#who's Trump working for and what is his goal?

[wilwheaton]

Trump had given Musk and his operatives carte blanche to tap any unclassified system they pleased. One of their first stops: a database previously breached more than a decade ago by alleged Chinese cyberspies that contained investigative files on tens of millions of US government employees. Other storehouses thrown open to DOGE may have included federal workers’ tax records, biometric data, and private medical histories, such as treatment for drug and alcohol abuse; the cryptographic keys for restricted areas at federal facilities across the country; the personal testimonies of low-income-housing recipients; and granular detail on the locations of particularly vulnerable children. What did DOGE want with this kind of information? None of it seemed relevant to Musk’s stated aim of identifying waste and fraud, multiple government finance, IT, and security specialists told WIRED. But in treating the US government itself as a giant dataset, the experts said, DOGE could help the Trump administration accomplish another goal: to gather much of what the government knows about a given individual, whether a civil servant or an undocumented immigrant, in one easily searchable place. WIRED spoke with more than 150 current and former federal employees, experts, and Musk supporters across more than 20 agencies to expose the inner workings of DOGE. Many of these sources requested anonymity to speak candidly about what DOGE has done—and what it might do next.

Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’ | WIRED

This is sickening. Take the time to read this whole article, and be informed. You need to know who these criminals are, and what they are doing to our personal, private, deeply NOT THEIR FUCKING BUSINESS information.

[unsolicited-opinions]

weve been moots for a while and its interesting, i feel like you have gotten a little more "radicalized" ans turned slightly more rightwing than when you first started posting abt i/p

I wouldn't say more right wing. On domestic policy, I still align pretty well with the Bernie Sanders end of the liberal spectrum.

Here's a ranty infodump:

I still think that Trump is the most dangerous President in US history. I think he's our Hitler/Mussolini/Franco. I think his support of Israel and his supposed opposition to antisemtism are products of political convenience, not principle/values/solidarity. I think he'll turn on both when the political winds change. I think his party's base includes a massive number of white supremacists, Christian Nationalists, and antisemites to whom he and his allies dogwhistle often.

I still think the GOP is completing its transition to fascism.

I continue to despise Netanyahu. I still loathe Otzma Yehudit. I still think that Israel was wrong to continue to invest in West Bank settlements for decades. I still think that the situation in the West Bank is unsustainable.

- I still think there hasn't been an honest partner working towards peace in leadership on either side for decades.

Some views have definitely changed, though, as I've read more broadly on the latest war which Israel did not want and did not choose...but must fight and win anyway.

- I am no longer able extend the benefit of the doubt to antisemites on the right or on the left, domestically or internationally, because I've come to see them as either nakedly hateful or wilfully ignorant. There aren't any other plausible explanations for their words and deeds.

- I no longer believe there's any principled, informed antizionism which isn't antisemitic.

- I'm out of sympathy for people who are brainwashed by the far right or the far left because they find it easier than thinking for themselves.

- I continue to find the suffering of the non-combatants of Gaza appalling, but I think the responsibility for that suffering rests mostly with Hamas and a popular sentiment among Palestinians which prioritizes Israel's destruction over building a Palestinian state.

- I think that real, awful suffering has been exaggerated by Hamas' propoganda war (which I think Hamas is winning, with Qatar's help).

- I think that while no war has ever been free of war crimes and it would not surprise me if members of the IDF have commited war crimes, I don't believe that Israel has conducted this war in an immoral manner. I think that if a Labor Prime Minister had been in power on 10/7/23, the war would not have gone much differently.

- I no longer believe that there's ever been any significant movement for Palestinian statehood. I believe now that the goal has always been Israel's destruction, and never the "liberation" of the Arabs of the Levant. If a state had ever been the goal, there would be a Palestinian state.

- I no longer believe that institutions like the UN, Amnesty International, or the BBC can be assumed to be acting in good faith and merely incompetent. The lies are too frequent, too blatant, and too obvious to have benign explanations.

- I still think that many US Jews are so freaked out by leftist antisemitism that they're failing to understand the very real danger of the Christian Nationalist, White Supremacist, xenophobic, misogynistic administration which weilds levels of power unparalleled in US history. I think that US Jews who ally with Trump or his movement will eventually regret it.

- I have come to believe that no lasting peace is possible until Hamas is destroyed and the people who elected them are deradicalized. For Israel to walk away from this conflict without destroying Hamas is just an invitation to continue this war in a handful of years in what appears to be a never-ending cycle.

Another round of this cycle benefits nobody.

- I understand better now what happened to the Labor party, why and how the second intifada changed Israel's electorate.

- I have become angry that my 14yo feels safe as an LGBTQ person in Jewish spaces, but not at all safe as a Jew in LGBTQ spaces.

- I have become angry at the way the far left (and much of what I once thought was the center-left) has revealed itself to be just as intellectually lazy and as morally bankrupt as the far right.

- I've come to reject the cultural relativism which says the lack of rights for women, LGBTQ people, and ethnic/religious minorities in all of Israel's neighbors is anything but appalling.

- While I continue to criticize the many profound failings of the Western world, I would not under any circumstances trade the Western world and its deeply flawed nature for the world promoted by its enemies. Classical liberalism is the force behind not just the liberation and enfranchisement of Jews in the West, but most of the forward progress the world has made lifting humanity out of sickness and poverty at record rates in recent decades.

- I have come to see the hypocrisy of Israel's detractors as historically unique, despite my affection for learning new and exciting ways to criticize Israel...by reading Israelis.

- There's no longer any political leader or pundit with whom I consistently agree.

At best, there are a handful who I think are genuinely knowledgeable and intellectually honest (like Haviv Rettig Gur or maybe Ezra Klein) and I cringe inwardly when people like Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro, or Dennis Prager present a rational, fair, honest, historically accurate defense of Israel...because I find a number of their positions on other matters repulsive.

- While I think it's wrong that many DEI programs have not recognized Jews as a persecuted minority, I just haven't been able to buy the argument that DEI programs are innately antisemitic. I think they need reform, not destruction.

So yes, my views have changed. I aim to be open about that because they'll change again as I continue to read and learn.

More conservative, though? I don't think so.

I think we need more and better models for understanding political alignment now than this single unidimensional spectrum from Left to Right.

[bimboficationblues]

hi. how will you describe an organization like hamas after banning the word terror? i am asking for a more longform version of that post.

have a nice day.

sitting in my nefarious chamber banning words and concepts

even within the already murky waters of political analysis and its reliance on “thick concepts” - ideas that are both descriptive and normatively charged - the word “terrorist” has very little analytical utility or explanatory power. this is because it is a political, juridical term first - a term with which to tar the enemies of particular states - and an analytical concept second.

as a legal term it does not even do an okay job of capturing some kind of bad phenomena like “murder” or “assault,” because it’s just “committing a regular crime but in a scary and/or political way” - a means for prosecutors to throw their weight around and for states to bludgeon certain enemies with. I mean this seems pretty intuitive based on what gets designated as terrorism and by who (Hamas or the Afghan Taliban being good examples, or compare the treatment of anti-Cop City or BLM protestors with the pro-Trump Capitol protestors).

as an analytical term (in political science, theory, everyday discourse, etc), it sets out already burdened with the above limitations. everybody wants to advance their pet definition of terrorism (“states can do terrorism” vs. “terrorism is only done by non-state actors” being the dispute of the moment) so as to encompass their political enemies and exclude their political allies.

this sort of nonsense is what Israel runs on (“when Hamas kills a bunch of our civilians and fighters in a heavily militarized area, it’s terrorism, but when we do it back on a massively increased scale against civilians, it’s a legitimate act of war”). in other words, terrorism is revealed as a term of moral rhetoric.

nothing is lost from shaking the word “terrorism” from our political language. in fact there’s a gain because instead of letting a term do all the work by acting as a shortcut to moral clarity, we have to actually engage with the specifics: the strategy, the goals, the underlying values, and the relationship between the three - the politics.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#RedForEd rides again in LA

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on WEDNESDAY (Apr 2), and in BLOOMINGTON on FRIDAY (Apr 4). More tour dates here.

The LA Teachers' Union is going on strike.

Fuck.

Yes.

The last time the LA teachers struck was in the midst of the 2019 #RedForEd wave, which kicked off during the last Trump presidency. All across the country, teachers walked out – even in states where they were legally prohibited from doing so. These strikes were hugely successful, because communities across the nation rallied around their teachers, and the teachers returned the favor, making community justice part of their goals.

This was true across America, but it was especially true in Los Angeles, where the teachers were militant, united, relentless, and brilliant. The story of the 2019 LA Teachers' Strike is recounted in Jane McAlevey's essential 2021 book A Collective Bargain, which recounts her history as a union organizer on multiple successful unionization drives and strikes, including that fateful teachers' strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

McAlevey learned her tactics from a lineage of organizers who predated the legalization of unions and the National Labor Relations Act. Accordingly, her organizing method didn't rely on bosses obeying the law, or governments sticking up for workers. She fought for victories that were won by pure worker power. The 2019 LA teachers' strike is a fantastic example, a literal textbook case about rallying support from the entire shop – including affiliated workers, like bus-drivers – and then broadening that massive support by bringing in related trades (the LA charter school teachers walked out with their public school comrades), and the community.

The LA teachers' community organizing was incredible. They worked with community groups to understand what LA families really needed, and made those families' demands into union demands. The LA teachers' demands included:

in-school social workers;

parks and green-spaces in or near every LA public school; and

a total ban on ICE agents shaking down parents at the school gates.

Environmental justice, immigration justice, racial justice – these issues were every bit as important to the LA teachers in 2019 as wages, working conditions and vacation pay. And. They. WON.

Not only did the LA teachers win everything they struck for, they built an enduring community organization that ran a massive get out of the vote effort for the 2020 elections and flipped two seats for Democrats, securing Biden's Congressional majority.

So now the teachers are walking out again, and while their demands include wage increases (the greedinflation crisis wiped out many of the gains won in the 2019 strike – though imagine how much worse things would be without those gains!), the demands also include a slate of bold, no-fucks-given, material measures to fight back agains the Trump administration and its fascism:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-03-26/l-a-teachers-union-pursues-salary-hike-progressive-goals-amid-trump-agenda

This time around, the LA teachers are demanding:

"targeted investment in the recruitment and retention of BIPOC, multilingual and immigrant educators and service providers" – that's right, the DEI stuff that makes Trump's incipient aneurysm throb visibly in his temple (keep throbbing, li'l guy, I believe in you!).

"support for, defense and expansion of the school district’s Black Student Achievement Plan and Ethnic Studies" – the same programs that make wrestling faildaughter Linda McMahon get the fantods.

“strengthened policies to support LGBTQIA+ students, educators and staff” – take that, Elon.

"increased support for immigrant students and families, with and without documentation, including support for newcomers" – up yours, Stephen Miller, you pencilneck Hitler wannabe.

Where'd all these demands come from? 665 meetings that solicited input from "students, parents and other community members." In other words, these are our demands – the demands of Angelenos.

Trump is a scab. Musk is a scab. They hate unions. They've put the National Labor Relations Board into a coma, illegally firing a board member so that the board no longer has a quorum and can no longer take most actions. But the tactics the LA teachers used to organize their victory under the last Trump regime didn't rely on the NLRB – it relied on worker power. That power is only stronger today. The NLRB exists because workers built power when unions were illegal. Killing the NLRB doesn't kill worker power. Worker power comes from workers, not the government:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/29/which-side-are-you-on-2/#strike-three-yer-out

Now that Trump has canceled labor laws, all bets are off. Trump is illegally breaking the contracts of federal workers, as a prelude to eliminating unions nationwide. As Hamilton Nolan writes, this is the time to take a stand:

It is unreasonable to run around demanding a general strike every time a single union gets in a hard fight. It is not unreasonable to demand a general strike when the very existence of unions is under direct attack by a government that cares nothing about us, and does not respect our contracts, and is attempting to throw in the trash the union contracts covering hundreds of thousands of our fellow union members, as a step towards doing the same thing to millions more of our fellow union members. This is the bombing of Pearl Harbor, against the labor movement. Will we say, “We are filing a lawsuit against this illegal bombing, and we will keep you all updated as it progresses?” Will we say, “Pearl Harbor is way out in Hawaii. I’m glad those bombs didn’t fall where I live.” These are the terms that the union world needs to be thinking in, right now. This is not an exaggeration. If we do not go to war, the husk of American unions that emerges at the end of the Trump administration will be, probably, about half as big as it was when the Trump administration started, and immeasurably weaker. That is not an acceptable outcome if you believe that increasing organized labor’s strength is the key to saving this country, which it is.

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/they-are-going-to-take-everything

McAlevey – who died in 2024 – agreed with Nolan. She wrote vibrantly about how union organizing, and the solidarity it nurtures, was the key to a revitalized democracy and a nation that truly takes care of its people, rather than lining them up in billionaires' feedlots.

I gotta go. I'm on my way to a Tesla protest. Maybe you could find one near you to join, too:

https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown

But if I don't see you at this one, I'll see you on the picket line – with the LA teachers, the federal workers, and everyone else who's taking a stand against this scab presidency.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/29/jane-mcalevey/#trump-is-a-scab

[thatdisasterauthor]

Just saw that FEMAs Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program has been canceled. As the disaster knowledge person, I come to you seeking hope- do you know of any other programs still doing this important community disaster preparedness work?

Unfortunately FEMA is under heavy assault, and that doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon. The BRIC program is just one portion of it so far. We're also seeing Trump be slow to sign disaster declarations, and even not signing them at all or denying them, and tons of grants have been frozen or revoked outside of the BRIC program as well. He also just announced the people he's putting on his FEMA review committee today and...ah...it's a terrible bunch.

This administration's goal with FEMA is to put disaster response back into the hands of the states. But that is just impossible. According to one higher up Emergency Management guy I spoke with recently, in Alabama, only four counties could afford to run their own Emergency Management departments without FEMA grants. Four. Alabama has 67 total counties. (He also stated that, to recover from Helene without FEMA help, counties in Alabama would have to raise property taxes 55-70%.) I would guess the numbers would be similar across most states.

Point is, yeah, it's a bad damn time right now. And it is probably not going to get better at any useful speed.

BUT.

But there are a ton of great people focused on this problem, and we're all working hard to plan for these changes as much as possible. What that looks like is changing all the time, due to the goalposts constantly getting yanked around, but it is being worked on. No matter what, some form of help is ALWAYS going to be there. It may not look the way you expect, or the way you want, but there will be something, even if it's just your neighbors.

Some things you can do to help:

Look up "Your State + VOAD." VOAD stands for "Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster." This will get you a list of local, vetted volunteer organizations that specifically offer their services during disasters. See if there's one you want to/can help out with, even during non disaster times! You can also look up "National VOAD" to find national groups.

If you have ever made use of ANY of FEMA's services, or you know someone who has, and you have a positive story to share about it, do so. Do it loudly and repeatedly wherever and whenever you can.

Go to your local city/state political meetings and talk about the value you see in FEMA and that you want to see it protected.

Call your representatives and tell them the value you see in FEMA and that you want to see it protected.

Make sure you are personally prepared as much as possible without it turning into an anxiety spiral. The more you can help yourself, the more weight you can take off a stressed system. A go bag and an evacuation plan are great places to start, and will already put you ahead of the game.

[anexperimentallife]

So you want leftist candidates? Here's how you get them:

First off, you have to understand that the far right didn't just wake up one day and say, "We should fuck up the country!" They have been OPENLY working for decades to fill literally every elected or appointed government position they could with Christian Dominionists and other right-wingers, and these folks show up to the polls EVERY SINGLE TIME.

When I was a kid in a far right church in the 1960s, they openly discussed how important is was to get their people into office who would help pass legislation to persecute/imprison/kill anyone who didn't follow their religion. If there's no one sufficiently right-wing running, they'll vote for whomever is closest, even if it gags them. And I cannot emphasize enough that they have long term goals that they are willing to take--and HAVE taken--generations to achieve.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, for example, is a DIRECT RESULT of the decades-long effort by the far right to boost the most far-right-leaning candidates they could find. They've been talking for decades SPECIFICALLY about getting enough far right judges in SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade. And these SCOTUS appointments are for LIFE, so these judges get to set policy for your GRANDCHILDREN.

So yes, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was only made possible because Trump was able to appoint three SCOTUS judges, in addition to all the other federal judges he appointed. Amd they're talking about going after same-sex marriage, minority rights, etc.

(Hell, the judge in charge of his secret documents case is one that he appointed--she has indefinitely postponed that case,by the way.)

And you don't think local school board elections are important? Have you not seen the news about all the anti-queer policies, and all the book-bannings? This, also, has a generational effect.

Meanwhile the left refuses to turn up to the polls because none of the candidates are pure enough. So guess why things are getting worse?

If the Left turned out for the most left-leaning candidate at EVERY SINGLE ELECTION, whether local or state or whatever, including primaries, we'd start seeing more leftist candidates. Yes, that means that if there's a choice between two extreme right wing candidates, you vote for the least extreme one.

I know I keep emphasizing that this is not just about POTUS, but POTUS does figure in, of course (among other things, who do you think appoints judges for congress to approve?).

So swallow this pill: Anything shitty Biden is doing, the shitgibbon will do MORE of.

"Not gonna vote Biden because he supports genocide, so I'd rather the guy win who ALSO supports genocide, wants Russia to invade more countries, thinks it's fine if China retakes Taiwan, wants a nationwide abortion ban, removal of civil rights for minorities, wants to overturn same-sex marriage (which the right-leaning majority in SCOTUS are already talking about), to cut back the role of congress in checking executive actions (including workarounds to avoid the need for congressional confirmation for presidential appointees), to remove federal employee protections so federal personnel can be replaced with Trump loyalists, and so on! That'll teach those Dems a lesson! THEN they'll be sorry. And fuck everyone the bad guys hurt, because I'll still be PURE. So what if top GOP officials want to actually NUKE Gaza?"

That's fucking kindergartner thinking.

Yes, Biden is a piece of shit, but I am not waxing at all hyperbolic when I say that a second orange shitgibbon term, with a far-right-majority SCOTUS--especially if the GOP manages majorities in both houses of congress--may be the end of what little is left of Democracy in the US. Not gonna argue about it, because I don't waste my time with petulant children.

Look at the GOP's plans for a Republican administration, and tell me you think it sounds better than another term of Biden. Hell, they've even set up online trainings and loyalty tests to narrow down potential federal hires to those who will commit to follow Trump without question.

I repeat: If you want more leftist candidates, if you want more worker power, if you want billionaires taxed, if you want to protect minorities and the queer community, you have to adopt the strategy that the right has used, educate yourself about what candidates stand for, and show up EVERY SINGLE TIME. Again, that includes primaries.

So many of us on the left would rather sit in the basement dreaming of some magical revolution that's going to fix everything, giving ourselves and others purity tests, and proudly announcing that we're... boycotting democracy by not voting(?), "because none of the candidates are a good choice."

Yeah, the left refusing to vote--or only voting in presidential elections--while the right turns up every time is exactly how we got here.

And you have to support the most left-leaning candidate even if it makes you gag, and even if "most left-leaning" means "not as openly fascist." This is the ONLY way you can be assured of candidates getting further to the left in the future. (Note that this means learning about your local candidates.)

"But voting won't fix--" I never said it was going to fix everything. There's no rule that if you vote, you can't volunteer with Food Not Bombs, or run for school board, or demonstrate, or circulate petitions. It takes more than voting, but voting has to be PART of our strategy.

You also have to accept that it may take decades to change course, and that you're not going to like every candidate you have to vote for.

The right didn't just magically get the orange shitgibbon into office overnight. It took decades of work. And if we want decent human beings in charge, we have to be willing to do the same.

[mariacallous]

There are situations in which tariffs are a useful tool to address a trade deficit, or to protect key sectors of a country’s economy. Then there are situations where you accuse a bunch of penguins on an uninhabited island of currency manipulation. Guess which one we’re living in?

This is the takeaway of the manifold tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon. In addition to the penguin-occupied Heard and McDonald Islands, the tariffs target the British Indian Ocean Territory, whose sole occupants live on a joint US-UK military base on Diego Garcia island. Yes, the United States is levying reciprocal tariffs against its own troops.

And then there are the tariffs against countries that have actual goods and services on which US consumers depend. China: 54 percent. Vietnam: 46 percent. Cambodia: 49 percent. South Korea: 25 percent. No corner of the US consumer economy will go untouched. Prices will rise. The stock market is spiraling. A recession looms. The tech industry will be turned upside down. Mark Cuban, noted billionaire, is encouraging people to stockpile consumables before it’s too late.

It’s reckless, it’s absurd, and it’s also everything Donald Trump said plainly he would do on the campaign trail. True, he didn’t telegraph how misguided the methodology would be—you can read about it more here, but suffice to say it’s thoroughly detached from the realities of international trade—but he loudly, repeatedly promised to tariff his way to glory.

The stated goal is to return manufacturing jobs to the United States, which is a bit like resurrecting the dodo. The US still manufactures plenty of goods; it’s second only to China in annual output, according to the World Bank. But many of the industry’s jobs have been replaced by automation, a bottle you can’t re-cork. And higher domestic labor costs mean US-made products will inherently be more expensive, a trade-off American consumers have consistently rejected. All of this was already true in Trump’s first term. It’s even more so now.

And let’s say a plurality of companies did decide to reshore or set up factories in the United States. The timeline for those decisions and implementation is measured in years, if not decades, and follow-through can be spotty. (Just ask Foxconn.) So what happens in the meantime?

The rationale has all the weight of a soap bubble. There isn’t a world where the US suddenly manufactures all the items the country has decided to target. There’s a 47 percent tariff on Madagascar now. Do you know why the US has a trade deficit with Madagascar? They produce vanilla; we don’t. Unless we’re suddenly setting up vanilla assembly lines in Ohio, that’s not changing.

But maybe Trump’s so-called Liberation Day is all just a master negotiating ploy. “Everybody sit back, take a deep breath. Don’t immediately retaliate. Let’s see where this goes,” said Treasury secretary Scott Bessent on CNN Wednesday. “Because if you retaliate, that’s how we get escalation.”

It’s an interesting tactic, to start a bar brawl and ask everyone not to punch back in case someone gets hurt. It’s not working. China has already vowed to retaliate; the EU suggested that it could as well. (New Zealand is officially chill.)

Set the economics of this aside for a moment, though. The insult on top of that looming injury is how sloppy this all is. It’s the same blunt-force destruction that DOGE has implemented within the US government, that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has imposed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now projected on a global scale. Yes, Elon Musk and DOGE have taken a blowtorch to federal agencies. But the tariffs are a helpful reminder that it's Trump who's fiddling while it all burns.

It’s the instinct to measure wins in units of pain and suffering. It’s an assumption that the only way to help yourself is to hurt other people. This is just what America is now.

The optimist’s case is that this is all a feint, that other countries will capitulate or at least make enough of a show of it that things will go back to normal. Seems unlikely. First of all, they’re already doing the opposite, all apologies to Bessent. But even if they weren’t, even if this is just posturing from the US, that posturing has consequences. Whatever equity the US has built up over the last century as a reputable trade partner has been largely wiped out by a businessman-president best known for his bankruptcies.

And then there’s the pessimist’s case, which also seems increasingly like the realist’s. The US is barreling toward a recession for no good reason, and dragging the world—and a few thousand penguins on remote Antarctic islands—down with it.

[pintadorartist]

THE TRUMP-MUSK FUNDING GRAB: THE QUIET COUP

Since taking office, President Trump and Elon Musk have worked together to defund the federal government from the inside while consolidating power into the hands of a right-wing elite. Their goal is clear: gut federal agencies, strip public resources, and redirect power and money into their own hands.

Agencies Are Starved of Ability to Help People: Key federal agencies—including the Departments of Health, Education, and Transportation—have been forced into bare-bones operations, unable to implement vital programs we depend on.

FEMA and Disaster Relief Blocked: Funding for emergency relief programs is being deliberately slowed or denied, leaving communities vulnerable.

Social Security and Medicare Under Threat: Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has gained full access to the U.S. Treasury's federal payment system, which processes Social Security, Medicare, and tax refunds. His team now has access to millions of Americans’ financial data and can manipulate payments.

DOGE is a Smokescreen for Dismantling the Federal Government: Under the guise of “efficiency,” Musk has proposed cutting $1 trillion in government spending, targeting social programs, education, healthcare, and regulatory agencies that protect consumers and workers.

At the same time, Trump and Senate Republicans are fast-tracking Russell Vought as OMB Director to oversee this attack on federal funding.

VOUGHT IS THE ARCHITECT OF PROJECT 2025

Vought wrote a chapter of Project 2025, which starts by outlining the role that OMB should play in implementing the massively unpopular playbook. If confirmed, Russell Vought will control federal spending. That means he will claim to have the power to:

Freeze funding for critical programs like Medicaid, public schools, environmental protections, and infrastructure.

Redirect federal dollars to right-wing priorities, including tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate handouts.

Defund regulatory agencies that keep corporations in check and protect workers and consumers.

THE PROCESS: HOW THE SENATE WILL PROCEED WITH THE VOUGHT CONFIRMATION VOTE

Monday: Motion to Proceed (MTP) passes, allowing debate on the nomination.

Immediately After: Republican Sen. John Thune can file cloture, starting the two legislative day clock before a cloture vote.

Wednesday: Cloture vote happens, kicking off 30 hours of debate.

Wednesday - Thursday: Senate Democrats must use the full 30 hours to expose this crisis and block the nomination at every turn.

Thursday: Final vote on Vought’s confirmation. If he is confirmed, the Trump-Musk takeover accelerates.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1.THIS LINK BY INDIVISIBLE LEADS TO A PAGE WITH RESOURCES INCLUDING POSTERS TO USE WHEN PROTESTING AND WHAT TO DEMAND FROM YOUR SENATORS

2. THIS LINK LEADS TO A CALL TOOL THAT PROVIDES A SCRIPT FOR YOU TO USE WHEN CALLING YOUR SENATOR. TELL THEM THAT WE ARE IN A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS

3.Fax: use this link and send a fax to your senator

4. Read through the list of Senate leaders and call a number

5. Contact Your State Attorney General by phone and email:

Minimal script for ALL state attorneys general: We are all learning that Elon Musk, a man who can’t even get the security access he needs to enter parts of SpaceX, and a band of unaccountable teenagers and business cronies, walked into the GSA, TTS, the U.S. Treasury and the USAID offices and took whatever private information they wanted, firing any civil servant who tried to stop them. [Your Stateians] records have most likely been invaded in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, and as he’s now embedded himself in the Treasury department computer system, payments for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other federal programs are at risk if the Trump administration decides to punish our state, [as he’s currently doing by holding fire victim funding hostage in exchange for extremist voter ID requirements.] Even the short pause from Trump’s executive order to freeze federal disbursements caused panic. We want you to sue the federal government to stop this corrupt and possibly treasonous attack on the privacy rights of our states’ citizens.

6. Contact the Secretary of the Treasury Department! – 202-622-2000

Minimal script for Secretary Scott Bessent: I’m calling to demand that you remove Musk’s access from all systems under your control, that all his equipment is confiscated, that his team is interrogated as to all actions they took under his direction, and that a computer forensics team is assigned immediately to check the system for integrity of its security systems.

More info on: https://indivisibleventura.org/2025/02/01/the-guy-nobody-trusts-with-a-full-security-clearance-now-has-access-to-all-your-private-data/

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

He’s a f—king madman who has no idea what he’s doing or what kind of harm he’s going to cause. Coffee prices will soar and it won’t’t just be Columbian coffee because it will create a greater demand for coffee from other nations. Then you can expect all the importers and retailers to price gouge on top of that. Pressed flowers will become unaffordable as well. Then gas prices will rise because their cheap crude oil will suddenly cost 25% more and again everyone else in the business will see increased demand and raise their prices and price gouge on top of that. Worse, he’s threatening to Jack the tariffs up to 50% for countries that won’t now to his demands.

Tariffs are meant to be used sparingly to stimulate domestic industry instead of relying on foreign producers. They were never intended to be used across the board on every item from a country. The foreign producers aren’t going to absorb a 25% loss in revenue, that’s never happened and likely never will. Prices for American consumers will rise by 25% plus inconvenience fees and price gouging.

Tariffs aren’t a weapon if you think they are you’re just shooting your own citizens in the foot. This is pretty basic stuff. Most people learned this when studying early American history in elementary school. American leaders in the post-revolutionary years imposed tariffs on European manufactured goods such as tools, guns, furniture, machines, etc to end reliance on imported goods while stimulating American manufacturing and turning us into an exporting nation.

Trump’s sole college degree is a bachelor’s in economics. This dumb ass should know how this works. He the densest mother f—ker alive and is completely incapable of being taught anything. Further he’s suffering cognitive decline due to mental illness and is a raging drug addict on top of that. Coke as an upper and Adderall to come down. His shadow president, Elon Musk, ironically only has a bachelor’s degree as well and surprise it’s also in economics. He should know better but also is suffering from mental illness and the consumption of mass quantities of Ketamine. Two moronic drug addicts.

The Republicants who should be advising Trump aren’t the best and brightest either. Nearly all of them haven’t gone beyond a bachelor’s degree and they certainly didn’t major in anything that would be useful in managing a large country with the largest economy on the planet. They are trying to run a government based on sound bites and talking points they picked up from the uneducated hosts of Fox News and Fox Business.

Once countries get burned by Trump’s tariffs they will seek out trading partners in Russia, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Once a trading partner leaves they almost never return. We’ll be forced to seek out more expensive trading partners who will be very cautious dealing with an unreliable USA. Further Columbia will stop cooperating and sharing intelligence in the war against the narco terrorists. Politically all these nations Trump alienates will realign their political goals with BRICS which is growing as an alternative trade and policy for nations not aligned with the Western and first world states. This is an economic and foreign policy disaster that will ripple through the world for decades to come. Trump isn’t just going to crash our economy but likely cause a worldwide depression, or at least recession. When the US catches a cold the rest of the world sneezes.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL AND ITS NOT EVEN RATIONAL.

[muffinlance]

State of the Muffin Report 2024-25

Happy birthday to my fanfics! As of March 3rd, 2025, I have been writing AtLA fics for SIX YEARS. Little Zuko v the World is in elementary school. WHAT.

Behold, last year’s stats!

[id: Screenshot of a spreadsheet showing my 2024-25 word counts. Important info is that over six stories, I wrote 107k words, for a monthly average of 8.9k and a daily average of 297 words. End id.]

Fanfic:

Thanks to last year’s Fandom Trumps Hate donator, I speedran Case 1 of Dark Night in Ba Sing Se, woo! (Much like Zuko speedran his trip to the library.) (And Ryo Cho Jyo speedran his retirement to desk duty.)

Also finished Scaled Over, double woo!

Honestly that’s way more words than it felt like I wrote, and a slight increase from last year, so YAY WRITING MATH.

Serious Face Writing & RL:

Li’s Friends has now raised $4,335.71 USD for wildlife charity, not counting gift matches. <3

Firstborn can recognize electromagnets and is making flying buttresses with magnet tiles. Secondborn’s hobbies include weight lifting, FASHION, and horking down pea pods and cherry tomatoes from our winter garden as fast as I can grow them.

Goals for the Coming Year:

Fanfic:

Sure looks like Fandom Trumps Hate is supporting the third part of Kindling this year, woo!

Finish the current book of Towards the Sun. We’re currently on the final field trip, so that should be very doable. —I say, using the exact same wording for the fourth year in a row. BUT HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS I JUST CHECKED AND SOMEONE CAME IN LAST MINUTE TO PLEDGE THE $500 FOR KICKING MY BUTT INTO GEAR? HOLY CRAP? Okay if they actually go through with that then I guess we’re doing this! I AM DELIGHTED IN THE WORST OF WAYS AND SHAKING MY FIST IN THE BEST OF WAYS! HOW VERY DARE YOU AWESOME PERSON YOU!

Mystery third FTH fic pending talk with the bidder!

More Blindsiding Badgermoles because that’s the one I personally <3 at the moment.

Serious Face Writing & RL:

Finish the third book in the Fox’s Tongue and Kirin’s Bone series, Face of the Wolf King. As arbitrary deadlines do wonders for my writing, and so does Avoiding Other Work, I trust that I can play Wolf King off my FTH fanfic commitments like some kind of author-shaped work-avoidant pinball.

KILL ALL THE WEEDS IN MY GARDEN THIS IS WAR. Lovingly put mesh nets on all my apples to gently shoo the moths away. I love moths please stop eating my apples your delightfully terrible wiggle-children got ALL OF THEM last year they are so delicious in pies please go to the neighbors down the street they don’t even PICK theirs.

I love you Linux Mint I'm never going back to the tyranny of Windows

Special thanks this year goes to BlindBeta, who is my awesome sensitivity reader on Blindsiding Badgermoles, and to Fandom Trumps Hate, because last year’s anonymous bidder was awesome and boy does it look like this year will be EVEN MORE AWESOME.

Cheers,

MuffinLance

[centrally-unplanned]

My own personal pet peeve Worst Trump EO is the one forcing all federal workers to abandon remote or hybrid work schedules. I can't think of a job better suited for hybrid work; government employees are paid less than they could make in the private sector and so need amenities as incentives to stay, and their work is typically very procedural and thus requires minimal collaborative creativity. Meanwhile, despite what a few headlines will tell you, hybrid work arrangements are increasing, not decreasing, and are the plurality of all office arrangements today. Most of the "mandate" stuff you saw from some big orgs was a combination of headline/selection bias and confusing the fact that fully remote work is decreasing in popularity, and orgs are transitioning to ~3 days in the office or some such.

The EO is just full on culture war, punishing government workers for the sin of being "Libs" who need to be owned. And, to boot, it is baking in the exact problem the federal workforce always has - a complete inflexibility on how they do their job due to the whims of politicians divorced from their org and mission. If I wanna hire the best person for a job and they demand 3 days remote or they going to Deloitte, then a hiring manager should be able to agree to that. None of his business CEO appointees would run their orgs this way. Even Elon Musk, with his headline Wars Against Remote Work at Tesla & SpaceX, couldn't actually achieve that, adding things like:

The billionaire added that “Working remotely is also ok if their manager vouches for excellence. Same policy as Tesla & SpaceX.”

As anyone who has managed anyone knows, half the staff are gonna be "excellent", and that aligns with anecdotal data I have heard (mainly SpaceX) that flex days are frequently taken outside of crunch times.

There is no illusion that this will help anyone. It is purely punitive, with maybe an added dash of trying to force people to quit for downsizing goals (shedding employees arbitrarily, selecting for those who have the best outside options - how strategic!)

[sherrylephotography]

A letter from Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is a senator in Vermont USA.

I’m getting a lot of calls from people who are not only upset about what’s happening, but are wondering how we best go forward.

My response: We must be smart. We must be organized. And we must fight back - effectively. This is not a time for wallowing in despair and hiding under the covers. The stakes are too high. We’re not just fighting for ourselves. We’re fighting for our kids and for future generations. We’re fighting for the future of this planet.

Further, we must not become overwhelmed and think that Trump has some kind of extraordinary mandate and an inevitable glide path into the future. That’s what the right-wing mouthpieces want you to believe, but it’s not true. Trump won the election because Kamala Harris and a very weak and out-of-touch Democratic Party received 5 million votes LESS than Biden did in 2020, not because Donald Trump or his agenda were popular. His agenda can be defeated.

So, where do we go from here?

First, we’ve got to understand what, in fact, is happening around us right now.

Second, we need a short-term strategy. What do we do tomorrow and the day after that?

Third, we need a long-term strategy. How do we build a grassroots movement that gains political power?

In terms of what is happening right now under Trump I see three key elements. President Abraham Lincoln, at Gettysburg, talked about a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Under Trump we are seeing a rapid move toward oligarchy in our country — a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class. And it’s not being done secretly. It’s right out there for all to see. Two weeks ago, Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States. Standing right behind him were the three richest men in the country – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — men who have become $242 billion richer since Trump was elected, and who are now worth a combined $932 billion. This is more money than the bottom half of America — 170 million people.

Not surprisingly, Musk, now a key part of the administration, spent over $277 million to get Trump elected. Bezos and Zuckerberg both kicked a million each into Trump’s inauguration fund. Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, rescinded the Post’s editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Zuckerberg had his Meta corporation settle a lawsuit with Trump for $25 million. These three multibillionaires are working with Trump because they understand one very important reality. Trump‘s policies are designed to make the very richest people in this country even richer.

But it’s not just oligarchy that we should worry about. This country, under Trump, is moving rapidly toward authoritarianism. The rule of law and our Constitution are being undermined.

Just a few examples: in violation of the Constitution and federal law, Trump attempted last week to suspend all federal grants and loans. That means he blocked funding for Medicaid, Head Start, community health centers, homeless veterans programs, etc., etc. Tens of millions of Americans, including some of the most vulnerable people in our country, were impacted by that decision. Fortunately, Americans all across the country stood up in outrage and said NO. And with the help of the courts much, but not all, of that freeze in funding was rescinded.

Trump is intimidating the media with lawsuits against ABC, CBS, Meta and the Des Moines Register. His FCC is threatening to investigate PBS and NPR. If Trump does not like what the media does, he goes after them — undermining the First Amendment, dissent and freedom of speech.

Trump pardoned the January 6th insurrections who injured 174 police officers at the Capitol. Now, he is investigating the FBI agents who helped bring these violent criminals to justice. His goal: condone violence and turn the FBI into a national right-wing police agency.

That is a very broad overview of where we are today.

In terms of a short-term strategy, we have got to mobilize as strongly as we can against Trump’s dangerous proposals.

And let me just say this: Yes, the Republicans control the House and the Senate, but don’t forget, their majorities are small. In the House, a body of 435 members, they currently have a three-vote majority. That is a razor-thin margin and their legislation can be defeated or modified — if we fight back.

There are a number of Republicans who won by small margins. And, let me tell you, these guys do respond to phone calls and emails. So, if there is a piece of legislation you disagree with, get on the phone and call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-2131.

And what is some of the legislation that we should be concerned about?

Republicans right now are working on a budget reconciliation bill which would provide massive tax breaks for the wealthy. This gift to the rich would be paid for by large cuts in Medicaid and other programs that working families and low-income people desperately need. At a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, when so many of our people are struggling to put food on the table, we must not savage programs for working families to provide huge tax breaks for billionaires.

We must vigorously oppose Trump’s efforts at mass deportation. YES, we must strengthen our borders. YES, we should deport people who have been convicted of serious crimes. But NO, we cannot destroy families who have lived and worked in this country peacefully for decades. Not only is Trump’s mass deportation program immoral, it will have a severely negative impact on our economy.

We are seeing extreme weather and devastation in our country and all over the world related to climate change. Think about Los Angeles. Think about North Carolina. We must vigorously oppose the absurd “drill baby drill” doctrine, which will only make an incredibly dangerous climate situation worse.

And those are just a very few of the issues that are coming down the pike.

But we cannot just play defense. We have got to be on offense. Please, never forget, the agenda that we are fighting for is widely supported by working families all across this country. And we must continue to fight for that agenda.

The American people do not want cuts to Medicaid and the privatization of Medicare. They understand that health care is a human right, not a privilege. We must continue the fight for Medicare for All so that every American has the health care that they need. That’s not a radical idea. That’s what Americans want.

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. We must raise that minimum wage to a living wage, at least $17 an hour. If you work 40 hours a week, you should not be living in poverty.

All over this country, we have a major housing crisis. And it’s not just the 800,000 who are homeless. It is millions of working families who are spending 40, 50 or 60 percent of their limited incomes on housing. Instead of spending almost a trillion dollars a year on a wasteful and bloated Pentagon budget, we have got to build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing. And when we do that, we put large numbers of people to work at good-paying union jobs.

I could go on and on, but let me conclude by saying this. The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. If we stand together and oppose right-wing efforts to divide us up by our race, our religion, our sexual orientation or where we were born—if we stand together, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish. Yes. We can provide a decent standard of living for every man, woman and child. Yes. We can lead the world in combatting climate change. Yes. We can end all forms of bigotry.

Yes. We can create a government and an economy that works for all, not just the few.

Let’s go forward together.

In solidarity,

Bernie

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

After illegally axing USAID and drafting plans to do the same with the Department of Education, President Donald Trump and his unelected co-president, Elon Musk, have now set their sights on decimating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal scientific agency that helps forecast the weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditions, and manages the protection of marine life.  "Hearing reports that Musk’s cronies are targeting NOAA—infiltrating key systems & locking out career employees," Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland wrote on X. "NOAA is vital for weather forecasting, scientific research & more. Their critical work saves lives. My team and I are looking into this & we will not stand for it." As of Wednesday morning, parts of the NOAA website appear to be down, including the Global Monitoring Lab, which conducts research on greenhouse gasses. Greenhouse gasses lead to global warming and climate change, which Trump and the GOP deny are real, despite the scientific consensus otherwise. What's more, Trump on Wednesday nominated Neil Jacobs to lead the NOAA, the same guy who was reprimanded in June 2020 for "Sharpiegate"—when Trump used a sharpie to alter the path of Hurricane Dorian on an official map to say it would impact Alabama and Florida when it was not projected to. In fact, the report finding that Jacobs violated scientific ethics with his involvement with Sharpiegate is now offline, replaced with text saying, “These are not the sites you are looking for” (a reference to the film “Star Wars”). However, the report can still be accessed through the Wayback Machine, an internet archive that helps preserve websites even if they are removed. 

[...] Ultimately, getting rid of NOAA is a goal of Project 2025, the far-right Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for a second Trump term. On last year’s campaign trail, Trump claimed he had nothing to do with that agenda, but it is now clearly driving the actions of him and his administration. Project 2025 also calls for privatizing the National Weather Service, which helps forecast major events like hurricanes, wildfires, blizzards, and flooding. That would make it harder for Americans to get accurate (and free) information about impending storms. Experts say that privatizing the NWS would make hurricane preparation and clean up even harder.

Not even the NOAA is safe from the dangerous un-American Musk Coup. #MuskCoup

See Also:

The Guardian: Doge staffers enter Noaa headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The GOP is not the party of workers

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/13/occupy-the-democrats/#manchin-synematic-universe

The GOP says it's the "party of the working class" and indeed, they have promoted numerous policies that attack select groups within the American ruling class. But just because the party of unlimited power for billionaires is attacking a few of their own, it doesn't make them friends to the working people.

The best way to understand the GOP's relationship to worker is through "boss politics" – that's where one group of elites consolidates its power by crushing rival elites. All elites are bad for working people, so any attack on any elite is, in some narrow sense, "pro-worker." What's more, all elites cheat the system, so any attack on any elite is, again, "pro-fairness."

In other words, if you want to prosecute a company for hurting workers, customers, neighbors and the environment, you have a target-rich environment. But just because you crush a corrupt enterprise that's hurting workers, it doesn't mean you did it for the workers, and – most importantly – it doesn't mean that you will take workers' side next time.

Autocrats do this all the time. Xi Jinping engaged in a massive purge of corrupt officials, who were indeed corrupt – but he only targeted the corrupt officials that made up his rivals' power-base. His own corrupt officials were unscathed:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181222163946/https://peterlorentzen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Lorentzen-Lu-Crackdown-Nov-2018-Posted-Version.pdf

Putin did this, too. Russia's oligarchs are, to a one, monsters. When Putin defenestrates a rival – confiscates their fortune and sends them to prison – he acts against a genuinely corrupt criminal and brings some small measure of justice to that criminal's victims. But he only does this to the criminals who don't support him:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/29/1088886554/how-putin-conquered-russias-oligarchy

The Trump camp – notably JD Vance and Josh Hawley – have vowed to keep up the work of the FTC under Lina Khan, the generationally brilliant FTC Chair who accomplished more in four years than her predecessors have in 40. Trump just announced that he would replace Khan with Andrew Ferguson, who sounds like an LLM's bad approximation of Khan, promising to deal with "woke Big Tech" but also to end the FTC's "war on mergers." Ferguson may well plow ahead with the giant, important tech antitrust cases that Khan brought, but he'll do so because this is good grievance politics for Trump's base, and not because Trump or Ferguson are committed to protecting the American people from corporate predation itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Writing in his newsletter today, Hamilton Nolan describes all the ways that the GOP plans to destroy workers' lives while claiming to be a workers' party, and also all the ways the Dems failed to protect workers and so allowed the GOP to outlandishly claim to be for workers:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/you-cant-rebrand-a-class-war

For example, if Ferguson limits his merger enforcement to "woke Big Tech" companies while ending the "war on mergers," he won't stop the next Albertson's/Kroger merger, a giant supermarket consolidation that just collapsed because Khan's FTC fought it. The Albertson's/Kroger merger had two goals: raising food prices and slashing workers' wages, primarily by eliminating union jobs. Fighting "woke Big Tech" while waving through mergers between giant companies seeking to price-gouge and screw workers does not make you the party of the little guy, even if smashing Big Tech is the right thing to do.

Trump's hatred of Big Tech is highly selective. He's not proposing to do anything about Elon Musk, of course, except to make Musk even richer. Musk's net worth has hit $447b because the market is buying stock in his companies, which stand to make billions from cozy, no-bid federal contracts. Musk is a billionaire welfare queen who hates workers and unions and has a long rap-sheet of cheating, maiming and tormenting his workforce. A pro-worker Trump administration could add labor conditions to every federal contract, disqualifying businesses that cheat workers and union-bust from getting government contracts.

Instead, Trump is getting set to blow up the NLRB, an agency that Reagan put into a coma 40 years ago, until the Sanders/Warren wing of the party forced Biden to install some genuinely excellent people, like general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who – like Khan – did more for workers in four years than her predecessors did in 40. Abruzzo and her colleagues could have remained in office for years to come, if Democratic Senators had been able to confirm board member Lauren McFerran (or if two of those "pro-labor" Republican Senators had voted for her). Instead, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Synema rushed to the Senate chamber at the last minute in order to vote McFerran down and give Trump total control over the NLRB:

https://www.axios.com/2024/12/11/schumer-nlrb-vote-manchin-sinema

This latest installment in the Manchin Synematic Universe is a reminder that the GOP's ability to rebrand as the party of workers is largely the fault of Democrats, whose corporate wing has been at war with workers since the Clinton years (NAFTA, welfare reform, etc). Today, that same corporate wing claims that the reason Dems were wiped out in the 2024 election is that they were too left, insisting that the path to victory in the midterms and 2028 is to fuck workers even worse and suck up to big business even more.

We have to take the party back from billionaires. No Dem presidential candidate should ever again have "proxies" who campaign to fire anti-corporate watchdogs like Lina Khan. The path to a successful Democratic Party runs through worker power, and the only reliable path to worker power runs through unions.

Nolan's written frequently about how bad many union leaders are today. It's not just that union leaders are sitting on historically unprecedented piles of cash while doing less organizing than ever, at a moment when unions are more popular than they've been in a century with workers clamoring to join unions, even as union membership declines. It's also that union leaders have actually endorsed Trump – even as the rank and file get ready to strike:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yz_Z08KwKgFt3QvnV8nEETSgTXM5eZw5ujT4BmQXEWk/edit?link_id=0&can_id=9481ac35a2682a1d6047230e43d76be8&source=email-invitation-to-cover-amazon-labor-union-contract-fight-rally-cookout-on-monday-october-14-2024-2&email_referrer=email_2559107&email_subject=invitation-to-cover-jfk8-workers-authorize-amazon-labor-union-ibt-local-1-to-call-ulp-strike&tab=t.0

The GOP is going to do everything it can to help a tiny number of billionaires defeat hundreds of millions of workers in the class war. A future Democratic Party victory will come from taking a side in that class war – the workers' side. As Nolan writes:

If billionaires are destroying our country in order to serve their own self-interest, the reasonable thing to do is not to try to quibble over a 15% or a 21% corporate tax rate. The reasonable thing to do is to eradicate the existence of billionaires. If everyone knows our health care system is a broken monstrosity, the reasonable thing to do is not to tinker around the edges. The reasonable thing to do is to advocate Medicare for All. If there is a class war—and there is—and one party is being run completely by the upper class, the reasonable thing is for the other party to operate in the interests of the other, much larger, much needier class. That is quite rational and ethical and obvious in addition to being politically wise.

Nolan's remedy for the Democratic Party is simple and straightforward, if not easy:

The answer is spend every last dollar we have to organize and organize and strike and strike. Women are workers. Immigrants are workers. The poor are workers. A party that is banning abortion and violently deporting immigrants and economically assaulting the poor is not a friend to the labor movement, ever. (An opposition party that cannot rouse itself to participate on the correct side of the ongoing class war is not our friend, either—the difference is that the fascists will always try to actively destroy unions, while the Democrats will just not do enough to help us, a distinction that is important to understand.)

Cosigned.

[iamnmbr3]

Do you have any tips on what we should do before Trump’s inauguration?

Edit: I know it's after the inauguration but this is still relevant.

Do get together important documentation - like passports, driver's licenses, birth certificates etc. Having some cash on hand isn't a bad idea either.

Do find out how you can get organized and get involved in your local community to preserve and protect our rights and freedoms.

Do consider running for office yourself. Even "small" roles like school boards or election officials are super important, as we have seen from the way MAGA has abused those roles.

Do pay attention to local elections and to election integrity efforts. people who know the public is watching and engaged will be less likely to tamper with elections.

Do volunteer to help run/monitor elections.

Do support Democrats.

Do be ready to march, protest and organize. If you look to your right and look to your left and think 'where's the adult in the room getting people organized to do something about this' then that adult is you!

Remember, he's got to implement his agenda a little bit at a time, so even if he gets something through eventually, if it's difficult it delays the rest of the agenda. So even just causing delays is a win. Make sure your representatives know that you support them doing everything they can to block but also to stall MAGA agenda items.

Do be wary of efforts to divide you from your allies. Your allies don't have to be perfect for you to work with them. Don't get distracted from your goal or succumb to infighting.

*

Don't give him ratings by watching the innauguration on broadcast.

Don't fall for propaganda and misinformation that will become even more rampant under Trump.

Don't give up.

We can do this.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I've been asked about this a lot, but as a British person, I only know so much, so I suppose I should ask you: what do you think of Trump's tariffs, and how do you feel about the US economy? Both in terms of the present and your prediction for the future

I like what Trump is doing. I think there are a lot of trade imbalances that need to be addressed, and since there are 75 countries who want to negotiate, I think it's working.

But the main goal of the tariffs is to crush China before they can go to war with us. Because make no mistake, China is building up its military with that intent. They plan to invade Taiwan and fight us if we try to defend them. The best way to avoid that is by crushing their economy and isolating them economically. Which is what Trump is attempting to do, both with the China tariffs and with the tariffs against our other trading partners. He wants to use tariffs to bring them to the table to, partly, get them to agree not to do business with China. And since the Chinese economy is weak and dependent on foreign money in a way our economy isn't, and because the rest of the world needs access to our markets (and in many cases our goodwill to defend them since they have no real armies), Trump has a lot of leverage in this. I'm cautiously optimistic about his chances of transforming the global economy to our benefit