The Republican Message

(Yeah, yeah - it's a redux. Sue me)

"I'm gonna keep fucking you up

until you give me permission

to fuck you up.

And then I'm gonna

fuck you up."

Today's Angela

Warning Signs

The road to tyranny

is crowded with people

telling us we're overreacting

The One Big Bamboozle (updated)

The Instagram post truncates, so I went looking for the full version.

Found it on YouTube: (via Eddie Roadcap)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Abigail Simon (@galaxina500)

New One Today

Knitting Cult Lady

Robert Reich

Trump's war on the mind of America.

(Kind of a silly intro, but stay with it)

1. Re-write history
2. Kill education
3. Stifle science
4. Suppress the media
5. Attack the arts

It's Not Funny

Leeja Miller

Explains Project Esther

The Declaration

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.


He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

No Good Germans Please

Gettin' pretty fuckin' sick of this shit.

• The assholes who attacked that lady doctor in Idaho showed no ID, and wore no uniforms or insignia.
• The assholes who nabbed that grad student at Tufts showed no ID, and wore no uniforms or insignia.
• The assholes who grabbed the guy in Charlottesville showed no ID, and wore no uniforms or insignia.

People are being disappeared, goddammit.

Don't just sit there pretending it's not happening. And don't start thinking it can't happen to you.

ICE Arrest Virginia Man in Court Despite Judge Dropping Charges Against Him

Federal immigration authorities detained a man at the Albemarle County Courthouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a judge had dismissed charges against him.

"Following the dismissal of a misdemeanor state charge, our client exited the courtroom into the lobby and was physically detained by three men," public defender Nicholas Reppucci told Newsweek. "The men showed no identification that they were law enforcement, nor that they had a valid arrest warrant."

Newsweek has contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for comment.

Why It Matters

President Donald Trump, who returned to office in January, has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. His administration's hard-line immigration agenda has sparked concern about the involvement of federal agents in local legal proceedings—in this case particularly regarding the lack of transparency in their actions at courthouses.

What To Know

A man who appeared in Albemarle County General District Court on April 22 to face assault charges had those charges dropped but was taken into custody shortly afterward by three plainclothes individuals.

Video footage obtained by 29 News shows a man being approached and restrained in an unrestricted portion of the courthouse lobby by multiple individuals, one of whom is wearing a full-face balaclava. Though bystanders asked what was happening, the individuals did not present a warrant or official identification when requested.

Despite the concerns raised by those present, the man was placed in handcuffs and escorted from the building, with the video ending as he was removed from the scene.

"It is extremely unusual for law enforcement to not show a badge of authority demonstrating they were legally entitled to seize the individual," Reppucci said. "Even more inappropriate and problematic, one of the individuals was wearing a mask to conceal his identity (which is illegal under Virginia state law)."

He added that the Charlottesville public defender's office was "working hard to develop and fine tune a new protocol to protect all our clients and their support networks moving forward."

The public defender's office was representing Teodoro Dominguez Rodriguez, who was arrested along with another man by the masked agents.

Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney James Hingeley, who was not present at the time of the arrests, said in a statement that he was investigating the incident. While he expressed relief that no one was injured, he voiced concerns that arrests of this nature by ICE could potentially lead to violence.

He told Newsweek, "ICE operations conducted in the manner of the courthouse arrests on April 23, where lawful authority to arrest was not displayed, constitute a grave danger to our community."

The county courthouse is under the jurisdiction of Sheriff Chan Bryant. In a news release, Bryant said the federal agents showed paperwork and credentials to the bailiffs before making the arrests.

"When the agents were presenting their identification and credential, none of the agents were wearing any face coverings. The agents informed the bailiffs at that time that they were there to detain two individuals who had court cases in the Albemarle County General District Court," Bryant said.

"The federal agents showed the bailiff their paperwork and photographs of the individuals they were looking for and waited outside the courtroom until the conclusion of each case," he added.

In response to concerns over the recent incident at the Albemarle County General District Court, state Senator Creigh Deeds and Delegate Katrina Callsen submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to Albemarle County.

The lawmakers, who seek to obtain answers regarding the presence and actions of plainclothes Department of Homeland Security agents at the courthouse, plan to make the findings publicly available.

Protests erupted outside the Albemarle County Courthouse on Wednesday, with more than 100 people gathering to oppose the arrests.

What People Are Saying

Public defender Nicholas Reppucci told Newsweek: "The decision to execute an immigration seizure at a state courthouse is horrible public policy. Inevitably, this detention will have a severe chilling effect on peoples' willingness to come to court on all matters of disputes, both civil and criminal. Individuals will be less likely to pursue civil protective orders or abide by lawful subpoenas; witnesses on both sides of any issue will be less likely to appear in court. As a result, local courts will be less efficient, less accurate, and less just.

"Additionally, people will be less likely to call the police if they observe criminal activity or are the victims of a crime. They will be less willing to provide important pertinent information to law enforcement and less likely to intervene to help others if they see people being victimized. There will be a significant increase in unreported crime across all categories. It is not just the undocumented community that will be negatively affected, but everyone who lives in, works in, or visits Charlottesville. Our community is less safe and just than it was a few days ago."

Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney James Hingeley said in a statement: "The information I have reviewed so far indicates that these alleged law enforcement agents did not display a badge or other indication of authority that would empower them to make lawful arrests in these circumstances. I am grateful that no one was hurt in this operation, but I am also greatly concerned that arrests carried out in this manner could escalate into a violent confrontation, because the person being arrested or bystanders might resist what appears on its face to be an unlawful assault and abduction."

Sheriff Chan Bryant said in a statement: "I want to be clear to the citizens of Albemarle County that the safety and security of the citizens and its courts are the top priority of our office. At no time was this a raid of the courthouse. These individuals were identified by the federal agents and taken into custody with paperwork in hand for them. Which would be the same practice whether it be Albemarle or Charlottesville police, state agencies or federal agencies."

Delegate Katrina Callsen wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "Senator Deeds and I penned a letter to Albemarle County requesting more information regarding the presence of plain-clothed Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents operating at the Albemarle County Courthouse."

What Happens Next

It remains to be seen whether further information surrounding the nature of the arrest will be released.

Overheard

I don't mean to be too obvious with this, but it needs to be repeated often.

Authoritarian governments are absolutely dependent on maintaining a constant fear in the minds of the citizenry. "Enemies without and enemies within."

As crisis looms, people will generally lean towards a protector - somebody they see as a strong leader to tell them what to do "for the good of the state", which is supposed to mean for all Americans because we're supposed to be the ones in charge of this joint.

But Trump is operating from the standard Daddy State playbook. Every time we turn around he's jumping up and down screaming about the Crisis du Jour.

• The southern border
• Immigrants eating the pets
• Deep State
• Trade imbalance
• Rampant crime
• George Soros
• Fentanyl
• People with brown skin
• and and and

He's always declaring one emergency or another, when none of it reflects reality. 

To be sure, we have real problems

• Climate change
• Unfair labor practices
• Healthcare
• Childcare
• General affordability
• Deficit and debt
• and and and

... but we don't hear anything from that prick in the White House about anything but his own grand delusions and petty grievances.

We’ve had a ‘constitutional dictatorship’ before. Trump is different.

Congress’s hesitancy to do its job would have puzzled the Constitution’s framers.

On the afternoon of Sept. 12, 2001 — for one of the few University of Virginia classes meeting that week after 9/11 — I set aside my prepared remarks and instead offered those rattled undergraduates a prediction about their futures.

Our messy, sometimes dysfunctional, politics of checks and balances would for a time disappear, I suggested, with Americans of all creeds united to follow their president’s lead. Yes, even in support of this unlikely national commander: an amiable but ineloquent Texan who rose to the presidency even though his opponent had gotten more votes.

I did not paint this picture to make my students feel better — although I anticipated it would. Rather, I was explaining to them what history showed was about to happen. At least until the president’s missteps in Iraq intruded years later, George W. Bush enjoyed extraordinary latitude to lead the nation against the threat of global terrorism, both at home and abroad. Republican and Democratic members of Congress joined hands on the steps of the Capitol to sing “God Bless America.” Troops became Bush’s to deploy unilaterally. Intrusive intelligence was his to gather. The economy was his to repair and resurrect. He was, in short, in broad command of our political system.

Bush’s ascension was predictable because it followed a durable pattern in America’s past: During normal times, our government by design and political habit is divided, and the zigzag path it follows emerges from the muddled process of compromise and consensus. Inefficiency is not a constitutional bug but a feature.

In times of genuine crisis, however, when strong action is needed without delay, Americans typically turn to a single, vigorous national leader. The eminent, mid-20th century political scientist Clinton Rossiter called these departures from the norm “constitutional dictatorships.”

Today we are experiencing another kind of vigorous national leadership from the White House. But the current presidency is unlike anything we have seen before. This is not an institution grown muscular from the natural push and pull of American politics.

It is a presidency on steroids.

There is no crisis clause in the U.S. Constitution. Rather, when presidents have proclaimed emergencies — or perhaps more accurately, when they have recognized them — in most cases, Americans have simply behaved differently. They rally to the leader. And these episodes of emergency leadership have produced astounding displays of executive power.

This pattern is older than the Constitution itself. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress was the national government. But the perils of English marauders on American soil caused Congress to follow Gen. George Washington, who raised and equipped troops, controlled food supplies, meted out justice, regulated public health, and took any steps he deemed necessary to fight off the threat. Congress accepted all this while actively rebelling against kingly rule.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was the government of the United States for 11 weeks, not even calling Congress back into session until he could get the Union war effort begun in a direction he single-handedly established. He blockaded Southern ports, a belligerent act widely understood to be the sole province of Congress. He spent tax dollars that had not been appropriated to raise, provision and deploy troops — all without specific legislative authorization. Later in the war he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which by the conventions of the day amounted to a monumental taking of private property.

Lincoln’s powers were later dwarfed by Woodrow Wilson in World War I, who could, among other things, direct Americans as to how much sugar they could add to their morning coffee. Wilson was granted by a compliant Congress the power to distribute fuels and other public necessaries; to fix wheat prices and coal prices; to take over factories and mines; and to regulate the production of intoxicants. Enhanced legal constraints were created by Congress to control treasonous utterances and punish disloyalty, which the president executed, energetically, through the federal courts.

And during the Great Depression, and then the Second World War, Franklin D. Roosevelt ran a command economy. For a time, he shut down the nation’s banks. He directed human and natural resources to where he judged they were most needed. He controlled prices. And he supervised the growth of an unprecedented defense and national security state, including surveillance of public and private communications. The National Archives reports of Roosevelt’s Office of Censorship, “At its peak, in September 1942, more than 10,000 civil service employees opened and examined nearly one million pieces of incoming and outgoing overseas mail each week.”

FDR interned Japanese Americans and sanctioned the development of the most lethal weapon used in history, without any substantial oversight or checks by Congress or the judiciary. He didn’t even tell his vice president about the bomb, although Harry S. Truman was the one who ultimately had to decide whether to use it. These were powers unknown to even the most ambitious monarch. And during the long run of the Cold War, some of these enhanced authorities reappeared, especially in instances where the nation’s security was vulnerable.

All this muscular presidentialism is an undeniable part of American political history — and a reminder that aggressive use of executive powers in Donald Trump’s second term is not entirely new.

And yet: For all of Trump’s resort to emergency powers, he has seldom stuck to the accepted playbook of crisis government.

Those who have studied these episodes in American history have noted one indispensable principle of proper crisis government: They are not free-for-alls for those in charge.

Even during periods of greatest emergency, constitutional dictators in America have been restrained by certain boundaries of behavior, which must be acknowledged and respected. “Although the normal rules do not apply,” observed South Carolina law professor William J. Quirk of these unusual times, “there are other rules that do and that make the difference between a constitutional dictatorship and a dictatorship.”

The first and most basic relates to the definition of the word “crisis” itself — and whether that term is even appropriate for our times (quite apart from any calamity this president may have self-generated now that he is back in the White House). Was the country Trump inherited in January besieged by an emergency on the same scale as the Civil War or the Great Depression? That’s plainly not so.

There are among the president’s supporters those who will assert that we are at war, perhaps on cultural grounds. But a heavy burden of proof is on them to make that case. Given the stakes, the proper standard for persuasion is Thomas Jefferson’s, announced in the Declaration of Independence: a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Or, for those who prefer Lincoln, reasoning “without guile and with pure purpose.”

Second, crisis government in the democratic tradition is to be deployed as a last resort. Any problems, however vexing, that can be addressed through normal constitutional means should be handled that way and that way alone.

A routine failure of the political order to address certain public issues does not gift the president dictatorial powers. Otherwise, partisans are too tempted to take refuge in emergency claims merely to avoid the heavy lifting called for under our system. Constitutional dictatorships are to be expressly reserved for that special class of troubles that threaten the survival of the republic — say, 9/11 or the attack on Pearl Harbor — and that are resistant to resolution through normal politics.

It follows that the exercise of emergency powers should be confined to the agreed upon threat at hand. A constitutional dictator must be parsimonious, focusing his or her enhanced powers on the wolf at the door. There is no broad license to diverge unchecked into political priorities unrelated to the crisis. The objective is to get out from under the state of emergency as quickly as possible, without distraction.

Conversely, Trump’s exercise of his authorities has been comparatively unfocused. He imposes massive tariffs across industries and nations, compels states to verify citizenship at polling places, dismantles broad swaths of executive agencies created under law, levies punitive fines or sanctions on universities and law firms, offers pardons of Jan. 6 offenders, and deports more than 100,000 foreign nationals. There is no common public purpose visible in this collection of executive actions.

Which brings us to a key point: The basic premise of crisis government is national unity. The community as a whole — Republican and Democrat alike — is under threat from a mutual peril, and thus has consented — against all the normal rules of political behavior — to entrust a single person with extraordinary authorities to defeat a common enemy. The misuse of such authorities by the president to benefit his or her political friends or ideological allies is inimical to the spirit of emergency government.

Vice President JD Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson applaud as President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress last month. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
It should go without saying that crisis governments are to last only as long as a well-defined emergency, and once it is ended, those responsible for it should be held to account for their actions. Rossiter acidly observed that “officials who abuse authority in a constitutional dictatorship — in other words, men who were charged with defending democracy but instead profaned it — should be ferreted out and severely punished.” That kind of accountability rules out the deployment of one of Trump’s favorite tools of executive power: the pardon. In a constitutional dictatorship, there is no lasting protection for those who misuse the great trust invested in them, however great the emergency may be.

There is one final difference between what the nation has commonly experienced during times of national emergency and the Washington, D.C., of today: the effective disappearance of Congress.

It is true that Congress has always played a secondary role in past instances of constitutional dictatorship. But it has never vanished as a governing partner. Once Congress reconvened in July 1861, Lincoln formally invited its review and authorization for his solo acts as a wartime president. He subsequently had to contend for years with a nettlesome legislative Committee on the Conduct of the War, and he had to lobby Congress to constitutionalize emancipation by passing the 13th Amendment.

Wilson became America’s closest approximation to a prime minister, openly courting congressional authorization for virtually everything he did. His Congress was a full governing partner.

FDR worked both around and through Capitol Hill, but Congress flexed its muscles enough for the president to know that lawmakers were not to be ignored — generating enough political opposition to spark a stunning 635 presidential vetoes, one-quarter of all ever issued. This baseline congressional vigilance remained true throughout the Cold War and George W. Bush’s presidency.

In the main, of course, members of Congress did defer to presidential direction during these crises. Yet they did so all the while mindful of their obligations to protect their institution and its prerogatives. Thus they actively patrolled those outer boundaries of proper presidential behavior: assuring that the scope of the president’s authorities were being exercised in the public interest, not for partisan or personal ends; reining in presidents who, as Rossiter argued, would find the constraints of the judiciary too easy to shrug off; and policing the essential from the nonessential departures from regular constitutional practice. These were all core to the proper functioning of Congress, even during system-threatening crisis.

We are just now approaching the end of Trump’s first 100 days — so there remains ample time for the scales of government to rebalance. But this is unlikely to happen without the insistence of Congress — which Trump narrowly but effectively controls for the moment. The hesitancy by lawmakers to play their assigned role would have puzzled the Constitution’s framers, who gave pride of place to the legislative branch in the first article of the Constitution.

Thus the only certain check on a president who claims that “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want,” is a Congress firm enough to assert in reply, “Yes, but we have Article 1.”

Waking Up To It

• it's not about brown people
• it's not about queer people
• it's not about fallopian people
• it's not about trans people
• it's not about testicularian people
• it's not about old people
• it's not about young people
• it's not about race
• It's not about religion
• it's not about ethnicity
• it's not about blue
• it's not about red
• it's not about anything else that I just can't think of right now

What it's actually about is not being such a sucker that you can't see that it always ends up being about rich powerful people fucking everybody over.

Buckle Up, Kids

Tim Miller nails it.

ie: Trump's guys fix their "facts" around the preferred narrative, and then jump up and down, yelling, "Look at me! Look at me! I done good, huh, boss!"

The reason we know how bad authoritarian regimes have been is the fact that everybody in those regimes has incentive to document their crimes, because they get ahead by showing the boss that their shitty behavior is shittier than that other guy's shitty behavior.

Get ready, boys and girls.

Today's Quote

This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.

A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies.

With such people, you can do whatever you want.

--Hannah Arendt