Buyers Remorse

The term “buyer’s remorse” is being used to refer to people who voted for Trump for whatever reason (e.g. to fix the economy) and are now regretting it when they see him destroying the government and the economy.

One of these voters is Jennifer Piggott from West Virginia. She described herself as a “MAGA junkie”, flying a Trump flag outside her home and voting for Trump three times. Then in February she was laid off from her job with the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service as part of DOGE’s downsizing of the federal government. The reason given for her dismissal was “poor performance” despite getting the highest rating on a performance review less than three weeks earlier. DOGE apparently either ignored her performance review or more likely made no attempt to read it.

Her community voted overwhelmingly for Trump, giving him 70% of the votes. Piggott said “Nobody that I’ve talked to understood the devastation that having this administration in office would do to our lives. I don’t understand this at all. Trump is creating a disaster and I don’t know what America is going to look like if this continues.”

Not all Trump voters in her community have been converted, though. Since speaking out Piggott has received death threats and had her property vandalized.

The latest polls show Trump’s approval rating dropping but still remarkably high. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found 49% of registered voters approved of Trump’s job performance in late March, down slightly from 52% in February. By now I would expect it to be in the 20-25% range with just his MAGA cultists still onboard. What is it going to take to wake up the rest of these people? Missed Social Security checks? Martial law crackdown on peaceful protests? Defying the Supreme Court? I honestly don’t know.

People who do not work for government have a (small) excuse for assuming some truth to Trump and Musk’s repeated assertions about “fraud, waste and abuse” in the federal government. But as a public servant working in a government agency, Jennifer Piggott knew that she and her co-workers were honest hard-working people who were providing an important service for American people. She should have known, but apparently didn’t, that this was true for all or nearly all public servants and government agencies. Perhaps she thought there was fraud and waste in other departments?

There is a meme circulating the internet that goes like this: “I never thought leopards would eat MY face”, sobs the woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

So, it’s hard to feel sorry for people like Jennifer Piggott. It’s tempting to feel she got what she deserved, that her misfortune is the result of Karma. And tempting to vent our anger on her: “You idiot, that’s what we’ve been trying to tell you for the last 10 years. It’s because of morons like you that we are in this mess.”

No, if we want to get out of this mess and salvage as much of our democracy as possible, we must embrace people like Jennifer. Welcome them to reality and invite them to become part of the resistance. The Democratic Party (or a new progressive party) needs to offer them a strong viable alternative. Bernie Sanders and AOC are doing that with their Fighting Oligarchy Tour.

America needs more Jennifer Piggotts. The sooner the better.

Sources:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-maga-voter-regret-fiscal-service-b2723454.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5224062-trump-approval-rating-dip-poll/

The Fentanyl Crisis

To hear Donald Trump tell it, the fentanyl crisis is caused by illegal immigrants coming across the border and he’s going to fix it with stricter border and immigration controls. Josh Levs in a March 27 article for The Contrarian claims both those statements are a lie.

The Biden administration had made progress on fentanyl and it got worse under Trump, but you would not know that listening to most media reports.

Trump’s penchant for exaggeration comes in to play too. “We lose 300,000 people a year to fentanyl” he’s fond of claiming. In 2023 drug overdose was responsible for 107,000 deaths with nearly 70% of those from fentanyl. So closer to 74,000. Significantly less than 300,000 but still, a lot of unnecessary deaths.

The vast majority of drugs seized at the border are at regular border crossings, not in between, so not from illegal immigrants and not because of an “open border”. About 80% of convicted fentanyl traffickers are American citizens; 20% are visitors or recent immigrants, legal or otherwise.

Fentanyl use went up during Trump’s first term. From 52,900 deaths in the last 12 months of Obama’s administration to 94,788 for the last 12 months of Trump’s first term. It continued to rise during Biden’s first two years to 107,000 and 109,745, then dropped to 105,480 in his third year and to 82,000 by October of 2024 (the last month data was available for the study quoted).

The CDC reported that the 12 months ending in September 2024 was a nearly 24% drop in overdose deaths. Allison Arwady, Director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, commented:

“It is unprecedented to see predicted overdose deaths drop by more than 27,000 over a single year. That’s more than 70 lives saved per day. CDC’s public health investments, our improved data and laboratory systems for overdose response … mean that we are more rapidly identifying emerging drug threats and supporting public health prevention and response activities in communities across America.”

The Biden administration was working on cutting demand as well as supply through things like addiction treatments, mental health support, research and education programs. Things that the Trump administration are likely to cut as “wasteful”, if they haven’t already. I have no doubt that the trend will reverse and overdose deaths will start increasing again under this regime.

Trump isn’t interested in facts such as these. He doesn’t’ even really care about the people dying from a drug overdose. For Donald Trump the fentanyl crisis is just a talking point with which to attack immigrants, Mexico and Canada. And also his predecessor, Sleepy Joe Biden, and his “open border”.

 

Sources:

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/red-america-needs-the-truth-on-trumps

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2025/2025-cdc-reports-decline-in-us-drug-overdose-deaths.html

Chilling Dissent

In this morning’s Koffee Klatch Robert Reich made the statement that the Trump regime wants to “chill all dissent”. They are achieving this on multiple fronts.

·        Detaining and disappearing international students who have been critical of the Trump regime or some position of it (e.g. Israel/Palestine)

·        Detaining and disappearing immigrants who the Trump regime believes (no evidence necessary) are criminals (e.g. Venezuela gang)

·        Removing security clearance and federal building access to law firms that have any connection with previous lawsuits against him

·        Forcing universities to toe the line on DEI, Palestine, etc. or lose millions in federal funding.

·        Attacking journalists and media corporations who speak out against the Trump regime

These examples are just that - examples. Trump is setting them as examples of what he can do to discourage any future dissent by anyone. Reich: This is what every authoritarian, totalitarian dictator has done going right back to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. This is exactly what we have seen from Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey, Orban in Hungary. These are attacks on individual’s freedom to speak out…”

It’s the end of March and Spring is coming soon here in Canada. But in America there is a chill in the air coming from Washington D.C., sending shivers up the spine of all freedom loving people.

Source:

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/is-the-trump-fever-breaking-saturday

Judges Fight Back

These stories were reported in this morning’s TCinLA substack.

As I reported yesterday, Judge Boasberg was appointed to the case of a lawsuit to preserve the messages in the Signal group chat planning a military strike against Houthis in Yemen. This is the same judge that ordered planes to turn around that were carrying Venezuelans being deported to a prison in El Salvador.

On hearing the news President Trump ranted on his social media platform:

“How disgraceful is it that ‘Judge’ James Boasberg has just been given a 4^th “Trump Case,” something which is, statistically, IMPOSSIBLE. There is no way for a Republican, especially a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, to win before him. He is Highly Conflicted in his hatred of me – Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome! Boasberg, who is the Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court, seems to be grabbing the ‘Trump Cases’ all to himself, even though it is not supposed to happen that way. There must be an immediate investigation of this Rigged System, before it is too late!”

Boasberg was appointed to the D. C. superior Court by George W. Bush and promoted to the District Court by President Obama. He was the judge who released Hillarie Clinton’s emails and allowed Trump to avoid having to release his income tax returns. Apparently Trump has a short memory.

In Thursday’s hearing Judge Boasberg, in an apparent response to Trump’s tweet, publicly explained how the case had come to him. He had been assigned to this case, he patiently explained, in the normal process of random selection out of the 24 judges in the district.

While Boasberg’s rebuttal to Trump’s lies was very mild, Judge Beryl Howell’s pushback was a tad stronger.

The Justice Department was trying to remove Howell from a case over Trump’s executive order attacking the Perkins Coie law firm. The DOJ accused Howell of “repeatedly demonstrat[ing] partiality against and animus towards the president” and is therefore “unable to impartially rule on the meritless challenges to President Trump’s efforts to implement the agenda that the American people elected him to carry out”.  

In a 21 page ruling Howell denied the bid to replace her on the case and called the DOJ and AG Pam Bondi out for attacking her character and undermining the judicial system. The bid to replace her, Howell wrote, “relies only on speculation, innuendo, and basic legal disagreements that provide no basis for disqualification.”

In the order denying the bid to replace her, Judge Howell wrote:

“When the U.S. Department of Justice engages in this rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attack, the stakes become much larger than only the reputation of the targeted federal judge. This strategy is designed to impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system and blame any loss on the decision-maker rather than fallacies in the substantive legal arguments presented”.

She added that the Trump administration’s claims of “ongoing improper encroachments” on his executive powers … “reflects a grave misapprehension of our constitutional order. … Adjudicating whether an Executive Branch exercise of power is legal, or not, is actually the job of the federal courts, and not that of the president or the Department of Justice…”.

She wrote that the president’s actions (e.g. against Perkins Coie) send a chilling message that lawyers can be punished for representing clients unfavorable to the administration. “Such a circumstance threatens the very foundation of our legal system. Our justice system is based on the fundamental belief that justice works best when all parties have zealous advocates.”

Justices like Boasberg and Howell are fingers in the dike holding back the utter destruction of America by Trump and his gang of thugs.

Sources:

https://tcinla757.substack.com/p/poking-around-at-the-end-of-week-1ca

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/us/politics/signal-chat-houthis-court-decision.html

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/judge-rejects-doj-bid-to-oust-her-from-trump-perkins-coie-fight

Hypocrisy Abounds

Pro-democracy journalists have been having a field day with what is now being called Signalgate.

Here are a few snippets of commentary from various sources.

Signalgate is being compared to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal which went on for over a year with front page headlines in corporate, as well as rightwing, media, and was a large factor in putting Trump in the White House the first time. Fox and other right wing media are treating this scandal, which is far worse for national security, as a simple mistake and are castigating the “Lefties” for making a big deal of it.

Jill Filipovic dug up Attorney General Pam Bondi’s response to Hillarie’s email scandal. Bondi, then the attorney general of Florida, said at the 2016 GOP convention that Hillarie “believes the law doesn’t apply to her”. As the crowd broke into their chant she said “Lock her up. I love that”.

Yesterday Bondi said it is unlikely there will be any charges laid in the Signal case. Apparently Bondi believes that the law doesn’t apply to her fellow Trump appointees.

The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called the story "another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin".

Donald Trump called it a "witch hunt", his favorite term for any attempt to hold him accountable for any of his many crimes.

Several good quotes came from Heather Cox Richardson’s substack this morning.

Hegseth: “Nobody was texting war plans”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (after first denying that she was even in the group chat: “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

In response to these accusations the Atlantic published the entire transcript of the group chat, redacting out only the name of a CIA agent which Hegseth had recklessly included in his text. Anyone reading it can be left in no doubt that the information being shared is highly sensitive and if it wasn't classified, it should have been.

Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Army pilot who was nearly killed in Iraq is furious. She wrote: “Pete Hegseth is a f’ing liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately.”

Missing from the group chat was President Trump [too busy announcing new tariffs or an election executive order disenfranchising millions of American citizens?]. Also left out was the acting chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Christopher Grady. Trump fired the previous chair, Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr. in February and hasn’t replaced him yet. You would expect Grady, the currently highest ranking Pentagon officer, would be included in a decision about a military strike.

Pete Hesgeth publicly suggested that Brown had been appointed because he is Black: “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt.” [Well, Pete, there is no doubt why you were appointed, and it wasn’t for your skill, knowledge, or combat experience. Nor for your drinking problem or sexual assault allegations (although apparently these weren't disqualifying). No, it was for your total loyalty to Donald (as well as the color of your skin).]

A former White House official said that if he had done what the people in that chat group did, he would have been investigated and lost his security clearance. Come to think of it most of the people in that chat never were investigated by the FBI for security clearance – Trump just waved his magic Sharpie or something and declared them eligible. Gabbard and Hegseth would likely not have passed - Gabbard for her Russian sympathies and Hegseth for the sexual assault allegations.

Discussions of military strikes are supposed to be held in a secure room called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or SCIF, with computers which are not connected to the internet. People invited to the meeting leave their laptops, phones, watches, pens and paper outside the door. Such discussions are not intended to be held in group chats and certainly not on a civilian app like Signal.

Noah Schactman wrote in a March 26 NYT article: 

"... this is an administration that actively, proudly rejects expertise. It casts those who have it as the corrupt old guard, the real enemy, the “deep state,” and it touts its own refusal to heed them as proof of its legitimacy and righteousness. By that view, the security establishment must be bent to the White House’s will, and if the people at the top don’t have the traditional qualifications for their positions, all the better. This is an administration that makes a weekend Fox News host the leader of the world’s largest military, puts a conspiracy-minded podcaster in charge of the F.B.I., and has at its pinnacle a reality star turned president. Blunders like this are an inevitable consequence."

WJ Hennigan wrote in NYT March 26

In previous administrations, this matter would have been investigated by the Defense Department’s inspector general, but Trump fired him during the first week of his second term.

Jen Rubin for the Contrarian interviewed Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and a House Representative for New Jersey where she sits on the House Armed Services Committee. In response to Jen's question about the Signal security issue Sherrill said "...every single thing about this just points to complete incompetence, incredible national security violations and dangers".

Commenting on the possibility that one of the people in the group chat was in Moscow, possibly right in the Kremlin, she said " I don't travel with my personal phones, I always have a burner phone. Having travelled to Moscow years ago I can tell you that the OPSEC (operations security) required to go there is very, very high. To think that somebody is texting there on a Signal chat with our nation's secrets is shocking."  

Regarding America's allies Sherrill said that "Nobody is going to be sharing intelligence with us ... the U.S. is an unreliable ally. This administration is just making us weaker with this incompetence."

Someone said that no one will be fired or charged unless Trump decides to, and he will only do that if it starts to affect him personally.

In an ironic twist of fate, a lawsuit to force the Trump administration to preserve the messages in the Signal chat according to government records laws, was randomly assigned to Judge James Boasberg. Yes the same judge who was denied the flight times of the Venezuelan deportations because of “national security”. I expect the DOJ will now try to argue that the planning of the Houthi strikes were not classified and thus did not merit full security measures.

Hypocrisy abounds!

Sources:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-26-2025

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/27/the-atlantic-handled-signalgate-with-good-judgment

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/opinion/americas-security-blunder-is-the-gift-of-a-lifetime.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/opinion/signal-group-chat-hypocrisy.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/27/signal-chat-leak-pete-hegseth

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/opinion/waltz-hegseth-signal-group-chat.html

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/rep-mikie-sherrill-and-jen-rubin

Making America Unhealthy Again

When Robert F Kennedy Jr. was appointed as Secretary for Health and Human Services he adopted the slogan Make America Healthy Again. Let’s leave his stance on vaccine safety and the relative healthfulness of seed oils vs. saturated fats for another day. Two of his initiatives so far have been to eliminate synthetic colors in kids’ cereals (think Froot Loops) and to make infant formula safer and healthier.

Baby formula has been found to have a high added sugar content and contain too much of some toxic metals like arsenic.

Kennedy’s taking on “the industrial food complex” is cautiously applauded by some health advocates from across the political spectrum. I can’t believe I’m referencing both Scientific American and Fox Business News on the same side of the issue.

But before we get too excited about Trump’s appointment of Kennedy and his goals, let’s take a look at what Trump is doing with pollution. Taking a few questionable chemicals out of a few foods is insignificant compared to his promotion of environmental toxins.

In a NYT Guest Essay, Thomas Edsall writes that Trump’s actions on the environment do not match his stated goal. On March 4 in the joint session of Congress President Trump stated “Our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply, and keep our children healthy and strong.”

But just like when he opened the American economy too early during the pandemic resulting in many unnecessary deaths, Trump is again putting profit and politics ahead of American lives. Here are some of the Trump administration's actions that will definitely make America unhealthy again:

·        Slowing and attempting to reverse the transition from fossil fuels to non-polluting renewable energy sources (“drill, baby, drill”)

·        Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental rules during his first term

·        Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is Lee Zeldin who Ben Jealous, director of the Sierra Club, described as “an unqualified, anti-American worker who opposes efforts to safeguard our clean air and water …”

·        On March 7 the DOJ dismissed a lawsuit against a neoprene factory for its chlorprene pollution (a likely carcinogen) which was affecting a mostly Black community (was this considered a DEI initiative??)

·         Revoked limits on mercury and other toxic pollution from power plants

·        Revoked air pollution standards

·        Revoked new standards for chemical plants that would reduce cancer risk by 96% for those living nearby

·        Revoke standards for managing coal ash waste

·        Slashing grants for environmental health research

·        Repealing the 2009 "endangerment finding" that legally justifies regulation of greenhouse gases

·        Stalling on a proposed ban on the cancer-causing chemical trichloromethylene (TCE)

·        In the March 12 announcement by Zeldin “EPA Launches Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History” the word “health” appears only once – in the title of a Biden executive order that was being revoked

·        Slashing EPA budget by 65% and closing the EPA research department

Update March 27

·        10,000 employees laid off from Health and Human Services

The president of Earthjustice, Abigail Dillen wrote “It is hard to imagine a more sweeping agenda to make Americans less healthy.”

 

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/health/rfk-jr-food-safety-artificial-dyes.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/us/politics/formula-fries-rfk-kennedy-vaccines-measles.html

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rfk-jr-wants-to-make-baby-formula-safer-but-trump-budget-cuts-imperil-that/

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/baby-formula-breast-milk-need-robustly-regulated-former-fda-commissioner

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/opinion/trump-toxins-cancer-environment.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/us/politics/health-department-job-layoffs-rfk-jr.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/climate/epa-zeldin-rollbacks-pollution.html

National Security

Today I will share some thoughts on national security in the United States.

There were a few developments in the Venezuelan deportation case I discussed last week (March 17-19). Yesterday (March 24) a federal appeals court heard the Trump administration’s request to reverse Judge Boasberg’s order to halt the deportations to El Salvador. The court met for 2 hours but has not yet issued a ruling. If the court sides with the government, the deportations can continue.

Then last night the DOJ told Boasberg that they would not obey his order to provide him with the exact times the planes took off, citing national security. Specifically they said doing so would “undermine or impede future counterterrorism operations.” This is patent nonsense. In such cases the judge is privately shown, in a secure situation, documents or other evidence showing how that national security would be compromised. It’s also nonsense in that a film crew was invited to make videos of the men being arrested and loaded onto planes and widely shown on television. This was obviously a PR stunt, which the government approved, but they won’t give the judge the time of takeoff?

By the way, did you notice on the videos that the ICE officers wore masks to hide their identity? Yet in the list of requirements for Columbia University to get back their $400 million funding was one that protesters on campus not be allowed to wear masks.

A DOJ filing said “the court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it”. This may be more true than they thought. The ACLU has filed a sworn affidavit from a Venezuelan woman who was on one of the flights to El Salvador, testifying that in mid-flight she heard the ICE officers discussing the judge’s order to turn the plane around. So now they can’t pretend that they didn’t know.

One of the judges in the Appeals hearing observed that German Nazis got better treatment when they were arrested in America during WWII.

The plea for national security is especially rich coming from thius administration because of the biggest news story from yesterday.

The Atlantic broke the story about the breach of security in the Trump cabinet Monday noon. A text chain, given the name Houthi PC Small Group, of cabinet ministers and top officials (V.P. JD Vance, Pete Hesgeth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, Stephen Miller, Steve Witkoff, and 12 others) discussed secret military plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen. Two problems with this – first that the texting was done on a commercial chat app called Signal which is not approved by the government for sharing sensitive information. Secondly, that Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic magazine, was accidentally invited to join the group. Goldberg reported on the conversation and the breach of security in an article Monday in his magazine. He was careful to redact sensitive information such as the identity of a CIA agent.

A possible reason for using Signal rather than government approved program is that Signal offers the option of self-deletion after a set time. Federal records laws requires all government correspondence to be preserved and archived, something that this administration has frequently ignored. Think of Trump’s hours long conversations with Putin with no witnesses and certainly no recording.

It turns out that Witkoff was in Moscow while participating in this meeting-by-text – not a smart place to be while discussing secret military plans on an insecure program.

The invitation of Goldberg is being investigated. Mike Waltz has taken responsibility for admitting Goldberg to the group but has not explaned how it happened.

One thing that came out in Goldberg’s report is the contempt that this cabinet feels for Europe. Vance texted “I just hate bailing Europe out again” and Hesgeth replied “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet who can do this”. Here the men are referring to their belief that Europe will benefit more than America from opening the Red Sea shipping lane, and they resented that America had to pay for this operation. Then it turns out that the Red Sea is an important shipping route for the Tesla factory in Europe which had to be shut down for a period due to parts not getting through on time. Hmmm.

Ironically one of the texts sent by Hesgeth guaranteed “100 percent OPSEC – operations security”.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called this “one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time”. That was maybe an understatement. A more accurate description was "a national security crisis of catastrophic proportion". Someone exclaimed "The gob - it has been smacked". Others are calling for a full Congressional hearing.

That's what you get when you appoint rank amateurs for jobs requiring serious professionals. These cabinet ministers and other agency leaders were chosed not for their experience, competence and knowledge but for their unswerving allegiance to Donald Trump. This is just another example of the folly of doing so.

The White House is of course covering it up best they can. Hegseth denied that any war plans were texted and attempted to smear Goldberg as a hoax peddler. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said that  Signal had been approved for government use by the Biden Administration but two days before the meeting, on March 18, the Pentagon had released a statement warning not to use Signal even for unclassified messages because it had been comprimised by Russian hackers. A similar memo had been issued in 2023.

Trump said he was unaware of the [security breach] incident, which if he is telling the truth brings up a different issue – why his cabinet didn’t immediately inform him.

In normal administrations, including under Republican presidents like the Bushes or Reagan, a security breach of this magnitude would result in firings and possibly prison time for those responsible. in 2016 Hillary Clinton's email scandal was nothing to this but Trump's followers chanted "Lock her up!". 

But then again this isn’t a normal administration.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt released a statement saying “President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team.”

Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-trump-yemen-war-chat

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/us/politics/judge-ruling-trump-deportations-alien-enemies-act.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/democrats-war-plans-signal-chat

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339801/pentagon-email-signal-vulnerability

https://tcinla757.substack.com/p/poking-around-on-the-ninth-tuesday

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/25/us/signal-group-chat-text-annotations.html

Attack on Education

One of the things the Trump regime is doing that I mentioned on Friday (First Destroy – March 21) was their attack on education.

In the March 22 “Koffee Klatch” Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse discussed Trump’s attacks on education. It’s happening on several levels:

·        The arrest of the pro-Palestinian protest leader Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia University

·        The gutting of, and plans to close, the federal Department of Education

·        The extortionist withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars of funding to Columbia and other universities to force them to crack down on protesters, revise their hiring and student admissions regulations, and change some of their programs and curricula

·        Cutting funding for libraries and museums

·        Whitewashing public school curriculums to remove reference to slavery in America or any mention of non-white heroes

Reich explained that this attack on education is typical tyrant tactics. Every tyrant in history has tried to get rid of learning. Nazis burned books. Slaveholders didn’t allow their slaves to become literate.

Why do tyrants want people to be ignorant? Because they know that an educated population is the enemy of tyranny. This is why since the beginning in America, education has been so important. Free universal public education. It was well understood that democracy needs education.

Heather Lofthouse described the Trump attack on education as a “dismantling of democracy tactic”.

Education affects voting trends. Someone once observed that the % of the American population that voted for Trump is about the same as the % that can’t read above a grade 5 level. The correlation isn’t quite that dramatic but there is some truth to it. The difference in voting between college educated and non-college educated voters is significant, especially for men. This chart shows the difference in Trump voters between college-educated and non-college-educated men and women.

The Inside Higher Ed article (link below) that provided the above data on voting trends explained how Republicans and others on the Right explain this phenomenon:

“… colleges and universities are bastions of liberal ideology where students are indoctrinated into left-wing thinking and punished for expressing differing opinions. (Conservative students do report feeling less comfortable sharing their political opinions with classmates, and right-wing speakers are more likely to get shouted down on campuses…)”

Robert Reich mentioned this last point also and said that universities have been guilty of suppressing other opinions. And I must agree. I recall an incident some years ago when a Canadian university professor was reprimanded (and almost fired I think) for showing a video of Jordan Peterson in her class. There should absolutely have been no problem for doing so, especially as she was using it as an example of how not to think.

Reich went on to explain that

“education is not just getting information but also thinking critically about that information and deliberating with others. … The best way of learning is to seek out people who disagree with you and find out why they disagree. Talk to them. Test what your opinions are against what theirs are. That’s what learning is all about. It’s about provocation, dissenting voices, a diversity of voices. This is what tyrants really fear and through history have tried to subdue.”

Robert and Heather both agreed that, unfortunately, in the present situation the two sides have become too polarized for this kind of discussion to occur in a productive civil manner.

Sources:

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/giving-trump-shit-the-coffee-klatch

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2024/11/08/men-and-white-people-vote-differently-based-education

Theo Bros

The last link in yesterday’s post was to a YouTube video by Michael Burns. He made the video prior to the November 2024 election to explore the philosophies followed by some right-wing politicians and leaders including JD Vance who could (and as we know did) become Vice President.

He divides the radical philosophers and theologians influencing right-wing politicians into two camps: 

·        Neoreactionary philosophers of Silicon Valley, led by Curtiss Yarvin

·        Theo Bros of the new Christian nationalism

Burns then explores several of the leaders of both camps.

In keeping with my tradition of a religious theme on Sundays (did you notice?) I will share some of the second camp. Hartman did a good job of covering the first camp in yesterday’s post.

Pastor Doug Wilson made this provocative statement:

“It used to be that the sexually troubled had to keep their kinks hidden away in the closet. Now it is the conservative Christian who needs to keep his virtues hidden in the recesses of the closet”.

Well, it depends on what those “virtues” are that Wilson feels must be kept hidden. Burns responded by listing a few of the virtues mentioned in the Bible like “helping the poor, caring for vulnerable people, and turning the other cheek”. And said “I don’t think you need to hide that stuff. Let those virtues out of the closet”.

I suspect, though, that Wilson was thinking of virtues like persecuting gender minorities (gays and trans), persecuting followers of other religions (especially Islam), and opposing abortion. Agreed, those are not popular positions in modern society, and rightly so.

Burns quoted Jesus in Mathew 5 “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

He then observed that Wilson and followers seem more interested in defeating their persecutors than praying for them; fighting against liberal culture to take back cultural and political power.

Aaron Renn is the author of “Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture”. He described the current American culture where Christians are persecuted for their beliefs.

Jeremy Carl has a book called “It’s OK to be White” about the persecution of white people. He speculates that “the war on white people” might be synonymous with the war on Christianity.

William Wolfe, a self-proclaimed “expert on Christian nationalism”, said that his ideal version of America would be led by a “Caesar figure”, that gay marriage would be prohibited, and men would vote for their households. He drew the line at executing heretics, admitting that the Founding Fathers had encouraged religious liberty. Very generous of him!

There is a strong thread of white supremacy mixed in all these philosophies but I won’t go into that today.

Burns concludes that “after careful philosophical analysis, this is some of the dumbest sh*t I’ve ever read". 

It’s worth the half hour to listen to Burns discuss these leaders of the philosophy and theology that are followed by Vance and others who are busy replacing America’s democratic government into something else entirely.

Source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrrsnFT-LNo

PS there is a video clip at 32:50 where Donald Trump is asked for his favorite bible verse. Watch him waffle his way out of that tricky question.

Dark Enlightenment

Yesterday I discussed how one expert on the history of fascism, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, explained Trump’s destruction of America as a necessary step in the creation of an authoritarian government.

Thom Hartmann in his March 21 substack post goes farther, explaining the type of government they have planned.

First he points out the bafflement of Americans trying to understand why the Trump regime is tearing down their country’s institutions, and lists several theories:

·        Crippling government programs like Social Security, Medicaid and the Post Office so they can be turned into profitable private businesses

·        Destroying America at the request of Putin

·        Cutting spending to justify the planned tax cuts

They are all wrong Hartmann states.

The reason all these programs and other American institutions are being destroyed is to replace them with a new form of government. This new ideology is called Dark Enlightenment or the neo-reactionary movement (NRx).

The closest existing example of this type of government is in Singapore which has been described as a combination of “pro-corporate libertarian economics and state socialism”. It seems to be working fine, Hartmann says, adding “if you don’t care about freedom”.

Hartmann shared the story of his visit to Singapore back in 1994 to discuss his book on ADHD. In answer to a question on how to get schools to adopt his ideas, he suggested becoming politically active. He returned to his hotel room to find it ransacked by the police. The hotel manager, when summoned, was unsurprised and unapologetic. The next morning one of the people from his audience whispered to him that “We don’t talk about politics here”.

This is the model of government that Musk, Vance Thiel and others have in mind for America. Government workers will be replaced by AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) computers which will make most day-to-day decisions. It will replace democracy with something more like feudalism or monarchy. Donald Trump probably doesn’t understand what they are doing and will be used as a front for a while until they no longer need him.

Peter Thiel, who is responsible for mentoring JD Vance and getting him into the White House as VP, once wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”. Robert Reich responds “Hello? Freedom is incompatible with democracy only if you view democracy as a potential constraint on your wealth and power.”

Their mentor is Curtiss Yarvin a far-right former monarchist blogger who considers democratic governments inefficient and wasteful. He is a Trump supporter and views Singapore as the best example of a successful regime.

Robert Reich wrote about Yarvin in his March 20 substack post. The New Yorker ran an article on February 26 called “Techno-Fascism Comes to America”. Rachel Maddow has featured this movement on her program. Americans are gradually awakening to what is happening.

Let’s hope they wake up in time to stop it.

PS – Note of caution to my Christian friends: Yarvin is a self-proclaimed Atheist and there is nothing Christian about the planned government.

Sources:

https://hartmannreport.com/p/dark-enlightenment-rising-the-billionaire-071

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/trumps-attack-on-the-american-mind

Further exploration:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/techno-fascism-comes-to-america-elon-musk

JD Vance, Curtis Yarvin, and the End of Democracy (Oct 18, 2024)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrrsnFT-LNo