because everything
Trump touches
turns to shit
- there
- are
- no
- simple
- 10-word
- answers
- to
- the
- important
- questions
Showing posts with label resistance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resistance. Show all posts
Apr 15, 2025
That Was No Pivot
... that was a cave-in - a capitulation - that was the entire Executive Branch admitting he's fucked it up - again.
For every problem that is complicated, and confusing, and vexing, there's a solution that is simple, and elegant, and wrong.
Apr 2, 2025
Mar 31, 2025
Mar 7, 2025
Overheard
On dealing with authoritarian pressures
- They don't expect - and can't really handle - long term resistance. They see us as collections of emotional trauma triggers, easily controlled through fear.
- If they can't terrorize us 24/7, they've already lost.
- Resisting fascism depends on not giving in to the terror impulse we all feel when the bully comes at us. Protect your mental health so you're not in the constant state of terror they need you to be in.
- Staying in touch with who we are - our core values, preferences, beliefs, honor, and ethics - helps to build and reinforce the inner strength we need to stay resistant.
- They are no different than an abusive parent or partner who sees us only as extensions of themselves - disconnected and isolated from everything they need to feel whole. They know how powerful we are when we stay connected to each other, and they'll work to break us down into smaller and smaller groups, and to set us against one another.
It sounds kinda hokey - to me anyway - but finding community, and making common cause with as many people as possible is still the best way to honor our own unique humanity. Not just to see ourselves in other people, but to see them in us as well.
Mar 5, 2025
Mar 2, 2025
Resistance
As always, we'll have to proceed with some caution - what we don't need to do is give the bad guys a good excuse to bash our heads in.
The response to those threats is at once very simple and really really scary:
At the same time - knowing the bad guys don't really give a fuck about needing an excuse, good or otherwise - what we really don't need is the usual Paralysis-by-Analysis that Democrats often fall into.
Hey, skeezix - better men than you have been trying to conquer the world for 40,000 years, and the world remains undefeated.
Lesser men than me have been willing to stand up - to fight and bleed and die to give me the chance to live in the freedom I enjoy now. If it's my turn, then it's my turn.
So here I am, asshole - come and get me.
Feb 28, 2025
Indivisible Email
You know what that means - we’re getting to him.
He’s ranting about "paid protesters" because the idea that people would stand up to him, to Trump, to the billionaire class - without being on someone's payroll - blows his little mind. That’s how these guys think (they also cheat at video games). Everything is a transaction. Everything is rigged in their favor.
So when they see an actual grassroots movement of regular people fighting back? It sends them into a tailspin.
And it should.
Elon Musk is currently raiding the US Treasury for everything he can steal. His hand-picked goons have gutted entire agencies, mass-fired Social Security Administration workers and shut down local offices, and thrown government services into chaos. He's demanding access to taxpayers' records and pushing to give himself direct control over where your money goes - all so he can fund Trump's billionaire tax scam, which rips Medicaid apart, slashes food assistance, and hands $4.5 trillion in giveaways to the ultra-rich.
That's what this fight is about.
They want to take everything. Not just public programs, but public power. They want an America where a handful of billionaire kings control the courts, the laws, and the money - while the rest of us get whatever crumbs they decide to let trickle down.
Over the next few weeks, we have a clear mission: Make Republicans in Congress pay for their complicity. Force Democrats to use the power we gave them. And stop the Trump-Musk coup from gutting our country.
Here's how we're going to do it.
The Next Phase of This Fight: Musk Or Us March Recess
The House and Senate are heading home for recess from March 15-23 - and they are desperate to avoid you.
Why? Because during the last recess, the few Republicans who dared to hold town halls got absolutely wrecked by their own constituents. People showed up. They demanded answers. They called out their Members of Congress for gutting Medicaid, slashing Social Security, and letting President Musk seize control of federal systems with zero oversight. In the days that followed, we saw those same Republicans start to get very nervous about their complicity and their plan to slash very popular programs like Medicaid.
Republican leadership took notes. Now they’re telling their members to dodge town halls altogether. They know that if voters see what they’re actually doing - selling out the country to billionaires while shredding programs that millions rely on -- it will be politically devastating.
And Elon Musk? He's panicking because he sees what we're doing is working. If we weren't a threat, he wouldn’t be xeeting about us.
The Plan: Make Them Answer For It
Why? Because during the last recess, the few Republicans who dared to hold town halls got absolutely wrecked by their own constituents. People showed up. They demanded answers. They called out their Members of Congress for gutting Medicaid, slashing Social Security, and letting President Musk seize control of federal systems with zero oversight. In the days that followed, we saw those same Republicans start to get very nervous about their complicity and their plan to slash very popular programs like Medicaid.
Republican leadership took notes. Now they’re telling their members to dodge town halls altogether. They know that if voters see what they’re actually doing - selling out the country to billionaires while shredding programs that millions rely on -- it will be politically devastating.
And Elon Musk? He's panicking because he sees what we're doing is working. If we weren't a threat, he wouldn’t be xeeting about us.
The Plan: Make Them Answer For It
Next week, we'll send you the full Musk or Us Recess Toolkit. But here’s where we start:
- 📞 CALL YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS RIGHT NOW AND DEMAND A TOWN HALL. If Republicans want to vote to gut your healthcare and hand billions to Elon Musk, they should have to face their constituents and explain themselves. As for Democrats, we need them to be out there, loudly, explaining to their constituents what’s going on and how they’re going to fight back.
- Call Senate Republicans - If they’re gutting Medicaid and Social Security, they should say it to your face.
- Call House Republicans - They’re looting the government for billionaires. Make them explain why.
- Call Senate Democrats - They must hold the line against extreme MAGA cuts and demand real guardrails to protect against the Trump-Musk coup.
- Call House Democrats - They need to hear from us. No deals. No blank checks. No business as usual.
- 🔎 FIND A TOWN HALL - OR REPORT ONE. If you know of a town hall happening, tell us here.
- 🪑 IF THEY WON’T SHOW UP, START PLANNING YOUR EMPTY CHAIR TOWN HALL. We will call them out. We will invite the press. We will make sure every voter in their district knows exactly what kind of coward they are (just for fun, we came across this video we did back in 2017 on putting together an empty chair town hall, and figured you'd also like to see it). And if your Republican senator or representative is dodging, reach out to a neighboring Democrat to stand in for them at your empty chair town hall.
- Elon Musk and Donald Trump think they can rule this country like kings.
- House Republicans think they can steal from working families to fund billionaire tax cuts.
- They all think we'll sit back and let them get away with it.
They are dead wrong.
We do not do kings. We do not let billionaires steal our government. And we sure as hell don’t stand by while a corrupt former president and an unelected billionaire try to burn our democracy to the ground.
So here’s the question: Are we going to let them get away with it?
Or are we going to fight like hell?
- This country does not belong to billionaires.
- It does not belong to Trump.
- It does not belong to Musk.
We do not do kings. We do not let billionaires steal our government. And we sure as hell don’t stand by while a corrupt former president and an unelected billionaire try to burn our democracy to the ground.
So here’s the question: Are we going to let them get away with it?
Or are we going to fight like hell?
Feb 27, 2025
#AltGov
Government employees fight the Trump administration’s chaos by organizing and publishing information on Bluesky
After seeing Elon Musk’s X post on Saturday afternoon about an email that would soon land in the inboxes of 2.3 million federal employees asking them to list five things they did the week before, a clandestine network of employees and contractors at dozens of federal agencies began talking on an encrypted app about how to respond.
Employees on a four-day, 10-hours-a-day schedule wouldn’t even see the email until Tuesday – past the deadline for responding – some noted. There was also a bit of snark: “bonus points to anyone who responds that they spent their government subsidy on hookers and blow,” one worker said.
Within hours, the network had agreed on a recommended response: break up the oath federal employees take when hired into five bullet points and send them back in an email:
“1. I supported and defended the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
“2. I bore true faith and allegiance to the same,” and so on.
It was only the latest effort by a growing and increasingly busy group banding together to “expose harmful policies, defend public institutions and equip citizens with tools to push back against authoritarianism”, according to Lynn Stahl, a contractor with Veterans Affairs and a member of the network. Increasingly, the group is also trying to help its members and others face the thousands of layoffs that have been imposed across the federal government.
Calling itself #AltGov, the network has developed a visible, public-facing presence in recent weeks through Bluesky accounts, most of which bear the names or initials of federal agencies, aimed at getting information out to the public – and correcting disinformation – about the chaos being unleashed by the Trump administration.
With 40 accounts to date, their collective megaphone is getting louder, as most of the accounts have tens of thousands of followers, with “Alt CDC (they/them)” being the largest, at nearly 95,000 followers.
The network has also formed a group and a series of sub-groups on Wire, the encrypted messaging app, to share information and develop strategies – as played out on Saturday.
The #AltGov hashtag has roots in the first Trump administration, perhaps most famously through the “ALT National Park Service” account on what was then Twitter, according to Amanda Sturgill, journalism professor at Elon University, whose book We Are #AltGov: Social Media Resistance from the Inside documents the earlier phenomenon. (That account, with its 774,000 followers, has since moved to Bluesky. Its online presence is parallel to and separate from the #AltGov network.)
The original #AltGov Twitter accounts were dedicated to “sharing information about what was happening inside government – which usually doesn’t get covered as much, because it usually works”, Sturgill said. Examples included the first Trump administration’s deletion of data and separation of families through immigration policies, she said.
The people behind those accounts also banded together to “provide services the government wasn’t providing” – like helping coordinate hurricane relief and distributing masks during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those efforts were often coordinated in Twitter group chats.
It was “a movement, more than an organization”, Sturgill said – and the same could be said of the current version, which moved its social media presence from X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky “because of the Elon mess”, said Stahl, referring to Musk’s 2022 purchase of the app. “It’s not safe to organize [on X] anymore,” she added.
The current iteration has not been reported on to date, but the numbers of the Bluesky #AltGov accounts have doubled in recent weeks without media attention, Stahl said. The group internally vets all members “to make sure people work where they say”.
A thread from the Bluesky #AltGov account for the Fish and Wildlife Service compiles five funny responses including “Counted all the fish and ensured they were gendered properly”
“#AltGov dates from the first Trump administration, but it’s even more needed now,” said an employee at Fema, the disaster response agency, who requested anonymity to avoid being targeted at work. She recently launched an #AltGov Fema account on Bluesky. With nearly 13,000 followers, the account says it’s dedicated to “helping people before, during, and after (this democratic) disaster”.
“Every federal employee takes an oath,” said the Fema employee. “When I did it, I teared up.” She said one reason she decided to join #AltGov was because “information [from the federal government] is so compromised right now. Everything is going on behind closed doors.”
As an example, she mentioned the moment nearly two weeks ago when Trump and Musk brought attention to her agency, claiming that Fema was spending $59m on housing immigrants in New York hotels. The administration fired four Fema employees. So she turned to Bluesky and posted on the #AltGov Fema account:
“The official story the federal government was telling was a lie!” the #AltGov member told the Guardian. “Of course they didn’t throw CBP under the bus – because to them, those are the people who lock up immigrants.”
Stahl, the federal contractor, said that #AltGov members are also increasingly turning their attention to what she called “action plans” for everyday citizens, such as calling members of Congress and attending town halls. “The idea is to get regular people aware of what’s happening … [and] maybe even inspire some people to run for office,” she said.
And as Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) swings its “chainsaw” through federal payrolls and piles up layoffs, #AltGov members also are using encrypted chats to figure out how federal employees can help one another. “[A]re we thinking of gathering resources for terminated folks?” one #AltGov member recently asked on Wire. “We are gonna need food bank info and benefits and anything the [federal] unions don’t cover.” Others weighed in on building a website to cover such information.
Sturgill said the first go-round of #AltGov was “interesting … [because] it kind of stood up a different way of governing by putting it in direct contact with people – a ‘government with the people’. Whether this [version] can take it further depends on how much of the government is left.”
“2. I bore true faith and allegiance to the same,” and so on.
It was only the latest effort by a growing and increasingly busy group banding together to “expose harmful policies, defend public institutions and equip citizens with tools to push back against authoritarianism”, according to Lynn Stahl, a contractor with Veterans Affairs and a member of the network. Increasingly, the group is also trying to help its members and others face the thousands of layoffs that have been imposed across the federal government.
Calling itself #AltGov, the network has developed a visible, public-facing presence in recent weeks through Bluesky accounts, most of which bear the names or initials of federal agencies, aimed at getting information out to the public – and correcting disinformation – about the chaos being unleashed by the Trump administration.
With 40 accounts to date, their collective megaphone is getting louder, as most of the accounts have tens of thousands of followers, with “Alt CDC (they/them)” being the largest, at nearly 95,000 followers.
The network has also formed a group and a series of sub-groups on Wire, the encrypted messaging app, to share information and develop strategies – as played out on Saturday.
The #AltGov hashtag has roots in the first Trump administration, perhaps most famously through the “ALT National Park Service” account on what was then Twitter, according to Amanda Sturgill, journalism professor at Elon University, whose book We Are #AltGov: Social Media Resistance from the Inside documents the earlier phenomenon. (That account, with its 774,000 followers, has since moved to Bluesky. Its online presence is parallel to and separate from the #AltGov network.)
The original #AltGov Twitter accounts were dedicated to “sharing information about what was happening inside government – which usually doesn’t get covered as much, because it usually works”, Sturgill said. Examples included the first Trump administration’s deletion of data and separation of families through immigration policies, she said.
The people behind those accounts also banded together to “provide services the government wasn’t providing” – like helping coordinate hurricane relief and distributing masks during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those efforts were often coordinated in Twitter group chats.
It was “a movement, more than an organization”, Sturgill said – and the same could be said of the current version, which moved its social media presence from X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky “because of the Elon mess”, said Stahl, referring to Musk’s 2022 purchase of the app. “It’s not safe to organize [on X] anymore,” she added.
The current iteration has not been reported on to date, but the numbers of the Bluesky #AltGov accounts have doubled in recent weeks without media attention, Stahl said. The group internally vets all members “to make sure people work where they say”.
A thread from the Bluesky #AltGov account for the Fish and Wildlife Service compiles five funny responses including “Counted all the fish and ensured they were gendered properly”
“#AltGov dates from the first Trump administration, but it’s even more needed now,” said an employee at Fema, the disaster response agency, who requested anonymity to avoid being targeted at work. She recently launched an #AltGov Fema account on Bluesky. With nearly 13,000 followers, the account says it’s dedicated to “helping people before, during, and after (this democratic) disaster”.
“Every federal employee takes an oath,” said the Fema employee. “When I did it, I teared up.” She said one reason she decided to join #AltGov was because “information [from the federal government] is so compromised right now. Everything is going on behind closed doors.”
As an example, she mentioned the moment nearly two weeks ago when Trump and Musk brought attention to her agency, claiming that Fema was spending $59m on housing immigrants in New York hotels. The administration fired four Fema employees. So she turned to Bluesky and posted on the #AltGov Fema account:
Fiction: FEMA paid $59 million last week for illegal immigrants to stay luxury hotel rooms in NYCFact: FEMA administered funds allocated by Congress via the Shelter and Services Program (for Customs and Border Protection) which reimburses jurisdictions for immigration-related expenses. FEMA just sends the payments.
“The official story the federal government was telling was a lie!” the #AltGov member told the Guardian. “Of course they didn’t throw CBP under the bus – because to them, those are the people who lock up immigrants.”
Stahl, the federal contractor, said that #AltGov members are also increasingly turning their attention to what she called “action plans” for everyday citizens, such as calling members of Congress and attending town halls. “The idea is to get regular people aware of what’s happening … [and] maybe even inspire some people to run for office,” she said.
And as Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) swings its “chainsaw” through federal payrolls and piles up layoffs, #AltGov members also are using encrypted chats to figure out how federal employees can help one another. “[A]re we thinking of gathering resources for terminated folks?” one #AltGov member recently asked on Wire. “We are gonna need food bank info and benefits and anything the [federal] unions don’t cover.” Others weighed in on building a website to cover such information.
Sturgill said the first go-round of #AltGov was “interesting … [because] it kind of stood up a different way of governing by putting it in direct contact with people – a ‘government with the people’. Whether this [version] can take it further depends on how much of the government is left.”
Feb 25, 2025
Guerilla Ads
I’ll just leave this here
— 𝔗𝔯𝔲𝔱𝔥 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔰 (@politicsusa46) February 24, 2025
🎥 TikTok - @everyonehateselon pic.twitter.com/6oyxpNQnPS
Feb 23, 2025
Something Is Shifting
But for fuck sake, don't let up. These jerks are slimy, and we ain't won nothin' yet. We're just getting it started.
February 23, 2025 (Sunday)
Something is shifting,” scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder posted on Bluesky yesterday. “They are still breaking things and stealing things. And they will keep trying to break and to steal. But the propaganda magic around the oligarchical coup is fading. Nervous Musk, Trump, Vance have all been outclassed in public arguments these last few days. Government failure, stock market crash, and dictatorial alliances are not popular. People are starting to realize that there is no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power.”
Rather than backing down on their unpopular programs, Trump and the MAGA Republicans are intensifying their behavior as if trying to grab power before it slips away.
Trump’s blanket pardons of the people convicted for violent behavior in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol were highly unpopular, with 83% of Americans opposed to those pardons. Even those who identify as Republican-leaning oppose those pardons 70 to 27 percent. And yet, on February 20, the Trump Justice Department expanded those pardons to cover gun and drug charges against two former January 6 defendants that were turned up during Federal Bureau of Investigation searches related to the January 6 attack.
Then, on February 21, a number of people pardoned after committing violent crimes, including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio—who was sentenced to 22 years in prison—and Proud Boy Ethan Nordean (18 years) and Dominic Pezzola (10 years), as well as Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes (18 years) and Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who sat with his feet on a desk in then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office (four and a half years), held a press conference at the U.S. Capitol to announce they were going to sue the Justice Department for prosecuting them.
Kyle Cheney of Politico reported that the group followed the route they took around the Capitol on January 6, 2021, then posed for photos chanting as they had that day: “Whose house? Our house.” Protesters nearby heckled the group, and when one of them put her phone near Tarrio’s face while he was talking to a photographer, he batted her arm away. Capitol Police officers promptly arrested him for assault.
A number of the January 6 rioters were visiting the Capitol from the nearby Conservative Political Action Conference being held in Maryland. There, MAGA participants continued to normalize Nazi imagery as both Steve Bannon and Mexican actor Eduardo Verástegui threw fascist-style salutes to the crowd.
Yesterday, Tarrio posted a video of himself following officers who defended the Capitol on January 6 though the lobby of a Washington hotel where the anti-Trump Principles First conference was taking place. According to Joan E. Greve of The Guardian, Tarrio followed officers Michael Fanone, Harry Dunn, Daniel Hodges, and Aquilino Gonell, saying: “You guys were brave at my sentencing when you sat there and laughed when I got 22 f*cking years. Now you don’t want to look in my eyes, you fucking cowards.” Fanone turned and told him: “You’re a traitor to this country.”
Today, the hotel had to be evacuated after someone claiming to be “MAGA” emailed a threat claiming to have rigged four bombs: two in the hotel, one in Fanone’s mother’s mailbox, and one in the mailbox of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor turned critic. After listing the names of several of the conference attendees—and singling out Fanone—the email said they “all deserve to die.” The perpetrator claimed to be acting “[t]o honor the J6 hostages recently released by Emperor Trump.”
Billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump are also ramping up their behavior even as the public is starting to turn against the government cuts that are badly hurting American veterans, American farmers, and U.S. medical research. The courts keep ruling against their efforts and their claims of finding “waste, fraud, and abuse” are being widely debunked. Rather than rethinking their course in the face of opposition, they seem to be becoming more belligerent.
On Saturday, Trump urged Musk to be “more aggressive” in cutting the government, although the White House has told a court that Musk has no authority and is only a presidential advisor. “Will do, Mr. President,” Musk replied. He then posted a command to federal employees: “Consistent with [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” Shortly after, emails went out giving workers 48 hours to list five things they had accomplished in the past week.
This sparked outrage among Americans who noted that Musk has spent 24 hours tweeting more than 220 times and engaged in public fights with two of the mothers of his children while allegedly running companies and overhauling the government, while Trump spent at least 12 nights at Mar-a-Lago in his first 29 days in office. S.V. Date of HuffPost noted on February 18 that Trump has played golf at one of his own properties on 9 of his first 30 days in office and that Trump’s golf outings had already cost the American taxpayer $10.7 million.
Reddit was flooded with potential responses to Musk’s demand, scorching it and Musk. The demand also exposed a rift in the administration, as department heads—including Kash Patel, the newly confirmed head of the FBI, as well as officials at the State Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of the Navy—asserted their authority to review the workers in their own departments, telling them not to respond to Musk’s demand.
Then users pointed out that the new government employee email system the Department of Government Efficiency team set up explicitly says that using it is voluntary, and that resignations of federal employees must be voluntary. Musk responded by sending out a poll on X asking whether X users think federal employees should be “required to send a short email with some basic bullet points about what they accomplished” in the past week.
The entire exercise made it look as if the lug nuts on the wheels of the Musk-Trump government bus are dangerously loose. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “Drunk on power and ketamine.”
Historian Johann Neem, a specialist in the American Revolution, turned to political theorist John Locke to explore the larger meaning of Trump’s destructive course. The founders who threw off monarchy and constructed our constitutional government looked to Locke for their guiding principles. In his 1690 Second Treatise on Government, Locke noted that when a leader disregards constitutional order, he gives up legitimacy and the people are justified in treating him as a “thief and a robber.” “[W]hosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law and makes use of the force he has under his command…ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another,” Locke wrote.
Neem notes that Trump won the election and his party holds majorities in both chambers of Congress. He could have used his legitimate constitutional authority but instead, “with the aid of Elon Musk, has consistently violated the Constitution and willingly broken laws.” Neem warned that courts move too slowly to rein Trump in. He urged Congress to perform its constitutional duty to remove Trump from office, and urged voters to make it clear to members of Congress that we expect them to “uphold their obligations and protect our freedom.”
“Otherwise,” Neem writes, “Americans will be subject to a pretender who claims the power but not the legitimate authority of the presidency.” He continues: “Trump’s actions threaten the legitimacy of government itself.”
In the Senate, on Thursday, February 20, Angus King (I-ME) also reached back to the framers of the Constitution when he warned—again—that permitting Trump to take over the power of Congress is “grossly unconstitutional.” Trump’s concept that he can alter laws by refusing to fund them, so-called impoundment, is “absolutely straight up unconstitutional,” King said, “and it’s illegal.”
“[T]he reason the framers designed our Constitution the way they did was that they were afraid of concentrated power,” King said. “They had just fought a brutal eight-year war with a king. They didn’t want a king. They wanted a constitutional republic, where power was divided between the Congress and the president and the courts, and we are collapsing that structure,” King said. “[T]he people cheering this on I fear, in a reasonably short period of time, are going to say where did this go? How did this happen? How did we make our president into a monarch? How did this happen? How it happened,” he said to his Senate colleagues, “is we gave it up! James Madison thought we would fight for our power, but no. Right now we’re just sitting back and watching it happen.”
“This is the most serious assault on our Constitution in the history of this country,” King said. “It's the most serious assault on the very structure of our Constitution, which is designed to protect our freedoms and liberty, in the history of this country. It is a constitutional crisis…. Many of my friends in this body say it will be hard, we don't want to buck the President, we'll let the courts take care of it…. [T]hat's a copout. It's our responsibility to protect the Constitution. That's what we swear to when we enter this body.”
“What's it going to take for us to wake up…I mean this entire body, to wake up to what's going on here? Is it going to be too late? Is it going to be when the President has secreted all this power and the Congress is an afterthought? What's it going to take?”
“[T]his a constitutional crisis, and we've got to respond to it. I'm just waiting for this whole body to stand up and say no, no, we don't do it this way. We don't do it this way. We do things constitutionally. [T]hat's what the framers intended. They didn't intend to have an efficient dictatorship, and that's what we're headed for…. We’ve got to wake up, protect this institution, but much more importantly protect the people of the United States of America.”
Senator King, along with Maine governor Janet Mills, who stood up to Trump in person earlier this week, are following in the tradition of their state.
On June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) delivered her famous Declaration of Conscience, standing up to Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), who was smearing Democrats as communists. “I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges,” she said. “I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”
On July 28, 1974, Representative Bill Cohen (R-ME), who went on to a long Senate career but was at the time a junior member on the House Judiciary Committee, voted along with five other Republican members of the committee and the Democratic majority to draw up articles of impeachment against Republican president Richard Nixon, fully expecting that the death threats and hate mail he was receiving proved that that vote would destroy his political career. But, Cohen told the Bangor Daily News, “I would never compromise what I think is the right thing to do for the sake of an office; it’s just not that important. Only time will tell if the people will accept that judgment.”
Days later, the tape proving Nixon had been part of the Watergate coverup came to light. “Suddenly there was a switch in the people who had been defending the president,” Cohen recalled. “That’s when people back in Maine, Republicans, started to turn around and said, ‘We were wrong, and you were right, and we’ll support this.’ ”
It’s a good week to remember that politicians used to use as a yardstick the saying: “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”
Feb 19, 2025
Feb 11, 2025
A Whiplash Of Incompetence
These are not moments of chaos. These are signs of things to come.
Call your congress critter
202-224-3121
Jan 20, 2025
Jan 16, 2025
Adam Kinzinger
Staying Strong, Vigilant, and Courageous in the Face of Adversity
I wish this were a good news post. Truly, I do. Lately, I've begun to question whether my words help bring clarity or simply contribute to a collective sense of despair. But I've made a commitment—to be honest with you. This post is a continuation of that commitment. The truth is, the situation is grim, and MAGA hasn't fully taken control yet. I'm warning you: this path will not end well if we don't take a stand.
This week kicked off with the profoundly disappointing Senate hearing involving Pete Hegseth, the weekend morning show personality turned far-right political figure. The Republicans on the panel made it painfully clear from the outset that they were there not for constitutional oversight but to shield Hegseth and amplify Donald Trump's agenda. Their questioning wasn't about accountability—it was about currying favor with someone they believe could soon control the Department of Defense. The message was unmistakable: stay on Pete's good side, and your district might just get that new fighter jet or upgraded training facility.
Unfortunately, the Democratic response fell short of what the moment demanded. While there were some solid moments and good questions raised, too much time was spent focusing on Hegseth's controversial statements about women in the military. Don't get me wrong—I fully support women serving in our armed forces, and Hegseth deserves scrutiny for his past remarks. But when his position on the issue shifted recently, the line of questioning should have pivoted: What changed, and why? Instead, it seemed more about getting soundbites than achieving clarity.
More troubling still was the missed opportunity to press Hegseth on the core principles of military ethics. He wasn't asked whether he would refuse an illegal order until the very end—and when the question finally came, he dodged it. The only acceptable answer in our defense establishment is a resounding "absolutely." Yet, the questioning concluded without holding him to that standard, a failure I can only describe as oversight malpractice.
We must be clear-eyed about what this hearing represents: a test case. There are far more alarming nominations on the horizon. Tulsi Gabbard, a known Assad apologist and pro-Putin figure, is being considered to lead the coordination of all intelligence agencies. Rumors suggest Trump may nominate Joe Kent, a far-right extremist rejected even by MAGA voters, to head the National Counterterrorism Center—the agency responsible for identifying domestic and international threats. Imagine the implications of someone linked to extremist groups overseeing domestic terror assessments.
And it doesn't stop there. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal vaccine skeptic and proponent of conspiracy theories, could be tapped to lead Health and Human Services. His views on public health are not just controversial—they're dangerous, particularly for a position requiring sound scientific judgment.
I don't share this to spread despair. I share it to ignite a sense of urgency and action. This is not the time for resignation. This is the time for unyielding resistance. History reminds us that battles can feel lost just before victory emerges. During the Battle of the Bulge, the situation seemed utterly hopeless for the Allied troops, yet mere months later, they were in the heart of a defeated enemy's capital. The tide turned because they refused to give up.
This isn’t the time to obsess about difference in our coalition. The Brits and American’s fought together despite their past wars, and different governments. Yes there were Egos leading the armies, and those people sometimes clashed. But they never forgot the mission. We are in Act Three of this political struggle. The forces of extremism and authoritarianism want us demoralized. But we still have power. We still have voices. And most importantly, we still have each other. If we stand together, stay vigilant, and fight with clarity and courage, we can turn the tide. This battle is far from over—and together, we can win. It will take time (hopefully just four years) but when we look back in a decade, it will seem like a blink of time, and a victory well earned, as we stand in OUR capitol restoring Democracy to it’s pure form, “with malice towards none and charity for all.”
Something To Do
And something to remember:
A saint is just a sinner who fell and then got up again.
js@jeremysherman.com
Jan 8, 2025
What Now?
Democracy is not something you have
unless it's something you do.
A lot of us were pretty understandably burned out last fall - I know I was - but too bad, so sad - we don't have the luxury of being fed up with it all.
We've taken some time to get thru the stages of grief or whatever, and now we have to get back to work.
I'm not going to cede the field to the adversary. I'm going to be as much a thorn in their side as I can possibly be. I won't be giving them anything for free - every inch they take will cost them something.
And I can no longer be quietly supportive of Democratic teammates who aren't willing to stand up with me and throat-punch those fucking MAGA Nazis.
You thought I was a pain in the ass before? You ain't seen nothing yet.
embrace the suck
stay in the fight
Jan 7, 2025
Dec 29, 2024
Dec 20, 2024
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