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Month: October 2025

For Trump It’s Always About Size

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 17, 2025

Make No Kings bigger

Who can forget then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s fiery pronouncement on the size of Trump’s first inauguration crowd? I’d like to. Spicer declared it “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” Because for Donald Trump it’s always about size.

That’s why the White House is so anxious about the No Kings protests set for this weekend. About five million took to the streets to protest Trump in June. More than 2,400 protests are planned for Saturday, about 450 more than June.

The White House is sweating. The word has gone forth to brand Saturday events “Hate America” rallies:

For more than a week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and other GOP leaders have cast the “No Kings” rallies as un-American, using increasingly hyperbolic language. Johnson and other members of House GOP leadership, including Majority Leader Steve Scalise (Louisiana), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minnesota), and Republican Conference Chair Lisa C. McClain (Michigan), have all described the protests as events for people who “hate America,” with Johnson and Emmer going as far as to suggest they are meant to appease a “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party.

“We call it the ‘hate America’ rally that will happen Saturday. Let’s see who shows up for that,” Johnson said Wednesday at a news conference with other House GOP leaders. “I bet you you’ll see Hamas supporters, I bet you’ll see antifa types, I bet you’ll see the Marxists on full display, the people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.”

Like the separation of powers, Mike? Like respect for the law and the courts? Like defending the protections in the Bill of Rights?

Trump has reduced Johnson to a figure so comical it would be tragic if not for it being Mike Johnson.

“If you offer any criticism of this government, then you ‘hate America’? That’s ridiculous, un-American and unpatriotic,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) said in a video. “The fact is our country was founded on the idea that everyone has … a constitutionally-protected right to speak up and protest your government, especially when you think they have become lawless and corrupt.”

I’ve never been a fan of protest rallies. They tend to be catharic, feel-good events as substantial as cotton candy. People tend to go home and sit back down on their couches. What I’m seeing on the ground here, however, is a groundswell. Growing weekly sign protests across the county. A couple have grown from a handful of die-hards to 40-50.

We are faced with an authoritarian clique in Washington that sets a lot of store by spectacle. By size. Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and his creation of his own secret police is all about initimidation.

Your job tomorrow is to intimidate right back. Bigly.

And on being branded antifa:

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
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

War Plans

Published by digby on October 16, 2025

Apparently, Whiskey Pete and JD Vance are planning a big 250th birthday “vanity parade” at Camp Pendleton during the No Kings protests — using live ordinance:

Donald Trump is planning to throw himself another “vanity parade”—and this time, it might include Navy warships hurtling missiles toward the state of California.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is considering whether to shut down sections of Interstate 5 on Friday and Saturday, as reports circulate that the White House intends to shoot live ordnance over the highway at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, MeidasTouch Network reported Wednesday.

Newsom’s office told the Los Angeles Times that it had “received little information about the event or safety plans.”

[…]

The show of force is intended to commemorate the Marine Corps’s 250th anniversary and will run counter to the nationwide No Kings protests, which uses the visuals of millions of protesters to ideologically challenge Trump’s unopposed rule.

The event, called “Sea to Shore—A Review of Amphibious Strength,” will be led by Vice President JD Vance.

Vance said it’s fake news, but only because it was earlier reported that the White House was shutting down the I-5. It’s Gov. Newsom who is contemplating it just in case some bombs accidentally fall on the area. You see, it’s not usual for the military put Americans in the line of fire like this. Of course, times have changed…for all we know, they consider them collateral damage in the war against Antifa.

It’s very cute that they’re doing this on the same day as the No Kings protest but I would have thought their massive belly flop of Trump’s belly flop on the earlier No Kings day would have made them leery of doing it again. Maybe that explains why Trump is sending Vance to attend this one.

I’ll let Robert DeNiro have the last word:

Jack Smith On The Record

Published by digby on October 16, 2025

If you have the time to spare, I highly recommend that you watch Andrew Weissmann’s interview with former Special Counsel Jack Smith:

Weissmann writes:

Jack Smith spoke last week at the University College London law school, which has now posted online the hour-long conversation, which I moderated. There are lots of interesting substantive aspects to the conversation, but what struck me most was that the talk permits you to get a measure of the man himself, and not the caricature of him that many depict. He comes across as sincere, thoughtful, by-the-book, and apolitical. A career person through and through.

It’s easy to see why the Republicans don’t want this guy testifying in public. He is clearly a very competent, articulate, straight-arrow. He will remind many people of what many prosecutors used to be like before we had beauty queens and shitposters running the DOJ.

A couple of weeks ago he gave a lecture at George Mason University and he said this:

“My career has been about the rule of law and I believe that today it is under attack like in no other period in our lifetimes.”

That may seem obvious but coming from someone like him it’s chilling. He’s seen all the evidence of the first term crimes. We don’t even have to imagine what’s happening now.

Glenn Beck Is Back On The Case

Published by digby on October 16, 2025

Media Matters reports on Glenn Beck advising the FBI on who to go after in their purge of leftists. He’s been “gathering the evidence” for years and back in the day when he was a huge star on the Tea Party circuit, he would lay it out in great, hilarious detail.

He’s back on the case:

“The FBI showed up to my house to discuss my TV show exposing Antifa’s network,” Beck posted to social media on Monday, referencing the umbrella term for a broad and decentralized grouping of militant far-left activists who say they oppose fascism. “If you are a member of Antifa or providing material or financial support for Antifa, I might be a little concerned because the FBI is DEADASS serious about investigating you.” 

Beck appended a clip from his radio show in which he said that he had met for two hours on Saturday with agents sent at the behest of extremely online FBI Director Kash Patel.

“This is information that I first gave on Fox years ago,” he added. “Let me just say this: Finally, we have an administration and an FBI director that is willing to go in deep.”

Beck’s claim of FBI interest in his antifa report comes as President Donald Trump and his administration are attempting to reframe the concept of antifa as a framework to target their political enemies. Trump responded to the September killing of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk by seeking to implicate as many of his political opponents as possible, and he has ordered federal law enforcement, including the FBI and its Joint Terrorism Task Forces, to target nebulously defined “organized political violence.” In recent days, Republican officials have sought to blur the distinction between antifa activists and protesters who plan to participate in Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies.

On October 8, at Trump’s White House roundtable on antifa, Patel promised that his bureau would “find every single seed money, donor organization and funding mechanism that we have.” 

That same day, Beck published to YouTube his “off the cuff” review of what he mocked as “ANTIFA’s ‘De-centralized’ Network.” He explicitly pitched his work as “a starting point for people at the FBI or Justice Department as they begin investigating leads.” 

Beck’s list of purportedly antifa-linked organizations worthy of federal investigation meshed well with reports about the administration’s targets of interest, including Democratic megadonor George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and ActBlue, the platform Democratic candidates and affiliated organizations use to marshall small-donor fundraising.

If they have to go to Glenn Beck for investigation advice they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Not that it isn’t dangerous. They’ve already shown they’re willing to indict on the thinnest of pretexts.

Here’s what he told them:

Beck has been waiting for this moment for almost 20 years. He almost disappeared before they finally found a use for his “research”:

One of the many Jon Stewart commentaries.

Ah memories:

Front:

Back:

Deplorables?

Published by digby on October 16, 2025

Heaven forbid

That’s the White House Press Secretary. Trump called us vermin before so I guess this is actually a step up.

Are all of our Republican friends and neighbors ok with this?

Yeah, I guess they must be. They actually believe that you and I are terrorists because we don’t agree with her and Donald Trump.

Meanwhile:

By the way, every one of those people were over 30.

What Are We Living Through?

Published by digby on October 16, 2025
Still from “One Battle After Another”

It’s hard to know exactly what kind of historical moment your in when you’re at the center of the maelstrom. I feel strongly that this is a crucible in America like very few in our history and I struggle daily to tamp down the rising panic. But not everyone sees it that way to, which I find very weird. Whether because of propaganda or self-preservation or just plain different worldviews, we are not all on the same page.

This piece by Jedediah Britton-Purdy and David Pozen in the Boston Review does an excellent job of analyzing three distinct views of our current situation:

One view, dominant at this point among mainstream liberals and centrists, is that the United States has entered a dangerous new era of authoritarian crisis. Following a playbook used in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, and other illiberal regimes, the Trump administration is attacking independent institutions such as the media and universities, turning the Justice Department and other government agencies into instruments of extortion and retaliation, manipulating official data, pardoning violent allies, dehumanizing marginalized communities, declaring endless emergencies, and preparing the military to suppress “the enemy from within.” The emerging authoritarian crisis is also a constitutional crisis, as an ever more emboldened and presidentialized executive branch sidelines Congress and the civil service, deploys troops domestically over the objections of state and local officials, and flirts with ignoring judicial rulings. Variously framing the threat as one of autocracy, kleptocracy, fascism, patrimonialism, gangsterism, or another cousin of authoritarianism, this view insists that things have ceased to be “normal.” American democracy is beginning to fall apart.

A second view, espoused by prominent voices on the left as well as some libertarians, asserts that Trump has not ushered in a new order so much as highlighted and exacerbated preexisting pathologies. It’s mainly more of the same. Following a standard Republican playbook, his administration has embraced sweeping tax cuts, a selective gutting of economic and environmental regulations, and hostility to abortion and affirmative action. With some coarsening of the discourse and hardening of anti-immigrant policies, we could be in Ronald Reagan’s America. This through line is no cause for comfort. Whether styled as homegrown fascism, racial fascism, or simply the unreconstructed core of American political ideology, more of the same means more harsh immigration enforcement (as in Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” or Obama’s record-setting deportation program), more vilification of dissidents (as in the Red Scares or Nixon’s “Enemies List”), more expansion of the national security state, and more runaway deficits that fail to address runaway inequality. The real constitutional scandal is not the sudden arrival of “executive lawlessness”—the War on Terror had that in spades—but a long-festering rot that has eaten away at our system’s ability to produce responsive governance and thereby created the conditions for Trump 2.0.

According to a third view, embraced by many of Trump’s advisors and supporters, U.S. politics are indeed undergoing transformation but in a familiar or at least not unprecedented way, as part of a process of constitutional regime change. Trump’s decisive Electoral College victory in 2024, after a campaign with more sharply defined stakes than in 2016, put a popular (if not quite majoritarian) imprimatur on such change. Following a playbook developed during the New Deal and refined in the civil rights era, Trump’s team is employing all the tools at its disposal to reshape the balance of power across state and society in line with campaign pledges to curb illegal immigration, shrink the federal workforce, restore religion in the public sphere, and advance a “colorblind” conception of racial equality. To be sure, some of these shifts may be alarming to those socialized in the prior regime. But that’s what happens in a constitutional democracy when voters choose the other side. And if there has been some overreach or misadventure, well, the same could be said of any regime change. This revolution in law and governance, moreover, is at heart a “counterrevolution”—not so much a turn toward any foreign model as a return to principles that prevailed before the assaults of wokeism and Warren Court liberalism, the rise of the administrative state, and the proliferation of identitarian rights.

Yeah, I’ll pick door number one for $10 billion, Alex. As they say:

The stakes of this disagreement are high, the shape of it disorienting. From within each script, people in the others tend to look either dangerously complacent or risibly hysterical. Americans are deeply divided not just over partisan preferences or “alternative facts” but over the basic direction and meaning of our politics.

The piece goes on to flesh all this out in some very interesting ways. There are not a lot of solutions to offer except for one big one. Door number one and door number two can, and must, find common ground because together they constitute the majority. So far, it’s an uphill task.

I saw “One Battle After Another” the other day and was struck by the message which was both clarifying and daunting: saving our country is going to be, as the title suggests, one battle after another. I think we just have to gird ourselves for the fight.

The Most Unhinged?

Published by digby on October 16, 2025

Scott Bessent Is Losing It! by The Bulwark

Read on Substack

I will admit that this has succeeded in freaking me out a little bit:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on Charlie Kirk’s show and said the quiet part way too loud: calling Kirk’s assassination a “domestic 9/11” and promising to “compile lists” of left-wing groups to investigate. Tim Miller breaks down how this rhetoric crosses every line and why this “war on terror 2.0” mentality is straight-up un-American.

Bob Bauer, former White House Counsel, breaks it down:

Donald Trump has demonstrated his administration’s programmatic commitment to weaponizing the government to settle scores with political adversaries or weaken their opposition to him and his policies. Much of the fiercest public controversy has involved the Department of Justice and, so far, the president’s direction of the criminal prosecutions of old foes such as former FBI Director James Comey and New York State Attorney Letitia James. Now, according to Wall Street Journal reporting, his administration is turning its attention to an overhaul of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that would enable the agency to “pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups” and “major Democratic donors.”

As reported, this is a full-on assault on a long-standing policy, expressed in law and norm, that the IRS should be kept clear of political misuse. President Nixon was impeached for attempting to abuse the IRS’s power for political gain. Following that incident, and with overwhelming bipartisan support, the tax code was amended to prohibit “the President, the Vice President, any employee of the executive office of the President, and any employee of the executive office of the Vice President” from “conduct[ing] or terminat[ing] an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer with respect to the tax liability of such taxpayer.” The law imposes fines and imprisonment as penalties for violations, and it requires that any employee who receives any request or directive to violate the statute report it to the Inspector General for Tax Administration.

It is also a striking development because it comes some years after Republicans in Congress investigated alleged political abuse of the Service’s authority to grant or deny exemptions to nonprofits engaged in various forms of issue advocacy. To simplify a complicated story, the IRS Inspector General found that the IRS had discriminated against conservative organizations in the application of its power over exemptions. Democrats joined Republicans in decrying any such political misuse of tax regulatory authority but argued that the record pointed to “equal opportunity mismanagement and equal opportunity bedlam” that also affected progressive organizations. Congress subsequently enacted a freeze on all further rulemaking activity in this area.

Now the Trump administration appears to be breaking with the bipartisan consensus that the IRS should be insulated from politics. And it is notable that reports of this weaponization policy have surfaced within days of a federal court decision, in Freedom Path v. Internal Revenue Service, that highlighted the dangers of the IRS’s power to grant or deny exemptions from tax for organizations active in the political process. The case brought by Freedom Path, a nonprofit social-welfare organization that supports conservative fiscal policies and has financed ads calling for repeal of the Affordable Care Act, illustrates how this intersection of tax regulation and politics is a problem at all times—and, now, one that could become far worse under the reported plans for IRS weaponization.

Bessent is nuts, as Tim Miller amply demonstrated in that rant above. And I guess he wants a big piece of the police state action.

I would just add that the the Wall St. Journal reports that the guy they’ve put in charge of this is a hard core MAGA fellow by the name of Gary Shapely who was a big “whistleblower” in the Hunter Biden case and was ousted as head of the IRS under Trump after only three days. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be too sanguine that this is a person of good judgement.

No Pinky Promises

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 16, 2025

Damn right!

CNN offers a wrap-up on the Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s CNN town hall on the government shutdown. I assembled clips below, but wanted to grab this quote from CNN:

[AOC] said Democrats won’t accept a short-term extension of those subsidies, including for one year, a proposal she described as an effort to delay the political blow of skyrocketing health insurance premiums until after next year’s midterm elections.

“I think we know what we will not accept, and what we will not accept is for the ACA premiums to skyrocket on the American people. What we will not accept is the doubling of these premiums. And what we will not accept is allowing the teetering of this system to collapse right before everyone’s eyes,” she said.

A friend on Tuesday reported that her health care premiums are slated to jump from under $200/month to over $900 if the GOP kills off the subsidies. That’s far more than double. More than double is the national average.

No “measly one year extension of the ACA” just so Republicans can get past the 2026 midterms.

No IOUs or “pinky promises” accepted from Republicans on extending ACA subsidies, insists AOC. “That’s not the business that I’m in.” She wants “ink on paper.”

“No Kings” include billionaires who would be.

Damn right

AOC: You’re damn right that it’s a Democratic priority to keep people from getting poisoned, from dangerous chemicals that are being dumped and causing cancer in people without their knowledge. 

You’re damn right that it’s a Democratic priority to bring down the cost of housing and mortgages and rent, and you’re damn right that it’s a democratic priority to raise the minimum wage in this country, to allow people to get a fair shot at the American dream. 

If they want to say that that’s a Democratic priority, they’re right

“And until there is accountability for people who refuse to work, to work, then we’re going to continue to be in this cycle.”

Thank you:

AOC: The VP has been trafficking this other misconception, saying that the emergency medicaid program is doing is providing health care to undocumented people…

The truth of the matter is that we have a federal law, as it should be, that any person who walks into a hospital in desperate need of medical attention receives that medical attention, regardless of their insurance status and regardless of who they are. 

And I don’t know about you, but me as a human being, I don’t want to live in a world where if a human being is struck by a car or is getting rushed into a hospital, that the people in the E.R. Surgical room are asking for your insurance information or asking for documents before they save your life

AOC has really come into her own this year. If this country ever evolves to the point of electing a woman president, she’d make a good one.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
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

Americans For Un-Freedom

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 16, 2025

And Christians for Un-Jesus

Photo via John Pavlovitz substack.

The man angrily shouting out of his car window on Wednesday was barely decipherable above the traffic noice and music from my Bluetooth speaker behind me. He said something about the number of words on my sign: NO SECRET POLICE. (The others side promoted the local No Kings rally this Saturday.)

I figured it out later. The sign was a radical leftist lie, Angry Driver thought, and the real message was NO POLICE. Like “Defund the Police” after George Floyd’s murder.

Fine, I thought. What part of losing your Bill of Rights protections to a totalitarian dictator backed by masked secret police makes your heart sing, I’m proud to be an American | Where at least I know I’m free ?

It is remarkable how many neighbors have lost the plot on the whole 1776 and “We the People” thing. It may be that Angry Driver is not paying attention to the lawless behavior of ICEmen in Chicago and Portland. But likely the idea of busting heads on people he thinks are not like him gives Angry Driver a visceral thrill. He’ll have a rude awakening when it’s someone he knows or he himself is thrown to the ground and dragged off my masked thugs in violation of multiple once-constitutional rights.

“Sorry, the only king is Jesus,” spat a woman passenger in another passing car. That non sequitur was her reply to the No Kings ad.

It is remarkable, too, how many neighbors have lost the plot on the whole Jesus thing.

Former youth pastor John Pavlovitz experienced that at and after Wake Forest Pride Fest last weekend. It was all rainbows and music and dance, “a glorious thing to behold.” Until the “Christians” showed up, “a sullen, stone-faced cadre of almost exclusively young white men from local (and out of state) Evangelical churches.”

Pavlovitz writes:

One of the disrupters later posted that he and his partners were celebrating that “the Gospel was preached.” What he doesn’t understand is that their “Gospel” provided no good news, brought no love for neighbor, exuded no joy, and was bereft of Jesus.

All that stuff came from those they were targeting.

One of the protesters on Wednesday accosted Pavlovitz in the grocery store:

The first thing out of his mouth was, “Do you want to make enemies or do you want to have a conversation?”

I said, “You come screaming through bullhorns, waving signs about eternal damnation, and invading people’s personal space, and you’re gonna try and gaslight me into believing you were interested in conversation?”

He wasn’t pleased.

The takeaway was that his accuser’s anger wasn’t about the LGBTQ community, Pavlovitz concluded. “They’re out to get rid of everyone who isn’t like them.”

Like the Donald Trump administration’s lawless law-enforcement. Or like Jesus-less Christians. Americans for Un-Freedom mean to wring America out of America in America’s name. Founders be praised.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
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

QOTD: Steve Bannon

Published by digby on October 15, 2025

The Wall St. Journal:

“Everyone’s on my side now,” Trump told advisers this summer. “They were fighting me last time.”

He was talking a bout the business community but he might as well have been talking about the Republican party:

Inside the White House, top advisers joke that they are ruling Congress with an “iron fist,” according to people who have heard the comments. Steve Bannon, the influential Trump ally, likened Congress to the Duma, the Russian assembly that is largely ceremonial.

I think that’s right. In fact, I think we should call the GOP Congress The Duma from now on. That’s what it is and the members are totally fine with it.