I get no satisfaction from saying ‘I told you so’ and ‘I warned you about them.’ But I did, over and over. So did many, many others, all of them far more informed and experienced in politics, reporting, and history than I. They warned about fascism. They warned about racism. They warned about criminal behaviour. They warned about the oligarchs. They warned about Project 2025. But millions of Americans ignored them and elected a convicted felon, a blatant grifter in cognitive decline who openly lied and spread disinformation and Russian propaganda. No one should be surprised that they got what they voted for.
Everything I and they warned you about is coming true, right from Day One. In the few hours since the inauguration of the convicted felon, his flurry of authoritarian and racist executive orders have set the stage: fascism is in full force in the USA. And if you think it’s bad now, wait: this is only the beginning of the terror. Margaret Atwood’s Gilead will seem like a pleasant playground in a few months.
If anyone ever doubted that was coming, Elon Musk made it clear when he made a Nazi salute during his speech (see video, below). That wasn’t a mistake: it was a clear message of what’s coming. Shadow president Musk bought the USA from his billions for a paltry sum and he will cash in on that. Musk crawled out from under his rock to make sure everyone in the world knew what his political ideology was.
Guests at Trump’s indoor inauguration (held indoors to avoid the embarrassment of small outdoor crowds) were the billionaire oligarchs who contributed millions to the event and who expect to profit even more in his regime through deregulation, tax cuts, and government handouts. If you don’t realize how this bodes ill for working Americans, you have not been paying attention these past eight years. These people attended to kiss his ring to show their willing compliance. They were there to see him initiate the corporatocracy (or kleptocracy) in which they play a major role and enrich themselves further.
Yesterday, Trump withdrew the USA from the Paris Climate Accords, making it clear he intends to trash the American environment, and with it the world’s. He withdrew the USA from the World Health Organization (WHO). Given the terrible mismanagement of the COVID pandemic under Trump in his first presidency, and the recent nominations of a quack grifter and a conspiracy cultist to health-related positions, you can see why he and his followers want to avoid the scrutiny of real medical and health professionals.
Trump’s nominees are a long list of unqualified grifters and conspiracy spreaders, some of extreme moral, sexual, and ethical disoluteness. All of whom have only one thing to recommend them: their absolute, unquestioning loyalty to Trump. Which it seems is all that the MAGA party hacks and sycophants need to support them. And some of them are so corrupt that even their nomination is a slap in the face of Americans. Trump is deliberately building a kakistocracy.
Trump pardoned 1,600 convicted criminals who were part of the Jan. 6 attempted coup to keep him in power in 2021. Many of these criminals were armed and most were violent. Trump commuted the sentences of members of the far-right domestic terrorist groups the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys who were convicted of seditious conspiracy over the Capitol riot. The rule of law has been eliminated: Trump has his Brownshirts back on the street.
Trump plans to send troops into Panama (his Rhineland move). He plans to annex Canada, forcing us to comply through economic blackmail and the threat of military force (his Anschluss move), and to invade and take over Greenland (his Sudentenland move). We saw this playbook before.
This time, however, our allies will be too busy to come to our aid: fighting Putin’s invasion of eastern Europe, the Baltic States, and Poland to rebuild Stalin’s empire, as well as Xi’s invasion of Taiwan and maybe Vietnam. North Korea is likely to invade the south. India may invade Pakistan and Nepal. The dictators are working in concert to bring about the totalitarian world order. Never doubt this was the plan right from the start.
And let me warn you again: Trump’s mini-mes and mimics in other countries will try to repeat his actions, his successes, to bring about the end of democracy in their nations. Pierre PoiLIEvre will do it in Canada (Danielle Smith is doing it in Alberta on her own). None of them care about democracy, rights, laws, justice, or freedom. They care about power, money, and controlling others. And if you support them or vote for the parties they lead, you are a traitor to those ideals, to democracy, and your own nation.
You have been warned. Democracy has died and fascism is already established in the USA. It will come to Canada, too, if you vote for PoiLIEvre and his Maple MAGA.
Canada deserves better.
Notes:
Trump’s second arrival in the White House marks a shift in political economy. We’re entering the Age of Aggression – a new era in political economy. After WW2 we had the Age of Compassion. Neoliberalism was the Age of Indifference. Now we have naked force taking control.
Words: 907
My mood today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me-Dsiz5EyQ
Rachel Maddow on Dr. Mehmet Oz: Five things about Trump’s pick to lead Medicare & Medicaid Services
How much will Americans get to know about the people Donald Trump is choosing to run the U.S. government? In the absence of any real vetting the way it’s usually done, Rachel Maddow presents a Rachel Maddow Show Public Servant Announcement to hopefully help fill that gap. In this episode, Rachel takes a closer look at Trump’s choice for administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who brings the endorsement of “magic” pills to what has been called “the most challenging technical, policy and political job in government,” and questionable business ties to a job that oversees over a trillion dollars a year.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-orders-federal-diversity-equity-inclusion-employees-placed-paid-rcna188679
Trump orders all federal diversity, equity and inclusion employees placed on paid leave starting Wednesday
The Trump administration also directed government agencies to draw up plans for firing workers in DEI roles.
The Trump administration is ordering all federal employees in diversity, equity and inclusion roles placed on paid leave by Wednesday evening, according to a new memo from the Office of Personnel Management.
The memo, issued Tuesday to heads of departments and agencies, sets a deadline of no later than 5 p.m. ET Wednesday to inform the employees that they will be put on paid administrative leave as the agencies prepare to close all DEI-related offices and programs and to remove all websites and social media accounts for such offices.
It also asks federal agencies to submit a written plan by Jan. 31 for dismissing the employees.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/22/howard-lutnick-secretary-commerce-nominee
From crypto bro to commerce secretary pick: Howard Lutnick’s glaring conflict of interest
Trump’s choice shows how his friends and their business interests benefit from policy positions in his administration.
As senators contemplate Lutnick’s confirmation in coming weeks, they will be asked to allow one of banking’s bitcoin barons to lead an agency with an important role in the cryptocurrency world. The commerce department shapes both domestic economic and international trade policy, and has a “big impacton the crypto industry”, said Tonya M Evans, a law professor at Penn State specializing in fintech and author of Digital Money Demystified. She added that the conflict of interest should bring people pause.
“Ultimately, it’s important that the public’s trust and confidence in our leadership is not undermined by serious conflicts or even the hint of impropriety,” she said. “Trust in government – like crypto – is very low. And the industry has a golden opportunity to recast crypto’s image. Clear, ethical governance is critical, not just for innovation but for the long-term stability of the crypto economy and US economy more broadly.”
Lutnick’s relationship with crypto signals how things may change. The Biden administration has regulated, with the huge fraud of FTX, once one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, and the fall of its disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried, at the top of their minds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zWmcMcajQI
Lawrence: You can be guilty of using child pornography and Trump will pardon you for Jan. 6
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell details how racist and misogynist felon Donald Trump is lowering the standard “from hiring to truth telling” to pardons that “no other president in history would ever consider,” including a child pornography user who attacked police on January 6th and the world’s biggest drug dealer.
https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/trump-signs-muslim-ban-20-and-hundreds
Trump Signs Muslim Ban 2.0 & Hundreds More Destructive EOs
Summarizing the most destructive & hypocritical of Trump’s 200+ Executive Orders and what actions we can take to fight back
Trump’s presidency began with a sweeping Executive Order to rescind every single one of Biden’s Executive Orders, with no consideration for their individual merit or the impact of their repeal. In this action, there was no assessment of whether these policies were beneficial or effective—only the presumption that they were inherently flawed simply because they bore Biden’s signature. This is not the mark of thoughtful governance or collaborative leadership; it is the act of someone wielding power unilaterally, a stark reminder that Trump’s presidency is not about serving as a leader for all but about imposing his will as an autocrat.
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/hitler-pardoned-his-goons-too
Hitler Pardoned His Goons Too
Trump’s Actions’ Parallels with Germany 1935
Released from long sentences for seditious conspiracy by the mercy of Donald Trump, the leaders of the January 6 insurrection are flush with triumph and vengeful purpose. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys whom Trump pardoned for his 22-year sentence, proclaimed, “The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted. Success is going to be retribution.” Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, sentenced to 18 years, lobbied for full pardons for the 14 offenders, including himself, who received only commutations. He left jail a free man and immediately sketched out his plan to investigate police witnesses and prosecutors “on up the chain.”
Tarrio added, with perhaps the most inappropriate words ever spoken by a pardoned convict: “Now it’s our turn.”
It was the abuses at Hohnstein Concentration Camp—an early detention center for communists and other political prisoners—that were too savage and notorious to ignore. In 1935, local prosecutors brought 23 SA guards at the camp to trial on charges of torture and brutal mistreatment, including widespread “suiciding” of prisoners. The SA defendants were all convicted and sentenced to prison.
Within a year, they were all out, released on Hitler’s orders. After the trial, senior Nazi officials demanded their release and acquittal. Then, in November 1935, Hitler pardoned every last one of the convicted men. It was a brutal demonstration of his domination of the judiciary and a key benchmark in his complete conquest of the rule of law in Germany—one that paved the way for his unchecked rule and thirst for world domination.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-power-grab-executive-orders-birthright-citizenship-tiktok-constitution
Trump’s Power Grab
When you’re the president, they let you do it.
IN THE FIRST THREE DAYS OF HIS SECOND TERM, President Donald J. Trump has signed a tsunami of executive orders and proclamations revoking Biden-era policies and forging frighteningly aggressive new ones. They span a range of issues that the Constitution largely puts in the hands of Congress—energy and the climate, immigration, affirmative action, LGBTQ+ rights, police brutality, private prisons, civil servants, terrorism, health, and domestic military deployment—not to mention a reprieve for TikTok, security clearances granted with no vetting, and pardons and commutations for the January 6th convicts and defendants.
It will take weeks to work through the legal and policy implications of all these executive actions. The Trump team’s obvious strategy is to so overwhelm litigants, the media, the public, Congress, and the courts that nobody really has a handle on the entirety of what’s hitting us.
One thing is already clear, though: Trump is blatantly violating established federal law, knowing that there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Trump is the law now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjyuOui3Riw
Republicans move to enable THIRD TERM for racist and misogynist convicted felon Trump.
I told you so…
https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-price-of-speaking-up-in-trumps
The Price of Speaking Up in Trump’s America
A bishop asked the president to show mercy to immigrants and scared children. The response tells us everything about the next four years.
On Tuesday morning at Washington’s National Cathedral, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde did something remarkable: she looked directly at the president of the United States and asked for mercy. It became a bit of a viral moment.
The response was swift and severe. Trump himself attacked her on Truth Social, calling her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” and demanding an apology. He told reporters the service was “not too exciting” and that organizers “could do much better.”
But that was just the beginning. Right-wing media launched an all-out assault on Budde that revealed exactly how power plans to deal with dissent in Trump’s second term. Fox News host Greg Gutfeld literally called her “Satan.” His colleague Sean Hannity described it as a “disgraceful prayer full of fearmongering and division.” Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones called Budde’s words “radical leftist.” The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh declared that “hell exists for people like Mariann” and called her “exhibit A for why women should not be pastors, priests, or bishops.”
Even members of Congress got in on the act, with one Republican suggesting that the American-born bishop should be “added to the deportation list.”
Naturally, with conservative audiences fully whipped into a fury, Budde says she began receiving wishes for her death.
All of this—the full machinery of right-wing outrage—deployed against a religious leader who simply asked for kindness toward vulnerable people. The disproportionate response tells us exactly what we’re dealing with.
https://acoup.blog/2025/01/31/collections-on-the-gracchi-part-ii-gaius-gracchus/
…ancient tyrants did not demolish the apparatus of the state and declare themselves kings. Instead, they subverted the state to run its affairs extra-constitutionally: the courts still functioned, the assemblies still met, councils still voted but one man controlled everything through a web of cronies, clients and the threat of force.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/three-cheers-socialism
Three Cheers for Socialism
Just as absurd in its way, though perhaps more morally distasteful, was a column by Tom Rogan in the Washington Examiner repeating certain fashionable neoliberal lies about European, Canadian, and Oceanian health care—long delays in triage, shortages, lack of choice among physicians, and so forth.
Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like “socialism” and “capitalism.”
https://www.muskwatch.com/p/musk-associates-given-unfettered
Musk associates given unfettered access to private data of government employees
The Musk-connected political hires include two recent high school graduates
Several of Elon Musk’s associates installed at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have received unprecedented access to federal human resources databases containing sensitive personal information for millions of federal employees. According to two members of OPM staff with direct knowledge, the Musk team running OPM has the ability to extract information from databases that store medical histories, personally identifiable information, workplace evaluations, and other private data. The staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared professional retaliation. Musk Watch also reviewed internal OPM correspondence confirming that expansive access to the database was provided to Musk associates.
The arrangement presents acute privacy and security risks, one of the OPM staffers said.
Among the government outsiders granted entry to the OPM databases is University of California Berkeley student Akash Bobba, a software engineer who graduated high school less than three years ago. He previously interned at Meta and Palantir, a technology firm chaired by Musk-ally and fellow South African-born billionaire Peter Thiel. Edward Coristine, another 2022 high school graduate and former software engineering intern at Musk’s Neuralink, has also been given access to the databases.
https://www.avindman.com/p/hostile-takeover
Hostile Takeover
“Department of Government Efficiency” Hijacks The Federal Government
Make no mistake, what’s happening right now is a hostile takeover of the federal government by a private agency operating with a broad mandate and no concerns for the stability of the United States or the interests of the average American. It’s easier to break than it is to build, and Elon Musk’s agenda is focused on unraveling America’s governing institutions. When – not if – a preventable disaster is enabled by the Department of Government Efficiency’s decision to destroy a function of government in the name of “fighting wokeness”, there will be a reckoning for the damage Elon Musk has done.
https://us.cnn.com/2025/02/02/politics/usaid-officials-leave-musk-doge/index.html
Elon Musk said Donald Trump agreed USAID needs to be ‘shut down’
Musk said he checked with Trump “a few times” and Trump confirmed he wants to shut down the agency, which dispenses billions in humanitarian aid and development funding annually.
Sunday evening, before the X Spaces conversation, when asked for comment on USAID, Trump told reporters: “It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision” on its future.
Musk’s comments come after two top security officials at USAID were put on administrative leave Saturday night for refusing members of the Department of Government Efficiency access to systems at the agency, even when DOGE personnel threatened to call law enforcement, multiple sources familiar with the situation told CNN.
Around 60 senior USAID staff were put on leave last week on accusations of attempting to circumvent Trump’s executive order to freeze foreign aid for 90 days. Another senior official was put on leave for trying to reverse that move after finding no evidence of wrongdoing.
In the X Spaces conversation early Monday, which he co-hosted with Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Vivek Ramaswamy – who was initially named co-chair of DOGE with Musk but has since left – the X owner called USAID “incredibly politically partisan” and said it has been supporting “radically left causes throughout the world including things that are anti-American.”
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-destruction
The Logic of Destruction
And how to resist it
What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. America exists because its people elect those who make and execute laws. The assumption of a democracy is that individuals have dignity and rights that they realize and protect by acting together.
The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to dominate.
For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions.
The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who provide them with services are conspirators within a “deep state.” We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes.
All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now. The federal government has immense capacity and control over trillions of dollars. That power was a cocreation of the American people. It belongs to them. The oligarchs around Trump are working now to take it for themselves.
Theirs is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large, legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. The destruction is the point. They don’t want to control the existing order. They want disorder in which their relative power will grow.
https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/a-coup-is-in-progress-in-america
A Coup is In Progress in America
This is not hyperbole or exaggeration. The constitution of the United States is not operating. This is a grim moment in American and world history.
A coup is underway in the United States, and we must stop pretending otherwise. The signs are unmistakable and accelerating: In just the past 48 hours, Elon Musk’s DOGE commission has seized control of Treasury payment systems and gained unauthorized access to classified USAID materials, while security officials who followed protocols were removed. Career civil servants across agencies are being systematically purged for having followed legal requirements during previous administrations. The president openly declares he won’t enforce laws he dislikes, while Congress watches in complicit silence. This isn’t happening through tanks in the streets or soldiers at government buildings—it’s occurring through the systematic dismantling of constitutional governance and its replacement with a system of personal loyalty to private interests. Those who resist are being removed, while those who enable this transformation are being rewarded with unprecedented control over government functions. The time for euphemisms and careful hedging has passed. We are watching, in real time, the conversion of constitutional democracy into something darker and more dangerous. To pretend otherwise isn’t prudence—it’s complicity.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/doge-noaa-headquarters
Doge staffers enter Noaa headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats
Members sought access to IT systems at agency that Project 2025 has called ‘harmful to US prosperity’
Staffers with Shadow President Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington DC today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency.
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.”
Project 2025, the neoNazi blueprint written by several former Trump staffers, has called for the agency to be “broken up and downsized”, claiming the agency is “harmful to US prosperity” for its role in climate science.
https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/the-coup-detat-has-begun
The Coup d’État Has Begun
Trump believes that this is actually his country and can do whatever the fuck he wants to it. Like Gaza, he owns it.
He has also announced his desire to defund and shut down the United Nations. He hopes to exit NATO. He has already removed the United States from the World Health Organization. Let me be very clear about this one. A worldwide bird flu epidemic seems to have begun.
A couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives. Using technical jargon and vague references to orders from on high, they gain access to the basic computer systems of the federal government. Having done so, they proceed to grant their Supreme Leader access to information and the power to start and stop all government payments.
That coup is, in fact, happening. And if we do not recognize it for what it is, it could succeed.