Month: September 2025

By any means necessary

Donald Trump and his loyal subjects mean to rig the 2026 elections by any means necessary.

Trump subjects both in the Justice Department’s civil rights division and criminal divisions are compiling a national voter database “to try to prove long-running, unsubstantiated claims that droves of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally,” The New York Times reports (gift link):

“Nobody has ever done anything like this,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert at Loyola Marymount University’s law school and a former Justice Department official.

The Justice Department has requested data from at least 16 Republican-controlled states, including Mississippi, Alabama and Texas. It has also sent more formal demands for data to at least 17 mostly Democrat-controlled or swing states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin and New York.

Nearly every state has resisted turning over voter files with private, personally identifiable information on voters like driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers. Last week, a local judge blocked South Carolina from releasing private voter information to the Justice Department.

In particular, Trump’s subjects want to gather the last four digits of every voter’s social security number.

The administration plans to compare that voter data to a different database, maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, to see how many registered voters on the state lists match up with noncitizens listed by immigration agents, according to people familiar with the matter.

Except if our experience in North Carolina is any indication, any registrant in a blue county that lacks that number in their voter file — whether by data input error or because it’s not required under HAVA if the voter supplies a drivers license number — could have their votes challenged. This “election integrity” effort is not about rooting out noncitizens. That’s a pretext. (There’s a file drawer full of them in the West Wing.)

“The biggest structural concern is using this information in an irresponsible manner to fuel the narrative that something is amiss in any election in which the preferred outcome is not the actual outcome,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Election officials also note that creating a federal database has its own complications. A state’s voter file is not a static document; new voter registrations, changes in address, deaths and other adjustments to voter rolls take place every day. A federal database would be out of date a day after any voter list was turned over to federal officials.

The Trump administration deserves neither fealty nor any benefit of the doubt. If it wasn’t for bed faith, they wouldn’t have no faith at all.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

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Americans push back

“The Republican Party … is trying to destroy our democracy. That is pretty much incontrovertible,” declares historian Heather Cox Richardson. But remember, she emphasizes, how broadly unpopular that is, along with Donald Trump’s policies and job performance. Trump is running a reality-show presidency. The White House is obsessed with selling an image of strength for a president who is weak. Yet 46 percent of the American people per recent polling are strongly opposed to what Trump and MAGA Republicans are up to.

But weak in polling is not weak functionally. Republicans control all branches of our government and many state governments. Several states are at Trump’s insistence working feverishly to rig the 2026 elections so Republicans don’t have to face the wrath of voters. The time to push back is now, Richardson insists. Let neighbors know what’s going on. Use social media, post memes, show up to protests, incuding on bridges and overpasses.

“You are not normal people,” my friend Arshad Hasan told us when he lead my first campaign training. Normal people don’t spend their weekends learning to run political campaigns. Normal people do not hang out all day on the internet and on cable news channels. They won’t see those memes and social media posts. Public actions in high-traffic areas lets the offline neighbors see you think our nation is at risk. They get noticed (as I found out last week).

Public pushback works. Ask Rochester.

Chicago is gearing up big-time for Trump’s incursion:

A U.S. Army veteran who did a tour in Iraq said he was reminded of his military oath as Trump threatens to bring the National Guard to Chicago and other U.S. cities. The man, who declined to give his name, said he would tell National Guard members who are conflicted about Trump’s orders to “remember your oath.”

He said he was an immigrant himself and the United States “adopted” him when he moved here.

“I feel frustration, I feel sadness,” he said. “I’m scared for my family, I’m not scared for myself.”

[…]

David Villegas showed up to support his friends who he said have been affected by Trump’s anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ+ policies and rhetoric. By the time he was within view of the Trump tower, he jumped up and down with both middle fingers in the air.

“During Trump’s first term, I never felt like doing it,” he said. “But now with the second term and what he’s been doing recently, I felt the power to do so, just to take away the stress.”

Arrests continue. People are frightened and angry.

“They’re bullies with badges and guns,” Little Village resident Jose Sanchez, 42, posted to Facebook. “They’re terrorizing the community.”

I like this observation on community solidarity from Rick Perlstein:

For of us, resisting them has culturally become part of what it means to be a Chicagoan. These are from today and Sunday: two huge rallies in 72 hours, the second called with a days notice. Note how they all specifically tie together civic identity with resistance to tyranny. Not things scrawled on cardboard with magic marker: art, lovingly conceived and seriously executed.

I especially like the very-Chicago references to the Field Museum and Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.

It's going to be hell for ICE in Chicago. For many of us, resisting them has become part of what it means to be a Chicagoan. These are from today and Sunday: two huge rallies in 72 hours, the second called with a days notice…

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T01:51:49.148Z

Note how they all SPECIFICALLY tie together civic identity with resistance to this specific tyranny. Note that they are not scrawled on cardboard with magic marker: they are art, lovingly conceived and seriously executed. Fuck ICE. Chicago is going to neuter you.

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T01:53:48.972Z

Oops, here's photos I meant to share.

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T02:16:54.579Z

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

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This makes me feel like crying. Josh Marshall reports that the Senate Dems are on the verge of making a funding deal in the worst possible way:

As we’ve been discussing for a week there’s a big argument among Democrats about the looming shutdown fight. Senate Democrats seem set on making it a negotiation about Obamacare subsidies, the biggest part of the BBB cuts that kick in before 2026. Meanwhile, you have a growing chorus of people who aren’t Senate Democrats saying this is wrong. It’s not time for small-bore policy revisions. You’ve got to do something dramatic to rein in Trump’s increasingly dictatorial rule. I also see Lakshya Jain and Matt Yglesias saying that yes, maybe it’s time for a confrontation. But if you’re going to have a confrontation, you need to make that stand on the issue where your issue advantage is the greatest. And that’s on the health care subsidies. And at least on the first part of that I absolutely agree. Tariffs are actually pretty salient too. But let’s set that aside for a moment. Because there’s an unspoken part of this equation that makes all the difference.

So let’s get that clear and on the table.

Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats are making it very clear they don’t want a shutdown. They may be willing to risk one, but they really want to avoid it. Their thinking is that Trump’s getting unpopular on his own and a shutdown gives him an opportunity to spread the blame. Suddenly the Democrats own part of everything going haywire. That is a big part of the reason for focusing so tightly on the Obamacare subsidies. Because there’s already a slice of Republicans who very much want to do the same thing. That’s mostly the endangered members in the House and to a degree in the Senate. The leadership and White House won’t say so of course but they’d probably like to kick those cuts past the 2026 midterms as well because they are almost as invested in those endangered members not losing their races as the members themselves are. Donald Trump personally is probably even more invested than some of them are.

The point is that the Democrats are focusing on this because they’re pretty close to a deal in advance. Indeed, John Thune is openly inviting Dems to “come forward with a solution”, which is code for Democrats saying in advance what cuts they’ll propose to pay for the subsidies or what future moments of power — like another CR fight — they’ll give up in advance in order to get the subsidies restored until the midterms are over. If the optimal plan is to force a confrontation on the most salient and Dem-leaning issue, then what Senate Democrats are planning is the exact opposite of that because they’re trying to avoid a confrontation.

If they want to use health care as the battle ground, have at it. They don’t have to give up shit. Make the demand: restore Obamacare subsidies, reverse the Medicaid and VA cuts, no use of pre-authorization for Medicare treatments, restore cancer research funds and get rid of RFK Jr. LAY OUT THE STAKES AND PICK A HUGE FIGHT OVER IT.

Fergawdsakes. As Josh says here:

Without a big confrontation, it’s just a Senate sausage-making deal like every other continuing resolution negotiation. No one who’s not very plugged into politics and thoroughly committed in their politics will even know it happened. Most of the people who are going to be hit by those subsidy hits don’t even know about it yet. And if Democrats “win” this it will be as though it never happened at all. To think up-for-grabs voters who rely on Obamacare subsidies will hear about that lo-fi negotiation and think, “Wow, I’m stoked the Democrats got my subsidies renewed for six months so I don’t have to worry about this until after the midterms!” is comical and absurd. Democrats will get no credit for that because no one will know it happened. So that whole plan is one that does nothing for Obamacare recipients or for Democrats electorally or to help the country try to fight off an authoritarian takeover.

If the Senate makes this puny “deal” to restore the Obamacare subsidies, which benefits the Republicans in the midterms, they will harm Democrats who hold out against this, whether in the Senate or the House. “The Republicans passed a wonderful bipartisan compromise that even the liberal Senator Donothing agreed was very generous and yet Congresswoman Libnutz refused to vote for it. Thank God for President Trump and the congressional Republicans who stepped up to help people keep their health care.”

And keep in mind, this means that these Democrats will also be signing on to a GOP budget that will make your hair stand on end, getting nothing more than a six month extension of Obamacare subsidies.

Update: I don’t know if you’ve read Ezra Klein’s unexpected endorsement of the confrontation strategy but here’s a gift link in case you missed it. His arguments aren’t particularly original but the fact that it’s him making them is significant. He’s seen as an establishment voice and I don’t think anyone would call him a radical.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Democrats in the Senate are still keeping their powder dry for the day when things get really bad. I guess armed federal thugs kidnapping people off the street, quacks destroying science, public health, economic war against everyone and the world order in chaos isn’t that day.

A Dean of Texas A&M was removed this week for violating the president’s (insanely unconstitutional) executive order banning discussion of gender in higher education.

A Texas A&M professor under fire by university, state, and federal leaders is under investigation after a student in her class raised concerns over the topic of gender studies in the curriculum.

[…]

On Monday evening, Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, replied on X, saying, “This is deeply concerning,” and the DOJ would investigate.

On Monday night, Chancellor Glenn Hegar shared this statement:

“It is unacceptable for A&M System faculty to push a personal political agenda. We have been tasked with training the next generation of teachers and childcare professionals. That responsibility should prioritize protecting children not engaging in indoctrination.

Today, I was made aware of video recordings as well as instructional materials which are irreconcilable with the values of The Texas A&M University System. Early investigations appear to indicate that the professor who taught this course failed to comply with clear instructions to align course descriptions with course materials. Further findings reveal that this failure continues to be an issue with this professor.

I will work with the Board of Regents to make certain that the A&M System takes the disciplinary action necessary to ensure this does not happen again at one of our campuses.”

I urge you to watch the video that was taken in class. Apparently, the professor brought up the topic of gender in the class and one of the students, who had already complained to the administration, accused her of breaking “the president’s laws” and violating her religious beliefs. Clearly a set-up.

🚨CAUGHT ON TAPE: TEXAS A&M STUDENT KICKED OUT OF CLASS AFTER OBJECTING TO TRANSGENDER INDOCTRINATION… and A&M President defends "LGBTQ Studies."

I'm referring @TAMU to the Trump Administration for investigation… and asking Gov @GregAbbott_TX to fire the A&M officials… pic.twitter.com/J6IWsfw62I

— Brian Harrison (@brianeharrison) September 8, 2025

The underlying belief here is that it’s “illegal” to talk about gender in university classrooms because the president says so. And apparently, at least some universities are eager to confirm that daft concept. They created a fatuous excuse that the topic wasn’t in the course catalog so they had to remove the professor, but you’d have to be brain damaged to believe that.

A statement from Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III:

I learned this afternoon that key leaders in the College of Arts and Sciences approved plans to continue teaching course content that was not consistent with the course’s published description. As a result, I… pic.twitter.com/jj9sk0e0ni

— Texas A&M University (@TAMU) September 9, 2025

If they are seeking to turn their universities into Trump indoctrination camps they are succeeding:

Many Texas professors are looking for jobs in different states, citing a climate of fear and anxiety on their college campuses due to increased political interference, according to a recent survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors.

The survey interviewed nearly 4,000 faculty across the southern U.S., including more than 1,100 from Texas. About a quarter of the Texas professors said they have applied for higher education jobs in other states in the last two years, and more than 25% said they soon intend to start searching for out-of-state positions. Of those who aren’t thinking of leaving, more than one-fifth said they don’t plan to stay in higher education in the long-term.

“Morale is down,” said one Texas faculty member at a public four-year university in a written response. “Friends have lost contracts for no discernable [sic] reason. We live in fear of using the wrong word. We self-censor. We do not have academic freedom.”

The top reason faculty cited in the survey for wanting to change jobs was the state’s broad political climate. In Texas, faculty have criticized new state laws banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs in universities; requiring university governing boards to establish policies on granting and revoking tenure; and limiting faculty’s role in crafting courses and hiring colleagues. Other reasons included salary and academic freedom concerns, the survey found.

“It is certainly a combination of factors of people wanting to leave Texas. But the ability to do your job without attacks from politicians and the ability to participate in your campus voices is always [at] the top of faculty minds,” said Matthew Boedy, the president of Georgia’s AAUP chapter.

Texas had the highest percentage — more than 60% — of respondents who said they wouldn’t encourage graduate students or colleagues to seek employment in their state. The survey reached out to faculty from other southern states, including Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.

They are determined to turn their states into educational backwaters. Maybe that will work out well for them. But I doubt it. Oh well. They’ll always have football.

“Harvard can’t use race as a factor in admissions, but ICE can use race as a factor in detentions” is a retrenchment essentially to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution. It’s vanishingly few steps removed from “Latinos have no rights which the white man is bound to respect.” Civil-rights lawyer Athul K. Acharya

Yep. When America was great:

In the order lifting the stay of the order issued by a federal district court in Noem v Vasquez Perdomo, Justice Kavanaugh says that people who are citizens aren’t inconvenienced if they are detained by ICE agents so it’s perfectly fine for the masked marauders to racially profile them:

The Government sometimes makes brief investigative stops to check the immigration status of those who gather in locations where people are hired for day jobs; who work or appear to work in jobs such as construction, landscaping, agriculture, or car washes that often do not require paperwork and are therefore attractive illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English. If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go. If the individual is illegally in the United States, the officers may arrest the individual and initiative the process for removal.

If you follow his argument to it’s logical conclusion he is saying that the government should have the right to stop anyone and demand their papers because if you aren’t doing anything unlawful, you have nothing to worry about. Probable cause is so 2024.

Sherilyn Ifill had this to say about the decision:

Every aspect of this description is belied by the reality that appears on our televisions and online every day. But who are you going to believe – Justice Kavanaugh or your lying eyes? Kavanaugh’s description reads as though it were downloaded from the Department of Homeland Security’s website. Almost every word of this is preposterous. “Brief investigative stops” at places where undocumented immigrants are likely to work? What we have seen repeatedly are not “stops.” They are grabs and kidnapping. Most often, no questions are asked. Even when colleagues have insisted that the person targeted by ICE agents are here legally, or that they are citizens, ICE agents proceed to tackle, beat, cuff, and spirit away individuals they have targeted. And we have seen migrants detained and forcibly taken into custody as often in courthouses after immigration hearings, or in neighborhoods cutting lawns as at Home Depot.

Kavanaugh’s claim that if ICE officers learn that you are in the country legally the officials “promptly let the individual go”? Really? Is three months “prompt”? Two months? One month? Does he care at all what ICE detention is like? Does he know what 24 hours in those facilities are like?

[…]

I am reminded when I read Justice Kavanaugh’s tone-deaf opinion in this case of what Justice Byron White said in a tribute to Justice Thurgood Marshall about how Marshall’s presence influenced the Court’s conferences: “he would tell us things we know but would rather forget, and he told us much that we did not know due to the limitations of our own experience.” The work of trial courts can do the same. But the conservative majority on this Court believes they have no limitations. Instead the insistence of federal district courts in doing their job – eliciting facts that are relevant to the case at hand, facts that courts may not know or would rather forget and applying them to the law – has provoked from the conservative majority a series of rebukes, and a concerted campaign to discredit the legitimacy of the work of the trial courts. Kavanaugh ham-fistedly piles on that project here as well, purporting to remind us of the “proper role of the Judiciary.”

The Supreme Court majority is just as authoritarian as the Trump administration. Let’s just admit that now. They have disparaged the district courts for abiding by the long standing American constitutional understanding of everything from the separation of powers to civil rights and have held that the president would be irreparably harmed if they were to allow the constitutional order as we know it to continue. What does that tell you?

Basically, the Court is all-in on the authoritarian project. The big question remaining is if they will go along with Trump’s attempts to contest the election in 2026 and 2028. If the Republicans lose, you know he is going to do it.

Mike Johnson: "I cannot for the life of me understand how the Democrats think this is some kind of winning political message. Yield man! Let the troops come into your city and show how crime can be reduced."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-09-09T14:40:46.870Z

To think that Republicans see themselves as the macho tough guys in our culture.

Unbelievable.

Paul Krugman wonders if it matters that Trump isn’t popular. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself as well. If we don’t live in a democracy any longer it probably doesn’t.

Anyway, here are some of his thoughts on the matter:

The Trump administration is obviously attempting to follow the familiar playbook by which autocracies consolidate their power, effectively turning America into a one-party state where almost everyone accepts that resistance to the regime is futile and is afraid to show any signs of opposition.

And by and large America’s elites have offered no more resistance to authoritarian consolidation than a wet Kleenex. But historically, anti-democratic parties that establish lasting autocracies have done so with considerable initial support from the broader public. At least at first, they’re actually popular, especially because they deliver, or seem to deliver, major economic gains.

That’s not happening for Trump, at all. And the big question — to which I don’t know the answer — is whether a regime that inherited a good economy but ruined it and whose non-economic policies are deeply unpopular can still consolidate autocratic rule.

Let’s consider a couple of historical examples.

Adolf Hitler came to power in large part because the previous government insisted on following orthodox, deflationary economic policies in the face of the Great Depression. Hitler’s willingness to embrace heterodox policies helped Germany stage a strong recovery:

Who knew?

Fast forward to 2010, when Viktor Orban took power in Hungary. At the time, the Hungarian economy was deeply depressed, in part because of austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund. Orban sent the IMF packing, and was able to preside over rapid economic improvement.

By contrast, Trump inherited an economy in good shape — even if the vibes were bad — and appears to be running it into the ground. Here’s the three-month average rate of job creation (which will probably look worse after the regularly scheduled annual revision, coming later today)

The revised jobs numbers show that the economy wasn’t in as good a shape as we thought but that doesn’t change the fact that Trump is making it worse:

The latest jobs numbers, assuming the 911K preliminary downward revision for the yr ending Mar 2025 were spread evenly across the previous 12 months. We'll get actual revised numbers in Feb & they could be a little better than this (and distributed differently by month). pic.twitter.com/XkxgbqlILU

— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) September 9, 2025

Krugman notes that Trump is counting on culture war hysteria but that’s not popular either. Check out what’s happening on immigration, for instance:

So why is Trump getting away with doing anything he wants even though a large majority of the public is hostile to it? Krugman writes:

Part of the answer is anticipatory compliance on the part of members of the elite, from corporate CEOs to university presidents to law partners. Many of our institutions have been giving in to demands that Trump clearly has no legal right to make, out of fear of the consequences if they don’t.

Part of the answer is that Trump keeps declaring various kinds of emergency, then claiming that he has extraordinary powers to respond to these supposed emergencies.

Lower courts keep ruling against these claimed powers. For example, two courts have now declared Trump’s invocation of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act — the basis for 70 percent of Trump’s tariffs — illegal. But the Supreme Court keeps overturning these lower-court rulings, as it just did in allowing ICE to resume indiscriminate stops in Los Angeles based on nothing more than ethnicity.

But are cowardly elites and a compliant Supreme Court that keeps granting emergency powers enough to let a president who has not yet established a widespread climate of fear, who has low and declining public support, consolidate his position as autocrat?

We don’t know yet. But if Krugman is correct, it would be very unusual for him to succeed under these circumstances unless he can turn this economy around and fast. Unless everything we know about economics is wrong, it’s highly unlikely that’s going to happen since he’s doing everything wrong. But who knows? Maybe Trump will be able to convince people that the vibes are awesome and no one will know that we’re living through an economic crisis. I wouldn’t be surprised.

If there’s anyone who deserves to be harassed by a conspiracy theory, it’s President Donald Trump. The man has been pushing them himself for decades and now one of them has come back to bite him hard. The Epstein scandal is clearly driving him crazy and he only has himself to blame.

Last week, the saga rushed back into the headlines with the appearance of some of the survivors of the grotesque sex trafficking and sexual abuse scheme Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplices ran for years. It was moving and clarifying to hear from the people who were victimized and it took the scandal to the next level. All the House Democrats are supporting on to the discharge petition to force the Justice Department to release all of the files but it is still short a couple of votes despite four Republicans signing on. Three of the four are notable MAGA true believers — Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., , Lauren Boebert, R-Co., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C., — which should have kept Trump from falling back on one of his standard excuses that the whole thing is a “Hoax.” But it didn’t.

As the survivors were holding their press conference on the steps of the U.S. Congress, Trump said, “”So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends. You know, it reminds me a little of the Kennedy situation [assassination], we gave them everything. Over and over again. More and more and more. And nobody’s ever satisfied… I think we’re probably having, according to what I read, even from two people in this room, we’re having the most successful eight months of any president ever and that’s what I want to talk about. That’s what we should be talking about. Not the Epstein hoax.”

The women on the steps begged to differ. It is all too real to them and they pledged to keep up the pressure to release the information and hold people accountable. Perhaps that explains why on Friday night, he wrote a long Truth Social Post on the same subject accusing Democrats of socializing with Epstein when he was alive and once again calling it “another Democrat HOAX, just like Russia, Russia, Russia.”

The House Oversight Committee which he believes to be under his control, subpoenaed the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, demanding that they turn over all relevant papers to the committee and on Monday they did just that. By Monday night they distributed at least two very damning documents. One was Trump’s drawing and message (first reported by his ostensible ally Rupert Murdoch’s Wall St Journal in July, for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003) included in a book of birthday greetings gathered by his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump claimed the drawing didn’t exist or, if it did, it was fake and has sued the Journal for $10 billion. It exists. And despite hysterical caterwauling from the White House claiming the signature doesn’t match, the WSJ provides plenty of examples from the period showing that it does.

The message is extremely disturbing, intimating that the two men were very close, had a lot in common and shared a secret about “enigmas that’s never age.” Knowing what we already know, you don’t have to be a cryptanalyst to read between the lines. The lewd line drawing of what appears to be a budding young female only adds to the creepiness.

Trump was mentioned in another entry in the book as well:

It came from businessman and longtime Mar-a-Lago member Joel Pashcow, who made a crude joke about a woman whom Epstein and Trump each courted in the 1990s, according to court testimony and people familiar with the matter

The Pashcow letter included a photo of a posterboard-sized check for $22,500, which had been mocked up to appear that it was sent from Trump to Epstein. Beneath it, a caption said: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women sells ‘fully depreciated’ [woman’s name] to Donald Trump for $22,500.” The woman’s name is redacted in the image.

“Fully depreciated” suggests that the woman got too old for Epstein so he turned her over to his pal Trump. Joking about “selling” her seems particularly nasty in light of all the sex trafficking that was going on at the time. It certainly adds to the evidence that Trump was at least well aware of what Epstein was up to.

He’s lost control of this narrative. Trump was one of the first to bring up Epstein way back in 2015 when he appeared at the annual CPAC convention he was already plotting how to go after his probable rival Hillary Clinton should he decide to run for president. He told Sean Hannity that Bill Clinton was a “nice guy but has a lot of problems coming up, in my opinion, with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein. Lot of problems.” According to Vanity Fair, his buddy David Pecker, the publisher of the National Inquirer had been pushing the Epstein story in his tabloid and Trump saw a way to tar Hillary Clinton with it. It was the first time anyone had used the scandal for partisan purposes. He continued to try to tie Clinton to Epstein for years, despite his own very close relationship with the man for a decade and a half.

In fact he pushed it so hard that it took on a life of its own when the MAGA conspiracy cult QAnon, which already believed that the world is run by a rich and powerful pedophile cabal saw it as the ultimate proof of their theory. Now that he’s in power again and the conspiracy was stoked by half of the people he’s put into his cabinet, he’s trying to shut it down and they aren’t having it.

Live by the conspiracy theory, die by the conspiracy theory. The man has been working the levers of the fake news, tabloid scandal machine for decades so it was not surprising that he found himself uniquely suited for the right wing fever swamp of the late 2000s which had been turbo charged by the advent of email and blogs to spread rumors and lies more quickly than ever before. As the man who had started his career under his father’s wing being sued for race discrimination and was later renowned for his notorious full page ad demanding the death penalty for a group of young Black and Latino teen-agers (who turned out to be innocent) Trump was the perfect man to push the lie that America’s first Black president Barack Obama wasn’t qualified to be president because he wasn’t born in the United States. That was the conspiracy theory that put him on the political map and made him a hero to the right wing.

But it’s hardly the only one. Indeed, the list of conspiracy theories is so long that it’s impossible to list them all here. We all know the big one, of course — that the 2020 election was stolen. But some other highlights include implying Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered, childhood vaccines cause autism, windmills cause cancer, Ted Cruz’s father was in on the JFK assassination, Obama staged the bin Laden killing, Justin Trudeau is the son of Fidel Castro, Global Warming is a Chinese hoax, Joe Biden didn’t really sign anything while he was president, Haitian immigrants eat cats and dogs, Paul Pelosi had a relationship with is attacker, the COVID Death toll was far less than the official count, the Clintons killed Jeffrey Epstein (yes, both of them.) That’s just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of conspiracy theories he has floated just over the past decade or so.

And just as he did last week one of the main conspiracies he spouts whenever he accused of something is to say that it’s a hoax, usually perpetrated by the Democrats. In 2020, CNN counted up 250 times he used the term in that year alone, including one of his lowest moments when he started the rumor that the coronavirus was “their new hoax.” With that he set the stage for his followers to reject the scientific recommendations and disbelieve the science going forward, the reverberations of which we are still living with today.

In April of this year, the White House put out an official statement called 100 DAYS OF HOAXES: Cutting Through the Fake News. As it turns out many of the links to the alleged “hoax” debunkings don’t actually debunk the charges at all. One might even call them hoaxes themselves.

Trump may not win the Nobel Peace prize for all the unnamed wars he claims to have ended but if there’s a prize for lying no one deserves it more than he does. It’s quite clear that he is the leading conspiracy theorist in the world today. No wonder QAnon loves him.

Salon

More boys-will-be-raunchy

It’s a non-joke right up there with Donald Trump’s “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.“

Among the over 238 pages of the Jeffrey Epstein 50th “birthday book” released by the Congressional Oversight Committee on Monday is a photograph of Epstein standing behind an oversized novelty check. It’s boys-will-be-raunchy affair like the lewd note signed by Trump and superimposed over a doodle of a woman’s (girl’s?) body.

Daily Beast reports:

Trump’s letter appeared in the third volume of the book. But just a few pages up ahead, the president’s name came up in a photograph of Epstein with businessman and Mar-a-Lago mainstay Joel Pashcow.

The two men were snapped holding up a massive mock check made out to Epstein from “DJ Trump.” Under the image was a handwritten note that read, “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500. Showed early ‘people skills’ too. Even though I handled the deal I didn’t get any of the money or the girl!” The woman’s name was redacted.

The signature on the check (image at top) is obviously not Trump’s famous scribble.

People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that the letter was a crude joke about a woman Trump and Epstein socialized with in the 1990s, who was a wealthy European in her 20s at the time. Sources close to Epstein told the outlet she became a point of tension in the two men’s friendship because Epstein believed she preferred him over Trump. The disgraced financier was reportedly bitter when she ended up choosing Trump.

The woman’s lawyer told the newspaper that she cut ties with Epstein around 1997 and had no romantic relationship with him or Trump. She denied knowledge of Pashcow and the letter identifying her, which her lawyer branded a “disgusting and deeply disturbing hoax.”

“This is exactly the sort of juice Epstein truthers have been convinced for years was still locked away in Justice Department filing cabinets,” writes The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger:

Trump’s letter makes it unbelievably obvious that he at the very least knew about Epstein’s perversions, to say nothing of him claiming in the letter to share them. Pashcow’s letter suggests that everyone basically knew about it, and that Trump was himself part of the joke they told themselves about it.

One hopes that enough of these stories will result in our seeing Trump’s political fortunes “fully depreciated” by a large fraction of his MAGA base. But I’m not holding my breath. A lot of MAGA men are overgrown adolescents. It’s a key element of Trump’s curb appeal.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

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DHS: videotaping ICE is “violence”

You have noticed the drip, drip, drip of authoritarianism since Donald Trump occupied the White House again in January. Democracy’s death by a thousand cuts, to employ another metaphor.

Abductions and deportations by secret police; efforts to suppress the press and universities; the souring of relations with international allies; blatant Trump family corruption; “emergencies” that aren’t; the gutting of federal agencies; troops in the streets of Los Angeles and D.C.; Orwellian doublespeak from administration spokespeople; and open defiance of the courts and the Constitution; etc. Basically, our would-be dictator operates as if he is the law.

Thought crimes are next. Or are they already here? You may not have noticed in the gusher of lawlessness from the Trump administration. The Freedom of the Press Foundation explains:

It was bad enough when government officials claimed that journalists incite violence by reporting. But now, they’re accusing reporters of actually committing violence.

The supposed violence by reporters? Recording videos. At least three times recently, a government official or lawyer has argued that simply recording law enforcement or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers is a form of violence.

MAGA Republicans are pouring motor oil down a slippery slope toward prosecuting exercise of the First Amendment.

In July, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem proclaimed during a news conference following ICE raids on California farms that videotaping ICE agents performing operations is “violence.” Noem lumped video recordings in with other forms of actual violence, like throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails at agents.

Then, in August, Justice Department lawyer Sean Skedzielewski argued, during a court hearing over the Los Angeles Police Department’s mistreatment of journalists covering protests, that videotaping law enforcement officers “can be used for violence.” He claimed recording is violent because it can reveal officers’ identities, leading to harassment, and can encourage more protesters to join the fray.

Also in August, the government applied similar logic as it fought against the release of Mario Guevara, the only journalist in U.S. custody after being arrested for newsgathering. Guevara, who is originally from El Salvador, was detained while covering a protest in Georgia and turned over to ICE for deportation. In a bond hearing before an immigration court in July, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the government argued that Guevara’s recording and livestreaming of law enforcement “presents a safety threat.”

The Center for Media and Democracy adds:

DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that “videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online is doxing our agents,” and added: “We will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”

Also notice also ICE agents bumping or brushing back or having incidental contact with protesters and then alleging that the contact constitutes a felonious assault on the officer by the protester. These are harassment arrests typically dismissed by courts so far. But not until after the detaining and jailing of residents who oppose masked agents often violently disappearing their neighbors off the streets or from courthouse hallways. It is purposeful.

Constitutionally protected videotaping of ICE actions is on its way to being redefined as “assault” as well:

That expansive definition is likely driving the department’s claims of escalating “violence” against ICE agents, which purportedly rose from an alleged 700% increase on July 11, to 830% four days later, and to 1000% by August 7. When asked by CMD to provide concrete examples of violent assaults on personnel, the DHS spokesperson pointed to an incident of trash dumped on an ICE agent’s lawn and a sign with a profanity directed at an agent by name.

Peter Eliasberg, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California attorney representing journalists and observers who were attacked and injured by DHS officers in Los Angeles, told CMD that this definition bears “no relationship to what violence actually is. I don’t think there’s any evidence that… there is truth [in] those numbers.”

Meanwhile, DHS agents have repeatedly resorted to violence, assaulting and injuring journalists and legal observers doing their jobs. The lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles Press Club, the NewsGuild–Communications Workers of America, and individual plaintiffs alleges that DHS agents used targeted, unchecked, and officially sanctioned violence against them, including “smashing the hands of people recording events with their phones” and shooting reporters with “less lethal” munitions.

But that too is purposeful.

DHS appears to “fundamentally misunderstand the First Amendment,” said David Cole, a First Amendment scholar and law professor at Georgetown. “The First Amendment is designed above all to give citizens the right to criticize and report on government abuse. There’s not only no law against recording law enforcement officers doing their job, but it is a First Amendment protected right to do so in public in ways that don’t interfere with them carrying out their tasks. It reflects a failure [on the part of] the administration to understand the central role that watchdogs play in our democracy [and any] attempt to restrict [that] goes against the First Amendment.”

But there is no First Amendment in an autocracy. Nor separation of powers in a dictatorship.

 

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I don’t know how bad this will get. I don’t know if we’ll get to vote in 2026. But I do know that yelling at your TV, clicktivism and calling your congressman won’t stop it. There are more No Kings rallies planned for Oct. 18, but that’s five weeks away, a lifetime in Trump years. Your resistance, like the man on the streetcorner above, must be public and visible. If you believe the world is on fire, act like it, or else why would your less informed neighbors get off their couches and join you?

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 
May Day Strong
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense