator? Really…

[creature-wizard]

Vance has now re-created himself as a far-right “populist,” articulating an intellectual argument for the extremist MAGA agenda. In February of this year, Vance said he would not have certified the 2020 election if he was Vice President and would have allowed states to submit fake Trump electors.

Vance opposes abortion, called for the replacement of all civil servants with MAGA loyalists, said Trump should ignore Supreme Court rulings, wants to end aid to Ukraine in a move that empowers Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has openly praised far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.

[stormoflina]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeLmypRt/

Dominik and orban!! What’s this about??

Anon, however you got f*desz on your fyp I feel bad for you...

Bit of a backstory for this, before the translation: Orban (the PM of Hungary, the leader of a former liberal party turned into one of Europe's leading right wing parties, a very controversial man with very questionable politics and opinions, to say the least) is a huge football fan, to the point he tried politicize football in Hungary. In the past it did work out to an extent, our last two former captains were known supporters of his party... One is the rumoured gay lover of one of the ministers by the way, and no, I'm not joking :D

Now, when our last captain before Dominik, Szalai Ádám used to regularly entertain Orban with his wishes, he invited him to their dressing room after certain important wins, things like that. Ever since Dominik got the captainship, it stopped - thank God! No more asslicking from the nt, no more visits or PR meetings, or photos. He never showed support for him, and even disregarding if it's a personal choice or not, for the shake of neutrality, I hope it stays this way.

The video goes like this:

Interviewer: "When will you meet Szoboszlai Dominik?"

Orbán: "The question is not when will I meet him, it's if he is willing to meet with me."

*Scene cuts to Orbán telling a story*

Orbán: " By the way, once I meet him, briefly. He wasn't a big thing, a "king" back then. I had to go to Telki (the training center of the hungarian nt) with Csányi Sándor (vice president of the UEFA) for the MLSZ (Hungarian Football Federation) and I went to meet Szalai Ádám (former captain, known supporter of Orbán) and he was sitting at the table with a few of the "big kings". He was really young back then [not a superstar, as he is now, that's what he is trying to say by saying "king"]. I spoke like 3-4 words to him.

He is the king, their is no question about that. Prime ministers can come and go, but there are very few hungarians who were able to play for Liverpool. So the question is not when I will meet him, but when [if] is he willing to meet [ever] with me ?"

This video genuinely pissed me off. This is literally being posted by the Fidesz party (the governing party) as a light-hearted, fun video, but the undertone is very much pure pressure, in my opinion(!). You can tell Orbán is frustrated with the lack of ackowledgement from Dominik, especially how he was asslicking the nt team for performing so well this last year, esp for the Euros campaign, and got no public response back.

Sorry, this is a very biased response -of course not the translation, that is word-to-word -, but gosh, do I strongly dislike this man!

[head-post]

Storm Boris devastates Central Europe, death toll rises

Storm Boris caused widespread destruction in Central and Eastern Europe, killing at least 15 people. The storm swept across Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, southern Germany and parts of Austria, causing heavy rain, flooding and strong wind gusts.

Romania

In Galati county in eastern Romania, the hardest-hit region of the country, heavy rains caused widespread damage, affecting about 5,000 homes and leaving at least 25,000 people without electricity.

Romania’s emergency department confirmed the discovery of six bodies, including three elderly women and one man over the past two days.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis deplored the situation, saying:

“We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences.”

Rescue teams rescued hundreds of people in 19 areas of the country.

Czech Republic

In the Czech Republic, heavy rains fell for three consecutive days and flooding affected mainly northern parts of the country, leaving more than 50,000 homes without power.

Authorities reported one death, but said seven people in the country were missing, The Guardian reported.

The risk of flooding remains critical for rivers such as the Odra, Opava, Branna and Novohradka, especially in Jeseníky and Pardubice, Radio Prague International reported.

Although water levels in the upper reaches of the rivers are decreasing, the flood wave continues to travel downstream, threatening lower areas such as Uhretice and Chroustovice, the station added.

Austria

Austria has also been hit hard, with 24 villages in Lower Austria declared “disaster zones” and the death toll rising to three, the country’s vice-chancellor Werner Kogler told TV X.

“We have just received the terrible news of two more fatalities in Lower Austria,” he stated, expressing his “thoughts and deepest sympathy” for the relatives, families and friends of the deceased. He also added:

“The situation in the areas affected by the #Hochwasser (flood) remains very critical,” he warned, calling on the whole country to “follow the instructions of the emergency services on site.”

On Sunday, he said a firefighter had died battling flooding in Lower Austria after authorities declared the province surrounding the capital Vienna a disaster zone.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer noted on X:

“The Austrian Armed Forces are deployed in the storm-hit regions wherever help is needed.”

Rail services in the eastern part of the country were suspended and several metro lines in Vienna were closed due to the threat of the overflowing river Wien, APA news agency reported.

Poland

One person has drowned in Poland’s Kłodzko region, bringing the country’s death toll to five, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

He said on X:

“I have ordered the Minister of Finance to prepare funds for emergency aid and flood damage removal. The Minister for European Affairs will apply for European aid.”

He said he had asked the defence minister to “deploy additional forces to the threatened areas.” The Polish prime minister also added:

“After consultations with the relevant ministers and services, I have instructed to prepare a Council of Ministers resolution on the introduction of a state of natural disaster.”

According to The Guardian, around 1,600 people have been evacuated in Klodzko.

Because of all this, Warsaw is expected to declare a state of natural disaster, although it has not done so during previous difficulties such as the COVID-19 pandemic or major floods in 1997 and 2010, Polish Radio reported.

Hungary

In Budapest, officials have raised the forecast for water levels in the Danube River to rise to 8.5 metres (27.9 feet) in the second half of this week, nearing the record high of 8.91 metres recorded in 2013, The Guardian reported.

Zoltan Kovacs, the spokesperson for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, said on X:

“Amphibious tracked vehicles are en route from Szentes to Pilismarot to support flood defense efforts. The Hungarian Defence Forces are playing a key role in the flood protection efforts, deploying various equipment. Nothing is more important than the safety of the Hungarian people.”

Slovakia

Concern has been mounting in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, where authorities have been taking protective measures to contain the surging waters of the Danube. Police have extensively “warned the public about the danger” of walking along the river, a Bratislava Police spokesperson told CNN on Monday.

Extreme rainfall events are likely to become more frequent and intense as the planet warms, science shows.

An analysis of a 2021 heavy rainfall event in Europe, in which more than 200 people were killed, found human-caused climate change had increased the likelihood and intensity of these events in the region. The World Weather Attribution initiative — a group of scientists who study extreme weather and published the analysis — concluded “these changes will continue in a rapidly warming climate.”

Read more HERE

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Nichols at The Nation:

Donald Trump has made no secret of his determination to govern as a “dictator” if he regains the presidency, and that’s got his critics warning that his reelection would spell the end of democracy. But Trump and his allies are too smart to go full Kim Jong Un. Rather, the former president’s enthusiasm for the authoritarian regimes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán suggests the models he would build on: managing elections to benefit himself and his Republican allies; gutting public broadcasting and constraining press freedom; and undermining civil society. Trump, who famously demanded that the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential voting be “recalculated” to give him a win, wants the trappings of democracy without the reality of electoral consequences. That’s what propaganda experts Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead once described as “demonstration elections,” in which, instead of actual contests, wins are assured for the authoritarians who control the machinery of democracy. The outline for such a scenario emerges from a thorough reading of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, which specifically proposes a Trump-friendly recalculation of the systems that sustain American democracy. The strategy for establishing an American version of Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” is not spelled out in any particular chapter of Mandate. Rather, it is woven throughout the whole of the document, with key elements appearing in the chapters on reworking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In the section on the DHS, for instance, there’s a plan to eliminate the ability of the agency that monitors election security to prevent the spread of disinformation about voting and vote counting.

How serious a threat to democracy would that pose? Think back to November 2020, when Trump was developing his Big Lie about the election he’d just lost. Trump’s false assertion that the election had been characterized by “massive improprieties and fraud” was tripped up by Chris Krebs, who served as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the DHS. The Republican appointee and his team had established a 24/7 “war room” to work with officials across the country to monitor threats to the security and integrity of the election. The operation was so meticulous that Krebs could boldly announce after the voting was finished: “America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should, too.” At the same time, his coordinating team declared, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” This infuriated Trump, who immediately fired the nation’s top election security official.

In Mandate’s chapter on the DHS, Ken Cuccinelli writes, “Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinformation efforts. The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth.” Cuccinelli previously complained that CISA “is a DHS component that the Left has weaponized to censor speech and affect elections.” As for the team that worked so successfully with Krebs to secure the 2020 election, the Project 2025 document declares that “the entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day One.” The potential impact? “It’s a way of emasculating the agency—that is, it prevents it from doing its job,” says Herb Lin, a cyber-policy and security scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

This is just one way that Project 2025’s cabal of “experts” is scheming to thwart honest discourse about elections and democracy. A chapter on public broadcasting proposes to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of a larger plan to upend NPR, PBS, and “other public broadcasters that benefit from CPB funding, including the even-further-to-the Left Pacifica Radio and American Public Media.” More destabilizing than the total funding cut that Project 2025 entertains is a parallel plan to end the status of NPR and Pacifica radio stations as “noncommercial education stations.” That could deny them their current channel numbers at the low end of the radio spectrum (88 to 92 FM)—a move that would open prime territory on the dial for the sort of religious programming that already claims roughly 42 percent of the airwaves that the FCC reserves for noncommercial broadcasting. And don’t imagine that the FCC would be in a position to write new rules that guard against the surrender of those airwaves to the Trump-aligned religious right.

[...]

While project 2025 seeks to rewire the FCC to favor Trump’s allies, it also wants to lock in dysfunction at the Federal Election Commission, the agency that is supposed to govern campaign spending and fundraising. Established 50 years ago, the FEC has six members—three Republicans and three Democrats—who are charged with overseeing the integrity of federal election campaigns. In recent years, however, this even partisan divide has robbed the FEC of its ability to act because, as a group of former FEC employees working with the Campaign Legal Center explained, “three Commissioners of the same party, acting in concert, can leave the agency in a state of deadlock.” As the spending by outside groups on elections “has exponentially increased, foreign nationals and governments have willfully manipulated our elections, and coordination between super PACs and candidates has become commonplace,” the former employees noted. Yet “the FEC [has] deadlocked on enforcement matters more often than not, frequently refusing to even investigate alleged violations despite overwhelming publicly available information supporting them.”

John Nichols wrote in The Nation about how Project 2025’s radical right-wing wishlist of items contains plans to wreck and subvert what is left of America’s democracy.

See Also:

The Nation: June 2024 Issue

[amaditalks]

Heather Cox Richardson is a US based political historian, who connects facts from our history to current events to provide context. She writes daily on Substack, this is an excerpt from her March 17 post. It’s a longer read but very crucial toward understanding the American right’s plans for the future of this country, as illustrated by the close connections of The Heritage Foundation, a powerful right wing think tank, and Viktor Orbán, the autocratic prime minister of Hungary. 

“The tight cooperation between Heritage and Orbán illuminates Project 2025, the plan Heritage has led, along with dozens of other right-wing organizations, to map out a future right-wing presidency. In Hungary, Orbán has undermined democracy, gutting the civil service and filling it with loyalists; attacking immigrants, women, and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals; taking over businesses for friends and family, and moving the country away from the rules-based international order supported by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

In the January interview, Roberts told Garcia-Navarro that Project 2025 was designed to jump-start a right-wing takeover of the government. “[T]he Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start,” Roberts said. “And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”

Project 2025 stands on four principles that it says the country must embrace. In their vision, the U.S. must “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”; “[d]ismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”; “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”; and “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”

In almost 1,000 pages, the document explains what these policies mean for ordinary Americans. Restoring the family and protecting children means making “family authority, formation, and cohesion” a top priority and using “government power…to restore the American family.” That, the document says, means eliminating any words associated with sexual orientation or gender identity, gender, abortion, reproductive health, or reproductive rights from any government rule, regulation, or law. Any reference to transgenderism is “pornography” and must be banned.

The overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the right to abortion must be gratefully celebrated, the document says, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision accomplishing that end “is just the beginning.””

[hiveswap]

hey, what the fuck is happening over there [hungary]?????

oh, god hi fens it's a mess

europe is having eu parliament elections, which are kind of a big deal and every party here is campaigning to have their candidate sent so that they can influence eu policy or whatever.

At the same time, there's a new party called "Tisza" (both the name of a major river and an acronym for "purity and freedom") lead by a young former government politican called Magyar Péter. He's ridiculously popular rn. Dude knows how to move crowds and wants Hungary to catch up to eu standards which we are definietly not reaching under Fidesz (current govt. party) Obviously I don't trust him entirely but they've got a legit chance of making things better and that is GOOD.

Other parties exist as well, but they've got no relevance, no voter base, and nobody wants them: These include Mi hazánk (nazis) and Kétfarkú kutyapárt (two tailed dog party) who are there for the meme and nothing else, their candidate showed up in a leather jacket to a debate and made jokes the whole time. (iconic) There's also a bunch of others but no one likes them all that much

Still at the same time, Fidesz has been at power for 12 fucking years. (one thing Tisza wants to do is limit this to 8 years max for future elections) And they've got this fucking country in the middle of a mass hysteria episode.

Their talking points include:

George Soros/Soros György is sending (arab) immigrants here to rape women and do crime and he pays leftist politicans to do this for him. And this is good for them because...? (they are cartoon villians dont question it pls)

2. Bruxelles (eu parliament) bad because they do gender and immigration (because of George Soros)

This George Soros thing got to the point where the current eu rep. went to a debate and accused all other candidates there, to their faces, of being paid by him. like, to their faces live on public television.

3. THE WAR -> according to our prime minister Orbán Viktor, all other parties except them want to bring back the draft and send hungarian boys to Ukraine to fight (absolutely deranged idea, no party wants this, they keep saiyng they don't) and also he's saying that Europe is heading towards a third world war and they are going to change this if they get into the eu parliament (they are in, right now, too.)

This has gotten to the point where they've got posters and ads about how there is going to be war and only they can save us. Magyar Péter appeared on tv saying he's been approached by a teacher whose students, 9-10 years old, were afraid that a burning house across the lake from their summercamp meant we were being bombed by Russia. (He's a politican so take this anecdote with a grain of salt)

...Anyway the chatch is that the govt. has allegedly been sending hungarian soliders to Chad this whole time so theyve got 0 right to say anything about them potentially being sent to Ukraine maybe.

4. Child protection from i guess queer people..? This one was big until recently, they banned mentions of queer people from schools, (before florida did btw) removed self-identification for trans people, ect.

This child protection "GENDER IDEOLÓGIA" (no we don't use the word gender in hungarian, they just left it in english) campaign ended when our president pardonned a pedophile children's home headmaster a few months ago, sparked an outrage, and had to step down. They've yet to apologise to the kids, btw. (The president in question, Novák Katalin, what a fucking girlboss, belonged to that far right Mi Hazánk party i mentioned before btw) They haven't been talking about protecting the children since, strangely.

there's also going to be a battery factory in Debdrecen (2nd largest city) which everyone hates and nobody wants and it's polluting the farmlands and the groundwater around there.

SO. YEAH. yay for hungary this is barely scratching the surface