Month: March 2025

“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.”

“The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.

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Here’s what I’ve found interesting:

• The multiple scandals of Signalgate;
• How The Atlantic’s editor took a significant risk by reporting on that group chat;
• Why national security leaders shouldn’t keep their Venmo transactions and friends public;
• We should not accept deporting people without due process or for their opinions;
• The US is becoming a dual state;
• How to think and act like a dissident movement; and
• Let’s not allow Trump to rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021, insurrection he instigated.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

• The Five Scandals (and One Fascinating Political Insight) of Signalgate (Garrett Graff, Doomsday Scenario, Link to Article)
• Signalgate: violating national security (Timothy Snyder, Thinking About, Link to Article)

We may have finally experienced a Trump Regime scandal that reporters and leading Democrats may be willing to take seriously for more than a single news cycle.

I suspect everyone reading this newsletter is aware of The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s stunning announcement that he had been included in a group chat with senior Trump Regime officials about military strikes in Yemen. You also likely witnessed the Trump team react with so many character attacks, lies, and buck-passing that Goldberg decided he had to release the screenshots of the group chat in response.

As it usually does, the stonewalling has made a dire situation even worse. As Graff explains:

Across the last 48 hours, “Signalgate” has morphed from one scandal — the insane inclusion of one of the nation’s top journalists in one of the world’s most elite and secret group chats into what I think is best thought of as five distinct but overlapping scandals, as well as providing some fascinating political insight into who has power and how decisions get made in Trump II.

Graff’s five scandals include the massive leak of sensitive information, perjury to Congress, a criminal violation of the Federal Records Act, an information technology scandal, and the likely inadvertent admission of war crimes.

Even for the Trump-Musk Regime, that’s not a typical Monday.

Coincidentally, many of the senior officials who were included in the group chat had to testify to Congress the past couple of days. Democrats largely did their job highlighting the scandals during those hearings.

I hope they will see that fighting back can be enjoyable and politically advantageous because Democrats can’t let this scandal go. We must not minimize the ramifications of the Trump regime’s officials using personal phones and commercial software applications to exchange sensitive information.

As Timothy Snyder writes, these group chats also harm the American people because they are designed to keep us in the dark about these deliberations.

From the content of the group chat, it is clear that Signal (and, again, likely on personal phones) is the default way that Musk-Trump high officials communicate with one another. This group chat explicitly referred to another one. There was a protocol at the beginning of this chat, which seemed familiar to everyone. It involved adding people whose Signal numbers were known, as if this were a standard procedure. No one during the chat wrote anything like: “hey, why are we using Signal?” The reason that no one did so, most likely, is that they all do this every day.

Using Signal enables American authorities to violate the rights of Americans. Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges. The autodelete function, which Mike Waltz was using, violates the law. But what is most essential is the purpose of that law: to protect the rights of Americans from their government. The timed deletion function allows American officials to be confident that their communications will never be recorded and that they can therefore conspire without any chance of their actions being known to citizens at the time or at any later point.

This is the kind of scandal Democrats must prioritize. It was a national security failure. Members of our military were put at risk. Senior government members are trying to hide their deliberations from the American people. Every person on that chat failed to protect sensitive and classified conversations. The fact that such a mistake is so easy to make is one of the reasons commercial apps like Signal are inappropriate for such discussions.

Even in the minority, Democrats have tools they can use to force a response. They’ve started by asking good questions and expressing outrage during this week’s hearings.

Senate Democrats should now place a hold on every national security, intelligence, and State Department appointment until the people involved in the group chat are held accountable.

Republicans place holds over made-up culture war disagreements. One of the worst national security mistakes we have seen in recent decades should generate a similar response.

After all, we don’t have to go that far into history to see what Republicans used to think about the need for secure communications. Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz compiled clips involving those involved in the Signal chat as a helpful reminder of what they used to think.

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#2

• The Atlantic Editor Who Broke “Signalgate” Did Nothing Wrong. He Could Be Prosecuted Anyway (Mark Rasch, Slate, Link to Article)

Yep. Jeffrey Goldberg has placed himself in jeopardy by exposing the Signal group chat. It’s not just because the Trump-Musk Regime has been aggressively attacking the press—they also can try to build upon a legal argument made by the Biden Administration last year in the case involving the release of an unaired antisemitic rant by Kanye West during an interview with Tucker Carlson.

Rasch is the attorney representing journalist Tim Burke in a case the Biden Administration pursued under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. As Rasch explains:

The government filed a motion in court claiming that journalists who publish other persons’ conversations can be prosecuted (irrespective of whether law permits the acquisition), but that they have available to them an “affirmative defense” that the parties consented to the acquisition, or that the communications were otherwise public. As an “affirmative defense” the government could go ahead with the prosecution, and the defendant would have to prove that they were not guilty.

As a practical matter, this means that reporters can be investigated, their offices raided and contents of decades’ worth of reporting seized, they can be indicted and prosecuted, but that a journalist like Goldberg could, at trial—and only at trial—present evidence that he was invited to the group chat, and the jury would be entitled to acquit him. The government has no burden of proving anything other than the fact that Goldberg “eavesdropped”—that is, that he acquired the contents of the communication. In short, the journalist must prove that he committed no crime. The Burke prosecutors claimed that the charged journalist “is better equipped to prove that an exception [to the wiretap prohibition] is available and to take advantage of that exception.” By that point, the damage is done.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz tried to blame Goldberg for the security breach, asserting that he did not know how Goldberg got into the chat (even though the chat screenshots clearly show that Waltz was the person who added Goldberg).

Does anyone think Attorney General Pam Bondi and her team are not looking for ways to change the narrative by attacking Goldberg and charging him with illegally accessing classified information? And won’t it be convenient for Bondi to point to a Biden Administration precedent to do so?

#3

• Mike Waltz Left His Venmo Friends List Public (Dhruv Mehrotra and Tim Marchman, Wired, Link to Article)
• Even More Venmo Accounts Tied to Trump Officials in Signal Group Chat Left Data Public (Dhruv Mehrotra and Tim Marchman, Wired, Link to Article)
• Private Data and Passwords of Senior U.S. Security Officials Found Online (Patrick Beuth, Jörg Diehl, Roman Höfner, Roman Lehberger, Friederike Röhreke und Fidelius Schmid, Der Spiegel, Link to Article)

I am sure the intelligence services of many countries were pleased to see how awful Trump-Musk Regime officials are at information security.

You may think Venmo is just a convenient way to share expenses with friends and small businesses. But, if you don’t take steps to make your activity and friends lists private, they can create security risks by giving clues to intelligence services about how to target them. As Wired’s Mehrotra and Marchman explain:

A Venmo account under the name “Michael Waltz,” carrying a profile photo of the national security adviser and connected to accounts bearing the names of people closely associated with him, was left open to the public until Wednesday afternoon. A WIRED analysis shows that the account revealed the names of hundreds of Waltz’s personal and professional associates, including journalists, military officers, lobbyists, and others—information a foreign intelligence service or other actors could exploit for any number of ends, experts say.

Among the accounts linked to “Michael Waltz” are ones that appear to belong to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and Walker Barrett, a staffer on the United States National Security Council. Both were fellow participants in a now-infamous Signal group chat called “Houthi PC small group.”

Yep, this is the kind of information spies used to have to work a bit to find.

Worse, these Trump Regime officials left this information public even though Wired reported that Vice President JD Vance’s Venmo history and friends list were open to the public after Trump picked him to join the ticket last July.

How many times do Trump officials have to make this security mistake before they take the necessary precautions?

That question becomes even more urgent given the Der Spiegel report about how its reporters found the contact data of some of these Trump officials freely accessible on the Internet.

Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials.

To do so, the reporters used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web. Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

People can die when national security officials fail to take operational and information security seriously. That’s why Congress needs to hold Trump officials responsible for these failures.

For the nation’s sake, I hope Democrats are up to the challenge—whether or not any self-proclaimed national security Republicans decide that enough is enough.

Also, Lindsey Adler has a helpful explainer on BlueSky for people who want to make their Venmo settings private.

#4

• Trump Immigration Nazis Kidnap Another Victim For Wrongthink (Evan Hurst, Wonkette, Link to Article)
• Footage shows masked ICE agents detaining Tufts graduate student (José Olivares, The Guardian, Link to Article)

I was taught that defending the right of people to say things you disagreed with was one of our nation’s most important civic values.

The Trump-Musk Regime, however, is using our immigration laws to detain people for opinions with which it disagrees. Apparently, this authoritarian outlook even applies to opinion pieces written in a college newspaper. Evan Hurst explains:

It’s happened again, or should we say, it’s happening again. At Tufts University in greater Boston this week, Donald Trump’s immigration Nazis — in hoodies, plainclothes, and masks that hide their faces — abducted a student from the street and disappeared her. It sounds like they’ve shipped her to Louisiana, like they did with Mahmoud Khalil. She’s here entirely legally on a student visa, a PhD student and Fulbright scholar from Türkiye. No official reasons have been given, because Trump and his Nazis don’t think human beings they don’t like deserve due process, but it appears it might have been about an article she wrote in the school newspaper.

Better hope you haven’t written any letters to the editor that might hurt Tiny Hands’s feelings, because as soon as he decides he thinks he can do this with citizens, hoo boy, it will be far too late. It may already be.

Her name is Rumeysa Ozturk, and the Tufts University school paper is as good as any other place for the tick-tock of what happened.

I don’t think these are the criminals Trump promised he’d deport during the campaign. Of course, the problem for Trump is that he—and his advisor, Stephen Miller—have been lying about the immigration situation and now need to figure out how to meet the MAGA base’s demands for public mass deportations.

There is no need to detain a student like this. They could have revoked her visa and given her 14 days to leave the country. She had committed no crimes and was not a danger to our community. But having masked people in hoodies take her off the street in daylight gave the MAGA people the dopamine hit they needed on social media.

Is Secretary of State Marco Rubio proud of his efforts to target students this way? Are Democrats proud they unanimously voted to confirm him (yep, it was 99-0), believing he’d be one of the adults in the room?

You don’t have to agree with what Ozturk co-wrote in the Tufts University newsletter. In fact, it’s more important to defend her rights if you disagree. It’s just the First Amendment that is on the line.

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#5

• “You’re Here Because of Your Tattoos” (Noah Lanard and Isabela Dias, Mother Jones, Link to Article)

I am sure most of you aren’t surprised to learn that the Trump-Musk Regime’s deportation of Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador did not prioritize making sure the people being deported actually were criminals or members of a gang. Noah Lanard and Isabela Dias explain:

Mother Jones has spoken with friends, family members, and lawyers of ten men sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration based on allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua. All of them say their relatives have tattoos and believe that is why their loved ones were targeted. But they vigorously reject the idea that their sons, brothers, and husbands have anything to do with Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration recently labeled a foreign terrorist organization. The families have substantiated those assertions to Mother Jones, including—in many cases—by providing official documents attesting to their relatives’ lack of criminal histories in Venezuela. Such evidence might have persuaded US judges that the men were not part of any criminal organization had the Trump administration not deliberately deprived them of due process.

Due process matters. And the Fifth Amendment requires it. But, again, the Trump-Musk Regime needs to have splashy deportation stories to meet the demands of the MAGA base.

The United States has detained likely innocent people, sent them to a prison in another country, defied court orders, and then used them and other prisoners as part of a grotesque photo op.

We must not normalize any of this.

#6

• America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State (Aziz Huq, The Atlantic, Link to Article)

Aziz Huq reminded me of an important book that helped me understand a key dynamic of this dangerous moment.

Our independent courts continue to operate. But now, some people are being excluded from their protection. History suggests that the circle being excluded will widen—often without advance warning.

Huq writes about Ernst Fraenkel, a Jewish labor lawyer who was able to work in Germany until 1938. Fraenkel explained these dynamics in his book The Dual State.

As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system—which he called the “normative state”—remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely. In this domain, which Fraenkel called the “prerogative state,” ordinary law didn’t apply. (A prerogative power is one that allows a person such as a monarch to act without regard to the laws on the books; theorists from John Locke onward have offered various formulations of the idea.) In this prerogative state, judges and other legal actors deferred to the racist hierarchies and ruthless expediencies of the Nazi regime.

The key here is that this prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. Rather, Fraenkel argued, dictatorships create a lawless zone that runs alongside the normative state. The two states cohabit uneasily and unstably. On any given day, people or cases could be jerked out of the normative state and into the prerogative one. In July 1936, for example, Fraenkel won a case for employees of an association taken over by the Nazis. A few days later, he learned that the Gestapo had seized the money owed to his clients and deposited it in the government’s coffers. Over time, the prerogative state would distort and slowly unravel the legal procedures of the normative state, leaving a smaller and smaller domain for ordinary law.

Yet, Fraenkel insisted, it was a mistake to think that even the Nazis would entirely dispense with normal laws. After all, they had a complex, broadly capitalist economy to maintain. “A nation of 80 million people,” he noted, needs stable rules. The trick was to find a way to keep the law going for Christian Germans who supported or at least tolerated the Nazis, while ruthlessly executing the führer’s directives against the state’s enemies, real and perceived. Capitalism could jog nicely alongside the brutal suppression of democracy, and even genocide.

Fraenkel experienced this dual state as a Jewish attorney who was able to keep working because he qualified for an exclusion as a World War I veteran. One day, he was successfully defending clients. Then he learned that he and his wife were included on a Gestapo list.

Huq explains how the Trump Regime is building a prerogative state with pardons of insurrectionists, purges of career lawyers, retribution against opponents, and the appointment of justice officials who are loyal to Trump and not the Constitution.

I hope understanding more about how this process works will help us fight against it.

#7

• How to Think (and Act) Like a Dissident Movement (Jonathan V. Last, The Bulwark, Link to Article)

Defeating the Trump-Musk Regime will require a large and ideologically diverse coalition, and Jonathan V. Last makes an excellent argument that we should seek to emulate successful dissident movements.

We now see that most institutions are weak in the face of authoritarianism.

JVL’s Law is: Any institution not explicitly anti-Trump will eventually become useful to Trump. I originally thought this would apply only to media orgs. Turns out that it applies to everyone and everything. From Ross Douthat to John Fetterman, from Paul Weiss to Facebook. All of our institutions are the Republican party now.

This is an extraordinary moment and it requires extraordinary vision and actions. We must stop viewing political life through the lens of American politics as we have known it, and adopt the viewpoint of dissident movements in autocratic states.

This is not the time for typical opposition politics. This is not a normal political moment. We need our leaders to demonstrate that they understand.

This is why I’m so frustrated with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and many of his caucus colleagues. They admit they are trying to relive 2017 and wait until Republican popularity shrinks.

But in a dual state, popularity matters less and less over time.

Last explains the tactics used by dissident movements that our anti-Trump coalition can emulate. We can see how efforts to support each other can come together successfully. As he writes:

Find a leader. Bring people together in person, far away from the capital’s control. Build momentum. Organize your supporters. Harness the power of their mass. Build toward an explicit show of strength. Take back control of Congress.

And then, if we’re lucky, we can start thinking about an endgame.

In the meantime, fight the authoritarians on everything. If the stock market drops, scream about it. Because it’s their fault. When a kid dies of measles—their fault. Attack them every day, on whatever the latest thing is. Turn “flood the zone” against them by not needing to cling to any one outrage for weeks. Embrace the idea of snapping up new outrages every day.

Yeah, that’s a good plan.

#8

• The Reality of the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government. Here’s a video from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that one can review if their memory fades.

People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.

It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“‘History isn’t something you need to bring to life. History already is alive. We are history. History isn’t politicians or kings and queens. History is everyone. It is everything. It’s that coffee. You could explain much of the whole history of capitalism and empire and slavery just by talking about coffee. The amount of blood and misery that has taken place for us to sit here and sip coffee out of paper cups is incredible.’

‘You’ve put me right off my drink.’

‘Oh, sorry. But the point is: history is everywhere. It’s about making people realise that. It makes you understand a place.’

‘Right.’

‘History is people. Everyone loves history.’”—Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

Thank you for reading! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Please let me know what you think about what you’ve read—and send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

The Long Twilight Struggle is free and supported voluntarily by its readers. If you liked what you read, please consider buying me a coffee to drink while I write it by becoming a paid subscriber or sponsor.

“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.”

“The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.

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Here’s what I’ve found interesting:

• First they came for Columbia;
• We need Democrats who want to oppose Musk-Trump;
• The Camp of the Saints is an atrocious book that inspires the worst people;
• When does a society cross a threshold;
• DOGE is courting catastrophic risk;
• Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme;
• The war plans to invade Canada;
• The real criminal element is lead (RIP Kevin Drum);
• Elon Musk is begging Americans to destroy Tesla; and
• Let’s not allow Trump to rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021, insurrection he instigated.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

First They Came for Columbia (Professor Ryan D. Enos and Professor Steven Levitsky, Harvard Crimson, Link to Article)

Like many autocrats before him, Donald Trump has launched what could be a devastating attack on universities.

Over the last week, the Trump administration has cancelled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University and $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University.

Both schools were on a list of 10 universities (including Harvard) that the Department of Justice announced it was investigating over politicized allegations of antisemitism. The Department of Education subsequently launched a similar investigation into 60 universities.

And last week, the administration arrested a former student seemingly not for a crime but for his political speech on campus. Trump, who has pledged to punish universities that permit “illegal protests,” called it “the first arrest of many to come.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Harvard Professors Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky took to the pages of their campus newspaper to demand Harvard, and other higher education institutions, start taking steps to defend themselves from the Musk-Trump regime’s attacks.

They explain a dynamic I wish Democratic Party leaders understood: changing public opinion requires taking a public stand. If the public only hears from the Musk-Trump regime, minds won’t change, and the regime will win.

If the Musk-Trump regime pays no cost for the example it is setting of Columbia, we will see the executive branch go further down its university hit list. Our higher education institutions are the envy of the world for their scholarship and research. All of the benefits that leadership brings to the United States are in jeopardy.

Attacking higher education institutions and media outlets is a standard procedure for authoritarian regimes. As Enos and Levitsky explain, we have seen this happen again and again, from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to El Salvador, Hungary, and Türkiye more recently.

We need universities and Democratic Party leaders to stand up in loud opposition now while it is still possible. Yes, it is hard. Yes, things are moving faster than most of us anticipated. Yes, it means taking risks.

But, as Benjamin Franklin warned, that is what is required if we are to keep the Republic.

The Long Twilight Struggle is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider joining for free or becoming a paid subscriber to buy me coffee to drink while writing this newsletter.

#2

The Fault Line in Democratic Politics (David Dayen, The American Prospect, Link to Article)

There’s a much more elemental question animating Democratic politics at the moment, if you bother to listen to people who still call themselves Democrats (or even independents): Is the party in opposition to Donald Trump going to oppose anything?

We saw this week what in retrospect was a predictable answer to that question. House Democrats, who face voters every two years, who must pay attention to the public mood, saw the government funding deadline as an early and important moment of defiance against the ransacking of America. They didn’t come to it on the basis of being progressive or moderate, in a safe seat or a swing district. They listened to their voters, who were looking for some sign of life among Democrats, or a plan to stanch the bleeding of an economic and moral collapse.

But Trump is also a great uniter of his own side, and he was able to pull the Freedom Caucus in on a spending bill for the first time in ages by promising he would continue to impound and delete programs regardless of what the bill said. Happy to outsource the carnage and the responsibility, all Republicans went with it. So it fell to the Senate, where Democratic votes would be needed on the bill for it to pass.

Senate Democrats don’t face voters every two years. They have the luxury of overthinking themselves into oblivion, inventing scenarios to avoid confrontation that they can reverse engineer into seeming wise. That’s what Chuck Schumer did, retreating from the fight and advancing a bill he called abhorrent to avoid a government shutdown, as if we’re not experiencing that already.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Supposedly wise pundits have lectured us about why Democrats needed to keep the Senate filibuster in place in case a Republican—or Trump—won the presidency.

Yet, on the first opportunity to stop lousy budget legislation since the Musk-Trump regime took office, Senate Democrats declined to use the filibuster. And then they refused to object to unanimous consent requests that sped along some confirmations and allowed the Senate to adjourn and start its recess on schedule.

After all, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer had a book tour to start. Well, that is until his team figured out that irate Democrats were ready to share their outrage over his failed leadership by protesting his book events.

When facing an attempt at authoritarian capture, the opposition needs to, well, OPPOSE THE TYRANT’S ACTIONS to have a chance to win.

I understand that Democrats did not have a good option here once Trump could wrangle the House Republican caucus to go along with the budget continuing resolution. I even sympathize with the idea that ensuring the courts stay open had to be the priority right now.

However, Senate Democrats did not prepare the people for this vote. They hung their House colleagues, who were unified, out to dry on a tough vote. They did not take advantage of an opportunity to get people who don’t inhale politics daily to see what the Musk-Trump regime has been doing by breaking previously enacted budget laws.

It seemed like the plan was to let the House Republicans fail, and then there was no real Plan B once Trump got all but one of them on board.

Regardless, Senate Democrats could have earned more benefit of the doubt about this specific bill if they had already demonstrated a willingness to use the tools they have to fight the Musk-Trump regime.

Instead, they have refused to object to unanimous consent requests (we are up to over 500 of them since Trump entered office). Senate Democrats also refuse to force Republicans to be in the Senate in person by demanding a quorum call. There has been little talk about the need to impeach Trump. No, that won’t happen right now, but there is value in injecting the idea into the public discussion.

That’s created quite a bit of justified frustration. I am among the Democrats who want to see our Democratic-elected leaders start to fight back. If Schumer is unwilling to lead, he should step down.

#3

Making Fascism Work for Moderates (Alex Bronzini-Vender, Public Books, Link to Article)

Yet The Camp of the Saints, for all its lengthy, gratuitous depictions of the migrants’ crudeness and repellant hygiene, is a novel concerned equally with Western impotence as with Eastern barbarity. It is a reactionary diatribe against the very tenets of postwar liberalism: human rights, international law, and liberal universalism. As Nathan Pinkoski favorably noted in a defense of the novel for the Catholic integralist journal First Things, “Raspail wishes to hold a mirror up to our own society: He is concerned with ‘us,’ not ‘them.’”

For decades, the book has been a foundational text of the Far Right’s “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Yet its influence extends beyond the seediest extremes; in fact, The Camp of the Saints gave “sensible” conservatives—including Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley Jr., and Silvio Berlusconi—ideological cover under which to unite both strands of their movement once and for all. Fear of “white genocide”—and the brutal, racist measures needed to stop it, measures premised upon rejecting the postwar, liberal notions of universal human rights and dignity—entered the range of acceptable political disagreement.

<snip>

Worse than the book’s plot, perhaps, is that it is finding new audiences today. As the ideas espoused by The Camp of the Saints grow more accepted in polite political conversation, so too does the Right feel more emboldened to publicly pay it homage. In 2015, Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Far Right National Rally, tweeted: “Today, it’s a migrant submersion. I invite the French to read, or re-read, The Camp of the Saints.” In a series of leaked emails, Trump administration senior advisor Stephen Miller suggested to a Breitbart editor that “someone should point out the parallels [of the European migrant crisis] to Camp of the Saints.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I hated reading The Camp of the Saints. It made me physically ill. But during President Obama’s first term, I saw increasing references to it in conservative online forums. So I checked it out.

And as much as I hated the plot, I couldn’t ignore this vile book’s undeniable propaganda power. There is a reason white nationalists—from Steve Bannon to Stephen Miller to Marine Le Pen to Viktor Orban—encourage their supporters to read it.

This article explores how some of the worst people we know have used Jean Raspail’s novel to make the Great Replacement Theory—and fears of a white genocide—viable political topics.

I think we need to understand what is driving the rise in racism we are experiencing. I don’t think it is a coincidence that I started seeing more and more references to this book during President Obama’s first term. Some people never accepted that the United States elected a Black president.

You don’t need to read the book. But I encourage you to read this article, which has a good summary of its sickening plot, so you can be aware of how its fear and hatred continue to inspire some of the worst people.

#4

A Russian Warning About Trump (Introduction by Natalia Antelava, coda, Link to Article)

What does a society look like in the moment before it crosses a threshold? The hindsight afforded by history makes these transitions seem obvious, even inevitable – but for those living through them, the signs often appear disconnected, their significance obscured by the routines of daily life.

I’ve been obsessing about this question in conversations with friends and our editorial team. Many of us on the team have direct experiences of either growing up in or living in authoritarian regimes, and while our lived experiences don’t provide simple solutions they do give us a unique ability to recognize signs and bring together diverse perspectives on the transformation that the United States is currently living through.

The perspective I am sending you today comes from Andrei Babitsky, an independent, now exiled Russian journalist and a fascinating thinker.

<snip>

I was struck by Andrey’s observation that strongmen consistently tell us exactly who they are and what they intend to do – yet we persistently refuse to take them at their word. “Horrendous crimes are usually announced to the world long before they’re committed,” he writes, drawing on Russia’s painful lessons. He raises a question I’ve been pondering: Why do we struggle to recognize patterns of authoritarianism even when they unfold before our eyes? Is it optimism, exceptionalism, or perhaps a deeper psychological protection against uncomfortable truths?

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yeah, that’s quite the question. Historians and experts in authoritarianism have been warning us to take Donald Trump’s threats seriously because they were, history warns us, promises.

How do we know when we’ve crossed the Rubicon? When does a Republic fall into authoritarianism—as Rome’s did the day Julius Caesar crossed that river with his legion?

Coda Editor-in-Chief Natalia Antelava asks these questions to introduce an essay by Russian writer Andrey Babitskiy. He explores the parallels between Trump and Putin and notes that no conspiracy is necessary because “Trump and Putin are remarkably similar men who naturally understand each other.”

In the end, Babitskiy asks, given what history exposes about the current threat, “what are we going to do?”

If Senator Schumer and his Democratic colleagues wonder why people are so angry with them, that question gives them a clue.

Thank you for reading The Long Twilight Struggle. This post is public, so please share it with your family and friends.

#5

DOGE Is Courting Catastrophic Risk (Brian Klaas, The Atlantic, Link to Article)

DOGE is courting these kinds of risks by automatically assuming that programs with no immediately obvious function—or at least none that Musk and his minions can discern—are wasteful. Some of its cost cutting may be eliminating genuine waste; no government spends its money perfectly. But DOGE’s campaign is riddled with errors, at the level of both understanding and execution. The agency’s strategy is akin to a climber replacing sturdy rope with low-cost string: We may not realize the full danger until it snaps.

Musk developed DOGE’s playbook when he took over Twitter, where resilience matters much less than it does in government. Gutting the social-media platform may have resulted in more harmful content and some outages, including one this week, but the stakes were low compared with the crucial government services that Musk is currently cutting. When X fails, memes go unposted. When the government fails, people can die.

The risks are not only to Americans but also to humanity, as technology and climate change have linked the destinies of far-flung people more closely and increased the likelihood of extinction-level calamities. It is not reassuring in this regard that Trump controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and that DOGE accidentally fired key people who manage it, that Trump doesn’t believe in climate change and is having Musk slash seemingly every agency designed to mitigate it, and that Musk summarized his view of AI risk by telling Joe Rogan that it presents “only a 20 percent chance of annihilation.” The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction—an organization that DOGE would certainly eliminate if it could—came up with a more sophisticated figure in 2023: By its estimate, there is a 2 to 14 percent chance of an extinction-level event in the 21st century. This is not a world in which the government should be running itself on a just-in-time basis.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Elon Musk and DOGE are making the United States and the world less safe. People are already dying because of Musk’s actions.

But we are only at the beginning of the crisis. As Klaas explains, Musk is destroying our nation’s ability to respond to a variety of complex threats.

Government workers do not get credit when their efforts prevent a crisis. They are only noticed when something goes wrong or when no one is there to respond because Elon Musk, or one of his young tech-bro employees, didn’t understand why a program matters.

We will wish some federal safety program gutted by DOGE the past two months was more resilient. The only question is how many people are going to get hurt or die because of what Trump has allowed Musk to do.

#6

Social Security Is Not a Ponzi Scheme (Lawrence B. Glickman, Boston Review, Link to Article)

When Elon Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” on Joe Rogan’s podcast on February 28, he was, wittingly or not, echoing a long line of conservative critics. Over the last fifteen years alone, a long line of Republican politicians—Mick Mulvaney, Ron Johnson, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul—have characterized it the same way.

Comparing a ninety-year-old federally backed social insurance system with a form of fraud that got its name in the 1920s—when Charles Ponzi was sent to prison for bilking investors out of millions of dollars—may seem bizarre. Senator Barry Goldwater obliquely conceded the oddity of the analogy when, in 1977, he called Social Security “the longest playing Ponzi scheme on record”—most Ponzi schemes being short-term gambits. In reality, of course, the Social Security system is almost the opposite of a Ponzi scheme: it uses funds collected from both employers and workers to pay small monthly benefit checks to retirees, disabled Americans, and others who qualify. (Self-employed people pay the full contribution.)

Inapt though such comparisons may be, they have been a persistent strand of conservative thought ever since 1935, when the Social Security Act became law.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

There is little new in the radical right-wing’s attacks against the Social Security program. They have hated the program, and other New Deal programs, since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed them into law.

Now Elon Musk has joined the list of people who lie about how the Social Security program works and the amount of fraud it experiences.

As Glickman explains, Republicans have tried to cut Social Security before using this plan. Musk is now adding a new element: inexplicable and anti-Constitutional worker layoffs that make it harder for recipients to reach someone who can solve their problems and increase the risk that the program will fail to pay promised benefits.

It would be wise for Democrats to start preparing the public for these potential problems so they cannot be used by the Musk-Trump regime to fool people into supporting the privatization or elimination of Social Security.

This is a time for a forceful response. Social Security is popular. Almost everyone knows someone who benefits from the program. Democrats should defend Social Security now because it is the right thing to do—and it is smart politics. That’s usually a pretty solid combination.

#7

Inside the US War Plans to Invade Canada (Peter Carlson, SpyTalk, Link to Article)

ONE DAY IN 2005, WHEN I WAS A REPORTER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST, I was in the National Archives, researching a story that has long ago escaped my memory. But I remember well what happened next: A PR lady for the Archives introduced me to an ancient gentleman who’d been an archivist there for 50 years.

Being a reporter, I blurted out what seemed like the obvious question: “What’s the weirdest document you’ve seen in your 50 years?”

He did not hesitate even a second before replying, “War Plan Red.”

“What’s War Plan Red?” I asked.

“It’s the American war plan for invading Canada,” he said.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I mean, our military should be preparing for all possible scenarios, right?

And, as Charlie Pierce reminded readers, the United States’ desire to annex Canada goes to the birth of our nation, including a special clause in the Articles of Confederation (Article XI) that made it easier for Canada to join than any other colony. There have been several additional attempts over time.

I hate that Trump’s threats to Canada have made such stories relevant again. I wish our Democratic Party’s elected leaders could demonstrate as much passion in fighting Trump as the Canadians have. Elbows up, indeed.

#8

America’s Real Criminal Element Is Lead (Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, Link to Article)

Put all this together and you have an astonishing body of evidence. We now have studies at the international level, the national level, the state level, the city level, and even the individual level. Groups of children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes. All of these studies tell the same story: Gasoline lead is responsible for a good share of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.

When differences of atmospheric lead density between big and small cities largely went away, so did the difference in murder rates.

Like many good theories, the gasoline lead hypothesis helps explain some things we might not have realized even needed explaining. For example, murder rates have always been higher in big cities than in towns and small cities. We’re so used to this that it seems unsurprising, but Nevin points out that it might actually have a surprising explanation—because big cities have lots of cars in a small area, they also had high densities of atmospheric lead during the postwar era. But as lead levels in gasoline decreased, the differences between big and small cities largely went away. And guess what? The difference in murder rates went away too. Today, homicide rates are similar in cities of all sizes. It may be that violent crime isn’t an inevitable consequence of being a big city after all.

The gasoline lead story has another virtue too: It’s the only hypothesis that persuasively explains both the rise of crime in the ’60s and ’70s and its fall beginning in the ’90s. Two other theories—the baby boom demographic bulge and the drug explosion of the ’60s—at least have the potential to explain both, but neither one fully fits the known data. Only gasoline lead, with its dramatic rise and fall following World War II, can explain the equally dramatic rise and fall in violent crime.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Kevin Drum passed away last week after a battle with cancer. I have been reading Drum since the first wave of blogging in the early 2000s when he was the CalPundit. Since then, he continued to blog for a variety of publications, including Mother Jones.

I didn’t agree with him all the time. But he was thoughtful and avoided the vitriol that is so common on the interwebs.

But he didn’t just do short-form blog posts. He could write longer features. And the one I am sharing here is what I consider his most important work: demonstrating the link between lead concentrations in the air and crime 20 years later.

It wasn’t Rudy Giuliani’s broken windows plan. It wasn’t mass incarceration. It wasn’t the war on drugs. The leaded gasoline used in the post-war era is the molecule that explains the crime surge and crime decline—given lead’s impact on the brains of young people.

It is one of the best articles I have ever read. It should be more famous. So, as my tribute to Drum, I’m sharing it with you.

#9

Elon Musk is begging Americans to destroy Tesla (Jason Sattler, The Last Billionaires, Link to Article)

Last week offered another in a series of heartbreaking reminders to all Americans who care about freedom, science, and each other: No one is coming to save us.

Not Senate Democrats. Not the courts. And certainly not the governor of our largest state, who has chosen fashy bro podcasting over opposing the current regime. Not anyone but ourselves. If America is to survive the next 1,400 or so days of the Trump presidency as something resembling a free and fair democracy, it’s all on us.

This is why we must do our best to take down what may be the sole reason we are in this mess: Tesla Motors.

Elon Musk’s flagship operation’s inflated and entirely suspect value must go down because he has left us no other choice. We are obligated by our history as Americans to do our very best to destroy his companies and him through them until he wisely decides to leave us the fuck alone. Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor depend on it.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Protests work, even when our elected leaders—from Chuck Schumer to Gavin Newsom—fail us.

Tesla stock is down 35 percent this month. Elon Musk may be the only person who can lose $100 billion in paper wealth and not apparently care, but even he has to feel the pain at some point.

Instead of effectively overseeing Elon the CEO, the Tesla Board of Directors has recently sold over $100 million of stock.

We need more of this. The overvalued Tesla stock has financed so much of Elon Musk’s horribleness over the past few years. May this correction continue.

#10

The Reality of the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government. Here’s a video from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that one can review if their memory fades.

People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.

It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“American politics makes a lot more sense when you realize that the GOP is afraid of pissing off the GOP base, and the Dems are afraid of pissing off the GOP base, but neither party is afraid of pissing off the Dem base.”—The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer on BlueSky

Thank you for reading! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Please let me know what you think about what you’ve read—and send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craig@cheslog.com. 

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“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.”

“The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.

---

Here’s what I’ve found interesting:

• Democratic Leadership chooses friendly fire;
• Democrats need to react to the coming Trump lies about the economy;
• Anti-Semitism in the Oval Office;
• The Trump regime’s effort to deport dissidents;
• Gavin Newsom falls into a MAGA trap;
• The Nerd Reich is pushing Freedom City legislation;
• Revelation-inspired diplomacy;
• Fired federal workers face family members celebrating their trauma;
• Democratic speeches flip 29 GOP votes to defeat anti-trans bills in Montana; and
• Let’s not allow Trump to rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021, insurrection he instigated.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

Three things the Democrats can do right now (Radley Balko, The Watch, Link to Article)

No Democrat has asked me for my advice, nor would they. But I’m going to venture outside my lane to offer some anyway: Stop acting like any of this is normal. Donald Trump isn’t Mitt Romney or John McCain. He isn’t even Dick Cheney. He’s Victor Orban, and aspires to be Vladimir Putin.

I understand the argument that you can’t use authoritarian tactics to stop an authoritarian. And I agree with it. We don’t need competing authoritarian parties.

But it’s also time to end the asymmetrical decency. You don’t owe any deference or reverence to “the office” of the presidency when the man occupying it is a vulgar thug who’s exploiting the office to enrich himself and smite his enemies and whose administration is provoking a constitutional crisis by openly defying the federal courts. You needn’t respect “decorum” during a speech in which the president is blood-libeling immigrants, threatening allies, promising to wreck the economy, and telling lies that everyone knows are lies as a raw display of power. And it is especially craven to scold one of your own for a modest act of defiance against an administration that has threatened to arrest and imprison you over protected speech.

That said, civil disobedience isn’t the only way to convey the seriousness of what we’re up against. The Democrats just need to start acting like the Trump administration is the threat they’ve long and correctly claimed it to be. Their actions need to match their words.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I wasn’t thrilled to learn that the Democratic leader of the United States House of Representatives responded to the lies spoken by the president during his address to Congress by confronting the Democrats who protested.

Hitting members of your caucus with friendly fire? That’s not great. Sadly, it is the latest example of Democratic leadership failures since the election.

By treating President Trump’s authoritarian speech as a typical event, Democratic leaders helped to normalize his regime’s anti-constitutional actions.

There should be no cooperation from Democrats until Elon Musk’s anti-constitutional crime spree through federal agencies and our personal data comes to an end.

I am worried that the Senate Democrats will play nice and give the Musk-Trump regime a big win on the budget continuing resolution rather than using their powers under the rules—tools Republicans used without hesitation—to slow down events and force negotiations.

Balko also lays out other ways Democrats could help lead the opposition. Town halls in red districts, creating an unofficial Shadow Cabinet, and hosting daily briefings to outline the Musk-Trump regime’s anti-constitutional actions would be a great start and help ensure the truth has a chance to be heard.

This is not the time to play games with amendments or to defer to what has been considered normal. Our Constitutional form of government is under siege. Will enough Democrats defend it in time?

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#2

Be Prepared (Brian Beutler, Off Message, Link to Article)

But the battle for narrative control is only just beginning. As markets continue to deteriorate and if growth turns to contraction, the right will shift into a different gear—from panic to scapegoating. We’ll hear, loudly and endlessly:

* That Trump inherited a depressed economy from Biden (false);

* That Trump’s recession is a sadly necessary but carefully devised program to whip inflation and kick off a manufacturing renaissance (also false);

* That the economy is doing great, actually (false again);

* That wokes and “globalists” (😉😉😉) sabotaged the economy (false, bigoted);

* That the macroeconomic indicators are fake news (another lie);

* That the real numbers are these official government statistics (which have been manipulated by political appointees).

I don’t believe right-wing propaganda in the U.S. (and foreign propaganda aimed at propping up the U.S. right) is all powerful. Reality can still break through in dire circumstances. But I do believe it’s harder than many Democrats appreciate, and my hope is that they don’t assume that deteriorating material conditions will do most of their work for them. Again, Schatz is right. Democrats have a very good case to make—he made it right there in his tweet! But it’s just as important for them to anticipate and prebut the coming lies.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Despite decades of experience, Democratic elected officials still tend to believe that the American people will figure out how Republican policies are hurting them.

As Beutler describes, MAGA media will start working overtime to absolve the Musk-Trump regime of any responsibility for the coming economic downturn. Democrats need to start explaining now why that’s bullshit. They can’t wait until they see baffling polling numbers.

The Musk-Trump regime dismantled USAID without much pushback because of surprise and speed. They also took advantage of the American voters’ lack of understanding about the size of our foreign aid budget and how many lives it saved around the world. Americans think that nearly a quarter of the budget goes to foreign aid when the figure was closer to one percent (see this February 2025 KFF Health Tracking poll for more details).

There are several issues where Democrats getting ahead of the story is vital. It is clear that the Musk-Trump actions with the Social Security agency are going to put payments to recipients at risk. Staffing cuts will make it more difficult to fix those problems.

Will Democrats wait until Social Security isn’t popular and the Musk-Trump regime proposes privatization or elimination before sticking up for the program? Or will they act now and give voters the ability to understand the sabotage that’s underway?

This is one of the reasons I support some of the ideas Radley Balko shared in the first story of this newsletter. Daily briefings and town halls would allow Democrats to tell a story that can be shared on legacy and social media. This is not the time to hide away and hope voters get what is happening. Democrats need to lead.

#3

Antisemitism in the Oval Office (Timothy Snyder, Thinking About…, Link to Article)

Last Friday I happened to start watching the discussion at the White House between Zelens’kyi, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Brian Glenn towards the end, when Vance was already yelling at the Ukrainian president: “you’re wrong!” I took in the tone and the body language, and my first, reflexive reactions was: these are non-Jews trying to intimidate a Jew. Three against one. A roomful against one. An antisemitic scene.

And the more I listened to the words, the more that reaction was confirmed. I won’t speak for how Zelens’kyi regards himself. Ukrainian, of course. Beyond that I don’t know. These things are complex, and personal.

But not for the antisemite.

It was all there, in the Oval Office, in the shouting and in the interruptions, in the noises and in the silences. A courageous man seen as Jewish had to be brought down. When he said things that were simply true he was shouted down and called a propagandist. There was no acknowledgement of Zelens’kyi’s bravery in remaining in Kyiv. The Americans portrayed themselves as the real heroes because they provided some of the weapons. The suffering of Ukrainians went unmentioned. An attempt to refer to it was cruelly and falsely reduced to a “propaganda tours” led by Zelens’kyi. The Americans portrayed themselves as the real victims of the because they paid for some of the weapons. It was all, bizarrely, about money. There is this odd Trumpian notion, unique to Ukraine, that aid should be paid back as if it were a loan, with Trump himself just making up the amount owed. Zelens’kyi was portrayed as someone who was taking our cash, giving is nothing in return, ripping us off. He was also mocked for not knowing how to dress for the space, as not belonging. And his deference was demanded: “Have you said thank you once?” “Offer some words of appreciation.” And then was thrown out of the White House. And told to resign his office as president of Ukraine.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Snyder explains why how the Oval Office betrayal by Trump and Vance, their opposition to supporting Ukraine, and the war goals laid out by Russian President Vladimir Putin are anti-Semitic.

They believed Zelenskyy needed to be put in his place. He cannot be the president of a fake country. He’s wearing the wrong clothes. It’s about the money. He isn’t worthy of respect.

That wasn’t subtle.

Snyder’s article goes into the details about how all of this fits into the history of anti-Semitism. The Trump-Musk-Vance regime’s leaders should not be given any benefit of the doubt about what hatreds are lurking behind their actions.

#4

What is happening to Mahmoud Khalil is chilling — and intended to chill all opposition (Chris Geidner, Law Dork, Link to Article)

But, even though there are complications and will certainly be more as we move forward, the specific responses of the administration tell me that there is more than enough happening here that we should all be alarmed by what is happening to Khalil.

First, Secretary of State Marco Rubio weighed in, stating on Sunday evening, March 9, that the U.S. government would be revoking visas and green cards of the vaguely termed “Hamas supporters.” This could mean anything and was nothing legal; it was a rhetorical flourish made to inflame.

If there were any doubt about the nature of Rubio’s statement, the Department of Homeland Security was more specific and more troubling — making clear that lines were almost certainly being crossed in justifying Khalil’s arrest.

In a statement issued a few hours later Sunday night, DHS tweeted that the arrest was made “in support of” Trump executive orders. The department also stated not that Khalil provided “material support” to Hamas — or any term known to the law — but rather that he “led activities aligned to Hamas.”

This is both vague and so overbroad that it could include virtually any activity.

If this were actually the legal standard, Khalil — or any non-citizen — would be deportable without the government even needing to claim any real connection with Hamas or any “designated terrorist organization.” The odd wording and grammatical structure — “aligned to” — reinforces that idea: The activities need not even be “aligned with” Hamas; activities being “aligned to” Hamas is enough.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It is difficult to believe that what is happening to Mahmoud Khalil is about fighting anti-Semitism given how Donald Trump and so many people in his regime act.

In addition to what I wrote in the previous item, the Trump regime didn’t have a problem with Elon Musk using a Nazi salute during his inauguration festivities. And that was after Musk has allowed Nazis to run rampant on X (formerly known as Twitter), and has personally endorsed anti-Semitic statements.

It is absolutely possible to criticize the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu government in Gaza without being anti-Semitic. Khalil has not been accused of any crimes. He has permanent residency status. That means he is entitled to Constitutional protections, including the First Amendment.

But Khalil was taken into custody in front of his U.S. citizen (and eight months pregnant) wife, who was also threatened with arrest. Then he was moved without notice to his wife or his lawyers.

As Esquire’s Charlie Pierce asked, so we’re disappearing people now?

History demonstrates that these kind of authoritarian actions start with someone the regime hopes won’t generate much sympathy. But once regime is able to deport a permanent resident about speech that isn’t criminal, it establishes a precedent that can be broadened quickly to, well, any dissident. And as journalist Jonathan Katz observed, “Dissidents who will almost certainly, if history has any predictive power, include disproportionately large numbers of Jews.”

You may not like the speech Kahlil supported. But part of being an American is being able to say unpopular things without facing deportation or prosecution. The Trump regime is testing the system. As Geidner explains:

Trump is using Khalil — whom Trump and his allies believe they can paint unsympathetically to some — in order to establish a horrifying principle that leading opposition to Trump’s policies, even on a college campus, can get you deported.

That should frighten us all.

Thank you for reading The Long Twilight Struggle. This post is public, so please share it with your family and friends.

#5

Gavin Newsom and the MAGA Democrat Trap (Gil Duran, FrameLab, Link to Article)

Gavin Newsom has unveiled a dangerous new strategy for the 2028 presidential race – and it’s precisely why the Democratic Party keeps failing.

His cynical idea? Flirt with Trump’s MAGA extremist movement to distance himself from the Democratic base and rebrand as a “moderate.” We saw the clearest signs of this strategy with his new podcast, This is Gavin Newsom. The premise? Newsom sits down with MAGA influencers and finds “common ground.”

His first guest? Charlie Kirk – a far-right extremist whose group, Turning Point USA, has promoted religious extremism and conspiracy theories while providing a “vast platform for extremists,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Gil Duran does all of us a favor in explaining why Governor Newsom’s attempt to suck-up to MAGA influencers is not only doomed to fail but likely to harm efforts to resist the Trump-Musk regime.

And what was Newsom thinking by starting his new podcast by platforming Charlie Kirk? Why would Newsom want to provide any cover for a person who, as Media Matters has documented, “has a history of violent and bigoted rhetoric?”

Worse, Newsom didn’t fight back against Kirk’s lies. He accepted Kirk’s misleading framing. He accepted MAGA talking points. He was not prepared to debate factually over issues that were obviously going to be raised by Kirk, like transgender rights.

In each episode so far, Newsom has asked his MAGA guest to give the Democratic Party advice. Does anyone besides Newsom think that Kirk, Michael Savage, or Steve Bannon would be willing to share good faith advice to improve Democrats chances at winning?

Doing this podcast series is not going to get Newsom closer to the White House. MAGA people will never give him credit and he is making many Democrats (like me) angry.

That may get one near the top of the podcast charts. But it is stupid politics. Newsom should stop empowering MAGA while he has a few political allies left.

#6

‘Startup Nation’ Groups Say They’re Meeting Trump Officials to Push for Deregulated ‘Freedom Cities’ (Caroline Haskins and Vittoria Elliott, Wired, Link to Article)

Several groups representing “startup nations”—tech hubs exempt from the taxes and regulations that apply to the countries where they are located—are drafting Congressional legislation to create “freedom cities” in the US that would be similarly free from certain federal laws, WIRED has learned.

According to interviews and presentations viewed by WIRED, the goal of these cities would be to have places where anti-aging clinical trials, nuclear reactor startups, and building construction can proceed without having to get prior approval from agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trey Goff, the chief of staff of the startup nation known as Próspera, tells WIRED that he and other Próspera representatives working under an advocacy group called the Freedom Cities Coalition have been meeting with the Trump administration about the idea in recent weeks. He claims the administration has been very receptive. In 2023, Trump floated the idea of creating 10 freedom cities. Now, Goff says that Próspera’s vision is to create “not just 10, but as many as the market can handle.” They hope to have drafted legislation ready by the end of the year.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The techbroligarchs sense an opportunity through the Musk-Trump regime to fast-track the creation of their network cities, which I have discussed in previous issues (e.g. the third story in issue #89).

They seek to use federal land to start creating their freedom cities from scratch, because that’s easier than trying to revitalize an existing city. These cities would allow the techbroligarchs to have control without having to worry about governments, workers’ rights, or democracy.

Our technological elite believe they should not have to face environmental reviews or medical trial regulations. They believe democracy is finished and must be replaced by a new system that prioritizes their beliefs.

#7

Last Days “Diplomacy” (Andra Watkins, For Such a Time As This, Link to Article)

Christian Nationalists believe a one-world government will usher in the return of Jesus Christ. For this to happen, the world’s biggest democracy and economy (US) must be toppled.

This is a theme many Christian Nationalist pastors have been hammering for five decades, which is why I have repeatedly stated that evangelical Christians will become even more radicalized the worse things get. They will point to every fresh horror and exclaim, “Glory hallelujah! Jesus is coming!”

Tech bros want to create “techno-states” to replace democracy, but Christian Nationalists have a different goal: The consolidation of a one-world government under the Anti-Christ. They go along with Musk and his nerd reich because it gets them closer to their goal: The Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return on Jesus Christ.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It is vital to be aware of this dynamic given how many Christian Nationalists are in leadership positions within the Republican Party.

Watkins explains why what we are seeing the Trump regime do in Gaza, Ukraine, Canada, Greenland, and NATO fits into the end times narrative.

Many Christian Nationalists interpret Revelation to require that Russia defeat Ukraine and re-integrate it into its Empire. They also believe that Israel has to annex Gaza to get closer to Jesus’ return.

Understanding how many Republicans interpret their religion clarifies many foreign policy positions that otherwise seem baffling or hypocritical.

#8

Thrust into unemployment, axed federal workers face relatives who celebrate their firing (Matt Sedensky, Associated Press, Link to Article)

Scrambling to replace their health insurance and to find new work, some laid-off federal workers are running into another unexpected unpleasantry: Relatives cheering their firing.

The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of cost-cutting measures directed by President Donald Trump and carried out by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste.

“I’ve been treated as a public enemy by the government and now it’s bleeding into my own family,” says 24-year-old Luke Tobin, who was fired last month from his job as a technician with the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

How awful do you have to be to celebrate the firing of one of your relatives? Cults are known to turn people against their families.

Remember this when MAGA cultists take to social media to complain that their relatives have frozen them out for their political beliefs. They will never understand why they should face any consequences for their hurtful reactions to traumatic situations.

#9

Powerful Speeches From Trans Dems Flip 29 Republicans, Anti-Trans Bills Die In Montana (Erin Reed, Erin in the Morning, Link to Article)

Something remarkable happened in Montana today. As has become routine, anti-trans bills were up for debate—the state has spent more than half of its legislative days this session pushing such bills through committees and the House floor, with Republicans largely voting in lockstep. But something changed.

A week ago, transgender Representative Zooey Zephyr delivered a powerful speech against a bill that would create a separate indecent exposure law for transgender people. Since then, momentum on the House floor slowed. Today, two of the most extreme bills targeting the transgender community came up for a vote. Transgender Representatives Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell gave impassioned speeches—this time, they broke through. In a stunning turn, 29 Republicans defected, killing both bills. One Republican even took the floor to deliver a scathing rebuke of the bill’s sponsor.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This is why we need to fight. It is possible to change minds and limit the damage.

It’s harder work than just agreeing with a MAGA influencer on a podcast, but the work is worth it.

We can demand that all people are treated with respect and as human beings. Even Montana Republicans can agree to reject bigotry after hearing how it can impact their colleagues and others living in the state.

Democrats need to stop retreating and selling out people who deserve protection.

#10

The Reality of the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government. Here’s a video from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that one can review if their memory fades.

People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.

It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“When you see important societal actors — be it university presidents, media outlets, C.E.O.s, mayors, governors — changing their behavior in order to avoid the wrath of the government, that’s a sign that we’ve crossed the line into some form of authoritarianism.”–Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard who co-authored 2018’s “How Democracies Die.

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“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.”

“The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.

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Here’s what I’ve found interesting:

• It is going to take more than signs on sticks to save our democracy;
• Why this isn’t the time for normal responses to the Musk-Trump regime;
• Trump’s advisors continue to attack veterans;
• How destroying our economy can serve the interests of Trump and the techbroligarchs;
• Democrats have ways to defeat Trump’s patrimonial regime change;
• A trade war provides an opportunity for countries to hurt big tech; and
• Let’s not allow Trump to rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021, insurrection he instigated.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

Democrats can’t flashmob their way out of this one (Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day, Link to Article)

This week, members of the opposition party filled the Capitol building with smoke grenades and tear gas canisters and hurled eggs at the ruling party, demanding an end to a regime that has held the country hostage for over a decade. Oh, wait, sorry, that was Serbia. In the US, our opposition party protested our current regime last night by wearing pink, holding up signs, and posting 22 identical TikTok videos. That’s fun. I think that’s what a lot of freshman orientations do now to welcome new students. I hope everyone had a nice time.

<snip>

Last night was really about the Democrats. A chance to show the country how they plan to respond to the Trump’s second administration. An opportunity, however small, to prove that they are both taking Trump and Musk’s coup seriously and also that they have a vision of how to reach voters in 2026 and 2028. And apparently, that vision is, uh, Ronald Reagan. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, in the Democratic Response after Trump’s address, told viewers, “As a cold war kid, I am thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980’s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War.” I fear that we are dangerously close to a Democrat starting a speech with, “As a 90s kid…”

The best take on the Democrats’ behavior last night was from @KrangTNelson, who wrote on X, “If you think Trump is a fascist, like Hitler was, then you have to accept that [wearing pink] is a ridiculous thing to do. ‘In response to hitler’s policies, some members of the German Left Party wore purple hats.’ Do you see how stupid that sounds?”

Though, @jeffsharlet.bsky.social had an equally good take, writing on Bluesky, “No, Democrats, these little auction signs aren’t it. You’re acting like Wes Anderson characters who don’t understand that they’re in a Tarantino movie.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I can’t imagine being more disappointed with the Senate and House Democratic Caucuses after what we experienced with President Trump’s deranged speech to the Joint Session of Congress.

Prioritizing decorum? Showing respect for the office of the presidency? A color-coordinated protest with at least four different colors? Small paddles with sayings on them? Celebrating Ronald Reagan in the official response? A Virginia Senator stating we owe Trump his due and should celebrate the progress being made on the border?

As Stephen Colbert observed during his live show monologue following the Trump speech:

“That is how you save democracy. By quietly dissenting — or bidding on an antique tea set, it was hard to tell what was going on.”

You aren’t doing it right if your protest can be compared to a weekend of antiquing.

It appears the Democratic leadership and their consultants have decided to sit back, hope Trump implodes, and scoop up the mythical centrist voters that haven’t materialized since I was a child.

So many of these elected officials and consultants who are complaining about decorum also love to quote the late Rep. John Lewis’ “make good trouble” statement. I suspect Lewis would have been joining Rep. Al Green in getting in good trouble to highlight Trump’s lies.

Democrats need to signal that none of what we are experiencing is normal—and that they are ready to lead the fight to protect this nation’s democratic experiment.

As The New Republic’s Greg Sargent explained, “Newsflash: It’s not OK for the American president to lie relentlessly about our allies and threaten them with economic Armageddon to bend them to his deranged, passing whims.” It is not normal to yell at a wartime ally in the Oval Office. It is not normal to have an unelected oligarch and his young acolytes violating the Constitution by canceling spending without Congressional authorization (leading to deaths around the world and the careless exposure of a CIA black site). It is not normal to pretend that an Executive Order can eliminate the Department of Education. It is not normal to remain quiet and seated when the president uses a Joint Session of Congress speech to call one of your colleagues “Pocahontas.”

Stopping this authoritarian takeover is going to require the public to get involved. That means taking some risks to get the public’s attention. Yep, public opinion matters! How are Democrats going to convince anyone by sitting down and being quiet? Democrats prioritizing decorum will only embolden those behind the Trump-Musk-Vance coup. We can color-coordinate ourselves right into the re-education camps.

It is time to throw sand in the gears of this government, at least until the Musk crime spree stops. No votes for a budget. No more helping the Republicans speed up the confirmation process (as they did for RFK Jr., Hegseth, Gabbard, and others). Democrats have agreed to more than 400 unanimous consent requests this session. That needs to stop now. Demand a quorum be present for business to continue. Republicans need to pay a price for what they are allowing the Musk-Trump regime to do. Time is a finite resource—make Republicans decide how they want to spend it.

We need to see that our political leaders are willing to fight for us. Trump is going to start blaming Democrats for anything that goes wrong because of what Musk and DOGE have done while gutting our federal agencies. Now would be a great time for Democrats to take Colbert’s advice and try to do something, at least out of self-preservation.

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#2

Democrats Are Acting Too Normal (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, Link to Article)

So what’s not to like? Slotkin—like so many in her party lately—failed to convey any sense of real urgency or alarm. Her speech could have been given in Trump’s first term, perhaps in 2017 or 2018, but we are no longer in that moment. The president’s address was so extreme, so full of bizarre claims and ideas, exaggerations and distortions and lies, that it should have called his fitness to serve into question. He preened about a Cabinet that includes some of the strangest, and least qualified, members in American history. Although his speech went exceptionally long, he said almost nothing of substance, and the few plans he put forward were mostly applause bait for his Republican sycophants in the room and his base at home.

It’s easy for me to sit in my living room in Rhode Island and suggest what others should say. But in her response, Slotkin failed to capture the hallucinatory nature of our national politics. As a former Republican, I nodded when Slotkin said that Ronald Reagan would be rolling in his grave at what Slotkin called the “spectacle” of last week’s Oval Office attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But is that really the message of a fighting opposition? Is it an effective rallying cry either to older voters or to a new generation to say, in effect, that Reagan—even now a polarizing figure—would have hated Trump? (Of course he would have.) Isn’t the threat facing America far greater than that?

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

As far as official responses go, Senator Slotkin did much better than average. However, it failed to meet what we need to see in this constitutional emergency.

Is the Musk-Trump regime a danger to the Republic or not? If it is (and I certainly believe it is), where is the urgency in opposing it? Where is the acknowledgment that our political leaders understand what is at stake?

It surprises me that there isn’t a larger group of 2028 presidential contenders rising to be the leaders of the opposition. One of my rules is that politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Yes, we are seeing a few, like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker take tentative steps. Some Senators are saying good things, but I can’t add them to a list until they start using their powers to slow down Senate proceedings.

Also, as a Gen Xer military brat, I have to disagree with Slotkin’s giving credit to Reagan for not losing the Cold War. I’ve covered this a few times in this space, but we were so lucky to survive the year 1983 (e.g. see story #9 in this newsletter). We owe Stanislav Petrov everything for his quick determination on September 26, 1983, that the Soviet early warning system was malfunctioning. That judgment prevented a likely massive Soviet nuclear response. Reagan’s actions that year, at least until he saw The Day After, made a nuclear exchange more likely.

So, no, Democrats don’t need to give Reagan any benefit of the doubt. His policies helped create Trumpism and MAGA. The last election demonstrated that there are not many voters who will change sides because a Democrat prioritized appreciating sane Republicans.

#3

Trump adviser Alina Habba says veterans fired by DOGE are perhaps ‘not fit to have a job at this moment’ (Rebecca Shabad, Allan Smith, Megan Lebowitz, Tara Prindiville and Natasha Korecki, NBC News, Link to Article)

Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, Habba was asked about fired workers whom Democrats have invited to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday night. Habba defended the cuts and said she had no sympathy for the thousands of people who have lost their jobs.

<snip>

“That doesn’t mean that we forget our veterans by any means,” she added. “We are going to care for them in the right way, but perhaps they’re not fit to have a job at this moment, or not willing to come to work. And we can’t, you know, I wouldn’t take money from you and pay somebody and say, ‘Sorry, you know, they’re not going to come to work.’ It’s just not acceptable.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

What’s not acceptable is referring to Veterans and federal workers with this level of disdain.

So many Veterans supported Trump. So it seems to me that Democrats might want to do what they can to make sure they learn what Trump and his advisors think about them.

#4

I Know Exactly What They Are Doing (Jess Piper, The View from Rural Missouri, Link to Article)

I hear people all around me saying, “They are going to crash the economy. Surely they don’t mean to crash the economy.”

I beg to differ. This is curated failure.

Let me start off by saying that I am not an economist — I don’t even have a finance or accounting degree and I’m really bad at math in the first place.

But I do pay attention. I notice things and I am quick to see a pattern. I observe the world and the people in charge of it. I listen to the words they say and then measure those words against their actions.

You don’t need to be an economist to look around and see that the Trump administration is going to cause economic disaster — a recession or a depression. And it is by design. It is a feature, not a bug.

How do I know this?

I live under a GOP Supermajority. I have lived under their boot for two decades. They have economically damaged my state and it wasn’t by accident. They did it to sell off the state and workers and land to the wealthy. They created a desperate situation in Missouri and that desperation equates to bounty for the oligarchs.

The new Gilded Age. Make America desperate again.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Experts in authoritarianism have pointed out how much dictators love using crises to justify extraordinary measures and expand their power.

They declare that only they can fix it. Crises overwhelm people and prevent them from organizing and fighting back effectively.

Look at how quickly Trump and Musk have created economic problems. A trade war makes no economic sense, and firing so many federal employees across the country will lower economic activity.

Last week, the Atlanta Fed GDPNow model projected 2.3 percent economic growth for the first quarter of 2025. This week, that projection plummeted to -2.8 percent. Businesses hate uncertainty. How many times has Trump turned the trade war on and off in the first two months of his second term? How many invoices have been left unpaid? How many people are no longer going to pay taxes because they have lost their jobs? What is going to happen if Social Security is unable to pay benefits because of DOGE staffing cuts and technological interference?

People living in deep red states like Piper have experienced these shock doctrine tactics and seen government services and schools grow worse each year. Are we now going to see the United States forced into a recession—or worse—so oligarchs like Elon Musk can buy the scraps on the cheap?

Trump will try to blame Democrats and former President Joe Biden for any economic troubles. Fox News has already started spreading that lie. That’s one of the reasons Democrats must be more aggressive now to point the blame where it belongs before voters buy a false narrative.

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#5

One Word Describes Trump (Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic, Link to Article)

Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?

There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism—nor is it autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism. Understanding patrimonialism is essential to defeating it. In particular, it has a fatal weakness that Democrats and Trump’s other opponents should make their primary and relentless line of attack.

<snip>

Patrimonialism explains what might otherwise be puzzling. Every policy the president cares about is his personal property. Trump dropped the federal prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams because a pliant big-city mayor is a useful thing to have. He broke with 50 years of practice by treating the Justice Department as “his personal law firm.” He treats the enforcement of duly enacted statutes as optional—and, what’s more, claims the authority to indemnify lawbreakers. He halted proceedings against January 6 thugs and rioters because they are on his side. His agencies screen hires for loyalty to him rather than to the Constitution.

In Trump’s world, federal agencies are shut down on his say-so without so much as a nod to Congress. Henchmen with no statutory authority barge into agencies and take them over. A loyalist who had only ever managed two small nonprofits is chosen for the hardest management job in government. Conflicts of interest are tolerated if not outright blessed. Prosecutors and inspectors general are fired for doing their job. Thousands of civil servants are converted to employment at the president’s will. Former officials’ security protection is withdrawn because they are disloyal. The presidency itself is treated as a business opportunity.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

In all this, we can find opportunities. The fatal weaknesses of patrimonialism to which Rauch refers are the incompetence and corruption inherent in the system.

Corruption is something voters understand—and hate.

If Democrats are looking for a way to start messaging in this Constitutional emergency, corruption would be a great place to start. Trump is hosting private dinners at Mar-a-Lago for people who pay $5 million. Musk reportedly is trying to transfer an FAA technology contract that Verizon won to his Starlink company. Trump loves cryptocurrency now since he has personally benefited from it with the Trump meme coin. How much will Musk’s companies benefit from their access to the information the DOGE team has taken from federal agencies?

People understand how they don’t benefit from such corruption. Democrats need to point out all of the corruption and highlight the people who have lost jobs or contracts because of the insider dealing a patrimonial system requires. This would also be a great time to prohibit individual stock trading by members of Congress.

There is an opportunity here. Democrats should take it.

#6

Ideas Lying Around (Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, Link to Article)

Redistributing the means of production around the world is a necessary and urgent project, but it won’t be advanced through Trump’s rapid, unscheduled mid-air disassembly of the global system of trade. Tariffs will cause breakdowns in neoliberalism’s fragile supply chains, and the ensuing chaos – mass unemployment, shortages, political rage – will make it even harder for countries (including the USA) to rebuild the productive capacity vaporized by 40 years of neoliberalism.

<snip>

But foreigners don’t have to tolerate this nonsense. Governments around the world signed up to protect giant American companies from small domestic competitors (from local app stores – for phones, games consoles, and IoT gadgets – to local printer cartridge remanufacturers) on the promise of tariff-free access to US markets. With Trump imposing tariffs will-ye or nill-ye on America’s trading partners large and small, there is no reason to go on delivering rents to US Big Tech.

The first country or bloc (hi there, EU!) to do this will have a giant first-mover advantage, and could become a global export powerhouse, dominating the lucrative markets for tools that strike at the highest-margin lines of business of the most profitable companies in the history of the human race. Like Jeff Bezos told the publishers: “your margin is my opportunity.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

With Trump playing the stupid tariff card, Cory Doctorow explains how countries that signed free trade agreements with the USA now have an opportunity to stick it to big tech and help lower prices for users around the world.

How are Apple and Google able to force app developers to pay them a 30 percent fee on payments through their app stores? Why is it so difficult for people and businesses to fix their own electronics? Why is printer ink the most expensive liquid (up to $10,000 a gallon) people can purchase without a special license?

All of these horrors, and more, are possible because of ill-advised intellectual property protections granted to technology companies, starting with the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998 and expanding through provisions being included in free trade deals.

Doctorow explains how these IP rules mean no one can create a competing app store that charges developers less. He explains why farmers can’t use their equipment and have to wait for costly service calls. He explains why you can’t use third-party ink in HP and other printers.

But Trump’s tariff threats open the possibility of some countries deciding to no longer follow these rules since free trade access to the US market is not guaranteed. That would stick it to Trump and the techbroligarchs.

I hope some nation calls Trump’s tariff bluff. It would help consumers around the world.

The Reality of the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government.

People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.

It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we’re dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.

If politicians can take or distribute them, then they’re not “inalienable” and they’re not “rights.”

We don’t have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.

And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.”—existennialmemes, Tumblr

Thank you for reading! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Please let me know what you think about what you’ve read—and send me things you’ve found interesting! You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

The Long Twilight Struggle is free and supported voluntarily by its readers. If you liked what you read, please consider buying me a coffee to drink while I write it by becoming a paid subscriber or sponsor.