Tag: #Migrated-1743632887012

In this edition:

• The Trump regime crosses many red lines with a meek opposition response; the assassination of Minnesota Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman is the latest example of right-wing political violence; clearing my tabs; and what’s giving me hope!

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

• From Fort Bragg to LA, Trump enlists the military in a slow-motion coup (Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Link to Article)
• Bragg Soldiers Who Cheered Trump’s Political Attacks While in Uniform Were Checked for Allegiance, Appearance (Konstantin Toropin and Steve Beynon, Military.com, Link to Article)
• ‘Everybody stood up’: Why a union leader’s arrest galvanized California Democrats on immigration (Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters, Link to Article)
• NYC Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander Latest Victim of ICE Violence (Whitney Curry Wimbish, The American Prospect, Link to Article)
• L.A. curfew continues for third night as Marines prepare to deploy for more ICE operations (Matthew Rodriguez, KCAL News, Link to Article)
• Padilla Assault Fails to Stop Senate Business as Usual (David Dayen, The American Prospect, Link to Article)

The Trump regime has crossed so many red lines in the past couple of weeks that it is challenging to keep up with them all. But it is important that we try to do so.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Representative LaMonica McIver (R-NJ), U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, and SEIU California President David Huerta have been detained or indicted for their responses to the Trump regime’s mass deportation actions.

The arrests and detentions of opposition leaders is a red line no one would accept in a healthy democracy.

While the United States has a history of not politicizing the military, President Trump used the 82nd Airborne Division as props in a political rally. As Military.com’s Konstantin Toropin and Steve Beynon reported:

As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom – amid the president’s controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles – as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump’s diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship.

They add that internal 82nd Airborne Division communications indicate that organizers screened out soldiers who were not Trump supporters and insisted on “no fat soldiers.” The rally also included a vendor selling MAGA supplies and phony credit cards labeled “White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything.”

As the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch explained:

It’s not an exaggeration to say that June 10, 2025, will go down in American history as a day of infamy, when an authoritarian president made clear that the world’s largest and most lethal fighting force now exists to enforce his personalist political agenda, and not to defend the nation’s people.

The crass politicization of the military is a red line no one would accept in a healthy democracy.

As part of its mass deportation actions, Trump nationalized 2,000 California National Guard soldiers and put 700 Marines on Los Angeles streets based on lies regime officials shared about the situation in a few square blocks of the downtown area.

It was the first time since 1965 that a president nationalized the National Guard of a state without the consent of its governor. There has been at least one instance of Marines detaining a U.S. citizen—an initial step towards using the military as law enforcement on U.S. soil.

Many people have noted over the years why it is a mistake to use the military as law enforcement. But few have explained it better than writer Ronald D. Moore using the fictional Commander William Adama in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica’s first season episode Water:

“There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”

There are many historical examples to back up that observation. One of the United States’ strengths has been its focus on avoiding that abyss.

The abuses of the power to nationalize the National Guard and station military troops on U.S. soil is a red line no one would accept in a healthy democracy.

While there has rightly been a focus on what happened to U.S. Senator Padilla when he was detained for trying to ask a question of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, I believe it is essential that we not overlook what Noem said right before Padilla attempted to ask his question. It ranks among the most ominous statements made by a cabinet official.

“The Department of Homeland Security and the officers, agencies, departments and military personnel working on this operation will continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city. We are not going away,” Noem said. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert to this city.”

Read that again. It would be alarming enough coming from a Fox News pundit. But Noem made this threat while serving as the head of the internal security office.

A senior federal government official threatening to replace lawfully elected local government officials is a red line no one should accept in a healthy democracy.

Crossing all these red lines should be enough to create a robust opposition. The American people rose to the occasion last week with the No Kings rallies held in all 50 states.

But our elected Democratic Party leaders have continued to act like the situation is normal.

While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other Democrats took to the Senate Floor to condemn Senator Padilla’s detention, I am still waiting for them to do something beyond mere words.

In the moments after their speeches about Padilla, Senate Democrats allowed the Senate to return to regular business. The American Prospect’s David Dayen explains:

The interesting context is what Schumer actually interrupted. His outraged comments came right after the Senate advanced a substitute amendment to the GENIUS Act, with the assistance of 16 Democrats. If Schumer and his fellow Democrats were truly sick to their stomachs—and I believe they were—over witnessing representatives of a Republican administration assault one of their colleagues, why are they continuing to collaborate with Republicans legislatively?

In theory, you can compartmentalize actions happening outside legislative votes with the votes themselves. But in this instance, cooperating with a Republican Party that keeps arresting, indicting, and detaining the political opposition, on a bill that would place congressional sanction on corruption in the digital asset space, including that personally conducted by Donald Trump, as well as severely destabilizing the financial system, cannot be blindly forgotten without some highly situational ethics. “They will continue to stern-letter us into fascism,” one former Hill staffer told me.

Why wasn’t the assault of one of their colleagues enough to get at least one Senate Democrat to say the magic words “I object” when Republicans needed a unanimous consent request to keep moving that horrible bill forward? Where were the demands for the presence of a quorum? Where are the threats to use the new exception Republicans carved out of the filibuster rule as discussed in a previous edition of this newsletter?

This is not a normal situation. Nearly two percent of Americans showed up at rallies to make it clear that they understood what’s at stake. It would be great if elected Democrats stepped up to protect an American democracy that may not have many more red lines left for the Trump regime to cross.

As I was finishing my editing of this newsletter, Trump announced the unconstitutional bombing of Iran. Will Congress care? Authoritarians, after all, love using the threat of war to expand their powers.

#2

• Rep. Melissa Hortman, killed in targeted attack, was a champion for Minnesotan families (Grace Panetta, The 19th, Link to Article)
• There’s no such thing as a right-wing “lone wolf” (Garrett Graff, Doomsday Scenario, Link to Article)
• Inside the DHS: Former Top Analyst Says Agency Bowed to Political Pressure (Interview with Daryl Johnson, Southern Poverty Law Center, Link to Article)
• MAGA Whips Up Conspiracy Theories To Muddy An Act Of Right-Wing Violence (Kate Riga, Talking Points Memo, Link to Article)
• MAGA political violence claims more victims (Noah Berlatsky, Public Notice, Link to Article)
• The Fear Coursing Through State Capitols (Elaine Godfrey, The Atlantic, Link to Article)

The assassination of Minnesota Speaker of the House Emerita Melissa Hortman is the latest incident in an epidemic of white nationalist far-rightwing political violence that President Trump and his MAGA supporters have proudly exacerbated over the past decade.

An assassin killed Hortman and her husband and attempted to kill Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife. The assassin also visited several other legislators’ homes during his spree.

Hortman was one of the most influential state legislators of this century. While Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) rightly received credit for signing a slate of progressive bills into law during his campaign for Vice President last year, it was Hortman who skillfully shepherded that legislation through a closely divided legislature.

I mourn these deaths. Public service should not lead to a death sentence.

There have been efforts to raise alarms about the rise of far-right violence. But Republicans and conservative media personalities have gone to the mattresses for decades to cover up this story. In 2009, for example, the Department of Homeland Security prepared a report for law enforcement about the radicalization of rightwing extremism. That report was leaked to conservative outlets, and the Obama Administration withdrew it rather than contend with the misleading narrative. (You can download a PDF of that report from this Stanford University archive.)

As Garrett Graff explains, that failure is just one example of how our politicians and media have ignored the increasing trend of rightwing violence over the past 40 years.

The US government made some effort to dismantle the shadow network of white nationalist terror groups in the 1980s, but ever since Tim McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, the US government and leaders have made a conscious choice to pretend that all this right-wing domestic terrorism is made up of “lone wolves” — as if all these terrorists just spawned independently believing the same thing and following the same tactics.

They’re not lone wolves. They’re foot soldiers.

This hate and extremism emerges from the fever swamp the right-wing media has built over the last generation — McVeigh was a huge fan of Bill Cooper, the extremist host who help inspire and mentor Alex Jones in the 1990s — and that fever swamp has been amplified and accelerated by the internet and social media.

This dynamic is one of the reasons so many right-wing pundits and social media influencers worked overtime to mislead the public about the Minnesota assassin. As Talking Points Memo’s Kate Riga writes:

The right-wing machine’s task, obfuscating this clear-cut episode of right-wing political violence, should have been difficult. In addition to a manifesto, which has not been released, Boelter had written down the names of other targets: a list, per an FBI affidavit, of “mostly or all” Democratic politicians, reportedly in addition to abortion providers and activists. The anti-abortion motivation slots in neatly with archetypal right-wing violence, which has often involved misogynistic elements. 

There was also, by Sunday, an easily excavated tranche of evidence suggesting his political ideology: interviews with his roommate who said he’d be “offended” to be called a Democrat, that he was a staunch Trump supporter and that he considered abortion to be “murder,” along with a sermon he’d delivered about the evils of abortion-supporting American churches.

We know that our elected leaders are all too aware of the danger they face from rightwing violence. Former Senator Mitt Romney wrote in his memoir that his colleagues were afraid to join his objections to Trump because they could not afford the personal security. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) shared a similar story in an interview earlier this year. The story by Garrett Graff that I quoted earlier also includes many examples of Republicans discussing how they feel they cannot oppose Trump because of the potential of violence against them and their families.

Trump has encouraged violence since the earliest days of his first campaign for the presidency, including telling his supporters he would pay their legal bills if they roughed up protestors at his events.

So we should not be surprised that legislators around the country are worried about their safety in the wake of the Minnesota assassinations.

We should spend more taxpayer money to ensure the safety of our federal and state lawmakers. Public service in a functioning democracy should not leave elected officials and their staff fearing for their lives.

Ensuring legislators’ safety may also allow more Republicans to oppose the Trump regime’s authoritarian takeover. That is an added benefit worth paying for.

Clearing My Tabs

• Surprise: Minnesota Killer Used Data Brokers To Target And Murder Politicians (Karl Bode, TechDirt, Link to Article)
  The failure of our federal government to regulate how our data is traded and monetized has once again had deadly consequences. (Also, to be clear, the surprise in the deadline is sarcastic.)
• Georgia Takes Brain-Dead Woman Off Life Support After Using Her Corpse as Incubator (Lauren Tousignant, Jezebel, Link to Article)
  That headline says it all. Forced-birth advocates need to own the atrocities they create. Making Adriana Smith’s family pay the expenses is an added bit of horribleness.
• How MAGA Took Over America’s 250th Birthday (Amanda Moore and Dan Friedman, Mother Jones, Link to Article)
  Planning for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has been underway for years. But MAGA supporters have taken over the process and pushed out historians unwilling to make it a Trump-centered celebration.
• This Fucking Guy (Rebecca Traister, Link to Article)
  With the New York City mayoral primary coming up on Tuesday, Traister reminds us of all the ways Andrew Cuomo failed as Governor and acted very Trumpian in how he treated people and opponents. It is shameful that so many establishment Democrats are supporting him.
• By any objective standard, Stephen Miller is a hater (Lindsay Beyerstein, The Editorial Board, Link to Article)
  Terry Moran didn’t lie about Miller in the tweet that ended his ABC News career. The more people understand the truth about Miller, the better! But Moran did expose just how cowed ABC is to Trump and his regime. We should remember that as we see how they cover the regime.
• Selling salvation: Trump has earned $1.3 million (so far) from his MAGA Bible grift (Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, Link to Article)
  Last I checked, Jesus didn’t actually approve of the merchants and money changers in the temple. It’s one of the few stories appearing in all four canonical gospels, after all.
• FIFA has taken us for fools over its promise to fight racism (Nick Miller, The Athletic, Link to Article)
  It isn’t surprising that the governing authority of global soccer is awful. But the fact that they couldn’t even continue their minimal messaging against racism during the current Club World Cup because it is being held in the United States of Trump is pathetic. Also, how will our country successfully host the men’s World Cup (2026) and the Summer Olympics (2028) under these Trumpian circumstances?

The Possibility of Hope

• Protests Big (Lauren Thiesen, Defector, Link to Article)
  I am glad I joined the No Kings protest in Sacramento last week. It was so wonderful to be in a crowd of people willing to make their opposition to the Trump regime’s attempt to end our democratic experiment. I want to draw attention to all of the protests with a few hundred people in the red areas of the nation. That kind of visibility comes with risk, but it is also how conversations start and minds are changed. It is a good foundation from which to build.

What’s giving you hope? Please e-mail me at craig@thelongtwilightstruggle.com.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“It is 100% carrying water for the opposition to participate in this collective delusion that Dems for some reason need to answer for every teen who throws a rock rather than hold the Trump admin accountable for intentionally creating chaos and breaking the law to stoke violence.”—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)

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

Follow me on BlueSky to see what stories and tabs I am finding in real time.

Craig Cheslog (@craigcheslog.com)

GenXer against fascism. Talking politics, women’s soccer, WNBA, Manchester United men and women, USWNT, USMNT, Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Taylor Swift. (he/him/his) My newsletter: https://thelongtwilightstruggle.com/.

Bluesky Social

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 or are giving you hope today! You can email me at craig@thelongtwilightstruggle.com. 

If this newsletter has helped you make sense of the day’s news, please hit “forward” and share it with (at least) one person who matters to you.

The Long Twilight Struggle is free and supported voluntarily by its readers. If you liked what you read and can afford it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber! Or, if you prefer, feel free to buy me a coffee using the tip jar.

Here’s what I’ve recently found interesting:

• As much as some may want to identify a scapegoat, a total system failure created the present Constitutional crisis;
• No matter what happens, we won’t return to the previous Constitutional understandings;
• Senate Democrats have been handed a tool they better use to tie up the Senate floor;
• Clearing my tabs; and
• What’s giving me hope!

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

• Joe Biden Isn’t Your Scapegoat (Jonathan V. Last, The Bulwark, Link to Article)

Since the first excerpts of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, Original Sin, were released, far too many Democrats have engaged in a circular finger-pointing exercise to determine who to blame for the 2024 election failure.

Finding a scapegoat is one of America’s favorite pastimes. Democrats are particularly adept at spending time on such exercises.

Making sure the blame falls on someone else is a skill. As the many books written by Bob Woodward have demonstrated, the best way to make sure you are treated favorably by the author is to be one of his featured anonymous sources.

Tapper and Thompson say they conducted more than 200 interviews as sourcing for their book about former President Biden’s decision to seek another term. Cowards, the lot of them.

If what they told Tapper and Thompson is true—and it may be—these staffers and advisors had an obligation to the Republic to resign in protest and warn us at the time. Waiting until after the election is quite a cowardly move—one that should disqualify every one of Tapper and Thompson’s sources from serving in a future Administration.

But, as Jonathan V. Last makes clear, Donald Trump’s re-election is not just the fault of the former president, his closest advisors, or even those who put their careers ahead of the nation. As he writes:

The reason we—and by “we” I mean everyone who is not part of the MAGA ummah—have made Biden the scapegoat is because the reality is too dark.

It wasn’t just Joe Biden who failed. It was America. All of it.

Last explains how Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Republican voters, the media, the elites, the judicial system, the Supreme Court, Biden’s inner circle, Democratic voters, Independent voters, and the writer all failed. I failed.

But these failures are not just the ones that Last describes. I would go back further to President Ford’s pardon of President Nixon. We didn’t hold Nixon accountable. We didn’t hold Ford’s key advisors (who included his three Chiefs of Staff, Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney—all names that would come back in future scandals) accountable. That pardon decision started a series of events where high-level wrongdoing resulted in no real penalties, sending a message that breaking the law was possible if the president asked for it.

We didn’t hold the people responsible for the Iran-Contra affair accountable. President Reagan was not impeached. Vice President Bush was able to win his election and became President Bush 41. At the end of his term, Bush 41 pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others involved with Iran-Contra, ensuring that there would be no trial. William Barr was the mastermind of those pardons. He wasn’t shunned for that work, allowing him to return under President Trump 45 where he could misrepresent special counsel Robert Mueller’s work on the Trump-Russia investigation.

President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld lied our nation into the war in Iraq. They oversaw a torture regime based on the legal memos written by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo. Yoo also provided the legal opinion to justify the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

Cheney and Rumsfeld shouldn’t have been able to get such high-level positions after their involvement with the Nixon and Ford Administrations. Rather than facing war crime prosecutions, Yoo has a named professorship at the University of California, Berkeley.

Of course, there are more people who can fit into this narrative (like Roger Stone, whose dirty tricks date back to the Nixon 1972 presidential campaign).

Democratic elected officials hold a bunch of responsibility for the lack of accountability. President Clinton didn’t push for an investigation of the Bush 42 pardons, and had his own scandals. President Obama wanted to look forward, not backward, and so he did not prosecute anyone involved with the 2008 financial crisis or the Bush torture regime. Congressional Democrats largely went along, even with their colleagues who supported an insurrection in 2021 that could have led to their deaths.

President Biden did not aggressively seek to hold Donald Trump accountable for the January 6, 2021, insurrection attack on the United States Capitol. He appointed Merrick Garland as the Attorney General, and there was clearly no motivation to quickly seek charges against Trump and the leading insurrectionists aggressively. Political norms, you know.

Our political leaders have also failed to fix the problems with our electoral system exposed by the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections. Fixing gerrymandering, voting rights, Citizens United, and corruption—like Congressional stock trading—were not priorities when Democrats had majorities.

Congressional Republicans have failed to meet their Constitutional obligations to serve as a check and balance on the executive branch. The tariff madness could end today if two-thirds of the House and Senate were willing to cast the votes required to override Trump’s likely veto of legislation stripping him of the tariff powers he is abusing.

Yes, Joe Biden should not have run again. It was also a mistake not to let Vice President Harris separate herself from him during a change election. And Biden really needs to stop going on television and implicitly blaming Harris for the 2024 election loss by claiming he still could have won.

But scapegoating him won’t solve our nation’s descent into authoritarianism. As Last noted in his article, Biden did more than most to try to avoid it. These conversations also distract us from discussing everything the Trump Regime is doing to create a competitive authoritarian nation.

Our system failed. A new Constitutional system will arise. Will it be competitive authoritarianism or a rebirth of our democracy?

That’s the battle we need to fight.

#2

• There Is No Piecing Back Our Badly Shattered Constitutional Order (Andy Craig, The UnPopulist, Link to Article)

Andy Craig does an outstanding job of placing into context the current Constitutional crisis created by President Trump and Elon Musk before their public falling out. As he writes:

America has been flung into a constitutional crisis in the most massive and fundamental way imaginable, ruled by a regime which is not merely doing unconstitutional things but is anti-constitutional at its very core.

“Crisis” is precisely the right word. This is not mere political disruption—it is a full-blown constitutional crisis in the proper, technical sense of the term. The normal rules of the system have been thrown into untenable contradictions where something has to break. The whole mechanism is disintegrating before our eyes. We stuck a wrench into its core by putting an anti-constitutionalist into its highest office, and now the broken gears are spewing left and right. What we will be left with is a government only superficially resembling the one codified in the Constitution.

The reality we face is grim, but not hopeless—yet. It will, however, be a political environment unlike any we have previously known. It will operate by different principles and mechanisms than the familiar model of a coherent system under the rule of law. The weeks, months, and years ahead will not just bring turmoil—they will challenge the basic premises holding America’s governing institutions together. Still, it will remain up to we, the people, to decide what comes next. At the end of the day, reasserting our constitutional foundations, and eventually reconstructing a stable system of law atop them, will depend on our ability to secure the imprimatur of raw popular sovereignty. America will have its say on the matter of its own undoing—though what should deeply worry us is that it is far from a given that it will choose to recover its constitutional legacy.

Craig explains how returning to the Constitutional understandings we had on January 19, 2025, is impossible. As has happened a few times before in our country’s history, a new Constitutional settlement will come from this crisis.

Will we have a stronger executive—as Trump and the unitary executive advocates demand—or will Congress reassert its prerogatives as the Article I branch the Constitutional framers envisioned? How will Trump’s attacks on the courts and legal system change how the third branch operates? How will the relationship between the federal and state governments change?

Thankfully, popular opinion still matters to these questions. As Craig explains,

“The future is not guaranteed; there is no iron law of progress, no arc of justice determined by anything outside of our own human actions.

<snip>

There will be no day when a switch is flipped and the pieces all fit back together as they used to. The future of our system of government is what we make of it.”

We still have that power. May we, the people, put it to the best use possible.

#3

• Senate Democrats Have Been Handed a Tool to Stop the Big Beautiful Bill (David Dayen, The American Prospect, Link to Article)

Apparently, asking our Democratic United States Senators to use their powers to slow down their chamber’s work was too much to ask—despite the fundraising emails and texts they send that rightly claim that we are in the middle of a Constitutional crisis.

I guess saying “I object” to unanimous consent requests to force Republican Senators to agree to do something about an out-of-control president falls too far outside the political norms. I am not sure why some still defend those norms despite the breakdown of our Constitutional system, but that’s where we are.

But David Dayen explains how the Senate Republicans’ recent decision to ignore the previously all-powerful Senate parliamentarian gives Democrats another opportunity to eat up valuable Senate floor time.

Senate Republicans recently used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to nullify several waivers California had received to set higher emission standards than national rules. Court rulings and the Senate parliamentarian said these Environmental Protection Agency waivers were not eligible for CRA review.

But Senate Republicans did it anyway. Dayen explains what it could mean if Democrats embrace the new precedent:

California has already announced that it will sue to maintain its waiver, charging that the Senate had no authority to overturn it. But the Senate operates largely on precedent, and now that the parliamentarian has been disregarded on this point, virtually any action the executive branch takes could be construed as a rule, and therefore subject to fast-track congressional review.

For this reason, Democrats could subject the Senate to time-consuming resolution votes repeatedly, to such a degree that the Senate would not have time to do anything else for the rest of this session of Congress. In other words, Democrats could respond to the waiver vote by paralyzing the Senate, and stopping the giant Trump tax bill from ever reaching the floor.

Georgia State University assistant professor and former House Oversight Committee staffer Todd Phillips laid this out in a Prospect piece earlier this month. Any 30 senators can force a CRA resolution onto the floor, with a required ten hours of debate time. These resolutions would need the president’s signature, and nearly all of them wouldn’t even get the Republican votes necessary to pass the Senate. But according to Senate procedure, they have to be dealt with if enough senators force them onto the floor. They must be debated and voted upon ahead of other Senate business if brought up for consideration. This means that Democrats can tie up the Senate floor for upwards of ten hours with any single CRA resolution.

Oh, there are so many CRA resolutions Democrats could craft to force these 10-hour debates. These debates could force Republican Senators to go on the record about the Trump regime’s atrocities. They also would burn the most valuable resource the Senate Republicans have: floor time.

Debating CRA resolutions means Republicans can’t confirm judges and nominees. It means they can’t pass a Big Beautiful Budget bill.

This precedent gives Democrats another tool they can use to impact policy despite being in the minority. The Republicans did it first. It’s time for Senate Democrats to force Republicans to pay the price for changing the rules and supporting unpopular policies. There is no excuse not to use it.

Clearing My Tabs

• RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory (Beth Mole, ars technica, Link to Article)
  In a 2021 book attacking Anthony Fauci, RFK Jr. promotes miasma theory instead—while misstating what that theory means. But it helps one to understand why RFK Jr. is harming the public health with his decisions as Health and Human Services Secretary.
• Right-wing media and anti-abortion groups are using a “seriously flawed” study on medication abortion to claim it’s not safe (Chloe Simon, Media Matters, Link to Article)
  A conservative think tank released a flawed study just in time for Congressional Republicans to coordinate their attacks against the abortion medication mifepristone. No, one in ten women do not experience a serious adverse event from using mifepristone. But I suspect you’ve been hearing that statistic a bunch—and we will continue to do so.
• The Study Republicans Demanded About Trans Kids Just Backfired. Guess What the Media Isn’t Covering? (Parker Malloy, The Present Age, Link to Article)
  Utah Republicans banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth in 2023, saying that they needed time for better evidence to come in. That evidence has arrived: the Utah Department of Health and Human Services released a 1,000-page report that concludes that “youth who received care before age 18 had better outcomes, especially around depression, anxiety, and suicidality.” Readers of this newsletter will probably not be surprised to learn that Utah Republicans are ignoring these findings. But Malloy rightly wants to know why media outlets that find time to cover stories that express skepticism or opposition to transgender care are also ignoring it?
• What to do if you’re targeted by the White House (Ellinor Heywood, If You Can Keep It, Link to Article)
  Here are 22 things a non-profit organization can do to defend itself from Trump Regime politicized executive actions.
• Prepare for America’s Summer of Pain (Garrett Graff, Doomsday Scenario, Link to Article)
  Safe summers in the United States have relied upon the expertise of federal government entities like the National Weather Service, Federal Aviation Administration, FEMA, the National Park Service, and others. Unfortunately, as Graff explains, these are some of the agencies that have been harmed the most by Musk’s DOGE teams.

The Possibility of Hope

• I have appreciated seeing so many people protest the actions of ICE around the country. There is no need for this level of force against people who have committed no violent offenses. Standing up against Stephen Miller’s immigration lies is always worthwhile.
• Maine Governor Janet Mills told President Trump that she would see him in court, and then she won. That’s how you handle a bully.
• If you have TikTok or Instagram Reels, I encourage you to do a search for #MascotReveal. You will then have the opportunity to watch college mascots reveal their identities as they prepare to graduate. Up to that point, even roommates are often unaware who is underneath that mascot outfit. I love this tradition, and the University of South Carolina may have the best one of all.

What’s giving you hope? Please e-mail me at craig@thelongtwilightstruggle.com.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“It’s kinda weird how, the more oligarchic our society gets, the more *racist* it gets. Why is the rise of billionaires attended by a revival of discredited eugenic ideas, dressed up in modern euphemisms like “race realism” and “human diversity”?

I think the answer lies in JK Galbraith’s observation that “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” (Cory Doctorow, [Plura-List] the Meritocracy to Eugenics Pipeline)”

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

Follow me on BlueSky to see what stories and tabs I am finding in real time.

Craig Cheslog (@craigcheslog.com)

GenXer against fascism. Talking politics, women’s soccer, WNBA, Manchester United men and women, USWNT, USMNT, Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Taylor Swift. (he/him/his) My newsletter: https://thelongtwilightstruggle.com/.

Bluesky Social

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 or are giving you hope today! You can email me at craig@thelongtwilightstruggle.com. 

If this newsletter has helped you make sense of the day’s news, please hit “forward” and share it with (at least) one person who matters to you.

The Long Twilight Struggle is free and supported voluntarily by its readers. If you liked what you read and can afford it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber! Or, if you prefer, feel free to buy me a coffee using the tip jar.

Here’s what I’ve recently found interesting:

• Let’s go after Stephen Miller at every opportunity;
• Protests are helping to reduce harm and improve opposition morale during Trump’s first 100 days;
• Democrats need to step up their messaging efforts as we enter the “find out” stage of the Trump trade war;
• The group chats radicalizing our techbro elite against democracy;
• I’m fed up with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ insistence on following advice to play dead rather than oppose Trump;
• Clearing my tabs; and
• What’s giving me hope!

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

The Struggle

#1

• How Trump Accidentally Sabotaged His Own Case Against Abrego Garcia (Greg Sargent, The New Republic, Link to Article)
• Stephen Miller Has a Plan (Nick Miroff and Jonathan Lemire, The Atlantic, Link to Article)
• Trump Allies Sue John Roberts To Give White House Control Of Court System (Josh Kovensky, Talking Points Memo, Link to Article)

A few days ago, I posted on BlueSky that we need people to go after Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller at every possible opportunity.

That’s right: I want Miller to be famous for his cruel policy actions and rejection of Constitutional law. I want Democrats and people who care about our democracy to make him famous.

It’s the most popular post I’ve written on that social media site, and now I want to follow my advice here. Miller is an unpopular and unlikable figure. It is time to make sure every American voter understands the person behind this fascist and anti-Constitutional agenda.

This particular post was a reply Greg Sargent’s article about Miller’s actions in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. But it could have been about the plethora of cruel policies Miller has pushed in both of Trump’s terms.

Sargent explained how Trump’s admission that he could take action to have Abrego Garcia returned—even as he chooses not to do so—highlights how Trump has chosen to defy the Supreme Court. That’s a Constitutional crisis, and there is little doubt who is behind it. As Sargent writes:

Which lawyers have told Trump that he is not required to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return? What exactly transpired in these communications? Which top official—aside from Trump—is internally directing the lawyers to advise Trump this way? Are that official’s initials S and M?

“These lawyers appear to be obeying Stephen Miller and not the Supreme Court,” says Chris Newman, an attorney for the Abrego Garcia family. “Miller himself should be deposed under oath in federal court to determine his role in this ongoing affront to due process.”

<snip>

Drunk with hubris and high on his sad little fascist fantasies, Miller believes he can bury Americans in propaganda about criminal migrants, seducing them into embracing unchecked presidential power as essential to securing public safety. But Trump’s blithe admission that he can follow the law on Abrego Garcia anytime he wants to—and is not doing so because someone, somewhere told him he doesn’t have to—reveals this as entirely unmoored from anything resembling public order and the rule of law. It’s lawless, arbitrary, and dictatorial—proudly so, in fact.

That pride could lead to Miller’s eventual fall, and the Trump Regime with it, if Democrats are willing to make him an issue.

Nick Miroff and Jonathan Lemire explain how Miller learned from the limited progress he made in Trump’s first term.

Miller’s approach is different this time. He has unleashed an everything-at-once policy storm modeled after the MAGA guru Stephen K. Bannon’s “flood the zone” formula. Drawing on policy ideas worked up in conservative think tanks during the four years between Trump’s terms, Miller’s plan has been to fire off so many different proposals that some inevitably find a friendly court ruling, three administration officials told us.

This tactic also gives Miller multiple ways to seal the border, shut down the U.S. asylum system, and ramp up deportations. “It’s Do everything all at once everywhere,” says Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group aligned with Miller that has incubated some of his policy ideas.

Miller dug deep into the law books to find the rules he has asked Trump to implement in the first 100 days. That’s why Trump has dusted off the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. He has flooded the zone, and the Department of Justice is doing everything possible to keep the courts from doing their oversight work.

We also have just learned that the organization Miller founded and used as a base between Trump’s two terms is now attacking our court system. Talking Points Memo’s Josh Kovensky explains:

In a little-noticed lawsuit filed last week, the America First Legal Foundation sued Chief Justice John Roberts and the head of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.

The case ostensibly proceeds as a FOIA lawsuit, with the Trump-aligned group seeking access to judiciary records. But, in doing so, it asks the courts to cede massive power to the White House: the bodies that make court policy and manage the judiciary’s day-to-day operations should be considered independent agencies of the executive branch, the suit argues, giving the President, under the conservative legal movement’s theories, the power to appoint and dismiss people in key roles.

Multiple legal scholars and attorneys TPM spoke with reacted to the suit with a mixture of dismay, disdain and laughter. Though the core legal claim is invalid, they said, the suit seems to be a part of the fight that the administration launched and has continued to escalate against the courts over the past several months: ignoring a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a wrongly removed Salvadoran man, providing minimal notice to people subject to the Alien Enemies Act, flaunting an aggressive criminal case against a state court judge.

This case may not work, but Miller is not subtle. We have all seen how successful the Trump Regime has been in taking initially wacky ideas and making them mainstream after finding a MAGA judge—and their mouthpieces on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets—to approve them.

Miller is going big, and our response to him has to be equally so. We cannot allow him to lurk in the shadows as he seeks to dismantle our judiciary and immigration systems to achieve his white nationalist goals.

And, seriously, Democrats, The Daily Show has already done a bunch of work for you. Start here and work to make him an issue in every state and Congressional District nationwide.

#2

• Don’t believe the doubters: protest still has power (Jan-Werner Müller, The Guardian, Link to Article)
• One Way to Keep Trump’s Authoritarian Fantasy From Becoming Our Reality (Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times, Link to Article)
• One Hundred Days In: The People Who Have Put These Days to Good Use (James Fallows, Breaking the News, Link to Article)

This is not an easy time for those who oppose the anti-Constitutional actions of the Trump-Musk Regime’s first 100 days.

Far too many of the Democratic Party’s elected leadership failed to oppose Trump’s initial atrocities. People have been upset by what they’ve seen Trump-Musk do to federal agencies and employees.

But politics abhors a vacuum, and regular people started to fill in the leadership gaps. While severe damage has been done, the actions people around the country have taken have reduced the harm while strengthening the spines of key institutions.

The Tesla Takedown, Hands Off, Earth Day, and May Day protests are part of a national movement that has held double the number of protests this year compared to what the U.S. had during the same time period in Trump’s first term. It is exciting to see so many people connecting and building momentum to resist the Trump-Musk Regime!

This movement’s policy successes have been relatively small so far—but that’s not the only reason public protests are essential. As Jan-Werner Müller explained in The Guardian:

Yet immediate policy change is not the only metric of success. Especially in light of the defeatist elite stance earlier this year, people coming out and seeing each other can be a major morale booster. What is so often dismissed as performative – music, drums, people parading with handmade signs to have their photos taken by others – is not a matter of collective narcissism; rather, it has been recognized by many modern thinkers, starting with Rousseau, as an important part of building community.

The Fighting Oligarchy Tour with Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proved that many Americans were hungry for someone to step up and lead the opposition.

As these actions gained press coverage and Trump-Musk’s polling deteriorated, more Democratic elected officials stepped up. Senator Cory Booker held a record-breaking filibuster, and Senator Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador. As they gained appreciation, press attention, and fundraising success, other Democrats have joined in making more good trouble.

Jamelle Bouie explains how institutions learned that the situation was not helpless—and how leadership can create even more power.

By exercising political leadership, by acting like an opposition, both lawmakers and ordinary citizens have turned smooth sailing into rough waters for the administration. And while there is still much to do (Abrego Garcia has not been released, there are reports that the administration has sent at least one detainee to Rwanda, and there is also at least one person who is missing from all records), it’s also true that Trump and his people are not an unstoppable force.

Trump wants us to be demoralized. He wants his despotic plans to be a fait accompli. They will be if no one stands in the way. But every time we — and especially those with power and authority — make ourselves into obstacles, we also make it a little less likely that the administration’s authoritarian fantasy becomes our reality.

The people still have the power to create reality in our nation. That means hope remains alive.

James Fallows created an honor roll for the people “defending the values and institutions that Trump and his allies are attempting to destroy.” It’s a lengthy list, and Fallows does all of us a favor by reminding us of the first resister of this second Trump term: Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. It seems like a lifetime has passed since the inaugural National Prayer Service on January 21, 2025—but we should not let the past few months of chaos overshadow the heroes.

Keeping up our morale is an essential part of resisting an authoritarian regime. That’s why I don’t mind seeing people sing, dance, and enjoy themselves while protesting.

In the previous issue of this newsletter, I started closing by highlighting the people and events that are giving me hope right now. I plan to continue doing so, because the possibility of hope is essential. I hope you’ll share with me what is giving you hope so I can include them in future issues. You can email me at craig@thelongtwilightstruggle.com.

#3

• China-to-U.S. Container Shipments Shrink as Tariffs Bite (Costas Paris, Wall Street Journal, Link to Article)
• The Slowdown at Ports Is a Warning of Rough Economic Seas Ahead (Aarian Marshall, Wired, Link to Article)
• The last boats without crippling tariffs from China are arriving. The countdown to shortages and higher prices has begun (Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN, Link to Article)

We are about to enter the “find out” stage of President Trump’s trade war. I think Democrats should be doing more to ensure that the Trump Regime and Congressional Republicans are blamed for the empty shelves, increased prices, and layoffs that shipping experts expect to see in the next week or so.

It’s a serious situation. Worldwide shipping doesn’t start and stop on a dime. The impact of tariff decisions takes time to be felt. Wired’s Aarian Marshall explains:

As the effects of President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on foreign goods—and the trade war they’ve ignited—set in, many shippers who usually send goods across the Pacific Ocean have paused or canceled their shipments. Data from the supply-chain research firm Sea-Intelligence shows that blank sailings to the US’s West Coast spiked 13 percent this week, and is due to jump to 28 percent the week after. The Port of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest, expects 17 total blank sailings in May, which means the port will lose 224,000 “twenty-foot equivalent units of capacity,” the standard metric used to measure the contents in one container. In total, the port’s data shows, import volumes will be down 31 percent next week compared to the same week last year.

<snip>

What does that mean for consumers? Right now, the US government has said that it is negotiating tariff levels with many countries, including China, so the container shipping picture could change quickly as deals are signed or dashed. But at this point, some shortages are baked in. Experts say low-cost retail goods, like toys, are very likely to get more expensive in the US, as fewer ships make it to port and scarcity pushes up prices.

Trump acknowledged as much in a Cabinet meeting this week: “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more,” he said.

Hello, Democrats? These Trump statements about dolls and pencils are deranged. They should provide all sorts of ammunition for the needed efforts to ensure the proper people get the blame.

Democrats must also emphasize that Congressional Republicans could end this trade war tomorrow. They could strip the president of the emergency powers that he is misusing. Will voters understand this dynamic? Only if Democrats make it an issue, day after day.

#4

• The group chats that changed America (Ben Smith, Semafor, Link to Article)
• Extremist blogger to debate Harvard professor at unsanctioned campus event (Ben Makuch, The Guardian, Link to Article)
• Global elites are rotting their brains in group chats (Max Read, Read Max, Link to Article)
• Democracy dies in billionaire group chats (Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day, Link to Article)
• Trump’s Win Has Tech Bros Delighted They Can Say Slurs Again (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, The New Republic, Link to Article)

Semafor’s Ben Smith gives us a peak into these conversations that appear to have been strategically used to radicalize the tech elite who were not thrilled with the response to the COVID-19 pandemic—as they are the real victims—and who have decided that democracy is not the answer for 21st Century challenges.

In February, [Mark Andreessen] described the group chats to the podcaster Lex Fridman as “the equivalent of samizdat” — the self-published Soviet underground press — in a “soft authoritarian” age of social media shaming and censorship. “The combination of encryption and disappearing messages really unleashed it,” he said. The chats, he wrote recently, helped produce our national “vibe shift.”

The chats are occasionally marked by the sort of thing that would have gotten you scolded on Twitter in 2020, and which would pass unremarked-on on X in 2025.

They have rarely been discussed in public, though you can catch the occasional mention in, for instance, a podcast debate between Cuban and the Republican entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, which started in a chat.

But they are made visible through a group consensus on social media. Their effects have ranged from the mainstreaming of the monarchist pundit Curtis Yarvin to a particularly focused and developed dislike of the former Washington Post writer Taylor Lorenz.

Oh, Curtis Yarvin. It’s not a surprise to see him pop up here given how the Silicon Valley elite have taken to his anti-democratic philosophy. The Guardian’s Ben Makuch does a great job of putting Yarvin in context in his article about an upcoming unsanctioned debate he will have with a Harvard professor:

An extremist blogger, who has become the Trump administration’s so-called “dark enlightenment” sage, is debating a Harvard professor of political philosophy at an unsanctioned event on its campus next week.

Curtis Yarvin, who was for a time an obscure darling of Silicon Valley and the broader spectrum of the fringe right wing, has emerged as a major philosophical influence on key Capitol Hill power brokers. He is considered a favorite of Vice-President JD Vance, an ally of the tech mogul Peter Thiel, and having the ear of senior state department official, Michael Anton, among others.

Yarvin’s outlandish politics vouching for dictatorships and a new “American Caesar”, as he discussed in a 2021 podcast with Anton, in place of liberal democracy has made him both a much-maligned and loved figure.

Yarvin has also promoted blatant rightwing extremism, in the present and past: under his pen name Mencius Moldbug, he argued the racist, Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik was no more a terrorist than Nelson Mandela; he has also recently asserted the well-trodden, bigoted and historical trope that Black Americans under slavery in the old south, enjoyed much better living standards as chattel.

So, yeah, it’s a bit problematic that so many billionaires and centimillionaires are looking to Yarvin for their political outlook. This story emphasizes why I have been so focused on our techbroligarchs turn to the right thanks to philosophies that reject democracy for the rule of people like them.

Meanwhile, because the right-wing always seem to be better at using the internet to radicalize people, we learn that some leading alt-right activists understood they had a rare opportunity to earn the backing of some of the most wealthy and powerful people in the nation. As Max Read writes:

But others see it slightly differently: “Two of its conservative participants said they see [Chatham House] as a way to shift centrist Trump-curious figures to the Republican side,” Smith writes. The race-science enthusiast conservative Substacker Richard Hanania recounts for Smith a group chat “of smart right-wing people” he created at Andreessen’s behest. “Marc radicalized over time,” Hanania tells Smith, no doubt helped along by the “elite law students and federal court clerks” in the chat, not to mention Tucker Carlson. The right-wing activist Chris Rufo is (as always) particularly explicit: “I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right,” he says.

Chris Rufo, Richard Hanania, and Tucker Carlson—it’s a white nationalist bingo!

Rufo (who created the critical race theory moral panic out of nothing and now is leading the charge to defenistrate higher education) naturally took advantage of his access to people who are not as saavy as they believe they are. These tech brologarchs were ripe for the picking.

And it isn’t really that new of a story. We have been seeing similar radicalization stories play out on the internet in a variety of venues since the start of the pandemic shutdowns. As Ryan Broderick explains:

Networked oligarchy, but, also, the most typical radicalization story you could ever tell. Men, isolated by the pandemic, found each other on a public network, Clubhouse, and moved to a dark social platform, Signal, to speak more freely and openly and then spent years radicalizing each other. This is as true for the Silicon Valley dorks as it is for QAnon as it is incels as it is for ISIS. And it’s darkly funny that some of the men who built the internet as we currently use it were not immune from the indoctrinating social pathways they funded or built. Or to put it more simply: Silicon Valley has secretly getting very high on their own supply for years.

And now the fate of our democracy stands in the balance. It is important that Semafor’s Ben Smith was able to get these chat transcripts. I hope they inspire us to work hard to stop them.

#5

• Hakeem Jeffries Reportedly Fed Up With Democrats’ Trips to El Salvador (Malcolm Ferguson, The New Republic, Link to Article)

Thanks to Senator Chris Van Hollen and a few members of Congress who followed up to El Salvador, Democrats were making progress is getting the American people to see why due process is important.

Even Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley got an earful from constituents who wondered if they too could ignore judicial orders if Trump could defy the Supreme Court.

Since the strategy is working, it makes total sense to stop pushing it? What the hell, Mr. Leader?

When the right thing also happens to be popular, you don’t abandon the effort.

So, while Jeffries may be fed up with his colleagues trips to El Salvador, I’m fed up with his failure to follow James Carville’s horrible advice to “to play dead” instead of opposing an authoritarian president.

Clearing My Tabs

• Are Em Dashes Really a Sign of AI Writing? (Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, Link to Article)
  That’s ridiculous—and this decidedly human writer won’t stand for such calumny.
• Paul Clement Joins Arrested Milwaukee Judge’s Legal Team (Alex Ebert, Bloomberg Law, Link to Article)
  It is great to see that Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan has the support of some conservative titans in her fight to clear her name against the Trump Administration’s outrageous decision to arrest her.
• 45-year mystery behind eerie photo from The Shining is believed to be solved (Catherine Zhu, CBC Radio, Link to Article)
  The previously unknown story behind the film’s famous photo takes us to a 1921 Valentine’s Day dance in London and ballroom dancer Santos Casani. This research doesn’t have a scary ending.

The Possibility of Hope

• Voters in Canada and Australia rejected MAGA-interested political parties in national elections last week, including voting out the right-wing party leaders from the districts in which they were running.
• Paul Clement supporting Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan is a reminder that some conservative attorneys still respect the Constitution.
• Our libraries continue to do amazing work on behalf of the residents of their communities. I know some people are concerned about supporting media outlets that have been bowing to Trump, but still want to stay informed. Use your libraries! Many of them offer library card holders free short-term passes to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and many magazines. Stay informed while supporting your library!
• Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker: Unlike some Democratic elected officials, this Governor appears to understand the assignment.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Somewhere ‘out there,’ beyond the walls of the courthouse, run currents and tides of public opinion which lap at the courtroom door.”—Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Address at Suffolk University Law School; quoted in The New York Times (April 17, 1986)

Follow me on BlueSky to see what browser tabs I open in real time.

Craig Cheslog (@craigcheslog.com)

GenXer against fascism. Talking politics, women’s soccer, WNBA, Manchester United men and women, USWNT, USMNT, Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Taylor Swift. (he/him/his) My newsletter: https://thelongtwilightstruggle.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 recently found interesting:

• Why fighting to protect due process matters;
• The surprisingly broad coalition joining the due process fight;
• Why Democrats should start talking seriously about impeachment;
• MAGA investors made a bad bet with Trump;
• Robert E. Lee was a traitor;
• The Nerd Reich wants Greenland;
• No, Donald Trump did not write The Art of the Deal;
• The millions whom Marco Rubio is sentencing to die;
• Baseball’s leaders don’t deserve Jackie Robinson; 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 United States Declaration of Independence (Link to National Archives)
• Trump told us the horrifying reason why Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not back in the U.S. (Chris Geidner, Law Dork, Link to Article)

I am relieved to learn that fighting for due process remains something a majority of the American people support.

We need to be clear that the Trump Regime’s decision to render Kilmar Abrego Garcia and over 270 other people to an El Salvador torture gulag without due process is a Constitutional emergency. No individual has the power to decide who is and who is not a criminal under our system of government if “innocent until proven guilty” has any meaning.

As attorney Asha Rangappa noted on the BlueSky:

Fighting for due process is in our national DNA. It dates back to the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson and his co-writers included a list of grievances about King George III to justify the decision to rebel. The 16th-19th grievances are sadly all too relevant today:

Some enterprising Member of the House of Representatives may want to hit copy and paste while preparing their impeachment resolution.

The Trump Regime has embraced a Constitutional Crisis and has even mocked the Supreme Court because the real plan doesn’t end with undocumented immigrants. This is just the test case. The one that was supposed to work because of how awful the Regime wants us to believe those sent to El Salvador are. Who is going to defend terrorists?

But, as usual, the Trump Regime was sloppy. They sent someone to El Salvador who a Court had ordered could not be sent there. While they are claiming that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist, they have provided no proof of that claim.

It turns out, thankfully, that most Americans do not like to hear that a person was sent to a foreign torture gulag because of an “administrative error.” They also do not appreciate it when the president ignores a Supreme Court decision.

But the Trump Regime cannot stand down because their ultimate plan requires that Abrego Garcia stay in El Salvador. As Law Dork’s Chris Geidner writes:

Why do they not bring Abrego Garcia back?

That would, ultimately, destroy the plan.

The Trump administration wants to create a Schrodinger’s box — quite literally, the CECOT prison is that box — where anyone can be sent under an agreement between the U.S. government and El Savador’s government but at which point the U.S. government can claim to no longer have any authority because people within that box are in the custody of a foreign sovereign.

If they can get Abrego Garcia out of the box, the plan does not work.

The door that the George W. Bush Administration opened in the War on Terror has been blown off its hinges—as is typical when government officials are not held accountable for their illegal actions. The precedents created by black site renditions, CIA torture, and Guantanamo Bay existed for Stephen Miller and the Trump Regime to expand upon.

If the Trump Regime can keep Abrego Garcia and the other Venezuelans sent to El Salvador in that gulag, that precedent can be expanded upon to get troublesome U.S. citizens out of the way.

It’s a red line. It may be the red line because the right to due process is required for freedom. That’s why the founding generation included it in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I was initially worried that too many people would not understand this dynamic. Those fears appear to have been misplaced, as a new coalition has been created to fight back, and more Democrats have found their opposition spines in the process.

#2

• Sen. Chris Van Hollen argues Trump administration’s actions in Abrego Garcia case ‘threaten everybody’s rights’ (Kaanita Iyer, CNN, Link to Article)
• Welcome to the Resistance, Bret Stephens (Dave Karpf, The Future, Now and Then, Link to Article)
• We Radicalized David Brooks (Melissa Ryan, Ctrl, Alt, Right, Delete, Link to Article)
• How a Judge Tells a President to F**k Off (Allison Gill, Breakdown, Link to Article)

It was great to see Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) take a risk and go to El Salvador and insist on meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia to ensure he was still alive.

Resisting an autocrat and defending Constitutional rights requires taking risks, and our political leaders should set an example by demonstrating such courage.

I am glad that Van Hollen has received so much credit for taking a stand on due process. He appeared on all five Sunday news programs today and did an excellent job with his messaging.

As Van Hollen told CNN today:

“I don’t think it’s ever wrong to fight for the constitutional rights of one person, because if we give up on one person’s rights, we threaten everybody’s rights,” Van Hollen said, adding, “Anyone who is not prepared to stand up and fight for the Constitution doesn’t deserve to lead.”

I hope other Democratic leaders see what can happen—support and media coverage—when they oppose the Trump Regime.

It turns out that the political coalition to defend this concept is broad. Really broad. Like, we are welcoming some unexpected people to the cause. As Dave Karpf explains:

There has been a marked shift within the Republic of Letters. David Brooks is calling for a “National Civic Uprising.” Bill Kristol is asking “where does the ‘Abolish ICE’ movement go to get its apology?” And now even Bret Stephens (Bret Stephens!) is saying that Trump is trying to turn the United States into “a nation of toadies.”

Heck, even Joe Rogan is a member of the due process defenders. And the brazen defiance of the Trump Regime led a Reagan-appointed judge to use uncharacteristically blunt language in response.

Like Melissa Ryan, I’ve had to double-check some of these articles—like David Brooks’—because they seemed too good to be true.

Many of the people reading this newsletter have been working to protest the Trump Regime. So I wanted to close this section with what Ryan had to say about how important all of that work has been to what we witnessed this week. As she explains:

The Trump Regime’s continued escalation is terrifying. They’ve made it clear that they’re willing to do whatever it takes to destroy America from within and sell our nation for parts. And that they’re willing to harass, sue, and lock up anyone who tries to get in their way. But every week the defiance grows. More people and institutions join the fight, and defying the regime becomes a little less scary each time someone else stands up and says no more.

But the win doesn’t belong to the elites. It belongs to everyone who has put pressure on them, from calls to Congress and town meetings to protests, rallies, economic boycotts, and other forms of direct action. You created the space for all of this to happen. You’ve let them know that you are a force to be reckoned with. You’ve inspired people who previously thought they could probably ride out another four years of Trump to change course and fight. Keep going.

The work matters. Let’s continue fighting for our Constitution.

#3

• Some Democrats in Congress are starting to talk about impeachment. They’re right. (Andy Craig, MSNBC, Link to Article)

One of the powers political leaders have is to influence public opinion. They can take actions that will eventually change minds.

So, while impeaching Trump and removing him from office isn’t going to happen tomorrow, Democrats should start the conversation and force Republicans to defend an increasingly unpopular—and tyrannical—Trump Regime. As Andy Craig explains:

It is a severe failure of imagination to think his public support is some static fact of nature, or that the present crisis will not continue to escalate. As America slides into open authoritarianism and economic ruin, we can’t afford an opposition that, as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently told Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, is doing nothing more than “the kinds of things you’d be doing if Mitt Romney were president.”

As the government flings itself apart, we will keep coming back to the grim reality. Trump can’t be restrained, or reasoned with, or babysat for the next four years. The only way to bring power back under the rule of law is to remove a lawless man from power.

Members of Congress don’t swear an oath to defend the Constitution only if it tests well in a focus group, or with pundits and consultants. Nor does Republican opposition justify inaction. Refusing to do the right thing because you expect others won’t join is just another form of complying in advance.

Removing Trump from office is the Constitutional remedy. If this is a crisis—and it is—then Democrats must be willing to initiate this conversation.

It would signal to voters that they are willing to fight to defend our system of government. It would give people something around which to rally. It would force Republicans to defend the anti-Constitutional actions of the Trump-Musk Regime.

These are not normal times. Democrats must embrace every tool at their disposal, especially the ones included by the framers for this purpose in the Constitution.

#4

• I Hope MAGA Investors Enjoy the Crisis They Caused (Ryan Cooper, The American Prospect, Link to Article)
• Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All (Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, Link to Article)

One of the most famous tweets of all time describes conservative voters’ attempt to punish people they don’t like backfiring on themselves: “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” It’s a cliché at this point to cite this, but the tweet is only becoming more relevant as Donald Trump has unleashed the biggest leopard of all on a core source of his support: the financial industry. His deranged trade war with the entire planet is cratering markets around the world and may unleash a global financial crisis.

I realize not everyone is as online as I am, so I am glad Ryan Cooper opened his story by explaining the dynamic of MAGA supporters being harmed by the president they supported.

Just a few months ago, Wall Street and tech leaders were giddy over the economic growth the United States was about to experience. Cooper recalls some of this misplaced optimism:

A great many Trump-supporting financiers and business leaders thought they were ushering in the usual Republican regime of low taxes and lax regulation. Markets soared on the news of his election, reaching a peak in January. “I am quite optimistic that this administration is going to run a very, very pro-growth agenda,” said David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs. “I feel liberated,” a “top banker” told the Financial Times. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled … it’s a new dawn.” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon even supported Trump’s tariff ideas outright. “Get over it,” he said at Davos in January.

Since then, with Trump plainly mentally unbalanced and Elon Musk tearing up the government structures that underpin American capitalism, markets had fallen by about 15 percent as of early April. And now, Wall Street is getting perhaps the most wholly gratuitous market crash in history—touched off not by a business failure or bank run, but by the dumbest president in history dropping a neutron bomb on the global trading system for no reason.

Our economic elite are not as smart as they believe. And now the leopards are coming for their faces.

When asked about the Trump-Musk Regime’s economic insanity, many members of Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have pointed to Trump supposedly being a great deal maker and the author of The Art of the Deal.

Of course, Trump didn’t write that book. Tony Schwartz did. In this 2016 New Yorker profile by Jane Mayer, Schwartz explains his regret for his part in creating the myth of Donald Trump, the competent businessman.

“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title.

Yeah, he tried to warn us in 2016. As did so many people.

So let’s not allow Republicans like the Speaker to use the Art of the Deal as justification for Trump harming the United States economy. They know the truth.

#5

• The Myth of the Kindly General Lee (Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, Link to Article)

Earlier this month, we celebrated the anniversary of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House.

This traitor has been the beneficiary of a concerted effort to rehabilitate his image and justify his decision to betray his oath and kill United States soldiers.

Not holding Confederate leaders responsible for their treason has harmed our country. Allowing Robert E. Lee to be cleansed of his racism and support of slavery must not be allowed to continue. As Serwer writes in an all-too-relevant 2017 article:

To describe this man as an American hero requires ignoring the immense suffering for which he was personally responsible, both on and off the battlefield. It requires ignoring his participation in the industry of human bondage, his betrayal of his country in defense of that institution, the battlefields scattered with the lifeless bodies of men who followed his orders and those they killed, his hostility toward the rights of the freedmen and his indifference to his own students waging a campaign of terror against the newly emancipated. It requires reducing the sum of human virtue to a sense of decorum and the ability to convey gravitas in a gray uniform.

Robert E. Lee is one of the most significant traitors our nation has produced. We must not allow a propaganda campaign to rewrite that horrible history.

#6

• Greenland ‘Freedom City’? Rich donors push Trump for a tech hub up north (Rachael Levy and Alexandra Ulmer, Reuters, Link to Article)
• The Nerd Reich podcast, episode 1: The Network State (Gil Duran, The Nerd Reich, Link to Article)

I’ve written about Gil Duran’s coverage of our techbroligarch’s plans to replace democratic government with Network States based on cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, and their own authoritarian power.

Many analysts have wondered why the Trump-Musk Regime has been so focused on taking over Greenland, including threats to invade a NATO ally. Rachel Levy and Alexandra Ulmer may have uncovered a big part of the puzzle:

As the Trump administration intensifies efforts to acquire Greenland from Denmark — or take it by force — some Silicon Valley tech investors are promoting the frozen island as a site for a so-called freedom city, a libertarian utopia with minimal corporate regulation, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The discussions are in early stages, but the idea has been taken seriously by Trump’s pick for Denmark ambassador, Ken Howery, who is expected to be confirmed by Congress in the coming months and lead Greenland-acquisition negotiations, the people said. Howery, whose involvement with the idea hasn’t been previously reported, once co-founded a venture-capital firm with tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a leading advocate for such low-regulation cities. Howery is also a longtime friend of Elon Musk, a top Trump advisor.

Freedom cities are just another name for a Network State. Better branding, even if the result is still dystopian.

I want to share Gil Duran’s new podcast for those of you who want to learn more about what Musk, Thiel, and other tech leaders are seeking to do. The first episode includes a deep dive into the Network State and why our techbroligarchs are so excited about getting rid of regulations and government oversight. After all, as Thiel once wrote, “democracy is no longer compatible with freedom.”

That’s what we are up against.

#7

• Count the Dead by the Millions (Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, Link to Article)
• Marco Rubio Lied (Daniel W. Drezner, Drezner’s World, Link to Article)

The United States Senate confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio by a 99-0 vote. That’s right: every Democrat supported their colleague in the hopes he’d be an adult in the room.

Instead, Rubio has been central to many of the Trump Regime’s most harmful actions. He lied about why Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was seized from the streets of Medford, Massachusetts, last month. He sat silently while President Trump and Vice President Vance attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. He has championed the end of U.S. foreign aid programs.

That last choice is going to have deadly consequences around the world. As Tim Dickinson writes:

A new study models the impact of the implosion of U.S.-funded disease treatment and prevention in the developing world — and suggests that Elon Musk and Marco Rubio will go down as among history’s greatest monsters if funding and effective administration are not restored.

In short: Tens of millions will die, millions of them children.

<snip>

The findings shock the conscience. Cessation of U.S. aid will lead to people in poor countries dying, in genocidal proportions, of preventable and treatable diseases. That includes more than 15 million additional deaths from HIV/AIDS, more than 2 million additional casualties from tuberculosis, and nearly 8 million additional children dead of other maladies.

The numbers are stunning. This is how many people around the world will remember the United States. There was no reason to make these cuts so chaotic, even if we decided as a nation that these programs were no longer worthy of our support.

Marco Rubio oversees the decisions leading to these death tolls while proclaiming to be a devout Christian. I hope Democrats learn the lesson that anyone willing to serve Donald Trump cannot be trusted in office.

#8

• When Baseball Forgot Its Courage: MLB’s DEI Capitulation (Parker Molloy, The Present Age, Link to Article)

The past week has been difficult for this baseball fan. In many years, that difficulty can be traced to a poor start by the Chicago Cubs. But this year, the problem is more significant.

Parker Molloy is also a Cubs fan. But she shares my disappointment about how Major League Baseball has capitulated to the Trump Regime about diversity and inclusion initiatives while pretending to care about what Jackie Robinson meant to the game.

Yes, the sport that loves to pat itself on the back every April 15th for Robinson’s breaking of the league’s color barrier couldn’t even bring itself to mention the color barrier in its press release this year (they did mention it on some other pages on the MLB site, however). The same MLB that sells #42 jerseys, that produces emotional video packages about Robinson’s courage, that uses his legacy to bolster its image as a progressive force in American culture, now can’t find the courage to use the words “diversity” or “inclusion” in its official communications.

<snip>

The real irony is that Jackie Robinson himself was never one to stay silent in the face of injustice. He used his platform to speak out, despite the personal and professional risks. In 1972, just before his death, Robinson wrote in his autobiography: “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world.” That’s the kind of courage that made him not just a baseball pioneer, but an American hero.

Baseball should be better than this. It’s supposed to be where we gather together, across all our differences, to share something beautiful. The game deserves leaders who understand that acknowledging our painful past isn’t “DEI” — it’s just honesty. And honesty is supposed to be one of baseball’s core values, right alongside courage and integrity.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and baseball’s owners are cowards. They want credit for Jackie Robinson’s courage without doing the work necessary to honor his legacy.

#9

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.

The Possibility of Hope

We are not alone—and here’s what’s bringing me hope in the long, twilight struggle.

• Senator Chris Van Hollen for going to El Salvador and defending due process in the media.
• I believe the rallies we are seeing nationwide are making a huge difference and providing space for our elected officials to increase their opposition to the Trump Regime.
• Harvard University for telling the Trump Regime that they will not assist in the destruction of our higher education institutions.
• All of the fired federal employees who are preparing to run for office. Let’s help them as they take a stand in the fight to protect our democracy.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“We’ve seen this movie before across different contexts and continents. The script is familiar, the plot mostly predictable. But we don’t yet know how it ends – especially in a country with America’s democratic traditions, constitutional safeguards, and decentralized power structures.

And so, when friends ask me “what do we do,” I tell them: Look to those who’ve been there before. Democracy isn’t saved through grand gestures, but through thousands of small acts of courage. Through showing up, speaking up, and refusing to turn away from what is happening before our eyes. Through recognizing that the authoritarian playbook works precisely because each small tactic seems too minor to resist.

We’ve seen this movie before. But we’re not just a passive audience—we’re also actors. And we still have the power to change the ending.”—Natalia Antelava, Coda Story, Sunday Read: How Democracies Die – The Script for a Three-Act Play

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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@thelongtwilightstruggle.com. 

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Craig Cheslog (@craigcheslog.com)

GenXer against fascism. Talking politics, women’s soccer, WNBA, Manchester United men and women, USWNT, USMNT, Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Taylor Swift. (he/him/his) My newsletter: https://thelongtwilightstruggle.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:

• 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.

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

#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.

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.

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#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. 

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

#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.

“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:

• Musk-Trump destroys systems that took generations to create;
• The weaponization of trauma against federal employees;
• White House press corps should send in the interns;
• Local news’ great coverage of the impact of Musk-Trump cuts;
• Let’s make Tesla toxic;
• Montana bill would charge women for trafficking their own fetus;
• Nazis ushered in fascism by burning trans literature;
• SCOTUS sides with innocent person;
• California’s Prop 30 taxes expire in 2030; 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

‘They Were Careless People’: Taking Moments to Tear Down What Has Taken Lifetimes to Create. (James Fallows, Breaking the News, Link to Article)

Last week the eminent China scholar Orville Schell likened this moment’s all-fronts Trump-Musk disruption of American institutions to the early years of the catastrophic Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao. “Trump may lack Mao’s skills as a writer and theorist,” Schell wrote, “but he possesses the same animal instinct to confound opponents and maintain authority by being unpredictable to the point of madness”:

<snip>

It is impossible to keep up with the barrage of daily shocks and dislocations. Of course this is by design. The nonstop flow of outrages also makes it easier for members of the quisling Congress to avoid commenting on any of them in particular—for instance, the US siding with Russia and North Korea in a major UN vote this week, and siding against all its traditional allies. By tomorrow, reporters will have something else to ask about.

So let me focus on one dull-sounding development that sooner or later will be killing people. Yes, I could be talking about changes in Medicaid or in vaccine coverage or in cancer research, or about the USAID shutdowns that have already left many people dead overseas. Or lots more.

But instead I’m talking about the sudden attack on part of the invisible infrastructure that has kept air travelers so safe in the skies.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

When James Fallows isn’t providing analysis of our press or political speeches, he often shares what he’s learned from his years of flying planes.

Fallows draws from this expertise to discuss how the Musk-Trump regime’s destruction of federal institutions could set in place the “accident chain” for a crash in the future.

Fallows notes that making a complex system safe takes expertise and stability. It takes decades to build up what the United States had with our commercial aviation industry and the safety culture that our aviation systems have produced.

It won’t take long to destroy the delicate combination of institutions that makes it so safe to fly in the United States. Musk and DOGE have shut down safety committees, fired staff key to our air traffic control systems, and left federal employees in a state of trauma and unease.

Fallows details the aviation sector in his article, but he notes that experts in many other fields—health care, research, disaster relief, foreign aid—could share similar stories and warnings.

Federal agencies have been keeping us safe for decades. Musk and his tech-bro followers are now crashing and burning through our systems and likely creating problems that will only become apparent when something catastrophically fails.

It will not be easy to put these systems back together. Democrats should be telling this story to make sure the right people are held accountable for what is likely coming.

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 Weaponization of Trauma (Rachael Dietkus, Can We Still Govern?, Link to Article)

I am a current federal employee with the United States Digital Corps. I was required to be interviewed by a member of the DOGE team and am also on the termination list of employees due to probationary status. I wrote this in my personal capacity, but the perspectives I share are deeply connected to my professional responsibility to advance ethical, trauma-informed practices in public sector innovation.

TL;DR: The forced mass terminations and agency restructuring under the Trump administration have activated psychological and emotional distress among federal workers. Employees report hypervigilance, institutional betrayal, physiological symptoms of stress, loss of identity, grief, and collective trauma.

The administration’s rhetoric explicitly frames these actions as an intentional effort to induce trauma, as evidenced by Russell Vought’s statement: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

The following analysis applies trauma frameworks to understand the impact of these upheavals.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told us what he wanted to do to our federal workers. We should not forget how Vought and Regent Elon Musk’s DOGE tech-bros are treating people who were dedicated to improving our lives.

I am glad we have this first-hand account of the human toll created by the Musk-Trump-Vought destruction of our federal agencies. It is vital to remember that each announcement of layoffs or terminations involves real people with mortgages, children, and health concerns. They have done nothing to deserve the disrespect and chaos they face.

Vought has described himself as a Christian Nationalist, and he seeks to bring Christianity into all parts of our society and government.

I’d like to know what part of Jesus’ teachings is consistent with wanting other humans “to be traumatically affected?” I don’t remember that being a part of the Sermon on the Mount.

Vought is a dangerous person trying to impose his heretical religious views on the rest of us. The trauma won’t stop with federal workers if he has his way.

#3

Send the Interns (Jay Rosen, Press Think, Link to Article)

When I say #sendtheinterns I mean it literally: take a bold decision to put your most junior people in the briefing room. Recognize that the real story is elsewhere, and most likely hidden. That’s why the experienced reporters need to be taken out of the White House, and put on other assignments.

Look: they can’t visit culture war upon you if they don’t know where you are. The press has to become less predictable. It has to stop functioning as a hate object. This means giving something up. The dream of the White House briefing room and the Presidential press conference is that accountability can be transacted in dramatic and televisable moments: the perfect question that puts the President or his designate on the spot, and lets the public see — as if in a flash — who they are led by. This was always an illusion. Crumbling for decades, it has become comically unsustainable under Trump.

Please note: I am not saying that as a beat the White House is unimportant, or that its pronouncements can be ignored. I’m not saying: devote less attention to Trump. Rather: change the terms of this relationship. Make yourself more elusive. In the theater of resentment where you play such a crucial part, relinquish that part.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen first suggested that media outlets #sendtheinterns to the White House press briefings with this article at the beginning of the first Trump Administration. That didn’t happen.

However, given Trump’s attacks on the Associated Press, ABC, CBS, the Des Moines Register, and other reporters, Rosen reminded people of his suggestion.

I think it has much merit, especially now that the Trump White House is taking over the media pool assignments from the White House Correspondents Association.

Trump gives reporters access and sound bites but otherwise insults reporters and is engaged in a war against the stewards of the First Amendment.

White House reporters have ways to fight back. Rosen notes that very little news comes from the briefings, so the lead correspondents could spend that time more productively.

Trump loves his media coverage. He may react to having the press briefing downgraded. Reporters can reset the rules of engagement.

As Reporters Without Borders has explained, press freedom is under siege after the first month of Trump 47. Our press outlets need to do something. Or they can continue to be lied to in press briefings and belittled at every opportunity while our First Amendment rights slip away.

#4

Local news deserves high marks for coverage of the doge fallout (Jennifer Schulze, Indistinct Chatter, Link to Article)

Local news is doing what it does best: build trust by reporting on stories local residents can verify with their own eyes. Recently, much of that reporting has focused on the local impact of the reckless actions of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Fired USDA bird flu scientists. Shuttered Head Start programs. Angry voters confronting GOP Congressmen about doge. It’s all part of a monumental story playing out every day on trusted local news outlets from the TV newscasts in Chicago, to newspapers in Kansas and digital news sites stretching from Nevada to New Hampshire.

I’ve spent my journalism career working in local newsrooms and I’m very impressed by the quality of work. It’s timely, often gut wrenching and impactful. Equally, in an era when people doubt the news, it feels authentic.

One of the biggest stories across America is the growing anger aimed at Musk and Trump revealed in numerous town hall meetings this week. In Yucca Valley, California, the Hi-Desert Star witnessed the shouts of’ ‘no kings’ and ‘do your job’ at Republican Congressman Jay Obernolte’s Saturday morning town hall. In Milwaukee, TMJ4 was there as the crowd booed claims that Doge was proving successful. In Tulsa, News on 6 reported on calls for congressional hearings. In Georgia, multiple news outlets covered the overflow crowd that jeered Republican Rich McCormick especially when he compared the crowd to the January 6th rioters.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Local news outlets have been suffering greatly over the past 15-20 years. It isn’t a loss of classified ads and subscribers. It is also hedge fund buyers loading them with debt before they strip them for parts.

That is why we should tip our caps to all of the outstanding coverage we have seen the past couple of weeks as voters protest the Musk-Trump regime’s coup against our federal agencies.

Voters are unhappy and demanding that their representatives do their Article I jobs and place guardrails on the Musk-Trump regime. Voters do not want their Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid cut. Voters do not want to hear that their Congressional representatives have no power to stop what Musk and his DOGE tech-bros are doing to our federal agencies.

I am glad that national outlets are picking up these local stories. However, we need to figure out ways to secure the future of local reporting. Rich liberals could do a bunch of good by endowing publications in news deserts and then getting out of the way (unlike that space and defense contractor who has decided to ruin the Washington Post’s reputation).

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#5

Make Tesla Toxic (Evan Sutton, Ctrl Alt Right Delete, Link to Article)

But how do regular people with limited resources extract a price from a rising fascist movement?

The first answer is everything we can think of. No one who’s lived their whole life in the United States has ever faced something like this, and none of us knows for sure what’s going to derail the march toward fascism. In times like these, we should foster creative actions, not wag our fingers or tut-tut ideas.

But there is a very specific target that deserves special focus—Tesla Motors.

Tesla is the basis of Elon Musk’s mystique and his wealth. His stake in the company is worth around $145 billion at today’s valuation—more than a third of his total net worth.

Elon clearly isn’t scared about the legal consequences of his actions. Why should he be? The courts have never held him accountable in any meaningful way before, and now he’s protected by an increasingly authoritarian regime.

But legal consequences aren’t the only cost an effective resistance can make opponents pay.

The first thing you need to know is that Tesla Motors is a house of cards.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Many people have lost quite a bit of money shorting Tesla since the start of the pandemic. By any typical measure, the company is overvalued—it is worth more than the next 11 automobile companies combined.

So much of Tesla’s value is based on the belief that Elon Musk is a visionary with a special ability to see the company continue to grow like a technology stock.

But sales have already slowed. And European sales have plummeted since Musk tied himself so closely to Trump and other right-wing causes.

Musk has been working diligently to alienate the people most likely to want to buy an electric vehicle. Meanwhile, other auto companies have caught up to Tesla—and even provided less expensive models in key markets like China.

So, if one wants to hurt Musk, breaking the spell Tesla has on the market is one way to do so. We’ve seen a growth in protests at Tesla dealerships. People are dumping the stock. And people who can’t sell or get out of a lease are putting stickers on their cars to share that they bought it before “Elon went crazy.”

There is more people can do, and Sutton outlines steps people can take to hit Elon Musk financially.

The overvalued Tesla stock is the basis for much of Musk’s power. The marketplace has an opportunity to have an impact.

Musk losing a significant amount of his financial power may, in turn, give Trump (or his advisors) the opportunity to teach him one of the oldest lessons in politics—smart leaders delegate unpopular decisions to others and then use them as a scapegoat to regain their popularity.

Machiavelli diagnosed this dynamic when he wrote in Chapter 19 of The Prince, “From it a noteworthy lesson may be drawn: princes should delegate unpopular duties to others while dispensing all favors directly themselves.”

I doubt Trump is aware of the political philosophy. But he’s a master at using and scapegoating people. Musk’s unpopular overreaching has also upset enough other Trump Administration appointees that the metaphorical knives are starting to emerge.

#6

Montana Bill Would Charge Women for ‘Trafficking’ Their Own Fetus (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, Link to Article)

For the past two years, we’ve watched Republicans push ‘abortion trafficking’ laws to restrict minors’ ability to leave their states for care. And for just as long, I’ve warned that this was never going to stop at teens—that what happens to young people today comes for the rest of us tomorrow.

Well, tomorrow is here. Montana Republicans have introduced a first-of-its-kind bill that would criminalize women for getting certain out-of-state abortions, accusing them of ‘trafficking’ their own fetuses.

And regardless of what happens in Montana, this bill has stark implications for the whole country. Republicans have broken a legislative seal—signaling that they’re coming for women’s right to travel.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

This is the first legislative effort to criminalize women’s travel. And we need to treat it as a serious threat.

The bill may not pass in Montana. But other states are likely to pick up the baton. We have seen this dynamic with forced-birth bills for decades.

Forced-birth extremists are working with conservative legal groups and outside organizations to create an environment where these outrageous ideas are normalized.

The legislation, as Valenti explains, is also a backdoor way of establishing fetal personhood as a legal concept.

Travel restrictions may have started with teens. But like all of these ideas, forced-birth activists will work to expand them to every person who can become pregnant.

It is easier to defeat these bills the earlier we find out about them. I’m glad that Valenti is serving as a major hub to distribute information about what the forced-birth extremists are doing to restrict women’s rights to reproductive healthcare.

#7

Nazis Burned Trans Books To Usher In Fascism: Now Trump Does The Same (Erin Reed, Erin in the Morning, Link to Article)

Nearly a century ago, Nazis raided the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft—the Institute of Sexology—a pioneering research institution and clinic founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, a forefather of transgender research. The institute housed tens of thousands of books, research notes, and data documenting the first decades of scientific study on transgender and queer people. Long before the labor camps and mass killings, the Nazis identified Hirschfeld as a primary enemy, targeting his work in the early rise of fascism. That night, in Berlin’s Bebelplatz Square, they burned his institute’s collection in a now-infamous spectacle, immortalized in history books yet often stripped of the context of who, exactly, was targeted. Now, President Trump is doing the same—digitally burning records of transgender people and pressuring nonprofits to follow suit.

And those digital fires have spread. Within days of Trump’s anti-trans executive orders, the word “transgender” was erased from nearly every government website where it once appeared. CDC data on transgender health was stripped from its pages. The Stonewall National Monument—dedicated to the LGBTQ+ people who fought back against oppression, led by transgender activists—was purged of any mention of transgender people online. Even institutions and nonprofits serving LGBTQ+ communities, particularly those receiving federal funding, have been pressured into scrubbing “transgender” and “gender identity” from their materials. The Nazis would envy the speed and efficiency with which it was done.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Some of history’s rhymes are frightening. Anyone who thinks the Trump Regime is going to stop after they wipe out the existence of transgender people has not paid attention to numerous historical examples.

The attacks against trans people continue to grow. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a directive to permanently bar trans athletes from entering the United States if their visa applications misrepresent their birth sex. The United States is about to co-host the Women’s World Cup in 2027 and the Summer Olympics in 2028.

The directive is also vague enough that it could apply to non-athletes as well.

Rubio was confirmed to his position by a 99-0 vote. Yes, every Democrat voted for to confirm him. And this anti-trans directive is what that celebration of Senate norms has wrought. Did Democratic Senators think Rubio would stand up to Trump and stop some of his worst foreign policy initiatives?

So bleeping naive.

Senate Democrats have also agreed to more than 340 unanimous consent requests in 2025, speeding up the confirmations of many of Trump’s unqualified nominees. This situation is not normal, and Democrats should stop wishing and acting like it is. Are they an opposition party or the junior partner in an authoritarian government?

#8

SCOTUS Sides With Obviously Innocent Richard Glossip, Orders Oklahoma To Vacate His Conviction (Robyn Pennacchia, Wonkette, Link to Article)

In a rare moment of actually doing the right thing, the Supreme Court of the United States of America has determined that Oklahoma inmate Richard Glossip should have his conviction vacated and be granted a new trial.

Glossip was convicted in 1997 of a murder he did not commit — the murder of Barry Von Treese, the owner of the Best Budget Inn where he worked as a manager. Another man named Justin Sneed actually committed the murder and Glossip was convicted of supposedly “hiring” him by promising they could split any money Sneed was able to steal afterwards.

<snip>

This morning, after having his execution date changed nine times, after eating three last meals, after years of insisting upon his (very obvious) innocence, after years of work from lawyers, activists and documentary filmmakers seeking to prove his innocence, after years of even Oklahoma Republicans arguing for his case to be overturned, SCOTUS has ordered the state of Oklahoma to vacate his conviction.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

It doesn’t happen often, so I will celebrate when the Supreme Court does the right thing.

Richard Glossip did not receive a fair trial because the prosecution did not correct testimony it knew to be false during the original trial.

There was no guarantee that the Supreme Court would see things this way. After all, it has recently made it much more difficult for innocent people to access the courts when new evidence is found and implicitly said that no Constitutional right is violated if an innocent person has to spend the rest of their life in jail after a wrongful conviction.

Glossip may now get the opportunity to receive the fair trial everyone deserves, particularly those facing the death penalty.

Prosecutors and police should face more significant sanctions for lying to the court or withholding evidence from the defense. I think police should be barred from lying to suspects during interrogations.

But those are conversations for another day. Now we can celebrate that a person with a compelling claim to be innocent of the charges that led to his capitol conviction can get a fair trial (if Oklahoma decides to pursue the case).

#9

Proposition 30 taxes expire in 2030 (Jason Sisney, #CABudget, Link to Article)

One of California’s voter-approved marginal tax rates for higher-income personal income tax (PIT) filers expires at the end of 2030. Absent legislative or voter action to extend these taxes, the state budget then will lose perhaps more than $10 billion of annual tax revenue. Compared to budgets under current tax law, deficits would increase by several billion dollars per year, and guaranteed school funding would decline by several billion dollars. From a perspective of prudent planning for tax and fiscal policy, a decision to extend the current taxes, modify them, or let them expire ideally would be made a few years prior to 2030.

Because the state’s multiyear budget forecasts only go out about four years, the deficit pressures from expiration of these voter-approved temporary taxes are not yet shown in those forecasts. Similarly, the forecasts do not account fully for deficit pressures from the 2030 end of the existing cap-and-trade authorization or the long-term decline of the state’s fuel taxes.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Here’s something my California readers will want to keep an eye on as the state budget debate develops.

I would love it if the Democrats would use their legislative supermajorities to extend the taxes. But I doubt they will since it would require taking a stand.

So, it would be prudent to have a ballot measure ready to go in 2026 to extend the Proposition 30 tax to protect school funding. I’m not confident the legislative leadership or Governor Newsom will see it that way, but we should not be blind as we edge closer to a budget cliff.

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:

“Beyond this, the adage that the opposition’s duty was to oppose was not Rayburn’s adage. He didn’t want to oppose simply for the sake of opposing. “Any jackass can kick a barn down,” he said. “But it takes a good carpenter to build one.” (Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate)

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:

• How to make Trump unpopular again by not allowing more GOP political layups;
• Democrats must address their gerontocracy problem;
• Silicon Valley’s plan to dismantle democracy;
• Republican SAVE Act could prevent many women from voting;
• Elon Musk is trying to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat;
• How a foreign reporter would write about last week (“King Donald I” Accelerates White Nationalist Purge of Military Leaders);
• 150-year-olds are not collecting Social Security benefits;
• Civil Servants are leading the resistance; 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

How to Make Trump Unpopular Again (Dan Pfeiffer, The Message Box, Link to Article)

Without adopting McConnell’s nihilism, we do need a similar approach. McConnell understood that his party’s success was inversely correlated with Obama’s. Unfortunately, politics is zero-sum. Mutually shared political victory between Republicans and Democrats does not exist.

Therefore, Democrats need to adopt a “no layups” rule. This is a concept borrowed from basketball. There are no easy shots. If the other team tries to make a layup, you foul them before they can. This is the mentality Democrats need. We must complicate everything for Trump and the Republicans and use every lever of power to slow things down and gum up the works. Time is the only non-renewable resource in politics. Every day that Trump doesn’t move his agenda is a day he won’t get back. This is what McConnell did to Obama and it’s what Democrats need to do to Trump.

The real test will come when government funding runs out and the debt limit expires. The Democratic approach must be in total opposition to any Republican proposal. We have all the leverage. If Republicans want Democratic votes, they must pay in concessions. This doesn’t mean we demand Medicare For All or an expansion of Social Security, but we can insist on concessions to protect many of the priorities being slashed by Musk and his minions.

To be clear, Democrats are not forcing a shutdown. Republicans have the votes to keep the government up and running. I am simply saying that Democrats shouldn’t bail out the Republicans due to some sense of civic duty.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Right before this recent Congressional district work period, Senate Democrats helped speed along the confirmations of several of President Trump’s nominees, including Tusli Gabard, Pam Bondi, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They did this by agreeing to unanimous consent requests so members could avoid being in session on Friday and be sure to get to the Munich Security Conference.

To quote the legendary Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi:

I was under the impression we were facing the most difficult time for our Republic since the Civil War. It’s not just what I’m seeing the Musk-Trump regime do in the news—it’s also in all the fundraising appeals I am getting from Democrats and Democratic-related fundraising committees.

Yes, protecting our democracy and highlighting the Musk-Trump illegal activities may require staying in session on Fridays (and, gasp) weekends.

Yes, the Republicans enjoy a federal trifecta. But that doesn’t mean Democrats are without tools they can use.

This is where I find Pfeiffer’s use of the “no layups” metaphor helpful to describe reasonable expectations at this moment.

Democrats may not be able to win many votes, but they have many ways to slow down events—especially in the Senate. Democrats should start using all of these tools, at least until Elon Musk and his tech-bro followers at DOGE are brought under control.

That means objecting to every unanimous consent request. It means hard quorum calls that force 51 Senators to be present on the floor to conduct business. Republican Senators need to pay a cost for going along with Musk-Trump. Time is a nonrenewable resource, and Democrats should force Republicans to use every moment of it. Indivisible Co-Founder Ezra Levin used BlueSky to post the memo that former GOP Senator Judd Gregg sent to his colleagues in 2009 to try to stop the passage of universal healthcare. Democrats should use every one of those processes.

Republicans broke these norms years ago. They set the precedent.

While more Democrats have started fighting back since my last newsletter, we still need to see more from our leaders. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries have been subpar (I hope Jeffries noted the protests aimed at him earlier this week while he made a baffling book tour appearance in Chicago).

We need our leaders to show us they care.

And we need to show them that we care. I have been calling my two U.S. Senators every day the past week to share my disappointment with their unwillingness to use their power to throw sand in the gears of the Musk-Trump regime. I’ve called my Member of Congress to encourage her to talk to her California Senate colleagues. Contacting local elected officials who have endorsed the Senators can help as well.

The 5 Calls app is an excellent way to make these calls about this issue or any other part of the current Constitutional emergency. There is something all of us can do, as dire as the situation seems.

Finally, regarding the gif image at the beginning of this newsletter, if you weren’t aware of what the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream did to help Rev. Raphael Warnock defeat their team’s co-owner, former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, in the 2020 Georgia special Senate election, I encourage you to read Elizabeth Williams’ article telling the story and to watch the outstanding Amazon Prime documentary Power of the Dream. Williams is the person blocking the shot and preventing an easy layup in the image above.

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

Democrats’ gerontocracy problem is front and center in the Trump era (Kyle Thorp, Chaotic Era, Link to Article)

The most powerful elected official in the Democratic Party at the moment uses a flip phone and does not send email. “I don’t do e-mails. I get them but I don’t do them,” Chuck Schumer told a local news outlet several years ago.

As U.S. Senate Minority Leader, Schumer is one of the most visible representatives of the Democratic Party’s brand and platform. He arguably has the greatest say over Democrats’ inside strategy to block or stall parts of President Trump’s agenda. And yet, “embarrassing,” “so unbelievably bad,” and “horrific,” are just a few of the words used by senior Senate Democratic staffers to describe Chuck Schumer these days.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve spoken with a half dozen current or former Democratic Senate Communications Directors, Legislative Directors, or Chiefs of Staff about Chuck Schumer and whether or not he is the right person to lead Democrats at this moment. Every person requested to speak on background, out of fear of losing their jobs or angering their friends. Each is in agreement that the Democratic leader has struggled to find his footing in the new Trump era, and should pass the torch to the next generation.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

So we’ve tried it Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s way. He seemed to think that if the Democrats held their fire against some of President Trump’s least objectionable nominees, that Republicans would go along with keeping the most dangerous of them from getting confirmed.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert K. Kennedy Jr., and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard demonstrate how terrible that strategy turned out to be.

I thought that Schumer may have wanted to take advantage of this moment to get revenge for all of the Republican obstruction that intensified when the nation had the gall to elect a non-white person to the presidency. But, no, apparently taking weekends off and letting Republican Senators help announce our national appeasement of Russia and China in Munich (of all cities) turned out to be a bigger priority.

It’s not just Schumer, of course. Leading Democrats still haven’t figured out how to center themselves on video calls and make sure they have decent enough lighting to appear professional on cable news interviews. Schumer put Senator Cory Booker in charge of organizing the Senate Democrats’ social media plan. It’s not going well. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries didn’t inspire confidence with his “God is still on the throne” thoughts and prayers.

What we’ve seen the first month of the Musk-Trump regime from Democrats has not been good enough. It’s time to try new strategies, and if the current leadership isn’t willing to do so, they should make the honorable choice and step down.

#3

Silicon Valley’s Plan to Dismantle Democracy (Mike Brock, Notes from the Circus, Link to Article)

DOGE is not about efficiency. It is about erasure. Democracy is being deleted in slow motion, replaced by proprietary technology and AI models. It is a coup, executed not with guns, but with backend migrations and database wipes.

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, marking the largest failure of an investment bank since the Great Depression. This event catalyzed the global financial crisis, leading to widespread economic hardship and a profound loss of faith in established institutions.

In the aftermath of the crisis, several key figures emerged who would go on to shape a new movement in American politics.

<skip>

The notion that traditional democratic governance was inefficient or outdated resonated with those who saw themselves as disruptors and innovators.

This intellectual throughline—from Mises to Hoppe to figures like Yarvin and Thiel—helps explain the emergence of what some have called “techno-libertarianism.” It represents a dangerous alignment of anti-democratic thought with immense technological and financial resources, posing significant challenges to traditional conceptions of democratic governance and civic responsibility.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The emergence of techno-libertarianism, and its current alliance with white Christian nationalists, has put our democracy in its greatest danger since the Civil War.

Why is Silicon Valley shifting sharply to the right? Why are the PayPal mafia, who include Peter Thiel, so interested in spending money to create politicians like Vice President JD Vance?

They believe democracy is incompatible with freedom. They want to move our nation towards a new system where those with the most money and access to technology make the rules.

I think understanding these motives provides more context for what we are watching happen with our federal agencies.

It also may be related to why President Trump wants to dissolve the Presidio Trust. The Nerd Reich’s Gil Duran wonders if these people are looking to replace the park with one of its fascist cities (that they prefer to call Freedom Cities). I think that’s the likely plan. We shouldn’t be surprised when we see announcements to that effect. As Duran also explains, we also shouldn’t be surprised by the potential federalization of the Solano County land that the tech evangelists behind California Forever want to take over and create a new city.

They don’t believe in democracy. They know the American people didn’t vote for this. But they don’t care. They think they are the only ones with the right answers.

Duran has also created this YouTube video to explain what the Nerd Reich is trying to accomplish.

#4

How the SAVE Act Will Keep Women From Voting (Andra Watkins, For Such a Time As This, Link to Article)

For readers unfamiliar with the SAVE ACT, it requires Americans to present a birth certificate or passport THAT MATCHES THEIR LEGAL NAME when they register to vote.

Why does this matter? Because the majority of American women change their names when they marry. Their legal names do not match the name on their birth certificate.

Just over one half of Americans have a passport, and these numbers fall in Communities of Color, which would impact the ability of Women of Color to vote. The SAVE ACT could lead to a significant percentage of American women needing to obtain some new documentation to protect their right to vote.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Republicans have made passing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act (H.R. 22) one of their top priorities this Congress. It probably has something to do with how it would disenfranchise many women and people of color for the reasons Watkins explains in her post.

Watkins also provides suggestions and step-by-step instructions for what people who have changed their legal name can do to be ready in case this bill passes.

We know Republicans aren’t serious about protecting election integrity with these bills. It’s voter suppression that Chief Justice John Roberts and his radical Republican colleagues have demonstrated comfort with allowing.

If you’ve changed your legal name, I hope you’ll consider getting ready for what may be coming. Please share this information with others. I don’t think hoping the Senate Republicans refuse to change the filibuster rules to keep Democrats from preventing a vote on this bill is a smart bet.

We need to raise the alarm and make sure our elected officials aren’t asleep on about this issue.

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

#5

Elon Musk Is Trying to Buy Another Election (John Nichols, The Nation, Link to Article)

This week, a Musk-backed political action committee, Building America’s Future, bought a reported $1.5 million in advertising time on television stations across the state of Wisconsin, where one of the most critical elections of 2025 will be decided on April 1. The race is for an open seat on the state’s powerful Supreme Court, which currently has a 4–3 progressive majority. The senior member of the court, widely respected progressive Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, is standing down. Running to replace her are Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford, who is backed by Bradley and dozens of current and former jurists and court commissioners from across Wisconsin, and former Wisconsin attorney general Brad Schimel, a right-wing ally of former governor Scott Walker who was appointed to a Waukesha County judgeship after being defeated in his 2018 reelection bid for the AG post.

If Crawford wins, progressives will maintain their majority on a court that has been asked to prioritize cases involving abortion rights, labor rights, and free and fair elections. Since Wisconsin is an intensely contested battleground state where five of the last seven presidential contests have been decided by under 30,000 votes, the court’s decisions carry significant national implications.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Yeah, Elon Musk is trying to buy a Supreme Court seat in one of the most important electoral states in the country.

Judge Crawford will sustain the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s 4-3 progressive majority. She could use some donations to fight back against the authoritarian billionaire.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party is working hard to support Crawford’s candidacy. They’ve demonstrated they know how to win these court races. Click here to learn more about what they are doing.

I’m not thrilled that we have elections for judges. But that’s the current system, and I am not about to unilaterally disarm in this fight for our democracy for ideological reasons.

#6

“King Donald I” Accelerates White Nationalist Purge of Military Leaders (Garrett Graff, Doomsday Scenario, Link to Article)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a late Friday night purge, Donald Trump — America’s often ramblingly incoherent ceremonial commander-in-chief — fired three of this country’s top generals and admirals, the latest assault in weeks of efforts to install loyalists at top military and security posts and restore the primacy of the white male ruling class that has traditionally held power here since the country’s founding two centuries ago.

The purge included the nation’s groundbreaking and widely respected top four-star general, C.Q. Brown, who was the first of the country’s oppressed racial minority Black community to rise to head a branch of the military, and also removed the military’s top lawyers as well as the air force chief and the one female currently leading a military branch. The purge completes Trump’s removal of the both the first-ever and second-ever women to rise to the highest ranks of the military.

Traditionally, incoming US presidents remove precisely zero military leaders and the collective firings stand as all-but unprecedented in the 80-year history of the modern military, which prides itself on itself on studious political independence, but had looked increasingly inevitable since Trump installed a white Christian nationalist as defense minister who has been openly hostile to women serving in the military and who has cut back on recruiting Blacks to join.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Garrett Graff shares his fourth weekly dispatch describing our Constitutional crisis like a foreign correspondent would cover similar events in another country.

As Graff explains, foreign correspondents use sharper language and stronger judgments than most reporters have used in our country. This writing tactic helps to provide more context for what is happening while providing a quick review of what we’ve experienced in the past week.

This isn’t normal. I wish more reporters were like Graff here and not following the New York Times’ Peter Baker, who felt he should write an analysis seriously considering the prospect of Canada becoming the 51st state.

Reporters still insisting all of this is just a game between red and blue is how we end up without freedom of the press.

#7

No, 150-Year-Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits (David Gilbert, Wired, Link to Article)

While no evidence was produced to back up this claim, it was picked up by right-wing commentators online, primarily on Musk’s own X platform, as well as being reported credibly by pro-Trump media outlets.

Computer programmers quickly claimed that the 150 figure was not evidence of fraud but rather the result of a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from many other US government agencies.

COBOL is rarely used today, and as such, Musk’s cadre of young engineers may well be unfamiliar with it.

Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875, as this was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the Convention du Mètre.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

You may have seen Regent Elon Musk make his startling claim about the fraud he uncovered because of all these 150 year olds who are getting Social Security benefits.

That, of course, isn’t what’s happening. But rather than talk to people who know how the systems work, Musk and his team of tech-bros assumed it had to be fraud.

Several people on BlueSky have been noting that “everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.” This is why an actual genius wouldn’t fire all the experts.

#8

Civil servants are leading the American resistance – with GameStop as a guide (Virginia Heffernan, The Guardian, Link to Article)

The most ferocious response to Elon Musk’s coup in the US is also the most disciplined. It’s a sustained act of civil disobedience by the civil service. Amid the malignant lies of the current regime, federal workers are steadily telling the truth.

This strategy is more methodical than it at first seems. Yes, the distress and anger among federal workers is palpable. But the more anarchy Donald Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) operation loose upon the world, the firmer the federal employees are standing. Their protest might even be seen as a political short squeeze.

Starting on 28 January, federal employees refused to leave their posts in spite of Musk’s campaign to bully them out. On the subreddit for federal employees, they exhorted each other not to quit. Their rallying cry soon became: “Hold the line, don’t resign.” Although 2 million workers were pressured to quit, only 75,000 of them took what looked like a sketchy “buyout” deal.

Then, this past week, when on the job mass firings started, staying at work became impossible. Thousands of employees, many of them with excellent performance reviews, were terminated on the hollow pretext that their “performance has not been adequate to justify further employment”.

But as these employees cleared out their desks, a vocal group refused to vacate their faith in the civil service’s excellence. They have, in short, opposed the lie that they and their colleagues are being fired for cause. In this way, they’ve converged on the policy that Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet dissident, called “personal non-participation in lies”.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

We should not underestimate the personal pain that Regent Elon Musk and his DOGE disciples have created among our federal workers and the people who rely on their services to survive.

It will take decades to replace what has been lost.

Given the stakes, I am glad so many are continuing to fight. And this is one of the reasons I would like to see Democratic elected officials fight at least as hard as those who are losing their careers during this Constitutional emergency.

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:

“Maybe egg muffins *are* the perfect on-the-go breakfast but we are in a moment of unprecedented danger and our media organisations are unable to understand that normal service has been suspended. Even if the New York Times wants to continue using its favoured phrase “executive power grab” as opposed to “coup”, why not try out a bigger typeface than the one you’re using for recipes? News organisations actually do need to pick a side: do they think liberal democracy is better than autocracy? If so, maybe the muffins could temporarily be re-positioned below the fold?”—Carole Cadwalladr, How to Survive the Broligarchy, February 17, 2025, Link to Article

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