A Long Twilight Struggle

Here’s what I’ve found interesting recently: thinking about the long twilight struggle, what to watch for as Trump weaponizes our government, how Trump plans to seize the power of the purse from Congress, I guess Trump still likes Project 2025, the Christian Nationalist set to take control of the federal government, why an anti-abortion group is so excited about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination, Steve Bannon shares his worldview, a first-person account of being unhoused in America, and why you shouldn’t accept checks for online purchases.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961 (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Link to Transcript)

Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need—not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.

“The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, written and created by J. Michael Straczynski, season 2, episode 20, Warner Bros. Television Distribution, 1995.

Draal to Capt. Sheridan: “It might be helpful for you to know that you are not alone. And that in the long, twilight struggle, which lies ahead of us, there is the possibility of hope.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I hope I am wrong about the impact President-Elect Donald Trump and his appointees will have on our nation.

But hope isn’t a plan, and Trump and his people have not done anything to change my assessment about the authoritarian path we are about to journey down. More on that in some of the things I find interesting below.

I have been thinking about the phrase “the long twilight struggle” quite a bit since election day. It’s been often enough—and mixed in so strongly with my thoughts about the election’s aftermath—that I decided to rename this newsletter.

I’ve loved the phrase since I first heard it while listening to Kennedy’s inaugural address. That speech is known more for the lines Kennedy speaks three paragraphs later (“ask not what your country can do for you…”) but he sets up that call after noting the stakes the United States and its allies were facing during the Cold War.

The next time I remember focusing on the phrase was while watching Season 2, Episode 20, of my favorite television show, Babylon 5. The phrase is the title of the episode, which transforms the show through a series of shocking developments. The show takes a bleak turn. There are war crimes, the decimation of one of the show’s major societies, and an unconditional surrender.

But as with Kennedy’s speech, when the long twilight struggle phrase is spoken during the episode, it is immediately followed by a declaration of hope. The night is coming, but there is promise of a dawn.

The post-sundown twilight is my favorite time of the day. I like watching the sunset and seeing how the shadows grow in strength as the sun’s illumination fades below the horizon. I enjoy the opportunity to pause after what has often been a frustrating day. Some of the favorite photos I’ve taken come from this part of the day. For example, here’s one from last month during a brief trip while I was having dinner with Stacey at Moss Beach just after civil twilight ended.

I know people who are tired after the election. They are taking time to rest. And that’s the right action to take if that is what you need. Self-care is a vital part of any resistance. As the airplane safety briefing reminds us, you need to affix your own oxygen mask to ensure you can help others.

In his day-after-the-election reaction, Chris Geidner of Law Dork used a pivotal scene from one of my favorite plays to describe how this human reaction need not be the end of our story. Geidner writes:

In Tony Kushner’s epic play chronicling New Yorkers in the midst of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1980s, Angels in America, when the Angel arrives, the attention — even from me — is on that opening line: “The Great Work Begins.”

If you are sitting in pain or fear today, take heart in the initial response of Prior Walter: “Go away.”

When the Angel presses ahead, Prior continues to fight: “I’m not prepared, for anything ….” Recounting his experience with the Angel, Prior tells a friend, “It’s 1986 and there’s a plague, half my friends are dead and I’m only thirty-one, and every goddamn morning I wake up … and it takes me long minutes to remember … that this is real, it isn’t just an impossible, terrible dream, so maybe yes I’m flipping out.”

But, the fight — Prior’s work, America’s work — continued. And, by the end of Kushner’s “Gay Fantasia on National Themes” in 1990, Prior closed the story. Addressing the audience in a speech that always has reminded me of Puck’s final speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Prior concludes:

Bye now.
You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
And I bless you: More life.
The Great Work Begins.

One of the lessons that I have taken from that is that fear — even justified fear — need not be the end of the story. It might be the beginning of a new story. There will be pain, difficulty, and even death. The harm will be real. But the work can be worth it, and can lead to change.

I think that’s right. America’s great work continues during this long twilight struggle. And I continue to believe that, in the end, there is the possibility of hope.

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#2

What to watch for: The weaponization of government (Radley Balko, The Watch, Link to Article)

Since the election, a number of readers have asked how worried we should be, and what we should be looking for in the weeks and months ahead.

My general answer: pretty worried! At this point, I see little reason to think that Trump won’t at least attempt his most authoritarian and destructive campaign promises. Whether he succeeds will depend on how much resistance he gets from the courts, Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and the rest of us.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Given what we’ve seen so far, I am pessimistic about how much pushback we can expect from the institutions that are supposed to provide checks and balances against the presidency.

For example, look at how silent most Democratic Party leaders have been about the worst of President-Elect Trump’s nominations for the most sensitive positions in our government. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Americans have a favorable view of the transition despite Trump’s alarming nominations (for the Christian Nationalist Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary and conspiracy theorist Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence) and refusal to accept spending and ethical limits on the transition process.

Politics requires engagement with the media and the public. Voters will assume there is no need to worry about a situation if the opposition party fails to raise objections. After all, if things were bad, our elected officials would make sure to warn us, right?

Balko outlines what Americans can expect should Trump follow through on his promise to weaponize the government to seek retribution from his critics. It won’t take much effort because Congress and voters have allowed the president to consolidate power since World War II.

However, one power our elected officials and political leaders still have is to voice objections. We need to start seeing more of it.

#3

How Trump Plans to Seize the Power of the Purse From Congress (Molly Redden, ProPublica, Link to Article)

Donald Trump is entering his second term with vows to cut a vast array of government services and a radical plan to do so. Rather than relying on his party’s control of Congress to trim the budget, Trump and his advisers intend to test an obscure legal theory holding that presidents have sweeping power to withhold funding from programs they dislike.

…

His plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash over the limits of the president’s control over the budget. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget, while the role of the executive branch is to dole out the money effectively. But Trump and his advisers are asserting that a president can unilaterally ignore Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It doesn’t matter that Congress passed a law explicitly banning impoundment after President Richard Nixon tried it before his resignation. It doesn’t matter that federal courts have issued numerous rulings against the idea. It doesn’t matter that Article I of the Constitution gives the appropriations power to Congress.

Nope. MAGA is trying to make its own reality.

Trump wants to beat the Deep State, so he’s put Project 2025 architect Russell Vought back at the helm of the Office of Management and Budget to make impoundment happen. He’s appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency to try to identify programs ripe to face this extraconstitutional axe.

Yes, there are government programs that should be adjusted and eliminated (that shouldn’t be a surprise given how Congress keeps adding funding to the defense budget the Pentagon doesn’t want). But the real cause of the deficits Trump, Musk, Ramaswamy, and other broligarchs decry are the tax cuts focused on the rich enacted under President George W. Bush and President Donald J. Trump.

Any budget actions that don’t include reversals of these tax cuts are focused on something other than deficit reduction. Trump and the broligarchs have an agenda. We need to explain better what they are doing so that more voters understand the reality.

#4

Trump Disavowed Project 2025 During the Campaign. Not Anymore. (Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Erica L. Green, The New York Times, Link to Article)

During the campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump swore he had “nothing to do with” a right-wing policy blueprint known as Project 2025 that would overhaul the federal government, even though many of those involved in developing the plans were his allies.

Mr. Trump even described many of the policy goals as “absolutely ridiculous.” And during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he said he was “not going to read it.”

Now, as he plans his agenda for his return to the White House, Mr. Trump has recruited at least a half dozen architects and supporters of the plan to oversee key issues, including the federal budget, intelligence gathering and his promised plans for mass deportations.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Trump didn’t turn away from Project 2025 because of the policies. He did it because he didn’t want to defend unpopular policies.

Every reporter and pundit who pushed back when Democrats said that Project 2025 was going to be the blueprint for the Trump Administration should run a correction and wonder why they couldn’t process such a blatant lie in real-time when it mattered (you know, before the election).

For example, I wonder if the New York Times and USA Today fact-checkers will eventually fact-check their work.

I know. How naive of me to have such thoughts.

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#5

The ‘Christian Nation-ist’ Set To Take Control Of The Federal Government (Josh Kovensky, Talking Points Memo, Link to Article)

Russ Vought wants to make America Christian again. And he has put quite a bit of thought into what that might look like.

Across public speeches, little-noticed interviews, and secretly made recordings, the Trump functionary-turned-MAGA policy influencer has spent several years enunciating his belief: America was founded as a Christian nation, and is intended to be governed that way.

Vought is most known for proposing aggressive actions aimed at remaking the government into something very different than it is now — actions like deploying the military to quell protests, gutting the independent civil service, and the many draconian policy ideas contained in Project 2025, which he helped bring into being. But his public statements show that he puts great emphasis on imagining a specifically Christian future for America. He’s spoken at length about his view that America is fundamentally a Christian nation, and about how that contention informs his approach to right-wing budgetary policy. Out of all of Trump’s picks for senior staff to date, Vought may be the best example of how MAGA policy prescriptions have merged with the hard-line ideas of the Christian right.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Speaking of Project 2025, guess who Trump has nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget?

Why it’s Russ Vought, one of the key architects of Project 2025! The Russ Vought who was caught on a leaked video assuring people he thought were British reporters that Trump’s denials about Project 2025 were just “graduate-level politics.”

Oh, my goodness. Who could have seen this coming? «insert shocked face image here»

As Kovensky lays out in his article, Vought believes that the United States is a Christian nation and that people like him must protect the pre-eminence of that religion. Vought has said that his beliefs will guide his thinking about everything from budget cuts, mass deportations, and the use of the military against protesters.

Jesus demands mass deportations wasn’t the message I read when reviewing the Sermon on the Mount, but many evangelical leaders are celebrating Trump’s victory as a prophecy fulfilled.

These are the people Trump hopes you don’t notice while he’s nominating controversial figures like Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard.

#6

Anti-Abortion Group Hopes to Convince RFK Jr. Abortion Pills Are Poisoning Our Water (Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone, Link to Article)

Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, urged the Senate to reject Kennedy’s candidacy, calling him “the most pro-abortion” nominee for the position put forth by a Republican president “in modern history.” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of SBA Pro-Life America, the most powerful anti-abortion organization in the country, was only slightly more circumspect. “There’s no question that we need a pro-life HHS secretary, and of course, we have concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Dannenfelser said in a statement.

But Students for Life — a group that has frequently distinguished itself as the least compromising of any in the anti-abortion movement — had a markedly different reaction: optimism. For one thing, as the group’s president, Kristan Hawkins (herself a veteran of George W. Bush’s HHS), pointed out on X, it’s often the lower-level appointees, the heads of various HHS sub-offices, who are most integral in shaping actual policy. But, more importantly, the leaders of the group believe they might find common ground with Kennedy on one of their pet causes: advancing the dubious idea that abortion pills are polluting the U.S. water supply.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

This is a story worth monitoring whether or not the Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services Secretary.

Students for Life, aware of Kennedy’s previous work as a clean water champion, is hoping they may finally have someone willing to listen to their claims that abortion medication’s impact is polluting our water and should be taken off the market or paired with medical waste receptacles.

The EPA studied the potential environmental impact of mifepristone during its approval process. Not that this matters to Students for Life and other organizations that are going to try to make abortion access as complicated as they possibly can.

#7

Loose Bannon (Peter Hamby, Puck, Link to Article)

Bannon won’t—for now—be going into the White House like he did back in 2017, as Trump’s chief strategist. But he is still very much part of the ideological firmament in Trumpworld and its disciples on the internet. Bannon chats from time to time with the president-elect—and the wild bunch of staffers, appointees, and advisors who often appear on his show and are raring to take power in January. As Bannon tells me, he plans to be an outside check against the Republican establishment he so despises, putting G.O.P. leaders in Congress “on notice” if they dare try to halt the Trump agenda.

I chatted with Bannon on Monday evening, after one of his War Room tapings, about his expectations for Trump 2.0, what he really thinks about Elon Musk and Trump appointees like Scott Bessent and Marco Rubio, why mass deportations need to be conducted “humanely,” how Democrats fumbled their connection with the working class, and much more.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Steve Bannon may not be going back to the White House, but as Hamby notes, he is one of the intellectual drivers of the MAGA movement. I found this interview well worth my time because Bannon outlines his philosophical views and tells a compelling story about how we got here.

As people like George Lakoff have noted for years, most Democratic leaders fail to tell a compelling story about the country.

But Bannon is right that Democrats have a difficult job defending the system when so many voters want change. He sees an era of populism ahead but notes that it could be from the left.

What are our values? How are we going to defend them? What is worth fighting for?

Bannon’s thoughts should foster some difficult but vital conversations.

#8

The Invisible Man (Patrick Fealey, Esquire, Link to Article)

Twenty-seven degrees in a Port-A-Jon, the seat freezing my ass. I’m in the dark with a little flashlight. Chemically treated feces and urine splash up onto my anus. The wind howls, shaking the plastic structure. My hands go numb.

3:00 a.m., parked in a public lot across the street from the town beach in Westerly, Rhode Island. Just woke up, sleep evasive. It’s my first week out here. I pour an iced coffee from my cooler. I’m walking around the front of the Toyota I’m now living in when a car pulls into the lot, comes toward me. I see only headlights illuminating my fatigue and the red plastic party cup in my hand. Must be a cop. Someone gets out and approaches. It is a cop, young. I’m not afraid, exactly, but I’m also not yet used to being homeless.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Patrick Fealey has been a reporter and arts critic for outlets like the Boston Globe and Reuters during his career. In this essay, he provides a first-person account about what it is like to be unhoused in America in 2024.

He recounts the unlucky circumstances that led him to live and work in his car in Rhode Island with his rescue dog, Lily. He struggles to ensure he has the necessities he needs to get through the day and find resources that could help. He describes scary interactions with police, the changing instructions they give him as people report “being nervous” to see him, and the subtle hostility he experiences from people who see him.

People who work with the unhoused know just how difficult our society makes it for people who need help. We see him experience how many communities want to get someone like him to move along.

Fealey explores these circumstances and what it is like to have your life unexpectedly hit enough roadblocks to end up unhoused. What it is like to run into government programs that provide false promises of help.

Our nation makes it hard for someone who is ill or runs into some bad fortune. Fealey explains just how close many of us are to joining him and how this impacts our society:

Many of you could be where we are—on the street—but for some simple and not uncommon twist of fate. This is part of your rejection, this fear that it could be you. You deny that reality because it is too horrific to contemplate, therefore you must deny us. And the moneyed reject us because they know they create us, that we are a consequence of their impulse to accumulate more than they need, rooted in a fear of life and the death that comes with it. Nothing good comes of fear, only destruction, and America has become a society of fear, much of that fear cultivated to divide and control.

#9

You’re not a bank! Don’t accept weirdo checks! (Natalia Antonova, The Normie Restoration, Link to Article)

Scams are our ever-present reality, but I feel like it’s easier to fall for one around the holidays. A lot of people are stressed, and looking to make extra cash. Small businesses turn up the hustle. Many people look to unload items via places such as Facebook Marketplace, and many others are looking for affordable gifts this way. Also the days are shorter in our hemisphere and it does a bunch of things to our brains.

This is why I want to tell you more about check scams and why you simply should never accept a check if you’re selling something online.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This scam is a growing problem, and you should be aware of it so you can also warn friends and family. In this article, Antonova shares a few variations of the scheme that uses people’s misunderstanding about what it means for a check to clear and a check to be validated by the bank to rip off people as they buy things online.

The easy way to protect yourself is to avoid accepting checks for online purchases. People who want to purchase items online know how to provide electronic payments. Don’t risk your money and valuables by trusting too much.

Quick Hits

• The Redbox Removal Team (Jason Koebler, 404 Media, Link to Article)
  The bankruptcy of the DVD distribution company left over 24,000 abandoned machines in front of retailers across the country. Hobbyists and junk haulers are now workering to remove and reuse the machines.
• Remember Nuzzel? A similar news-aggregating tool now exists for Bluesky (Sarah Scire, Nieman Lab, Link to Article)
  I loved Nuzzel, so I was so excited to see this story about Sill. The website looks at the links the people you follow have shared on Bluesky and compiles them in an easy-to-digest article. I use it daily, and it’s like an old friend has gotten back in touch. Click here to sign up!
• ‘Enshittification’ Is Officially the Biggest Word of the Year (Matthew Gault, Gizmodo, Link to Article)
  This word aptly explains why the Internet and technology companies seem to get worse with each passing month. If you haven’t read it already, I encourage you to read the essay about Amazon in which Cory Doctorow coined the term.
• Should We Abandon the Leap Second? (Mark Fischetti & Matthew Twombly, Scientific American, Link to Article)
  As the polar ice caps melt because of the global climate emergency, their impact on the speed of Earth’s rotation is increasing as the planet becomes more spherical. After a series of leap seconds in recent decades, we may need to have a negative leap second later this decade. Would it be better to handle this once a Century or so given how complicated implementing leap seconds can be with our technology?

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“This isn’t the first time in modern history that populists with anti-democratic leanings have come to power. It is also not the first time that democracies have experienced backsliding. What’s different is the mechanism: Before, autocracy came about when military generals launched coups. But now it’s being ushered in by the voters themselves.” (Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start)

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