Trump/MAGA Budget Cuts to Education

Unless we act now, critical programs that support our students could shut down.  The Trump administration is proposing to further politicize federal funding decisions by giving political appointees authority over decisions about which schools, colleges, and community organizations receive federal funding.  That means funding decisions will be made by political appointees with an agenda—not based on empirical data, student needs, program quality, and professional expertise. Decisions about research funding will be driven by politics rather than peer review and merit.  Here’s what you can do:  Write a public comment and urge the Office of Management and Budget to withdraw its proposal and to preserve a fair, transparent, and student-centered grant system.

Write a Public Comment  ➤

Any program supporting:  Women and girls,   Immigrant families,   LGBTQIA+ students,   Racial equity, Students with disabilities, or A fuller account of U.S. history...  ...could lose its funding under this administration if this proposal is finalized.   This would apply not just to federal K-12 and college and university programs, but to all discretionary funding received by those institutions and by nonprofits that serve our communities and receive federal grants.   To add insult to injury, it will also have a chilling effect on schools, districts, and colleges as they try to balance what they believe is best for students, with which programs could be targeted for being contrary to the current administration’s values.   We have already seen many institutions drop critically needed programs and instruction in response to similar threats to federal funding.  Before the rule takes effect, the administration must solicit and respond to comments from the public—that's you.  Please share how federal funding supports your students, school, campus, or community and why stable funding matters. You have until July 13 to act.  We give you a sample to adapt, but the more personalized your public comment is, the better.  Educators need stability so they can focus on teaching and supporting students, NOT navigating politically motivated requirements.   And, students deserve stable access to the programs and services that help them learn and thrive.  Federal funding should serve students, not politics.  In solidarity,  The NEA EdAction Team

Note: A new project of Teachers and Educators Defending democracy is in the works.  Information will be posted here when ready.  Without an educated populace, the common good cannot even be discerned. This is fundamental. When education is viewed as a private investment yielding private returns, there’s no reason why anyone other than the “investor” should pay for it. But when understood as a public good underlying our democracy, all of us have a responsibility to ensure that it is of high quality and available to all. Our central obligation as citizens is to preserve, fortify, and protect our democratic form of government — not inundate it with big money and buy off politicians. We must defend the right to vote and ensure that more citizens are heard, not fewer.

 

Trump /Maga Viewpoints

 I came across this Public Service Announcement produced by the U.S. government in 1945. It seems apt today, on the eve of the nation’s 250th anniversary, when bigotry and hate are being stoked by a neofascist president. Please take a look:

Actually, it was Robert Reich who came across this video.  On his substack.

This is a clip from the original, which runs 23 minutes. It was called “Don’t Be a Sucker.”

Trump Wants to Make Voting More Difficult

View as web page Here we go again. Some in Congress are trying to make it harder for Americans to vote, and they’re calling it “election integrity.” The SAVE America Act would force people to produce extra citizenship documents just to register and vote in federal elections. Let’s be clear: only citizens can vote now. That’s already the law. This bill isn’t fixing a real problem; it’s creating new ones for eligible voters. The SAVE America Act would: Disenfranchise voters by creating huge new burdens on registering and voting, causing confusion, delays, and discrimination at the polls. Paperwork becomes a paywall. Not everyone has a passport or a perfect birth certificate sitting in a drawer. Replacing documents costs time and money. When voting starts to feel like a trip to the DMV that never ends, regular people get pushed out. Disproportionately impact communities of color, seniors, women, young people, rural voters, and low-income families, making disparities in accessing the ballot even worse, It hits Latinos first and hardest. Hyphenated names, two last names, accent marks; our names tell our stories, but in databases they trigger “mismatches.” Intimidate and suppress voters — particularly naturalized citizens and communities of color — from participating in elections. It scares mixed-status families. When voter rolls start talking to immigration databases, people worry. Even citizens think twice if it could bring heat to their household. That’s not integrity; that’s intimidation. This is how voter suppression looks in 2026; not with literacy tests, but with red tape. Voting is how we fight for better schools, safer neighborhoods, fair wages, and real opportunity. When politicians make voting harder, they’re not protecting democracy; they’re protecting their own power. This is a moment when your voice actually counts. Offices track calls. Staff log every message. When the lines light up, lawmakers pay attention. Call Congress and Be Heard Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121 Ask to be connected to your U.S. House Representative. Find your representative here. If you hit voicemail, leave a message. It still gets counted. How to do it in 60 seconds Dial: 202-224-3121 Say: “Please connect me to Representative [Last Name].” When connected, give your name and city (ZIP if asked). Deliver your message; short, clear, firm. What to Say “My name is ___, I’m a constituent from ___, and I urge you to oppose the SAVE America Act. It creates new barriers for eligible citizens and makes voting harder for working families, seniors, and naturalized citizens. We should protect voting rights, not put paperwork between citizens and the ballot. Thank you.” Optional add-on (10 more seconds) “Will the office commit to voting NO on the SAVE America Act?” “Please record my position and let me know the member’s stance.” After You Call Forward this to five friends or family members and ask them to call Share the number (202) 224-3121 in a group chat Remind people to identify themselves as constituents and to call both of their elected officials

 

Trump Autocracy Report - NYT

  

Donald Trump has wielded power as no previous president has, often in open defiance of the law.  

Read the report from the NY Times Editorial Board, Oct. 31, 2025, 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/31/opinion/trump-autocracy-democracy-report.html

He has persecuted opponents, by passed Congress, sent troops into cities, defied the courts, changed election rules, vilified minorities, and enriched himself and his family. 

A great summing up of the current situation.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/31/opinion/trump-autocracy-democracy-report.html

 

How Politics is Changing / Corrupting the Way History is Taught

 California, the nation’s largest Democratic-led state, has passed a law restricting what teachers can say in the classroom, and has walked back an effort to require high school students to take classes in ethnic studies.

 

To supporters of these changes, they are a necessary corrective to what they see as a leftward tilt in the education establishment. But these developments have also set off alarms among free speech advocates, as the Trump administration pushes to punish speech it dislikes and to impose its patriotic vision of American history on schools.

 

How Politics is Changing the Way History is Taught.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/us/history-lessons-ethnic-studies-retreat.html

To win, they will have to come through us. 

We Must Prepare Our Community Self Defense - Now

 We must prepare our political self defense against Authoritarians and  

Fascists.

Authoritarian Strategy: Criminalizing Dissent and Protest

Chaumtoli Huq
October 3, 2025
Huq Ithttps://substack.com/@huqit

 

Donald Trump’s recent Executive Order (EO) designating antifa as a domestic terror organization, issued in the wake of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s murder, is framed as a measure to denounce political violence. Antifa was singled out even though the person accused of murdering Kirk demonstrated no support for the political ideology. In reality, the antifa EO is an authoritarian maneuver aimed at criminalizing political speech, protest, and organizing. Authoritarianism is a political system that suppresses political freedoms and civil rights, using various levers of control to shift power from the people to the hands of one ruler or set of rulers. Contrary to common views, authoritarians can be elected, as was Trump. They consolidate their powers incrementally and gradually. Sometimes their actions are deliberate and calculated.

This EO should be understood as part of an ongoing move in a broader authoritarian strategy: to label dissent as “terrorism” and to silence opposition under the guise of public safety. It is evidenced by the deployment of National Guards against residents of cities that oppose Trump. The criminalizing of dissent has already occurred as we observed from the deportation of activists who support Palestine and against immigrant rights activists fighting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Recently, a federal court judge thankfully saw it for what it was by holding that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio violated the First Amendment by targeting pro-Palestinian students for deportation.

Far from narrowly targeting antifa, the EO explicitly references the “obstruction” of law enforcement officials, including ICE. The vagueness is intentional. By invoking antifa, the administration provides a pretext for criminalizing any community-based resistance to aggressive policing, deportation raids, or state violence. The goal is not simply to punish certain acts but to create a chilling effect on all forms of dissent. This EO, along with other similar actions—regardless of their legality—must be situated within the broader context of cementing Trump’s rule and advancing the white supremacist ideology of white, Christian nationalism embraced by many of his supporters.

Legality vs. Impact: Why the Antifa EO Still Matters

Some legal commentators dismiss this order as toothless, arguing that it lacks statutory basis since the U.S. has no legal mechanism for designating domestic groups as terrorist organizations. While technically correct, such analysis misses the point. The purpose of this antifa EO is not legality but intimidation.

It provides rhetorical and regulatory cover for escalating repression, enabling ICE and federal agencies to justify aggressive enforcement, surveillance, and infiltration of protest movements. For example, because antifa is not an organization per se, how would the administration determine who is a member of the organization? The administration has indicated that it will review social media and engage in surveillance of grassroots groups. This means that FBI and law enforcement will monitor otherwise lawful protest activity.

The antifa EO reshapes the narrative by branding those who oppose Trump’s policies as “anti-American.” In this way, the antifa EO functions like a perverse political theater that we are provoked into playing, rather than a juridical tactic. The EO revives and reaffirms into our discourse that dissent equals terrorism, even if the underlying EO is found to be illegal. This narrative schema connecting dissent and terrorism is intended to shape the public’s view against political organizing.

Too often, liberal lawyers place faith in the courts—believing that unconstitutional laws will eventually be overturned. That may indeed occur. But the damage occurs long before a case reaches the judiciary. Communities live under the threat of law, enduring harassment, surveillance, and detention. By the time the courts intervene, the EO will have already succeeded in silencing voices and deterring resistance. In some instances, we see that even when the lower district court issues a favorable ruling, the implementation of that holding is held in abeyance as it proceeds through the appeal process to the Supreme Court.

The Vagueness of “Antifa” as a Tool of Repression

That antifa is not a legally constituted organization is precisely why it was chosen. Its ambiguity makes it a useful stand-in for any and all protest movements. It allows the administration to use this vague, seemingly dangerous, phrase to encompass a wide range of politics including even more mainstream liberal democratic ones. The media, often complicit, reinforces this vagueness by portraying antifa as a “violent protest culture of far-left activists.” This framing allows the state to conflate property damage or disruptive protest tactics with terrorism—erasing distinctions between nonviolent civil disobedience, militant protest, and organized violence.

In effect, any form of civil disobedience can now be cast as terrorism. Sit-ins, direct action against deportations, labor strikes, or even marches that block traffic can be swept under this expanded definition of criminality. The media’s reduction of antifa to a caricature of “violent radicals” prepares the ground for this escalation.

The selective nature of this repression is obvious. If Trump’s EO were truly about combating political violence, why not designate the January 6 Capitol insurrectionists—who assaulted law enforcement officers and stormed the heart of U.S. democracy—as terrorists? The double standard reveals the real agenda: to punish left-wing opposition while excusing right-wing authoritarian violence.

Authoritarianism in U.S. History

This tactic is not new. U.S. history is littered with examples of labeling dissent “un-American.” It is part of a long genealogy of authoritarian practices within American democracy itself. During the Red Scare and McCarthy era, accusations of communist affiliation justified blacklists, firings, deportations, and imprisonment. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program systematically targeted civil rights leaders, Black radicals, and antiwar activists. Each of these campaigns relied on fear, vagueness, and media complicity to suppress democratic movements. Recognizing this historical similarity, hundreds of high-profile celebrities have revived the Committee on First Amendment that was first formed during the McCarthy era when Americans were targeted for their political beliefs.

Trump’s EO is a continuation of this tradition: the use of state power to criminalize political opposition and insulate authoritarian policies from resistance.

In the past, what enabled governments to carry out this suppression was the complicity by silence of everyday folks. Whatever our views on a particular ideology, as a pluralist democracy we must find common ground on the principle that political speech should not be punished. Yet, the fear of boogey man words like antifa, communism, socialism, are being used to justify suppression of speech.

Community Defense Is the Best Defense

While legal challenges will inevitably arise, the strongest and most immediate protection comes from communities themselves. Courts can sometimes provide relief, but the law is slow, uncertain, and often bent toward state power. By the time a ruling is issued—or overturned on appeal—the damage may already have been done. Communities therefore cannot wait passively for the judiciary to intervene.

History demonstrates that community defense has consistently offered the most effective shield against authoritarian repression. Mutual aid networks ensure that when activists lose jobs, face detention, or encounter state harassment, they are not left isolated. Safety planning and rapid response teams enable neighborhoods to mobilize quickly when ICE raids occur, when protestors are targeted, or when police escalate violence. We have observed a successful example of this in Los Angeles. Solidarity infrastructures—such as legal support hotlines, bail funds, community kitchens, and sanctuary spaces—transform resistance from individual risk into collective strength.

In 2016, during Trump’s first presidency, I called on my fellow lawyers to support community defense efforts. As a labor law advocate, I understand that it is through collective utilization of the law that we can deliver some modicum of relief to impacted communities. Moving away from the individual heroic organization or solo lawyer, we need to collectivize our legal support and provide what I have termed as community defense.

We should begin to ready ourselves to both defend communities under attack, to fight hard for the gains we have won for communities we care about and to continue to push forward grassroots organizing communities’ agenda for social justice.

Legal victories are necessary, and legal action must be taken to challenge unconstitutional policies. But litigation alone cannot sustain movements under siege. It must be paired with grassroots strategies that keep people safe, nurture resilience, and reaffirm the legitimacy of dissent.

Community defense builds power at the local level and signals that repression will not succeed in silencing opposition. In this way, the law becomes one tool among many, rather than the sole battleground, in the struggle against authoritarianism. Whereas authoritarianism atomizes (isolates people through fear and surveillance), community defense collectivizes our struggle and makes us feel we are part of a larger fight for democracy.

Democracy Has No Kings

The irony should not be lost: a self-proclaimed defender of “law and order” has issued an order condemning anti-fascist politics while excusing fascist violence. At its core, this antifa EO is undemocratic and unconstitutional. But even if it never survives legal scrutiny, it will have served its purpose: to intimidate, divide, and delegitimize dissent.

The lesson from history is clear. Authoritarianism thrives when communities allow the state to define who is “dangerous” and who is “American.” The response must be equally clear: refuse this narrative, defend dissent, and build resilient movements that cannot be silenced.

If democracy has no kings, then dissent cannot be treason. To defend democracy, we must defend dissent.

 

Trump Tightens His Control of the Media

 https://robertreich.substack.com/p/trumps-disastrous-defamations?

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/trumps-disastrous-defamations?

Pushing MAGA Out: The Resistance Rises

Pushing MAGA Out: The Resistance Ramps Up

https://portside.org/2025-08-22/pushing-maga-out-resistance-ramps

Portside Date: August 22, 2025

Author: Max Elbaum

Date of source: August 19, 2025

Convergence

 

In my previous article, A Path to Pushing MAGA Out of Power, I offered a set of ideas about what is needed to block MAGA in a way that offers more than temporary relief from authoritarian rule. The goal is to put in place a new governing coalition in 2028 that will start on the road toward deep structural reform.

To achieve that we need to:

• Build a powerful synergy of mass resistance and electoral work: scale up public protests, workplace actions, civil disobedience, and organized noncompliance to block MAGA attacks and defend democratic rights, including the right to elections that are at least minimally free and fair; and 
• defeat MAGA candidates at all levels in the 2026 and 2028 elections so that an anti-MAGA coalition gains governing power at the federal level and increases its strength in blue, purple and red states.

• Strengthen the progressive wing of the broad anti-MAGA coalition so it can:
• shape the politics of electoral campaigns against MAGA at all levels of government; 
• put its stamp on both the domestic and foreign policy of a post-MAGA federal government; and 
• play the leading role in state-level governing coalitions in at least a few blue states while increasing its political weight in purple and red states. If we don’t gain this leverage and end up with a government that doesn’t deliver substantial change, MAGA will have an opening to come roaring back.

 (A discussion guide for examining these points is available.) 

 

Read the entire piece on the site linked.  Portside.  

https://portside.org/2025-08-22/pushing-maga-out-resistance-ramps

https://portside.org/2025-08-22/pushing-maga-out-resistance-ramps

GOP Budget Bill Would Make ICE "Largest Federal Law Enforcement Agency i...

Liz Cheney has something to say. You should read it.

 https://robertreich.substack.com/p/a-remarkable-message?

'Trump Does Not Own Our Country': Greg Casar Speaks At Bernie Sanders Ra...

Injunction Stalls Trump / MAGA Assault on Education Department

 

Preliminary Injunction Issued in Democracy Forward’s Legal Challenge 

Massachusetts – The coalition of educators, school districts, and unions that challenged Secretary of Education McMahon’s massive reduction-in-force has won a preliminary injunction that will halt the administration’s unlawful effort to dismantle the Department of Education. The Secretary’s Mass Termination Order would have gutted the Department of Education and decimated crucial services the Department provides to every American. The group, which includes the Somerville Public School Committee, Easthampton School District, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) – Massachusetts, AFT, AFSCME Council 93, American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is represented by Democracy Forward inSomerville Public Schools v. Trump.

As the district court wrote, “A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all. This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself.”

“Today’s order means that the Trump administration’s disastrous mass firings of career civil servants are blocked while this wildly disruptive and unlawful agency action is litigated,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward. “No one’s lives are being made better by this administration’s attempted dismantling of the Department of Education. Instead of taking a wrecking ball to our nation’s best values and our chance at a better future, this administration should be focused on how to improve education and opportunities for all.”

The dismantling of the Department has begun via mass layoffs of half of the entire Department. Prior to January 20, 2025, the Department employed 4,133 employees. If the Trump administration’s actions were allowed to proceed, just 2,183 would remain. From distributing funds to help schools work with students with disabilities, to providing support and assistance to parents and families, protecting students’ civil rights, and making sure higher education is affordable for students, civil servants at the Department of Education are essential to the success of students. Mass firings of these hardworking people will harm students and schools.  

“We are deeply encouraged by the court’s decision today to grant the preliminary injunction,   which will temporarily prevent the Trump administration from proceeding with its harmful efforts to dismantle the Department of Education,” said Ilana Krepchin, Chair of the Somerville School Committee. “This victory is a win for our students, teachers, families here in Somerville and across the nation, and it affirms that our public education system is too important to be undermined by actions that threaten our students’ rights and opportunities. We thank our coalition partners for coming together to defend public education, and we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that our students’ futures remain bright.”

“While today’s decision will provide some relief, the damage is already being felt in our schools – by our students, especially the most vulnerable, and our educators,” said American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts President Jessica Tang. “We have the utmost confidence in the virtue and facts of our case. The White House is not above the law and we will never stop fighting on behalf of our students and our public schools and the protections, services, and resources they need to thrive.”

“Today, the court rightly rejected one of the administration’s very first illegal, and consequential, acts: abolishing the federal role in education,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “This decision is a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity.  For America to build a brighter future, we must all take more responsibility, not less, for the success of our children. The vast majority of Americans and states like Massachusetts, with the highest NAEP scores, want to keep the education department because it ensures all kids, not just some, can get a shot at a better life.”

“This decision gives public schools important relief from losing critical support, which the Department of Education provides,” said AFSCME Council 93 Executive Director Mark Bernard. “Thousands of families across Massachusetts depend on the vital services and protections under the IDEA Act, which ensures educational support for our most vulnerable children. Massachusetts, the home of the first free public school in America, has long been a beacon of leadership in public education, championing accessible, quality education for all students. Thousands of dedicated AFSCME Council 93 members across the state work tirelessly to create safe, welcoming, and caring school communities where every child can thrive. This win is a strong affirmation of our commitment to protecting public education for all.”

In addition to the layoffs, a presidential Executive Order and other administration statements have described the intent to close the Department and move Department programs and offices, such as the Office for Special Education Programs and Federal Student Aid, to different federal agencies with no relevant expertise or necessary resources. 

Read the full complaint here and the preliminary injunction here. 

The legal team at Democracy Forward on this case includes Will Bardwell, Elena Goldstein, Rachel F. Homer, Victoria Nugent, Adnan Perwez, and Kali Schellenberg.

– # # # – 

Democracy Forward is a national legal organization that advances democracy and social progress through litigation, policy, public education, and regulatory engagement. For more information, please visit www.democracyforward.org. 

Trump Rule

 Sunday’s Bulwark essay by JVL – Jonathan V. Last: 

“America is ruled by a regime which is attempting to create a dictatorship. Part of its strategy is to maintain strategic ambiguity about the state of our democracy. They want to send strong signals to various institutions that democracy no longer exists and that the rule of law is now rule by law. The point of these signals is to demand submission to their autocratic rule and consolidate non-electoral power.

At the same time, this regime wants to maintain the plausibility that it might be overthrown via normal democratic processes. The point of this second signal is to keep the institutions (and people) which have not yet been subdued docile and deactivated. The strategic ambiguity about whether or not we live in an autocracy is designed to preserve maximum maneuverability for the regime until such time as they have full control and no longer need to maneuver.”

 

Why Pay Federal Taxes ?

  

The White House is Forcing a Showdown Over Power of the Purse.  NYT.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/politics/congress-trump-spending.html

 

The White House may win, at least partially. 

However, that would be an illegitimate government, by the constitution.

We have no obligation to pay taxes to illegitimate government.

 

This coming April 19 will mark the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the American Revolution and our war against monarchical power. 

Anti-royalist militia in Massachusetts refused to disperse when ordered to by British troops. A shot was fired, and the troops kept firing, killing eight of those American resisters. Later that day, the militiamen returned that fire, killing a number of British soldiers. The revolution had begun. 

Please don’t get me wrong. I do not advocate violence. I’m simply reminding you that this nation was founded on resistance to arbitrary authority. We built American democracy in the face of what seemed to be impossible odds. 

And we will never, ever give up that fight. 

My friend Harold Meyerson suggests that on April 19 we stage massive peaceful protests in every city and town — crowds of Americans celebrating the anti-monarchical uprising of 1775 and pledging their allegiance to that heritage by denouncing Trump’s increasingly autocratic rule: Thereby flooding Trump and Musk’s zone still further. 

Sounds like a good idea to me. You? Robert Reich.

And, we can begin to not pay our taxes. In honor of the American Revolution.

Duane Campbell

Sacramento

 

Trump: Two Weeks of Chaos

 Trump/MAGA Destruction. Two weeks of chaos. 

Timothy Snyder, 

Trump’s tariffs (which are also likely illegal) are there to make us poor. Trump’s attacks on America’s closest friends, countries such as Canada and Denmark, are there to make enemies of countries where constitutionalism works and people are prosperous. As their country is destroyed, Americans must be denied the idea that anything else is possible.

Deportations are a spectacle to turn Americans against one another, to make us afraid, and to get us to see pain and camps as normal. They also create busy-work for law enforcement, locating the “criminals” in workplaces across the country, as the crime of the century takes place at the very center of power. 

The best people in American federal law enforcement, national security, and national intelligence are being fired. The reasons given for this are DEI and trumpwashing the past. Of course, if you fire everyone who was concerned in some way with the investigations of January 6th or of Russia, that will be much or even most of the FBI. Those are bad reasons, but the reality is worse: the aim is lawlessness: to get the police and the patriots out of the way.

In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards. In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to have a strong man in charge. It can be a befuddled Trump signing ever larger pieces of paper for the cameras, or a conniving Vance who, unlike Trump, has always known the plot. Or someone else.

After we are all poor and isolated, the logic goes, we will be consoled by the thought that there is at least a human being to whom we can appeal. We will settle for a kind of anthropological minimum, wishful contact with the strong man. As in Russia, pathetic video selfies sent to the Leader will be the extent of politics.

For the men currently pillaging the federal government, the data from those video selfies is more important than the people who will make them. The new world they imagine is not just anti-American but anti-human. The people are just data, means to the end of accumulating wealth.

They see themselves as the servants of the freedom of the chosen few, but in fact they are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them, of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us, their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level brainrotted.

The attempt by the oligarchs to destroy our government is illegal, unconstitutional, and more than a little mad. The people in charge, though, are very intelligent politically, and have a plan. I describe it not because it must succeed but because it must be described so that we can make it fail. This will require clarity, and speed, and coalitions. I try to capture the mood in my little book On Tyranny. Here are a few ideas.

 

If you voted Republican, and you care about your country, please act rather than rationalize. Unless you cast your ballot so that South African oligarchs could steal your data, your money, your country, and your future, make it known to your elected officials that you wanted something else. And get ready to protest with people with whom you otherwise disagree.

Almost everything that has happened during this attempted takeover is illegal. Lawsuits can be filed and courts can order that executive orders be halted. This is crucial work.

Much of what is happening, though, involves private individuals whose names are not even known, and who have no legal authority, wandering through government offices and issuing orders beyond even the questionable authority of executive orders. Their idea is that they will be immunized by their boldness. This must be proven wrong.