âSometimes I dream of revolution, a bloody coup dâetat by the second rankâtroupes of actors slaughtered by their understudies, magicians sawn in half by indefatigably smiling glamour girls, cricket teams wiped out by marauding bands of twelfth menâI dream of champions chopped down by rabbit-punching sparring partners while eternal bridesmaids turn and rape the bridegrooms over the sausage rolls and parliamentary private secretaries plant bombs in the Ministerâs Humberâcomedians die on provincial stages, robbed of their feeds by mutely triumphant stoogesâ âandâmarchâ âan army of assistants and deputies, the seconds-in-command, the runners-up, the right-handmenâstorming the palace gates wherein the second son has already mounted the throne having committed regicide with a croquet-malletâstand-ins of the world stand up!ââ
â Tom Stoppard, The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays
Every single decent Politician should stand up to this vile ugly stain of a human who is occupying the White House. Every single humane & reasonable Politician should stand up to this racist rapist rabid animal who is running amok in the People's House. Every single Politician has a responsibility to the people of this country, to our very lives, to uphold the Constitution.
It should sicken every single one of us that this man - this vulgar nasty deplorable human - is leading this Country. This isn't Man of LaMancha people, we're not marching into hell for a heavenly cause, he is leading us into hell because he's a troubled vicious self-centered motherfucker bully. Just when you think he can't go lower, he goes lower, he's the limbo stick of humans. Just when you think he can't say something or tweet something more vulgar or hideous, pure mean & ugly comes spewing out of his mouth & his fingers. Just when you think he can't be any more tainted, huge splashes of despicable are revealed.
This isn't a fucking reality show: this isn't Survivalist, or America's Most Vile, or Name That Rapist; this is AMERICA and she is bleeding and he is treating America like he treats all his women; with disdain and hatred and repulsion; he wants America on her knees.
Well, fuck that.
And one more thing - ONE MORE THING: this goes to every Politician whose got a hand out: do not call me, or email me, or text me and ask me to donate to your campaign: DO YOUR FUCKING JOB and then send me a bill.
"When you encounter difficulties, the feelings and stories that arise in reaction are just that, feelings and stories. They are whirlwinds of confusion, based not in what is happening now but in deeply held beliefs about you and your relationship to the world. Let them swirl- leaves in the wind. Sometimes you fall back into them and lose touch with the present, but a moment of recognition always comes. Right then, come back to your body, come back to your breath, and rest. The confusion, the stories and the feelings are still there. They continue to swirl, but you are not lost in them."
Testing Military Men Over 30 For Testosterone Levels In Order To Put Them On it--
Trump's drunken rageball idiot Secretary Of Blitzkrieg (who is usually blitzed more often than not) is engaging in yet another piece of Fourth Reich Nazi-f__kery this week, announcing his plans to put soldiers with so-called "Low T" on Testosterone therapy.
I'll leave the medical mish-moshery for others with more background to sort out. I want to briefly address just what in the AF this really is about.
Hegseth calls it a part of his "warrior ethos" and is imposing new arbitrary standards of fitness for all personnel. In his mind, being a woman, an ethnic minority of color, or an LGBTQ person makes a soldier unfit, either for duty, promotions, awards for valor, or memorializing. You all know he is a white supremacist, an ĂŒber-misogynist, and Christian nationalist. But sometimes I grow tired of using so many words to label him, so for the sake of brevity, let's just say he's a Nazi.
So, what is this Testosterone thing really? Is it an attempt to "Rambo-ize" the military, to take a bunch of otherwise relatively healthy and fit men, and turn them into movie action heroes with muscles bursting out everywhere, including inside their craniums? No, it's much worse.
The overall policy is Hegseth trying to recruit, brainwash, and build "Supersoldiers," elite units of what will be a modern version of Hitler's "Einsatzgruppen" which carried out the majority of the mass executions of Jewish and Slavic civilians on the Eastern Front during "Operation Barbarossa" when the Nazis invaded Russia. They were in fact death squads.
Trump and Hegseth are preparing a ground war against Iran. They are likewise planning to invade Cuba, then Mexico, then Greenland, and not too far down the road will target the Brazilian government of Lula DaSilva. They are in a mad imperial war drive to seize raw materials, energy, water supplies, and food, just as Hitler intended through his expansionist war drives for more "Lebensraum." Meanwhile, Trump, Hegseth and ICE will be conducting a ground war against the American population which opposes the entirety of this nightmare.
And yes my friends, Hitler's military prescribed pharmaceutical assistance to enhance their soldiers and sailors.
He and his doctors put them on Meth. And then they put the adult German working population on it in order to speed up war production and "enhance" them too.
Those who have argued that such comparisons of the Trump regime to Hitler's Nazis are hyperbole, exaggerated, paranoid, or simply inaccurate, should think again. The reason they are comparable is because that is their model, and because both Trump and his "Secretary Of Penis Envy" Hegseth admire Hitler's methods and copy them. Those pompous academic loudmouths still living in denial should just step back, take a minute and STFU.
Testosterone is today's drug of non-choice for our military. Which ones might the regime make compulsory next?
So, that said, here is the story from my archives on how Hitler and his quack Doctor Theodor Morrell hooked Germany on Meth.
A poem by Frank OâHara, from *Lunch Poems*, 1964 (the painting of OâHara is by Elaine de Kooning, 1964, about which she said: âWhen I painted Frank OâHara, Frank was standing there. First I painted the whole structure of his face; then I wiped out the face, and when the face was gone, it was more Frank than when the face was thereâ)Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul
It is 12:10 in New York and I am wondering
if I will finish this in time to meet Norman for lunch
ah lunch! I think I am going crazy
what with my terrible hangover and the weekend coming up
at excitement-prone Kenneth Koch's
I wish I were staying in town and working on my poems
at Joan's studio for a new book by Grove Press
which they will probably not print
but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night
wondering whether you are any good or not
and the only decision you can make is that you did it
I wish I were reeling around Paris
instead of reeling around New York
I wish I weren't reeling at all
it is Spring the ice has melted the Ricard is being poured
âThere's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.â
â Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Trumpâs âsuccessâ is due in large part to his preternatural ability to identify men and women who harbor ambition, vanity, and weakness in equal measure. Trump exploits their ambition and vanity by dangling access to power, knowing that their weak characters will look past his corruption, depravity, and malignant narcissism that threaten our democracy. On Wednesday, the bitter fruits of Trumpâs sordid recruiting efforts were on sorry display in the US Senate.
At some point in their lives, Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton were respected members of the bar with outstanding reputations among lawyers, judges, and clients. Todd Blanche has trashed his reputation over the last three years by representing Trump in the Manhattan hush-money trialâwhich ended in conviction on 34 felony countsâand in two federal prosecutions that were abandoned after Trump's 2024 re-election, a result made possible by the Supreme Court's immunity ruling in Trump v. US.
But the jury was out on Jay Clayton. Until today. The damning verdict was delivered by Clayton himself through his sniveling, evasive, shameful appearance before the Judiciary Committee. In the legal vernacular, âClayton has drunk the Kool-Aid.â
For those not familiar with Clayton, he is currently the US Attorney for the SDNY. He previously served as the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He served on the Management Committee of Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the worldâs largest and most respected law firms. His financial disclosure showed he drew a salary and bonus of more than $6.7 million from Sullivan & Cromwell in the year before his SDNY nomination, lofty salary that reflects his stellar legal training, his government experience, his purported legal acumen, and his wise counsel.
But in a brief exchange with Senator John Ossof, Jay Clayton demonstrated that either (a) he is willing to lie to a Senate Committee while under oath, or (b) he is functionally illiterate and cannot be trusted to serve as the nationâs chief intelligence officer. I believe the answer is option (a), but I will let you judge after watching the video of the exchange between Senator Ossof and Clayton, below: (Press the âplayâ arrow at the bottom of the embedded video to watch the exchange.)
If Claytonâs testimony was truthful, he was unaware that his predecessor in the job of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was present at the execution of the FBI search warrant that seized the Fulton County, Georgia, ballots. Clayton claims he was also unaware that Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that Trump requested that she attend the FBIâs seizure of ballots in Georgia.
Gabbardâs presence at the Fulton County raid was extensively covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and widely reported on cable news, including Fox News. So, too, was Tulsi Gabbardâs testimony that she was at the raid at Trumpâs request.
Again, Tulsi Gabbard is Claytonâs immediate predecessor in the job for which he is seeking a favorable report by the Judiciary Committee. For Clayton to pretend to be unaware of the biggest controversy surrounding his predecessor is (in the words of Jon Ossof) ânot credible.â
But Clayton has performed the calculus. He has weighed the stain on his reputation and the behind-the-back whispers that will follow him for life, and concluded, in his weakness and vanity, that access to power is more important than truth, honor, and patriotism.
Such are the men selected by the partners of Sullivan & Cromwell to lead their firm. It is no surprise that S&C never capitulated to Trump. It never had to; instead, it voluntarily aligned with him, serving as the White Houseâs favored intermediary to coerce other firms into capitulating to Trump.
And, now, Jay Clayton will be our nationâs chief intelligence officer, delivering critical briefings to a president who cannot abide bad news. Jay Clayton is the wrong man for a job that affects the safety and security of every American.
Tell your Senators that Jay Clayton is unfit to hold a position of public trust in the federal government!
As bad as Clayton's confirmation hearing was, Todd Blanche's was worse. Blanche walked into the confirmation room having protected Ghislaine Maxwell, obstructed the production of the Epstein documents, approved the bad-faith prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James, and approved the $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6 insurrectionists and the IRS immunity agreement for Trump. It is difficult to see how it could get worse. But it did.
One of the first questions posed to Blanche was whether he was Trumpâs friend. He replied, âI am his lawyer . . . was his lawyer.â
There you have it! For two seconds, Todd Blanche spoke the truth before he caught himself. But in that momentary candor, he explained why he was unfit to be the Attorney General of the United States. He views himself as the president's lawyer, rather than the lawyer for the people of the United States.
The influential New York City Bar Association filed a lengthy objection with the Chair and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, explaining why Todd Blanche is unfit to serve as Attorney General. See City Bar Opposes Todd Blanche Nomination for U.S. Attorney General (2026).
Senator Adam Schiff released key moments of his examination of Todd Blanche. See Schiffâs notes, Todd Blancheâs Conflicts of Interest. In a key moment in the examination (beginning at the 9:30 mark), Senator Schiff got Blanche to admit that he approved the $1.8 billion slush fund.
Senator Schiff then asked,
What happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York? What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for?
What happened to the prosecutor who once respected the rule of law? What happened to the prosecutor who said âthere wonât be a whiff of political partisanshipâ and then prosecutes the presidentâs enemies over seashells and making a video stating the plain law of the Constitution?
What happened to the Todd Blanche of the Southern District of New York that could convert him into you, someone who is willing to say the president has both the right and the duty to prosecute his political enemies?
[The above quote is my personal transcription from the video; I tried to get it right, but the official record may differ.]
There is more, but you get the point: It was a brutal hearing for Blancheâbut cowardly Republicansâlike the feckless Susan Collinsâwill vote for a man who has proven his willingness to ignore the Constitution, federal statutes, due process, the rule of law, and human decency.
Trump reverses order for ICE to âcease non-urgent traffic stops.â
Remember two days ago when Senator Susan Collins was bragging that she had convinced DHS to order ICE to cease all non-urgent traffic stops? Well that cessation lasted less than a day. See The Atlantic, Inside Trumpâs Reversal on ICE |Â Attacks from immigration hard-liners had the president worried about looking weak.
Per The Atlantic,
The president overruled his own administration after getting furious pushback from his MAGA base over the ICE order suspending most vehicle stops. White House officials told us that Trump had heard a litany of complaints from hard-line allies over the past day.
âWe CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.âs most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!,â the president wrote on his Truth Social network. âOnce we do, we are playing right into the criminalâs hands.â
Don't let Susan Collins lie about persuading ICE to suspend non-urgent traffic stops. Her plea to MarkWayne Mullin was immediately overruled by Trump. Perhaps she should've waited a few hours before taking credit for a major change in ICE policy. Now, she has proved that she is powerless to rein in Donald Trump.
Concluding Thoughts
Donât believe anything Trump says on Thursday evening.
Trump will give a primetime speech on Thursday evening. According to reports, he will allege that China attempted to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by attacking Trump on social media. However, Trump apparently has no proof that China affected voting procedures or vote count totals. And, of course, it is well established that Russia likewise attempted to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by attacking Joe Biden.
The most important point is this: Simply because Trump claims the authority to do something does not mean he has that authority. Moreover, if he attempts to exercise authority not granted to him by the Constitution, he will be stopped by the courts.
I had an email exchange with a reader that illustrates why things that âsound badâ may be bluffs designed to frighten or dispirit us. The reader asked,
Trump has fired the remaining EAC commissioners. The EAC is tasked with the certification of voting machines.
Can we predict that Trump will claim votes are invalid because machines were not certified?
Good questionâand one that may be causing some people to fear that the firing of the Election Assistance Commission will lead to âchaos.â But letâs look at the facts.
1 The certification of voting machines by EAC does not impose any obligation on states to use those machines. Itâs like a âGood Housekeeping Seal of Approvalâ on a cleaning product; you are free to purchase the store-branded, cheaper version. Some states have laws saying that they must use federally certified machines; others do not (e.g., California).
2 Once a machine is certified, it remains certified forever, unless it is decertified. Every machine that requires federal certification under state law already has itâand thus can be used in 2026. Moreover, the structure of the certification programâwhich delegates certification decisions to EAC staff rather than requiring a Commission voteâallows the testing and certification to continue despite the vacancies. See Just Security, What is the Election Assistance Commission With No Commissioners?
So, the answer to the readerâs question is, âNo,â Trump will not be able to claim that 2026 votes are invalid because âthe machines were not certified.â No federal law says anything of the sort.
On the other hand, Trump makes lots of claims that are patently illegal and unconstitutional. Can he make up a rule that, because the EAC doesnât exist, all votes in 2026 are invalid? Sure, just like he can issue an executive order stating that he can levitate. That doesnât mean he should jump off a skyscraper.
So, if Trump makes claims about voting machines not being certified for 2026, ignore him. The machines and software have already been certified.
Karl Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas, starting his 5-year-old daughter, Carla, across a 20-foot high wire during practice in Sarasota, Florida; 1941 :: Photographed by Joseph Steinmetz
* * * *
âNow listen for the pines, the bloom, its glittering, the wild hacking of sea, bend in each stream, eddy of bendâlistenâhear all skins raveling, unendingâhear one skin clamp down upon what now is no longer missing. Here you are says a voice in the light, the trapped light. Be happy.â
Exactly five years ago, on July 15, 2021, I wrote:
âToday Americans began to see the concrete effects of the American Rescue Plan show up in their bank accounts, as the expanded child tax credit goes into effect for one year. Through this program, the Child Tax Credit increased to $3,000 per child aged 6 to 17 and $3,600 per child under 6. All working families will get the full credit if they make up to $150,000 for a couple or $112,500 for a family with a single parent. The government sent payments for almost 60 million children on Thursday, totaling $15 billion.
âThis is a really big deal. In America, one in seven children lives in poverty. This measure is expected to cut that poverty nearly in half. Studies suggest that addressing childhood poverty continues to pay off over time, as it helps adults achieve higher levels of mobility.â
The American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021, was an early achievement of the Biden presidency, becoming a signature law as every Republican voted against it. A year later, researchers at the Brookings Institute found that the temporary expansion of the child tax credit lifted 3.7 million children out of poverty before it expired on December 31, 2021.
Family members did not stop working, as critics said they would. Instead, they used the money to cover routine expenses, decreasing their reliance on credit cards; had better nutrition; and made long-term investments in education for both children and parents.
Now, five years later, the results of the Republicansâ signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), passed without a single Democratic vote and signed into law last July, are revealing a very different set of priorities.
The OBBBA extended or expanded more than $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, while cutting more than $1 trillion from social welfare programs. It did increase the child tax credit, but less than it would have if Congress had just adjusted the credit based on inflation since it had set the amount in 2017. And, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute of Tax and Economic Policy, the benefits from the OBBBA measure went mostly to the richest fifth of Americans, dropping essentially to zero by the time they got to the poorest fifth.
The measure cut $187 billion in federal funding from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and on Monday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that between the passage of the OBBBA in July 2025 and March 2026âthe last month for which there is data from all statesâmore than 4 million people lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At least a quarter of those people are children. Those losses will mount in 2027âafter the midterm electionsâwhen states will have to assume much more of the costs of the program.
At the center of the difference between the Democratsâ signature bill and the Republicansâ is how the representatives of those parties see the purpose of the American government. Should it be used for the good of the American people, or to concentrate wealth and power among a few?
On July 9, Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MS NOW reported that Trumpâs appointees in the Department of Justice are overruling the career attorneys in the antitrust division who have called for reviews of how corporate mergers and acquisitions might lead to price gouging for consumers and taxpayers. Trump-appointed officials are pushing ahead without reviews designed to protect the American people from monopoly power and, in what former assistant attorney general Bill Baer called âunilateral surrender,â are not pursuing lawsuits to enforce antitrust laws.
âConsumers are getting really screwed by all of this,â a source told Leonnig and Dilanian. âWeâre talking 10 years of consumer harm that canât be undone.â
On Friday, Trump called a select group of Republicans who sit on the House Budget Committee to Camp David to put together a funding package, primarily for military funding, that they can get past Congress through budget reconciliation, a process that will not need any Democratic votes. Even the invitation to Camp David was controversial, though: Trump extended invitations to members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, but not to the more moderate Republicans on the committee. Invitations were secret, and membersâ phones were confiscated at Camp David.
Budget Committee member Erin Houchin (R-IN) told Jake Sherman of PunchBowl News that she was urging committee members to vote no on the package.
Today House Republicans released a $95 billion budget framework to provide another $73 billion for additional military funding for the war on Iran, a $12 billion bailout for farmers hurt by Trumpâs tariff wars, and $10 billion to enact aspects of the SAVE America measure Trump has been unable to convince Congress to pass.
Money for farmers was part of a sweetener to try to get Democrats on board with the measure, but it does not appear to be enough to get them to agree to fund an unpopular war and voter suppression. Representative Brendan Boyle (D-PA), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro of the Federal News Network, âIâm going to fight like hell to make sure taxpayer dollars are being used to lower costs and make life better for American families, not to bankroll Trumpâs giveaways to billionaires and endless wars overseas.â
âThis âAmerica Lastâ budget would add tens of billions more to the national debt to fund the most unpopular war in American history,â Boyle said.
Catie Edmondson of the New York Times noted that spending requests are usually dealt with through the bipartisan appropriations process, but Republicans are, once again, trying to maneuver around the Democrats to fund priorities the Democrats reject: an immigration enforcement surge that has led to two deaths at the hands of ICE agents in the past week, and the war in Iran.
Even Republicans donât appear to want to throw more money at the Iran War before the midterms, especially as the Pentagon has been opaque about the costs of the war and the White House has refused to confer with Congress about it. They also donât want to fund the unpopular voter suppression measure Trump wants, as prices for everyday Americans at the gas pump and grocery store are noticeably higher than they were a few months ago.
Representative Warren Davidson (R-OH) wrote on social media that the Republicansâ budget plan was âDOA,â or âdead on arrival.â
The deaths six days apart of two immigrants, neither one of whom was the intended target of the operation during which they were shot and killed, has rekindled the unpopularity of the administrationâs crackdown on undocumented immigrants. As protest broke out in the wake of the shooting death of Johan SebastiĂĄn DurĂĄn Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, yesterday, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), called for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to âcease all non-urgent vehicle stops.â
Collins, who is running for reelection, is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and was a key vote in the June measure that provided an additional $70 billion for immigration enforcement through 2029. As Margy OâHerron of the Brennan Center noted, $70 billion âis more than the budgets for all other federal law enforcement agencies combined, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Marshals Service.â
ICE issued a memo yesterday ordering agents to prioritize tactics other than traffic stops, prompting praise from Collins.
But at 6:45 this morning, Trump insistedâincorrectlyâthat the people ICE is rounding up are âCriminals, and we have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.âs most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminalâs hands. The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it wonât happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job. Keep those Crime Stat Records coming! Remember, you are loved and respected in America.â
The Iran War is also back on the front burner.
On Monday, Trump announced he was reimposing a blockade on Iran and that the U.S. would become the âTHE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAITâ; yesterday he reversed course, claiming that Gulf allies told him they would rather invest directly in the U.S. than pay tolls.
Last night, Barak Ravid of Axios, who often has inside information from the White House, reported that Trump yesterday held a meeting in the Situation Room with his top national security team to discuss ânew plans for devastating strikesâ against Iran. Those in the room included Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, White House special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and other senior officials, Ravid reported.
Before the meeting, Trump told the Fox News Channel that after the âhardâ strikes this week, â[n]ext week, it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. Weâre gonna knock out all their power plants. Weâre gonna knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.â
Attacks on civilian infrastructure are usually illegal under international law.
Nate Swanson, a former member of Trumpâs negotiating team, told foreign policy specialist Laura Rozen of Diplomatic that Trumpâs escalation was probably a ploy to kick-start further negotiations. âI think it is a very risky and low probability gamble, but nothing else makes senseâŠ. I donât see a feasible pathway towards military victory, nor do I believe that we can [militarily] open the Strait of Hormuz against Iranâs wishes.â
The more things change, the more they stay the same. When I wrote about the importance of the American Rescue Plan five years ago, I ended my discussion of it with the observation that âthis huge achievement of the Biden presidencyâevery single Republican voted against itâhas taken a backseat in the news to two blockbuster stories about the former president.â
What Will Trump Do To Steal The Midterms? Start With "The Unthinkable"--
My Reply To A Substack Reader's Question--
Question--
["Lance, sticking with WWII and Nazi German analogies, what are the chances that Trump will try to create tension between himself and Congress by demanding the ouster of the GA Senators (without evidence), and escalate to make a Reichstag fire event, to take away more of our rights?"]
My Reply-
What Will Trump Do To Steal The Midterms? Start With "The Unthinkable"--
["The chances are too high. My perspective is to imagine the full array of the absolute worst things he might do, and then make a plan to preempt them.
We cannot limit ourselves to litigation or cybersecurity measures. We will need election lawyers in every State Capitol, but I expect Trump to use a combo of ICE agents and his far-right militias to launch massive violence and voter intimidation at the polls, and to have the FBI at the state election boards to seize ballots. He will try to conduct mass arrests and likely declare an emergency to use the National Guard in various key places under the 1807 Act.
The danger is that we could also see significant counterviolence by provocateurs sent in as a response to whatever Trump does and even armed conflict between ICE and state or local law enforcement in blue cities. Trump will use the violence to justify deploying the military under such circumstances, which is why we have to overdeploy ourselves to keep it all non-violent on our side.
I would also make sure to have a political strategy for when Trump and Johnson try to obstruct the new Democratic Congressmen and Senators from being sworn in, not just his targeting of the Georgia Senators. For example, you know that if Talarico wins Paxton will not concede and Trump will try to install him. Johnson told an audience of MAGA Congressmen at a meeting last month that if they lose, they are going to jail. He vowed to them, "I am your protection." So the plan to suspend Congress and purge their enemies on the Reichstag Fire model is live and operational.They are telling us about their intentions.
The point I have been making is that Trump knows that if they lose both Houses he will likely be impeached again, and he with all of his top cronies prosecuted for a vast number of crimes, both for those in the past and more recently. The entirety of the Project 2025 apparatus, their think tanks and legal foundations, their corporate benefactors, can thus all be rendered vulnerable.
He is prepared to launch a civil war to survive personally. There is nothing he wouldn't do. It will be a mega-January 6th on steroids in which he'll attempt to deploy a combo of military, federal law enforcement, and his armed white supremacist militias at the polls, the state houses, and in the streets. That along with canceling mail-in votes and shredding Democratic ballots.
We should be organizing for landslide victories where we can in order to remove all doubt, not winning by a hair in close races. That depends on creative new kinds of campaign outreach, expanded operations for getting people to the polls safely through a huge turnout. The logistics of bringing voters to the polls are complicated now in places like Houston due to GOP redistricting making them farther away, and we will have to be resourceful.
We will need the full gamut of election security, with the biggest possible polling place presence by volunteers nearby to work with local police to prevent voter intimidation or violence. That will depend mostly on the level of courage and commitment by the campaign volunteers and whether they get cooperation. If I were there organizing I would be visiting every police chief and County Sheriff to talk to them in advance and get a reading on where they stand, to know what we are dealing with. Law enforcement in general voted for Trump. We don't know if they will side with his goons at the polls or not, and we should find out now, not leaving it to chance. (We'll get almost no cooperation in hard red states unless the cities have blue mayors.)
We also should be laying groundwork to launch a nationwide general strike and shut the country down if he does any these things. If I were in leadership at the DNC I would be meeting with the heads of every union and constituency-based organization to make plans. Trump should fear a US market crash and financial chaos if he voids elections and refuses to swear in the Democrats who won. Especially if he tries to jail Democratic leaders for sedition because they are all âcommunist terrorists,â and fills up detention centers with campaign activists and protesters.
Remember, we are dealing with a literal maniac with dementia and a Hitler-level cult of loyalty in which they are fully capable of doing the worst you could imagine. There will be violence. There will also be a fracturing of both parties leadership in reaction to what he does, though Trump obviously exercises great control over the GOP. His grip has weakened recently but we can't say whether or not he will have willing accomplices everywhere. There are other Brad Raffensbergers out there.
The big question mark is will the military follow orders to shoot or mass arrest their fellow Americans? Have Trump and Hegseth succeeded in purging the disloyal ones at the top? Is there still enough opposition in our national security establishment to rein him in? We don't know, that is the honest answer.
And what will the American people do? Will they be passive and give up, or retaliate against violence with more violence, or optimally be part of organizing something as a strategy which is effective and doesnât play into their hands.
First is generating the landslide. Second is protecting the voters. Third is legally defending our vote. Fourth will be our political response when they go ahead and void elections, including if necessary a nationwide general strike. Those are the things we can control, with the military being the wild card in all of this.
Blue state Governors and Mayors must be organized to arrest ICE agents at the polls and deploy their state National Guards to arrest white supremacist armed groups trying to act as "election integrity" vigilantes. The Governors of California, Illinois, New York, Minnesota and Pennsylvania in particular will have to lead the way on this and coordinate their actions.
GOP poll workers turning away minority voters based on race or gender must be arrested by local police.
It's not going to be an election. It's going to be a war, because they really are Nazis and their FĂŒhrer, who sees roughly half of American voters as his mortal enemy, is insane. Our worst response would be to just send in the lawyers and data analysts and make that our strategy. The outcome will depend on a combination of all forms of effective non-violent and constitutional actions, driven by âPeople Power.â
There is no point in sugar coating any of it. You will see Trump on TV tomorrow night in all of his psychotic hallucinatory malignant glory, and he will be telling all of us what his plan is to end free elections in America, in his typical dogwhistle Trumpspeak.
Nothing, absolutely zero about this midterm election will look like anything which has come before it. We had better get our asses in gear now.
(Photo collage: top, Pickett's Charge, a painting of Battle Of Gettysburg. Bottom, January 6th)
Star ceilings get their name from the clusters of stars painted or stamped in natural rock shelters. The stars are similar in shape, each an equal-armed cross, but may vary in size and color, black, red, or white, occasionally orange, yellow, or green. Some cave ceilings have a single star; some have a hundred imprints or more.Â
The stars are concentrated in the Canyon de Chelly area, but have been discovered throughout the Navajo heartland and the Four Corners area. Bernie hadnât heard of any near Alamo, but here it was. The very place sheâd admired in the photograph on Jonesâs desk. The moonlight enabled her to see the cluster of black stars against the pale rock. She stood beneath the decorated overhang and closed her eyes a moment. The place reverberated with the power of the ancestors and the prayers and ceremonies that helped them stay strong.
Stargazer (Leaphorn & Chee, #24)
by Anne Hillerman
I hope you get old.
I hope time is heavy on your bones, draped over you like an embrace from God.
I hope the backs of your hands become deep mapsâ
Of all the places you have been.
Dark stains where your fingers dipped into clay and dirt and mud.
I hope you get old. I hope time fills your heart with joy and triumph. I hope you have enough obstacles to teach you character and empathy and enough challenges to bestow you with uniqueness.
I hope pain shows you how strong you are and the value of a true friend.
I hope youâve been alone enough to know yourself.
I hope you find quiet more than you find chaos.
I hope you get old.
That time wraps around your legs like a desperate lover.
I hope you can look into the faces of people you have loved and cherished
and that you leave behind echos of grief,
Because you were loved in turn.
I hope you give thanks for every waking moment,
For what you have and for what you have not.
I hope you get old.
I hope you make things that last.
I hope youâve inspired people.
I hope youâve helped someone.
I hope grace rests at your feet.
I hope.
You forgive everything,
You did.
Not
Get
Quite.
Right.
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
stormborns
snowghoul
yousharknotpass