I just have to hope, that, if we get through to the other side of this cruel and feculent "administration" that the "unitary executive theory" will be recognized for the only thing that it is is, a euphemism for dictatorship.
Trump is not crazy; he has a plan. Counterintuitively, seems like those who understand the markets the best are the least likely to help us understand what is going on with the tariff mess. Senator Chris Murphy has been putting all energy into countering Trump and has figured out what he is doing. Sharing here, because it makes a lot of crazy stuff make sense, and it might just help us all to get on the same page in resistance.
Chris Murphy: Donald Trump’s plan to convert our democracy to autocracy is real, and I want to talk through how he’s doing this in real time because the crisis is here now.
Trump is enacting an insidious coordinated attack on the institutions that keep our government accountable to the people, designed to crater democracy before next fall. MAGA has given up on democracy. I wish it weren't true, but it is. They would rather rule forever than run a fair election where a Democrat might win.
Ending democracy is required to get away with the thievery and corruption happening before us. A true democracy would hold Trump accountable for the mass-scale corruption — Trump’s crypto coin, the insider trading, Musk’s self-dealing, etc.
Some people are looking for some high-stakes confrontation between Trump and the Supreme Court. They think that will be the five-alarm fire moment, and some believe it’s here with Trump defying their ruling on the Abrego Garcia case. Don’t get me wrong — I’m furious about the disappearances, which I spoke out against early when the Columbia grad student was taken without due process. It’s what happens in tin-pot dictatorships.
But a confrontation with the Supreme Court is not the endgame. The modern, time-tested way to destroy a democracy is NOT a coup or burning down the Parliament or a public confrontation with the judiciary.
It's a slow, methodical campaign to weaken the structures of accountability necessary for the political opposition to win elections. That was the playbook for Putin in Russia, Orbán in Hungary, and Erdoğan in Turkey, and Trump is copying it before our eyes.
Here’s how it works:
ELEMENT 1: They legitimize political violence to keep critics silent. That's what the Jan. 6 pardons are about. This week, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski spoke publicly about her worries of "retaliation.” That is chilling.
ELEMENT 2: They silence the press. Trump does this in two ways. First, he co-opts the owners of the media and information ecosystems (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc.). Those who don’t fall in line get harassed. That’s what’s happening with the AP over their refusal to use "Gulf of America" or FCC investigations into broadcasters like CBS.
ELEMENT 3: They silence protectors of the rule of law. In free societies, lawyers guard our rights. Despots can more easily trample our rights if the lawyers are silenced. That's why Trump is forcing the big law firms to sign what amounts to loyalty oaths.
ELEMENT 4: They silence universities. Two things that threaten their power happen on university campuses: youth protest and the guarding of objective truth. Neither is allowed in an autocracy. Thus, Trump’s illegal campaign to force campuses to crush dissent or be punished.
ELEMENT 5: They silence the private sector. The tariffs are a means to force every business to get on Trump's good side and stop public dissent in exchange for relief from his regime. Withholding of federal funds from non-profits forces these orgs to stay quiet too.
ELEMENT 6: They cut off funding for the opposition. Autocrats like Orban allow the opposition to exist, but starve it. Trump is moving to shut down non-profits and donor collectives that oppose his policies. They’re also targeting ActBlue because they know a huge source of our opposition’s ability to compete with their billionaire and corporate funding comes from small-dollar donations from people like you.
This is all happening so fast that it's hard for the public to see it all as part of one plan. But it is.
The press, lawyers, colleges and opposition political groups don't have to be destroyed for this plan to work. They just have to be weakened enough so the tools of accountability don't work anymore. The press can't tell enough truth. The lawyers won't protect our rights. Campus protests disappear. Opposition funding dries up.
That’s how they can move us to fake elections, where the regime always wins.
I know that sounds like a lot of doom and gloom, but I still believe we can stop it, and here’s how:
First, we need solidarity. Each set of institutions can't let the regime pick them off from each other. The legal profession failed miserably at this, but universities can model a collective strategy to fight back and win. We see some people trying that now with the proposed Big Ten Academic Alliance.
Second, we need mass mobilization. When hundreds of thousands of people rally against this kind of assault on democracy, history shows it works. There is a strange, magic power to mass activation that makes supporters of the regime start to jump ship. The public pressure matters.
Third, political leaders need to take risks. No citizen will take the risk to mobilize if their leaders are playing it safe.
This means speaking daily truth to the regime and taking tactical risks — like voting against the Republican government funding bill or boycotting the State of the Union would have been had enough other leaders joined my efforts.
I believe those three steps, taken together, can arrest Trump's assault. But if it doesn't, then we’ll need civil disobedience. This conversation will need to happen sooner than many of us may be comfortable with.
The bottom line is we still have the power, but we probably have less time than most think.
I can see that this is the plan, just don't see Trump as the mastermind. It would take too much effort and would interfere with his photo ops, social media posts and golf. Orban has provided the road map and zealots like Stephen Miller and Russell Vought are the visionaries and implementers.
They definitely coordinated Project 2025. Miller and Vought were contributors, now in the administration to put it into effect. It's like we're screaming into the void.
That New Statesmen article was extraordinary. Its summation of how the world we live in has been systematically rejecting the best parts of what Pope Francis stood for – that hit hard.
sadly, the far right has contaminated the Catholic church ; it flourished under Benedict. I knew there were factions within the church that hated Vatican II, but didn't really understand why. I grew up Catholic when the Tridentine mass was the only mass. To me it represents the separation of the church. The priests have their backs to the congregation , the mass is in Latin and mumbled in my experiences , and the refusal to recognize other religions (I was a Girl Scout, every year we went to a different service and I was angry that the parish priest told me it would be a sin .( 1950s)
While mid-terms can't happen soon enough, 11/'26 will be too late. This delusional megalomaniac doesn't care about midterms because by then he will have conquered the country. His base is 30% of the GOP? Likely 30% of the congressional GOP are probably likewise true believers. The rest of the GOP mollifies by saying, 'well, yeah, I want more government efficiency' (even though our govt was, until recently, a truly efficient, stable one), or 'well, yeah, I want our borders secure' (even though they really were). And they ALL want to be re-elected, regardless at what cost to the country, so kissing Orange's ass will guarantee them proximity to power they all crave, and the wealth that comes with it. Which means they will have chucked what was once the greatest country the world has ever known long before midterms.
i think some part of the right is obsessed with the "good king" concept and so imagines the unitary executive is just the thing we need.... yet i think the founding fathers felt no king was going to be good enough and tried to make the presidency as weak as possible. for a 2-bit farm nation -- they might have had it about right. for the leader of the free world including the political and economic dimensions of it -- way wrong. presidents should have far less power, that seems obvious now. in fact its probably always been true and dear fake conservatives -- he who pays the bills has the ultimate authority. the pres does not pay the bills, it's congress ... so the president can't fire or hire without congress in the way. sorry president nincompoop.
Every time I read about the latest Ron Johnson eruption, I curse the Democratic primary voters of Wisconsin once more for nominating the one guy that this blithering idiot could beat in the last election for senator.
They rightly assumed that if this is truly a small "L" liberal society that they shouldn't have to give up most of what they want in a representative just to bribe conservative people into not voting for fascists and crazies. Further they intuited that if they have to resort to that then it isn't a liberal society anyway and all this democracy stuff is just for show. That means it isn't worth saving for its own sake. In fact saving a potemkin democracy is counter productive if the goal is a more small "L" liberal society since it just provides legitimacy for the fascists and crazies and the authoritarians who support them.
What you call "bribery" I call "compromise": the contempt for it in your post only demonstrates everything that your end of the horseshoe has in common with the other side's.
How does one compromise with a fascist party and its supporters? Agree to use a gas that puts people to sleep peacefully rather than painfully?
Old Biden tried for 4 years and got nowhere. Chamberlain tried it in 38 and Hindenburg tried before that but it blew up in their faces too. I'm still trying to figure out the logic of compromise with fascists here against all evidence. Maybe you can explain what I'm missing. Or are we persisting in the stubborn delusion that the Republican party isn't a fascist party?
"Fascist" is a term that quickly loses its power when it's applied in a context where it's demonstrably absurd. The situation in which the same electorate, including people you dismiss as "fascists" both times, re-elected both Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson is a textbook example of the point.
"Political malpractice" on the other hand, is a term that's easily applied on the basis of evidence, and a powerful, all too often dominant, wing of the Wisconsin Democratic Party's response to THAT is always "hold my beer!"
The FIRST recall attempt against Scott Walker was a disturbing demonstration of the group's refusal to accept election results that didn't go their way, not "fascist" certainly, but not a reassuring sign of any real reverence for democracy, either. I observed it close-up from just over the border in Illinois, and was appalled. The SECOND recall attempt, though, was pure suicidal lunacy, a great example of Mitch McConnell's "second kick of the mule", and with the same lack of educational value. Even by the light of the bonfire that they made of their own credibility, they couldn't see their way to learn from it, and so gave RonJon six more years to make mischief and embarrass the state.
One of the facts of political life in the historically Center-Right leaning United States seems to be that, if the parties give probable voters two choices repugnant enough that they have to hold their nose to vote for either, they'll vote for the less left-leaning one. And yet with all their history, that's exactly what the Wisconsin Democrats chose to do. If I'd been a Wisconsin voter, I would have held my nose, voted for Barnes, and tried not to throw up until I was out of the booth, because I DO believe the RonJon is even worse -- but I can understand people for whom that was too much to ask. I don't agree, but I do understand.
And all that is fine when the other party shares a belief in liberal democracy. This one does not. The people who can't fathom voting for Mandela Barnes who aren't fascists could have easily voted in the Dem primary to move the midpoint of the party. They did not. I am forced to conclude they like what the Republicans are selling better which colors who they are in my opinion even if they aren't goose-stepping to the polls.
I'm not interested in propping up a sham democracy for them by pretending to have their interests in exchange for them to deign to back the pro liberal democracy candidate. If they want better Dem candidates they can get off their ass and vote in a Dem primary and canvass and donate to Dem candidates. I can see why the Wisconsin Dems weren't interested in mollycoddling them either. They were both lazy and morally reprehensibile and they're in the process of getting exactly what they deserve. And since they evidently are America's heart and soul America is getting exactly what it deserves too.
So anybody who disagrees with you is a fascist who doesn't believe in liberal democracy, and anytime your candidate loses that's more proof of "sham democracy" that's unworthy of your support. That DOES have the virtue of being a simple answer, and so spares you the trouble of having to think much about hard ideas. Like most simple answers it's wrong, as Bill Clinton warned, but you've made up your mind, so I won't annoy you with further arguments. It's just too bad that your answer doesn't seem to make you very happy.
As the stock market race to the bottom accelerates there is no reason why the elites would choose not to participate in the classic pump and dump schemes now afoot. Fortunes are being made in the transfer of wealth from the 401k accounts of working stiffs into the accounts of said elites. I doubt we will be treated to the spectacle of billionaires leaping from tall buildings as we saw in 1929 - pity, the more likely scenario has them departing for their playgrounds aboard their private jets while the hoi polloi attempt to pick up the pieces. YMMV. In the meantime The Don will be bleating about short term pain for long term gain as he contemplates the exit strategy perfected during his many bankruptcies - company, country, they are spelled the same are they not?
The Canadian Conservative leader is sounding very desperate in the week leading up to the election. Full embrace of the far right today vowing to end woke ideology in Canada and to provide federal funding to far right online "news" organizations.
Ah, the great Sam Alito. He comes out and says it is not ‘normal’ for the SCOTUS to issue midnight rulings. He is correct. But guess what Sam, nothing about Trump or these times is ‘normal’. That ship has sailed and you helped it. Maybe the other Supremes have finally recognized this. But you and Clarence are just fine with responding to the not normal Trump with normal Court responses.
Let's compare "a heck off a job Brownie" uttered by President Bush as New Orleans was underwater after Katrina, with "The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegsworth" as our Chinese and Russian friends know all of the intricate secrets of our defense establishment and strategy"
Duh
Oil tanks and now Putin is telling Europe what his terms are via his mouth piece, the USA.
I just have to hope, that, if we get through to the other side of this cruel and feculent "administration" that the "unitary executive theory" will be recognized for the only thing that it is is, a euphemism for dictatorship.
Essentially a Mafia State like Saddam Hussain's Iraq
Trump is not crazy; he has a plan. Counterintuitively, seems like those who understand the markets the best are the least likely to help us understand what is going on with the tariff mess. Senator Chris Murphy has been putting all energy into countering Trump and has figured out what he is doing. Sharing here, because it makes a lot of crazy stuff make sense, and it might just help us all to get on the same page in resistance.
Chris Murphy: Donald Trump’s plan to convert our democracy to autocracy is real, and I want to talk through how he’s doing this in real time because the crisis is here now.
Trump is enacting an insidious coordinated attack on the institutions that keep our government accountable to the people, designed to crater democracy before next fall. MAGA has given up on democracy. I wish it weren't true, but it is. They would rather rule forever than run a fair election where a Democrat might win.
Ending democracy is required to get away with the thievery and corruption happening before us. A true democracy would hold Trump accountable for the mass-scale corruption — Trump’s crypto coin, the insider trading, Musk’s self-dealing, etc.
Some people are looking for some high-stakes confrontation between Trump and the Supreme Court. They think that will be the five-alarm fire moment, and some believe it’s here with Trump defying their ruling on the Abrego Garcia case. Don’t get me wrong — I’m furious about the disappearances, which I spoke out against early when the Columbia grad student was taken without due process. It’s what happens in tin-pot dictatorships.
But a confrontation with the Supreme Court is not the endgame. The modern, time-tested way to destroy a democracy is NOT a coup or burning down the Parliament or a public confrontation with the judiciary.
It's a slow, methodical campaign to weaken the structures of accountability necessary for the political opposition to win elections. That was the playbook for Putin in Russia, Orbán in Hungary, and Erdoğan in Turkey, and Trump is copying it before our eyes.
Here’s how it works:
ELEMENT 1: They legitimize political violence to keep critics silent. That's what the Jan. 6 pardons are about. This week, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski spoke publicly about her worries of "retaliation.” That is chilling.
ELEMENT 2: They silence the press. Trump does this in two ways. First, he co-opts the owners of the media and information ecosystems (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc.). Those who don’t fall in line get harassed. That’s what’s happening with the AP over their refusal to use "Gulf of America" or FCC investigations into broadcasters like CBS.
ELEMENT 3: They silence protectors of the rule of law. In free societies, lawyers guard our rights. Despots can more easily trample our rights if the lawyers are silenced. That's why Trump is forcing the big law firms to sign what amounts to loyalty oaths.
ELEMENT 4: They silence universities. Two things that threaten their power happen on university campuses: youth protest and the guarding of objective truth. Neither is allowed in an autocracy. Thus, Trump’s illegal campaign to force campuses to crush dissent or be punished.
ELEMENT 5: They silence the private sector. The tariffs are a means to force every business to get on Trump's good side and stop public dissent in exchange for relief from his regime. Withholding of federal funds from non-profits forces these orgs to stay quiet too.
ELEMENT 6: They cut off funding for the opposition. Autocrats like Orban allow the opposition to exist, but starve it. Trump is moving to shut down non-profits and donor collectives that oppose his policies. They’re also targeting ActBlue because they know a huge source of our opposition’s ability to compete with their billionaire and corporate funding comes from small-dollar donations from people like you.
This is all happening so fast that it's hard for the public to see it all as part of one plan. But it is.
The press, lawyers, colleges and opposition political groups don't have to be destroyed for this plan to work. They just have to be weakened enough so the tools of accountability don't work anymore. The press can't tell enough truth. The lawyers won't protect our rights. Campus protests disappear. Opposition funding dries up.
That’s how they can move us to fake elections, where the regime always wins.
I know that sounds like a lot of doom and gloom, but I still believe we can stop it, and here’s how:
First, we need solidarity. Each set of institutions can't let the regime pick them off from each other. The legal profession failed miserably at this, but universities can model a collective strategy to fight back and win. We see some people trying that now with the proposed Big Ten Academic Alliance.
Second, we need mass mobilization. When hundreds of thousands of people rally against this kind of assault on democracy, history shows it works. There is a strange, magic power to mass activation that makes supporters of the regime start to jump ship. The public pressure matters.
Third, political leaders need to take risks. No citizen will take the risk to mobilize if their leaders are playing it safe.
This means speaking daily truth to the regime and taking tactical risks — like voting against the Republican government funding bill or boycotting the State of the Union would have been had enough other leaders joined my efforts.
I believe those three steps, taken together, can arrest Trump's assault. But if it doesn't, then we’ll need civil disobedience. This conversation will need to happen sooner than many of us may be comfortable with.
The bottom line is we still have the power, but we probably have less time than most think.
Every best wish,
Chris Murphy
"
I can see that this is the plan, just don't see Trump as the mastermind. It would take too much effort and would interfere with his photo ops, social media posts and golf. Orban has provided the road map and zealots like Stephen Miller and Russell Vought are the visionaries and implementers.
Heritage Foundation is the mastermind.
They definitely coordinated Project 2025. Miller and Vought were contributors, now in the administration to put it into effect. It's like we're screaming into the void.
It's about fucking time , where have they been....
That New Statesmen article was extraordinary. Its summation of how the world we live in has been systematically rejecting the best parts of what Pope Francis stood for – that hit hard.
sadly, the far right has contaminated the Catholic church ; it flourished under Benedict. I knew there were factions within the church that hated Vatican II, but didn't really understand why. I grew up Catholic when the Tridentine mass was the only mass. To me it represents the separation of the church. The priests have their backs to the congregation , the mass is in Latin and mumbled in my experiences , and the refusal to recognize other religions (I was a Girl Scout, every year we went to a different service and I was angry that the parish priest told me it would be a sin .( 1950s)
While mid-terms can't happen soon enough, 11/'26 will be too late. This delusional megalomaniac doesn't care about midterms because by then he will have conquered the country. His base is 30% of the GOP? Likely 30% of the congressional GOP are probably likewise true believers. The rest of the GOP mollifies by saying, 'well, yeah, I want more government efficiency' (even though our govt was, until recently, a truly efficient, stable one), or 'well, yeah, I want our borders secure' (even though they really were). And they ALL want to be re-elected, regardless at what cost to the country, so kissing Orange's ass will guarantee them proximity to power they all crave, and the wealth that comes with it. Which means they will have chucked what was once the greatest country the world has ever known long before midterms.
i think some part of the right is obsessed with the "good king" concept and so imagines the unitary executive is just the thing we need.... yet i think the founding fathers felt no king was going to be good enough and tried to make the presidency as weak as possible. for a 2-bit farm nation -- they might have had it about right. for the leader of the free world including the political and economic dimensions of it -- way wrong. presidents should have far less power, that seems obvious now. in fact its probably always been true and dear fake conservatives -- he who pays the bills has the ultimate authority. the pres does not pay the bills, it's congress ... so the president can't fire or hire without congress in the way. sorry president nincompoop.
Don’t feel bad at least you didn’t have a dream that Donald J Trump was your boyfriend
Every time I read about the latest Ron Johnson eruption, I curse the Democratic primary voters of Wisconsin once more for nominating the one guy that this blithering idiot could beat in the last election for senator.
They rightly assumed that if this is truly a small "L" liberal society that they shouldn't have to give up most of what they want in a representative just to bribe conservative people into not voting for fascists and crazies. Further they intuited that if they have to resort to that then it isn't a liberal society anyway and all this democracy stuff is just for show. That means it isn't worth saving for its own sake. In fact saving a potemkin democracy is counter productive if the goal is a more small "L" liberal society since it just provides legitimacy for the fascists and crazies and the authoritarians who support them.
What you call "bribery" I call "compromise": the contempt for it in your post only demonstrates everything that your end of the horseshoe has in common with the other side's.
How does one compromise with a fascist party and its supporters? Agree to use a gas that puts people to sleep peacefully rather than painfully?
Old Biden tried for 4 years and got nowhere. Chamberlain tried it in 38 and Hindenburg tried before that but it blew up in their faces too. I'm still trying to figure out the logic of compromise with fascists here against all evidence. Maybe you can explain what I'm missing. Or are we persisting in the stubborn delusion that the Republican party isn't a fascist party?
"Fascist" is a term that quickly loses its power when it's applied in a context where it's demonstrably absurd. The situation in which the same electorate, including people you dismiss as "fascists" both times, re-elected both Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson is a textbook example of the point.
"Political malpractice" on the other hand, is a term that's easily applied on the basis of evidence, and a powerful, all too often dominant, wing of the Wisconsin Democratic Party's response to THAT is always "hold my beer!"
The FIRST recall attempt against Scott Walker was a disturbing demonstration of the group's refusal to accept election results that didn't go their way, not "fascist" certainly, but not a reassuring sign of any real reverence for democracy, either. I observed it close-up from just over the border in Illinois, and was appalled. The SECOND recall attempt, though, was pure suicidal lunacy, a great example of Mitch McConnell's "second kick of the mule", and with the same lack of educational value. Even by the light of the bonfire that they made of their own credibility, they couldn't see their way to learn from it, and so gave RonJon six more years to make mischief and embarrass the state.
One of the facts of political life in the historically Center-Right leaning United States seems to be that, if the parties give probable voters two choices repugnant enough that they have to hold their nose to vote for either, they'll vote for the less left-leaning one. And yet with all their history, that's exactly what the Wisconsin Democrats chose to do. If I'd been a Wisconsin voter, I would have held my nose, voted for Barnes, and tried not to throw up until I was out of the booth, because I DO believe the RonJon is even worse -- but I can understand people for whom that was too much to ask. I don't agree, but I do understand.
And all that is fine when the other party shares a belief in liberal democracy. This one does not. The people who can't fathom voting for Mandela Barnes who aren't fascists could have easily voted in the Dem primary to move the midpoint of the party. They did not. I am forced to conclude they like what the Republicans are selling better which colors who they are in my opinion even if they aren't goose-stepping to the polls.
I'm not interested in propping up a sham democracy for them by pretending to have their interests in exchange for them to deign to back the pro liberal democracy candidate. If they want better Dem candidates they can get off their ass and vote in a Dem primary and canvass and donate to Dem candidates. I can see why the Wisconsin Dems weren't interested in mollycoddling them either. They were both lazy and morally reprehensibile and they're in the process of getting exactly what they deserve. And since they evidently are America's heart and soul America is getting exactly what it deserves too.
So anybody who disagrees with you is a fascist who doesn't believe in liberal democracy, and anytime your candidate loses that's more proof of "sham democracy" that's unworthy of your support. That DOES have the virtue of being a simple answer, and so spares you the trouble of having to think much about hard ideas. Like most simple answers it's wrong, as Bill Clinton warned, but you've made up your mind, so I won't annoy you with further arguments. It's just too bad that your answer doesn't seem to make you very happy.
As the stock market race to the bottom accelerates there is no reason why the elites would choose not to participate in the classic pump and dump schemes now afoot. Fortunes are being made in the transfer of wealth from the 401k accounts of working stiffs into the accounts of said elites. I doubt we will be treated to the spectacle of billionaires leaping from tall buildings as we saw in 1929 - pity, the more likely scenario has them departing for their playgrounds aboard their private jets while the hoi polloi attempt to pick up the pieces. YMMV. In the meantime The Don will be bleating about short term pain for long term gain as he contemplates the exit strategy perfected during his many bankruptcies - company, country, they are spelled the same are they not?
The Canadian Conservative leader is sounding very desperate in the week leading up to the election. Full embrace of the far right today vowing to end woke ideology in Canada and to provide federal funding to far right online "news" organizations.
he needs to move to Florida, he'll be a big hit there
Ah, the great Sam Alito. He comes out and says it is not ‘normal’ for the SCOTUS to issue midnight rulings. He is correct. But guess what Sam, nothing about Trump or these times is ‘normal’. That ship has sailed and you helped it. Maybe the other Supremes have finally recognized this. But you and Clarence are just fine with responding to the not normal Trump with normal Court responses.
Let's compare "a heck off a job Brownie" uttered by President Bush as New Orleans was underwater after Katrina, with "The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegsworth" as our Chinese and Russian friends know all of the intricate secrets of our defense establishment and strategy"
If the entire Pentagon is working against Hegseth, that would seem to indicate that his leadership is lacking, wouldn't it?
“The … moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun….” Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Timon of Athens, Act IV