Back in 2016, the Boston Globe ran this joke front page.
It’s so much worse.
*You have to love that it even caught the Nobel Prize bit.
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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
It is now officially a banana republic.
I could go on but why bother? Our national leadership is sophomoric, stupid, crude and mean. They don’t even bother to pretend to be dignified adults anymore. Our world is run by shitposters.
Update —
A Rutgers University professor is temporarily relocating to Europe as he grapples with threats that intensified after a student group affiliated with the organization founded by murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk accused him of being “a prominent leader of the antifa movement on campus”.
Rutgers’ Turning Point USA chapter also says the presence of Mark Bray – whose work has closely examined antifascist movements – threatens them and is calling for his firing from the New Jersey university, prompting the academic to say those demands are little more than “manufactured outrage”.
“I am not now, nor have I ever been, part of any kind of antifascist or anti-racist organization – I just haven’t. I’m a professor,” Bray said on Monday about the circumstances. Noting that antifa is a decentralized movement, he added: “I’m a professor of the history of the left.”
A Change.org petition calling for the termination of Bray’s employment at Rutgers came Thursday, several weeks after Kirk – the founder of Turning Point USA – was shot to death by a sniper on 10 September.
Turning Point USA has chapters at various college campuses. And the treasurer for the chapter at Rutgers, student Megyn Doyle, told Fox News Digital that the petition was made necessary by the fact that Bray “puts conservative students at risk for antifa to come in”.
“You have a teacher that so often promotes political violence, especially in his book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, which talks about militant fascism, which is on term with political violence,” Doyle said.
Bray countered that he is an antifascist “insofar as I don’t like fascism”. But he denied that he is a threat to conservative students
Contrary to popular belief, Julius Caesar was not the first living leader to put his portrait on a coin. A couple of others beat him to it, including Persia’s Darius the Great. But the Roman emperor was the first to break with tradition and distribute them to ensure his subjects understood that he possessed absolute power and, not incidentally, controlled the empire’s money supply. It was a savvy move, copied by monarchs and dictators across the world ever since.
America has long followed suit, featuring the faces of our leaders on our currency, but with an important caveat: They had to be long out of power and in their graves. No monarchy or dictatorship for us; we were hostile to the idea of minting the portrait of a living leader for the very reason Caesar thought it was such a clever idea. Our Constitution meant to ensure that no one person in American life would ever have sole unlimited power.
In 1877, Congress even passed a law prohibiting it, which says that “only the portrait of deceased individuals may occur on the United States currency and securities.” Even coins that will be minted for the 250th anniversary of the nation have a special section in the code which states, “No coin issued under this subsection may bear the image of a living former or current President, or of any deceased former President during the 2-year period following the date of the death of that President.”
But that was before we had our own Orange Caesar, who believes he can rule by fiat, supported by Republicans in Congress, and then allow the Supreme Court to sort it out, usually in his favor.
On Oct. 3 it was reported that the Treasury has designed and prepared to mint a new $1 coin with President Donald Trump’s face in honor of the country’s 250th celebration in 2026. The founders would be so proud to know that we made it that far before we finally succumbed to tyranny.
The front of the coin will feature Trump in profile, with his trademark 1967 Las Vegas lounge act hairstyle delineated in fine detail. The back will depict the famous fist pump pose from his 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, along with the words “fight, fight, fight.”
When images of the new coin were shared on X, U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach replied, “No fake news here. These first drafts honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUS are real. Looking forward to sharing more soon, once the obstructionist shutdown of the United States government is over.” In true Trumpist fashion, there is every reason to believe the administration will go ahead and mint the coins. By the time it’s litigated, the money will already be in circulation — and that will be that.
This is hardly the most important example from the lengthy list of Trump’s abuses of power. But symbols matter, and this one cuts to the very heart of who he is — and what he fancies himself to be. An emperor or king who rules not by the consent of the governed, but by divine right.
This is hardly the most important example from the lengthy list of Trump’s abuses of power. But symbols matter, and this one cuts to the very heart of who he is — and what he fancies himself to be. An emperor or king who rules not by the consent of the governed, but by divine right.
His princely ambitions are hardly new revelations; the signs are everywhere. Trump has decorated the White House to conjure his low-rent version of a European palace, complete with portraits of himself and gilded fixtures — that some intrepid internet sleuths suspect were sourced not from some continental antiques dealer but from the aisles of Home Depot. (As it turns out, there’s one just over three miles away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.) Work has commenced on a $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, the first known new construction to expand the White House’s footprint since President Theodore Roosevelt had the West Wing added in 1902 and his successor, President William Howard Taft, doubled it in size. Trump has called himself “THE KING” on social media, and in February he even posted on X, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
This much is clear: The president has no respect for the American anti-monarchical tradition and style, and he seems to lack any real understanding that it’s our fundamental reason for being.
The real problem, of course, is that Trump is abusing his power in a manner that is tearing this country apart. His despotic dismissals of the rule of law, in ways both large and small, are creating what many in the GOP have long fantasized: An imperial presidency. This Trumpist fulfillment is largely enabled by a supine Republican Congress and a Supreme Court that is seemingly eager to codify it. He is using every back door, loophole and extreme interpretation of the law to expand executive power and smother the system of checks and balances. And it’s working.
Federal troops are wreaking havoc in the streets, people are being abducted and sent to prison camps — or disappeared entirely — and the military is executing orders to murder foreign civilians on the high seas. The administration is slashing vital services, firing thousands of federal workers and using the power of the state to intimidate and blackmail private institutions from universities to law firms to corporations, and otherwise running roughshod over every aspect of American society. The world economy is dizzy from Trump’s incoherent tariff scheme, while at home he has seized the power of the purse from the Congress to spend the country’s money any way he chooses. He may even succeed in controlling the money supply and the economy if the Supreme Court signs off on it (and if he decides to abide by their decision). So far, little has stopped his quest for possessing the unfettered power of an anointed king.
The recent state visit to the U.K. where Trump and his entourage once again behaved like crass tourists, actually exposed the plight of the real modern monarch. At the behest of the government seeking to appease the president’s need for flattery, the British royal family was forced to pretend they were happy to host yet another over-the-top extravaganza for a man who bragged he could have succeeded in seducing Prince William’s mother Diana before her death in 1997. On this visit — having taken the measure of the man in the past and realizing his need for the imperial treatment — they deployed the famed Irish and Scottish state coaches to treat Trump to a carriage procession through the grounds of Windsor Castle.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla didn’t do this because they wanted to. (Trump’s anti-climate change agenda is anathema to the famously green king, who reportedly raised the issue with the president both in private and during his remarks at the state banquet. Nevertheless, Charles apparently played “a critical role” in Trump’s shift in favor of Ukraine in its war with Russia, which he announced a few days after returning from the U.K.) The royals were used by the British government as props to curry favor with the man who has an unquenchable thirst for boot-licking from famous, wealthy people. That’s one of their jobs in 2025.
British currency still has the king’s face on it. But over there, long after successive monarchs surrendered their absolute power, it has come to represent tradition, national unity and stability. Over here, it means a return to the tyranny we once fought against. In a way, after 250 years, perhaps they won the war after all.
Salon
Bondi testifies. “Testifies” in quotes
If you can watch AG Pam Bondi’s testimony, you have a stronger stomach than I.
She won’t answer questions, but responds with personal attacks.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship 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
Welcome to The Dystopian States Of America
Professional law enforcement does not behave this way. Not in a democratic republic. But then….
Videos confirm why Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker advised his citizens to know their rights, have their cell phones ready, and document everything done by “[DHS secretary Kristi] Noem’s thugs.” Calling them law enforcement is unjustified. Actual law enforcement professionals must be horrified. Citizens of Chicago filed suit (Axios):
A coalition of Chicago journalists, organizations and protesters sued President Trump and top administration officials over federal agents’ “pattern of extreme brutality” at a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
“Never in modern times has the federal government undermined bedrock constitutional protections on this scale,” their filing argues. “The individual acts of brutality by federal officers are too numerous to catalogue.”
The videos tell the tale. Watch this one carefully as this “law enforcement professional” chokeslams a protester.
Is that taught in ICE training? How much training do these armed thugs receive? I ask jokingly if ICE trains its agents over Zoom or over the weekend. Did ICE recruit the man above over Craigslist, from the WWE, or from a prison gang?
Watch this pair of clownish “professionals” sloppily attempt (and fail) to abduct a Latino man near 63rd and Kostner in Chicago. Again, how are these men being trained, and for how long, before sent to the streets of our cities?
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ICE tells Next 9NEWS that its agents are following their policies. Exactly what are those policies? What local police routinely behave this way where you live?
PBS News Hour examined ICE’s increasingly aggressive practices in Chicago:
“ICE acted like an invading army in our neighb’ds,” said state Rep. Lilian Jiménez, a Democrat. “These shameful & lawless actions are not only a violation of constit’l rights but of our most basic liberty: the right to live free from persecution and fear.”
ProPublica published a series of such videos at the end of July. The violence against what Trump dubbed “the enemy from within” has escalated since Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“The assault has become increasingly brutal as Trump and his allies intensify their demonization of all things left of center, by which they often seem to mean anything to the left of the hard right,” writes Thomas Edsall.
Edsall asked political scientist Barbara Walter of the University of California-San Diego, author of How Civil Wars Start,” what the end game is for Trump 2.0:
“Do you think Trump, Miller and other allies are hoping to provoke violence in order to justify further punitive or repressive policies?”
Her emailed reply: “The short answer is yes.”
The longer answer?
The biggest challenge that aspiring autocrats face is that their citizens still have rights, freedoms and real political power. In a functioning democracy, citizens can still vote their leaders out of office and there’s nothing a democratically elected leader can legally do about it. That’s why autocrats-in-waiting often look for ways to get rid of these constraints. They can rig elections, suppress opposition or, as history shows, manufacture a crisis that justifies emergency powers.
Provoking violence is a common way to do this.
Is it working? Walter:
The quickest way to piss people off is to send soldiers into their neighborhoods especially when there’s no reason for them to be there. It’s inherently provocative, and Trump and his team understand this. Research by the political scientist Robert Pape shows that the single most powerful predictor of suicide terrorism is the presence of foreign troops on local soil. People hate, hate, hate that. They hate the humiliation, the powerlessness, the feeling of being occupied.
Brace yourselves. Have your cell phones ready and document everything. If ever there is an investigation and prosecution over these events, videos will be needed. The scene of the crime is far more dispersed than it was on January 6, 2021.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship 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
President Donald Trump suggested Monday he could invoke the Insurrection Act if courts continue to block deployments of troops to cities nationwide, raising the prospect of using the centuries-old law to bypass unfavorable rulings.
“So far it hasn’t been necessary, but we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “If I had to enact it, I’d do that. If people were being killed, and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I do that.”
“I mean, I want to make sure that people aren’t killed. We have to make sure that our cities are safe,” he concluded.
First, people are being killed. By ICE. There have been several. But that’s fine. The ICE agents are sensitive men who need to hide their identities and they get frightened so they have to shoot people. So far, none of them have been seriously hurt. Protesters and immigrants? They’re being rousted and beaten all over the place.
But how about that new rationale that he can invoke it if the courts are holding them up?
I guess we knew that was coming.
Lol. Where on earth would they get that idea?
Either he’s making a very weird joke here or he’s losing his mind:
Collins: The supreme court rejected the appeal by Ghislaine Maxwell to overturn her conviction.
Trump: Who are we talking about?
Collins: Ghislaine Maxwell
Trump: Haven’t heard the name in so long. I’ll take a look at it. I’ll speak to the DOJ. A lot of people have asked me for pardons.
Reporter: But she’s convicted of sex trafficking
Trump: I’ll have to take a look at it.
What???
Sure.
Uhm…
They’re all just fucking nuts.
Yes, we have to start thinking along these lines.
Clara Jeffries at Mother Jones has written an important and useful piece about what Blue states can do to fight the federal government’s fascistic takeover. She begins by pointing out all the ways in which blue states, especially California, are economic powerhouses with substantial power and discusses some of the plans that have been proposed on over the years. I often hear people saying that we should refuse to send our taxes to the federal government but there isn’t a real mechanism to do that.
But there are ideas out there to resist this and they are very interesting:
Short of actual secession, what could California do? It could learn from the Jimmy Kimmel showdown and lead a financial “countervalue” rebellion, using “the full weight of blue states’ market power, cultural influence and legal authority to raise the stakes of Republican red-state aggression,” Democratic strategists Arkadi Gerney and Sarah Knight wrote in the Washington Post, by imposing “regulatory and economic costs that bite hard enough to make the constituents of even the most insulated legislator feel the pain.” We could start by disinvesting our pension funds from red-state companies like AT&T, American Airlines, ExxonMobil, and Tesla. “The 15 blue trifectas (states where Democrats control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the state legislature), with their larger state budgets and more generous pensions, have state investments that total almost 75 percent more than the 23 red trifectas,” they note.
If that seems a reach, consider that Texas effectively got BlackRock to drop its “woke” investment and governance policies by blackballing it. Blue states could lure away techies, doctors, nurses, and electricians with relocation bonuses. We could institute tax and other incentives to pull new factories and data centers away from red states. We could selectively terminate professional licensing reciprocity. We could ease commerce between friendly states and make it difficult for unfriendly ones.
Economic retribution is just part of a broader constellation of tools that law professors Jessica Bulman-Pozen (Columbia) and Heather K. Gerken (Yale) call “uncooperative federalism” and others call “soft secession.” It’s not, writes Substacker Chris Armitage, “the violent rupture of 1861, but something else entirely. Blue states building parallel systems, withholding cooperation, and creating facts on the ground that render federal authority meaningless within their borders.” Some of this is already underway. Led by California’s Rob Bonta, the attorneys general of blue states have been having almost daily Zoom calls to plot strategy and file briefs and suits. Democratic governors have devoted tens of millions to hire lawyers for those fights and banded together to oppose Trump’s threats to send troops to their states. In early September, California, Oregon, and Washington created the West Coast Health Alliance to formulate their own vaccine standards and distribute shots, no matter what lunacy Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unleashes. Hawaii signed on a day later. Other blue states are honing similar coalitions.
Unified action could further preserve what the federal government is destroying, law professors Aziz Z. Huq (University of Chicago) and Jon D. Michaels (UCLA) wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Blue states could create “large regional research consortia; re-create public-health and meteorology forecasting centers servicing member states; and finance pandemic planning.” (A proposal to do much of this is underway in Sacramento.) With the Justice Department doing little more than acting as Trump’s goon squad, states could also “mobilize interstate criminal task forces to track and prosecute corruption by politicians, lobbyists and government contractors (who invariably, when violating federal laws, run afoul of myriad state laws, too).” Ditto consumer and environmental investigations—the cost of which could be offset by fines, even as they lay the groundwork for federal prosecutions if America is ever restored to sanity.
But we need to be clear-eyed: Such a restoration may not come in time. So far, this year has been marked by a collective action problem. Media conglomerates, law firms, universities, banks, CEOs—too many powerful institutions and individuals have failed to meet the moment. This is why people all over the country, desperate for pushback against Trump’s autocracy, have embraced Newsom’s redistricting plan, whatever their broader opinions of him. With Trump provocatively sending troops into blue cities, and using recision and the shutdown to claw back congressionally appropriated funds from blue states, it’s time to turn the tables on him. Soft secession, powered by the presidential ambitions of multiple blue-state governors, could, should it come to that, be the proving ground of a new confederacy. Hopefully the threat of CalExit or a new Union will be enough. But that extreme measures might be necessary to ensure that American democracy shall not perish from the Earth is becoming more self-evident with every passing day.
Read the whole thing. There’s a lot of context there that’s important to understand how this might work.
I’m for this. I’d be for a general strike too — even just a day-long spending boycott. If all of us just refuse to buy anything for a day, maybe a day a week or even a month, it could have an effect. But we have to be creative now. This is hurtling out of control very quickly. They are starting to crack heads now and it’s not going to get worse.
Admitted pessimist Dan Pfeiffer has some uncharacteristically optimistic words today:
It’s worth remembering that Republicans are defending an incredibly narrow House majority in what’s shaping up to be a very bad political environment for the GOP. Trump’s approval right now is about what it was in 2018, when Republicans lost 40 seats. The economy is slowing, and prices remain high. Even under far better circumstances, the president’s party tends to lose House seats in the midterms
Failing to extend the tax credits could turn 2026 from a good Democratic year into a wave election. You don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s a memo Tony Fabrizio — Donald Trump’s own pollster — wrote earlier this summer:
“While the 2024 outcome for these districts was even, the generic Republican is down 3 points among all registered voters. Among those most motivated to vote — an early indicator of midterm turnout — the Republican is down 7 points. If the Republican candidate lets the premium tax credit expire, the Republican trails the Democrat by 15 points. There is broad bipartisan support for the tax credits and their extension.”
If the tax credits aren’t extended, voters will blame Trump and the Republicans, according to the Kaiser poll.
Donald Trump desperately wants to hold on to the House. It’s why he’s bullied a bunch of Republican states into redrawing congressional districts to find more GOP seats. But even the most aggressive gerrymander wouldn’t stand a chance under the scenario painted by Trump’s own pollster.
I don’t know what’s going to happen but it seems that the Democrats realize they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Having said that, we are talking about the U.S. Senate where there are always at least a handful of preening posers looking for a way to pretend to be above all this nasty politickin’ and decide to sell-out their own voters. You can see John Fetterman doing it right now. Luckily, they’ll need more than him and so far there have only been a couple who felt the need to show their plucky independence. But at this point the Democrats are winning.
And by the way, Trump is losing on this other important issue as well:
God, I hope that one holds up. What Trump is doing with DHS and now the National Guard in Chicago and Portland is fascist to the core. I’m relieved that Americans aren’t happy about it.
Come on
Yes, they are coming for Social Security:
The Trump administration is preparing a plan that would make it harder for older Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments, part of an overhaul of the federal safety net for poor, older and disabled people that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing benefits, according to people familiar with the plans.
The Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.
But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.
And here we were told Donald Trump would never touch Social Security.
Russ Vought’s made a big deal of the fact that he’s not going after Social Security. But, of course, he is. He was too smart to put it into Project 2025 in an election year. But that project didn’t spring up out of nowhere. It was sponsored and run by the Heritage Foundation, the long-time conservative think tank.
Back in 2022, they put $22 million into hiring people from many different organizations to put it together. One of them was Vought, who has been affiliated with Heritage since 2010. (He worked at their lobbying arm Heritage Action as VP from 2010 through 2017.)
The Heritage Foundation has been leading the charge to eliminate Socal Security and Medicare for decades now and they haven’t changed their minds. And if you don’t believe that a slash and burn wingnut like Vought isn’t for it, you aren’t paying attention.
Here’s an excerpt from a conversation between Heritage president Kevin Roberts and Vought from 2023:
Kevin Roberts: Thanks for that. A related question. And that is on social security and Medicare, agree fully, it’s not part of the conversation now. But for our audience members who find it a little frustrating, and for some of them more than a little frustrating, that we’re not even allowed to talk about it at this time. Explain the tactics behind that, but also at what point do you think from a policy and political point of view, the conservative movement does need to be talking about that?
Vought: Sure. And I would just say I’ve supported all of these reforms. I’ve been a part of writing them for senators and members of Congress. So it’s not that I don’t think that they’re a problem, it’s that political capital is a finite resource, and that we lose, and I believe we’ve lost for many, many decades because we have not been careful stewards of political capital and thought carefully about the fights that we want to have, and need to have to base as statesmen should the most critical fights that we would need to have.
So we put forward a budget and they were modeled after our budgets at OMB where we have 9 trillion dollars in spending cuts. A third of that is discretionary, woke and weaponized bureaucracy, and two-thirds is mandatory. We do not touch the benefits of social security and Medicare, not because they are not actuality unsound and they are, but because I actually want to get to the point where we someday get to reform those because the American people have come along and been part of cutting the easy stuff, then the less easy, than the somewhat hard, and then the stuff that requires a lot of a conversation about.
And my view is just the kind of view from the diner. I’m the son of union workers and so I process everything politically from the diner. You’re going to try and tell me that after I’ve been paying into social security and gave the federal government a surplus for decades, you’re going to tell me that’s the first thing we cut as opposed to the Bob Dylan statute in Mozambique or the LGBT activist in Senegal? Really that’s the first thing you’re going after? Because they’re not paying attention on the day-to-day. They’re seeing the narrative. What’s the fight about going across the TV screen? What what’s being talked about in that diner? And they’re saying, “Does DC care about me?” And they’re saying, “After the surplus is that you squandered on the bureaucracy. You didn’t put it in investment accounts in the 2000, you put it in the Department of Agriculture, in the State Department foreign aid. And that’s going to be where you start?”
And so my view is you start where the threat is the greatest and then you build a culture of spending cuts and restraint. You get people committed to a goal of fiscal balance is important, and then you will get to a point where you can actually deal with these big immovable spending. I look at it the way a family does. When you have a fiscal excess in your family, you don’t start with the big stuff. You start with the entertainment and the out to eat budget. And then you start to think about, all right, let’s refi the mortgage. I think that’s a credible political strategy that I think we would have more success with. And at the end of the day, I would just say the other side’s been tried, my side’s never been tried. Can we just try something else that hasn’t led us into a fiscal cul-de-sac?
Roberts: And it seems as if your comment about political capital being finite, which is so true, bears out here because if you follow this chronological approach, it’s incremental, but each step is incrementally harder. Not only are we building as a movement, but also as a country, which I think you’re begging for the muscle memory of having these subsequently harder conversations. But the political leaders on the right who are willing to message on that and genuinely govern that way while their political capital is finite if they just put it on the shelf, because there’s a half life there, they actually can accrue more because of increasing trust with the American people and their colleagues. We haven’t tried that either.
Vought: Right. No, and I don’t think people should stop working on these things. We need paradigm shifting policies everywhere. The question is for those that are getting inserted into a live fire exercise as it pertains to the debt limit, and I’m suggesting that we prioritize it accordingly.
He’s just prioritizing, you see. Once people see the glorious Christian nationalist Phoenix rising from the ashes of the American republic they will be thrilled to eliminate their benefits.
Yeah right. The reality is that he figures that once he solidifies presidential power to do anything they want (including maintaining that power by any means necessary) they will then be able to finally end every government program that benefits people. And part of that seizure of power is to stun the American people into paralysis by stripping them of any feeling of agency over what is happening to them.
Don’t believe me? Here’s that famous quote again:
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected… When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains… We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma”.
It’s not just the bureaucrats. He wants the American people to be traumatically affected so we will succumb. He’s a cruel, sadistic man in an administration full of them.