The Skinny: Cannonballs – March 2025 Blogs
March 8th to 14th Blog Posts
Snatching Dissidents and Skipping Towards Fascism
I don’t want to alarm all the very wise moderates yelling “you can’t call it fascism yet,” but what exactly would they call it when Downmarket Mussolini sends the immigration Gestapo that pretty much answers to only him, to unlawfully arrest student protest leaders who are legally in the country, and disappear them into the labyrinth of the American migrant carceral complex? Yesterday night ICE agents snatched Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent anti-genocide activist in Columbia University’s student encampment movement legally residing in the United States, at his university-owned apartment.
Ice arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia protests, lawyer says
“Mahmoud Khalil was at his university-owned apartment, blocks from the private Ivy League university’s main campus in New York when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entered the building and took him into custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told the Associated Press.
One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were executing a state department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil, who graduated last December, was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.
The arrest comes as Donald Trump vows to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” involved in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.”
As the story goes on to mention: Khalil who is Palestinian, is in the United States on a legally-issued Green Card which cannot be summarily revoked by either ICE Gestapo pigs or our fascist State Department without the order of an immigration judge; which makes this an unlawful arrest and detention. What the story doesn’t discuss however is that Khalil’s wife who is eight months pregnant, is also an American citizen. I mention these things not because it would somehow be “okay” for the fascist Trump regime to snatch up a student leader for the (not illegal) “crime” of protesting a genocide if he only had a student visa or his wife wasn’t a U.S. Citizen, but to point out that clearly the administration and its security forces do not give a flying fuck about any of the rules they’re violating or laws they’re breaking to punish dissent. Furthermore, reports posted on social media by a person identifying themselves as Khalil’s lawyer indicate that the Department of Homeland Security has already moved Mahmoud, possibly as far as Georgia, and thus he does not have access to legal representation. If this were Middle Eastern country with oil reserves, our establishment would rightfully note that the regime has thus effectively “disappeared” what amounts to a political prisoner.
Speaking frankly, I can’t think of one single good reason why corporate media and even significant portions of the opposition to Trump in American politics can’t seem to grasp that the Trumpenreich regime doesn’t intent to even pretend it cares about the law. They’re fascists, and fascists don’t give a fuck about the laws, rules, or standard operating procedures. If the law can be used to justify seizing power, eliminating civil rights, and punishing enemies then they’re happy to employ it. But if it doesn’t further their objectives or worse hinders them, then they’ll replace or simply ignore any rule that gets in the way of the attempts to purge the opposition and transform society into the full on fascist dictatorship of their dreams. The regime is now black-bagging what amounts to political prisoners to protect a US-backed genocide in Gaza being conducted by our client state, Israel. We’re well past hypotheticals here; this is what fascism looks like in practice.
What does that mean? It means we fight back now on behalf of Mahmoud Khalil, or we’re next. You don’t get to let this one slide because he’s not an American, you don’t care about Gaza, or you’ve been taught to hate student protestors by your media and the larger ruling class establishment. If Americans, including the nominal opposition in the US establishment, stand by and watch this happen to folks like Khalil, then it is an absolute historical certainty that it is only a matter of time before Trump is sending jackbooted thugs after anyone who won’t goosestep along with the fascist order; and that includes prominent figures in our complicit media and political classes. A whole bunch of affluent liberals have spent the past couple of years tweeting historical warnings about how Nazism and the Holocaust happened in Germany; now its time to prove you understand the lessons those words were trying to teach you about resisting the slide into overt fascism before it goes far enough that you can no longer stop it – because I assure you, if you tolerate this then (you and) your children will be next.
The Kelpto Kaiser Eyes Seizing Canada
I like to think I’m a pretty good analyst, but I’m not psychic. I can’t tell you whether or not Donald Trump is going to successfully annex or invade Canada; although I will say that given the vast disparity between Canadian and US military capabilities, it’s highly unlikely Canadian leaders would risk letting it get far enough to see “U.S. Marines marching on Quebec.” As such folks waiting for the US to actually invade before they deign to take our government’s rhetoric seriously are more or less promising to do nothing to prevent this.
What I can tell you is these nazis do not have a sense of humor. Factually speaking, the establishment portion of the America First fascist movement has been openly building the ideological arguments to seize Canada and trying them out in public settings for several years. Furthermore watching everyday Americans fall right back into a pattern of ignorant nationalism because they’re pissed off at Canadians for booing our anthem (in response to Trump’s threats) doesn’t give me faith in the idea that this is just another doomed-to-fail Trump fever dream. At least as far as Trump is concerned, this is real; and it is a scandal that the Very Serious PeopleTM in America are not only failing to oppose it, but not even taking it seriously enough to discuss it.
Trump’s Threat to Take Over Canada Is a Scandal
“There are numerous reasons why Trump and his government’s pervasive blathering about turning Canada into the “51st state” shouldn’t be dismissed as a “Madman Theory”-negotiating tactic, or as performative MAGA trolling. During a private phone call last month, according to a Friday New York Times report, Trump “told Mr. Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation.”
Lately, Trump — a man who would never try to do anything world-historically rash like ending democracy in America — has told every news camera that would listen and broadcast his message to the world that he would like to rule Canada, one of the U.S.’s most vital allies. It’s not just Trump blurting it out: This has become the position of the United States federal government; his White House press secretary and his Homeland Security secretary are now, too, calling Canada “the 51st state.”
“Canada could do a lot more. Canada has been taken over, Bret, by Mexican cartels,” top Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, bizarrely, told Fox News host Bret Baier on Wednesday, attempting to justify Trump’s tariffs. (At least Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt practically admitted the tariffs are about forcing Canada’s annexation.)”
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere; over the course of the past ten years I’ve spent warning people that the American establishment right has become an full-blown openly-fascist movement full of people who literally admire the Nazis, I’ve received a tremendous amount of pushback from too-clever-by-half people with college degrees insisting that I can’t call what has now become the America First movement “fascist,” because “they’re not pursing an aggressively expansionist nationalist policy.” Setting aside the fact that Americans are so drunk on bipartisan nationalism that I strongly question whether or not these folks would recognize nationalist policy in the wild (a fact borne out by watching our establishment largely laugh off Trump’s threats to annex Canada, seize Greenland, and carve up Ukrainian resource rights with Russia) there can be little question that the Trump regime is in fact “pursuing an aggressively expansionist nationalist policy” now that he’s back in power. Which frankly stands to reason; after all, by necessity the Nazis didn’t start invading Europe until they’d already seized political control of Germany because that’s how wars work. Furthermore, the idea that Trump is not doing so until there are “boots on the ground” in Toronto is absurd; America has long been proficient in exercising soft power and flexing our economic might to transform other countries into puppet states and colonial extraction zones for American corporations; we just don’t usually do it to countries full of white people, so the American media complex gives it little notice.
Finally for those still clinging to the idea that there is no reason for these Nazis to want to invade Canada, let me be blunt. Climate crisis is real, as the entire planet burns the Pig Empire is openly entering a phase of rampant climate imperialism, and Canada is not only predicted to be less affected than the US by climate change in the short term, but they also have vast supplies of fresh water, heavily forested land, and natural resources extremely valuable to the billionaire tech company fascists actually running the Trump administration. Of course, a US discourse that ignores climate crisis and pretends corporate power doesn’t control US foreign policy, probably isn’t going to mention that. They’d apparently prefer to stick with “lol, Trump so cray.”
A Pariah Police State
While much of the American establishment and media complex works to sanitize and explain away the danger the fascist Trump regime represents, I think it’s important to note that people outside of the US who don’t have a vested interest in collaborating with an oligarch-controlled American fascist order are in fact taking notice of the alarming speed with which the US is becoming an overt, open fascist dictatorship. And they are talking about it, even if it’s not reaching very many American eyes and ears:
US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms
“The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation”.
In the news release announcing the US’s addition, the organization cited recent actions taken by the Trump administration that they argue will likely “severely impact constitutional freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression, and association”.
The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalists in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid and the attempted dismantling of USAid.
The organization warned that these decisions “will likely impact civic freedoms and reverse hard-won human rights gains around the world”.
The group also pointed to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, and the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings, among others.”
I must confess that I’m not intimately familiar with Civicus or their mission, but let’s be honest here; it’s essentially never a good thing when international democracy watchdog projects are comparing to your country’s respect for civil rights to *checks notes* the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, and Serbia. Please keep in mind that this is an international observers group so this has nothing to do with Trump’s domestic political opposition. Furthermore, let me remind all the “Very Serious People” reading this that these kinds of reports are frequently cited as justification for global sanctions and even US military intervention; including reports that are often released by far more partisan and less trustworthy observer groups than Civicus appears to be.
American exceptionalism is a powerful psychological headcage that frequently distorts how Americans see their own society and government, but at some point you have to acknowledge that we’re not going to get through the rise of an overt fascist Trump regime by pretending everything is normal and trying to conduct business as usual. As Trump crashes through the wholly inadequate guardrails of our capitalist oligarchy masquerading as a democracy, shouting “this is fine” doesn’t change the reality that it’s not. Whether the US media reports on it or not and whether we as Americans talk about it or not, the United States is increasingly being acknowledged as a fascist pariah state by the rest of the world. It doesn’t matter if we want to accept it, that simply will have consequences going forward for both the regime, and Americans as a whole.
Business Partners in Crimes Against Humanity
Speaking of the fun house mirror that is internal American political discourse; while our media class is busy trying to figure out how serious the fascist president is when he announces his plans to do fascist things, they sure aren’t paying much attention to his actions in Gaza. I guess they’re just to busy translating Trump’s fascist ramblings into coherent policy arguments to report that Israel’s Finance Minister just bragged that Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza is “taking shape,” while revealing that the US administration and the Netanyahu government are working together to quickly transform their genocidal intentions into a reality:
As Israel Pulls Plug on Gaza, Smotrich Says Trump’s Ethnic Cleansing Plan ‘Taking Shape’
“Israel’s finance minister said Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza is proceeding, remarks that came on the same day as Israel completely cut off electricity from the last receiving facility in the obliterated Palestinian enclave.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the far-right Religious Zionism party told fellow Knesset lawmakers that “this plan is taking shape, with ongoing actions in coordination” with the Trump administration.
Smotrich said that he is working with Cabinet members including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz to establish a “migration administration” that will oversee the removal of an indeterminate number of Gaza’s approximately 2.1 million people, most of whom are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel during the modern Jewish state’s founding in 1948.”
Let me remind you that just because two fascist governments don’t call removing a population based on ethnicity so they can build luxury condos on the ashes of their homes, “ethnic cleansing,” does not in fact mean it isn’t ethnic cleansing. If I’m being honest the term ethnic cleansing itself is absolutely a bullshit cop-out. In the real world outside the US foreign policy bubble, forcibly removing a population based on ethnicity is straight up part of a process legally recognized as genocide; which is pretty on brand for an Israeli government credibly accused of genocide by international courts, and a US government that’s been actively arming, funding, and enabling the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza across multiple presidencies now – particularly the last two.
Furthermore, while Smotrich claims the removals will be “voluntary” there is very little reason for anyone but the most credulous rubes to believe him. First of all, Israel has already engaged in an ongoing attempt to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and they just cut off electrical power to an area that is essentially always in a state of humanitarian crisis; even though they absolutely know that action will kill innocent Palestinians. If you guessed that purposely starving people to death is also a crime against humanity, you win a gold star. Additionally there is no reason to believe Palestinians who have fought to keep their homes in Gaza intend to leave “voluntarily,” and every single country the US and Israel have said would be happy to accept “voluntary” Palestinian “refugees’ is stridently opposed to the plan because they recognize it as ethnic cleansing. Finally this very same fascist government in Israel has repeatedly and publicly made no bones about their intentions to remove every Palestinian from Gaza; by lethal force if necessary.
Friends, say what you will about Russian ministers bragging that Trump owes them one for political points, but Israel is not a geopolitical rival of the United States; they’re allied with the US government and we send them billions of dollars worth of military and financial aid. Smotrich has no reason to lie about Trump’s intentions and cooperation; in fact he clearly couldn’t be happier to have an American president working to accomplish the Netanyahu regime’s odious genocidal objectives. Just don’t expect a pro-genocide American media and political establishment to explain all this to you; they would after all much rather debate whether or not Trump is “serious” about getting rid of all the Palestinians and turning Gaza into a luxury resort complex for all his rich friends; at least until it’s already a genocidal reality.
Trump is Assembling a Jigsaw Enabling Act
Hello there, average American consumer of news! Would you believe me if I told you that the President signed an executive order on February 18th that gives Trump, a guy who tried to make election officials declare him the winner of an election he lost (and launched a coup attempt when that didn’t work) and has been talking about shutting down media organizations that criticize him, essentially complete control over the previously independent Federal Election Commission and Federal Communications Commission? I mean probably not right; after all if it was true the media would certainly be raising the alarm about the danger this represents to American democracy and the concept of a free press right? Sadly, no. For-profit media has barely covered the issue even though it has a direct impact on their industry; but that lack of coverage doesn’t make Trump’s order less real:
Independent Agencies Oversee Elections and Media. Trump’s Seizing Their Reins.
“The order states that, “The heads of independent regulatory agencies shall establish a position of White House Liaison in their respective agencies,” and goes on to say: “Independent regulatory agency chairmen shall submit agency strategic plans … to the Director of OMB for clearance prior to finalization.” In other words, independent agencies will no longer be independent but will instead be ruled over by political commissars, their every action now scrutinized to make sure they are ideologically sympatico to the aims of the MAGA movement.
Two of the agencies subject to this new system are the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — a historically bipartisan, six-member organization that helps to set ground rules for how elections are run and financed — and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which, among other things, controls access to the country’s airwaves.
Trump has been angling for control of both of these agencies since the start of his administration.”
So, is any of this legal? Who the hell knows; but are you willing to bet a 6-3 fascist-high Supreme Court that has already endorsed the idea that Trump is above the law and the existence of an imperial presidency are likely to stop him? I’m certainly not. Furthermore to mount any sort of mass resistance to this type of classic, brute-force fascist power grab ultimately targeting elections and media criticism of the regime, you’d probably have to know it’s happening and understand why this executive order might be the single most dangerous thing Trump has signed since he took office again; and clearly for-profit media and a political class doing more collaborating with fascism than resisting it, don’t consider informing you about this is very relevant right now.
My friends, I don’t know about you but I’m getting tired of waiting around for Trump to find his Reichstag Fire and finish crafting a multi-executive order version of the German Enabling Act while “Very Serious People” keep pretending we don’t know if Trump is going to go full Hitler and mustn’t presume he means to do everything he openly says he’s doing. We all heard this guy on tape pressuring election officials and even GOP Governors to “find” him thousands of votes and effectively rig the 2020 election for him. We’re all watching as his Project 2025 nazi minion Brendan Carr uses his newfound powers as head of the FCC to threaten the broadcast licenses of media orgs that criticize him, try to shut down PBS and NPR, and even investigate media companies that the regime claims “promote diversity” like that’s some kind of crime. It’s not creeping fascism if they’re just actively doing the fascism in the open.
So when Trump (the imperial president) passes an executive order that gives him complete effective control of the agencies that regulate American elections and what passes for the “free press” in the United States, you’d have to some kind of credulous rube to believe he’s doing so for any other purpose besides rigging elections for fascists and eliminating whatever portions of the US media that won’t carry water for the fascist administration and the odious ideology animating it. There’s not a lot of wiggle room in our analysis here; if it’s a problem for establishment muppets to recognize that then they’re either complete fucking muppets, or willing to quietly bootlick for a fascist President while he rips pages directly from Hitler’s playbook to create his very own American Pork Reich.
I guess the only question left then, is which of those two possibilities best describes an American political and media class supposedly opposed to Trump’s fascist regime, that doesn’t want to talk about it before it’s too late to stop him? Yeah, that’s what I see too.
I Know Too Much About SCOTUS to Trust Them
I’m honestly baffled by the significant portion of the liberal establishment and even everyday Democrat voters telling me to calm down because the courts will stop the Trump regime from doing all this fascism. I mean, did I accidentally fall into an alternate universe where we can put our faith in a 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS that said the president is essentially above the law just this past summer. You’ll have to forgive me for my lack of faith in the highest court in the land when they agree to hear a winger troll case that might overturn bans on trying to torture (psychological, or otherwise) “the gay” out of your kids; which they just did.
The Supreme Court Might Re-Legalize LGBTQ Conversion Therapy
“The Supreme Court is taking up yet another case that threatens to roll back the clock for gay and transgender Americans. The justices announced on Monday that they would hear a First Amendment challenge to Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy, the first lawsuit of its kind to reach the high court.
More than 20 states currently forbid medical professionals from offering corrective “treatments” for gay and transgender youth that seek to change their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Major medical organizations have unanimously condemned conversion therapy as unscientific and potentially dangerous for patients. If the justices strike down such laws, states would have far fewer tools to protect gay and transgender Americans from harmful and often coercive treatments.”
This entire case is a viper’s nest of Christian Nationalist, anti-LGBTQ fuckery so I encourage you to read the whole article; but in the short term I’d like to focus on three important things:
First up, there is literally nothing “therapeutic” about so-called “gay conversion therapy” and nobody has a right to try to force heteronormative gender identities and sexual orientation on anyone, including their children, because they think their God wants everyone to be heterosexual. There is no scientific support for these treatments and while this would still be a monstrous violation of civil liberties even if they did work, they do not. Under the best of circumstances these “therapies” start from a position that non-heteronormative sexual orientations or gender identities represent aberrant, immoral behavior that must be clinically corrected through negative reinforcement; sometimes that’s a whole lot of verbal shaming, and sometimes it’s literally physical torture.
These programs, which are typically targeted at LGBTQ youth, actively harm queer kids and work to scandalize and otherize the existence of LGBTQ identities in our larger society; this harm is reflected directly in studies showing an increase in suicidal ideation among LGBTQ youth exposed to gay conversion “therapies” – which is probably fine with fundie fascist American parents who’d clearly rather have a dead child than a queer one. I shouldn’t have to point this out but you can bet your ass that heterosexual society would (rightfully) lose its shit if someone tried to berate and electroshock straight people into being gay, and there is no constitutionally protected right for people to sell scientifically discredited, actively harmful treatments to straight people under the guise of providing medical care; in fact, that’s pretty much illegal unless you make it clear that you’re not a doctor or therapist.
Additionally it should be noted that this case is just another part of a longstanding and highly organized winger project to use free speech and arguments about “parental rights” to legally override the autonomy and civil liberties of young people (including their own children) to justify the larger criminalization and suppression of identities they don’t think should exist; identities they’d like to legislate away as soon as possible. I don’t have the space to go down the entire fascist rabbit hole connected to these ideas, but I can assure you that at the bottom of all this are bonkers fascist conspiracy theories that treat existing outside of the heterosexual norm as a type of contagion that can be stopped by legalized repression; which in turn makes this case part of a broader effort to literally criminalize being LGBTQ in our society. This didn’t start with and won’t end with gay conversion therapy.
Finally, and as the author of this piece notes, this whole case is yet another fascist troll job focused on the hypothetical harms to people who want to *checks notes* torture the gay out of kids, rather than any actual dispute rising out of really existing conditions:
“Another issue in Chiles v. Salazar is that the court appears to have taken up yet another case featuring a phantasmal injury to a plaintiff in order to achieve a predetermined outcome. The Supreme Court has an unfortunate habit in recent religious freedom disputes (or religious-adjacent free speech ones, as in this instance) of taking up cases with either underdeveloped records or nonexistent ones.”
The undeniable purpose of this case is to overturn legal (and necessary) bans on gay conversion therapy; it has nothing to do with free speech or the plaintiff’s right to practice legitimate therapeutically-effective medicine. There is literally no reason for SCOTUS to hear this case unless they right wing extremist majority on SCOTUS intends to legalize torturing LGBTQ people out of existence in America; they think this is a good, or at least profitable idea. You’ll have to forgive me if I just don’t trust those kind of people to protect my life and liberty under the fascist Trump regime.
A Lawless Regime Cares Not For Courts
Over the past month and a half, I’ve encountered a lot of “Very Serious People TM” in my life and on my TV, who seem to think that the best way to counteract Trump’s fascist regime as it tears everything apart and starts trying to disappear political prisoners is to “not take the bait” and wait for the courts to handle it. “We are still a nation of laws” these folks have assured me, even though I’ve spent the past four decades watching US presidents break the law in ways that are more acceptable to Pig Empire society than Trump does. Throughout that time my question has always been “well what are you gonna do when he just ignores the law? I mean it’s not like you can send the local sheriff to evict him from the White House, and the GOP is extremely unlikely to help their inept opposition to impeach him.” To the degree that I’ve been able to actually ask that question in person, I have yet to receive a reasonable reply; which is unfortunate, because completely ignoring the courts appears to be precisely what Downmarket Mussolini and his merry gang of shitposting nazi freaks are doing:
Trump Officials Are Pretending A Judge Didn’t Bar His Anti-Diversity Orders
“In at least one case, the senior executive says, a U.S. official told the international organization that they knew about the court injunction and what it meant, but that the senior ranks of the Trump administration had explicitly instructed staff to enforce Trump’s executive orders, to ignore the court’s injunction, and to pressure partner organizations if need be. This official also said that if the nonprofit’s leaders didn’t sign the new paperwork, they’d risk having their funding quickly terminated by the Trump administration, per the senior executive.
“The Trump administration is daring the courts in the United States to do something about this, and thus far, I don’t think most people in America understand that what’s at risk is the fundamental basis that there is fairness and justice and rule of law in the United States,” says the senior executive. “And whatever you think of DEI, we should all agree that running the government based on the rule of law is a requirement. The playbook that is being used in the U.S. is not new; we’ve seen it in country after country where there’s been an increase in authoritarianism. To see it in the modern United States itself is what’s new and disturbing.”
The other two sources, one of whom is a Trump appointee, tell Rolling Stone that the directive to comply with Trump’s DEI orders, despite what the judge said, has gone out to an array of nonprofit organizations and partners around the world.”
This is kind of a messy article that spends a lot of words going over the timeline of the Trump administration’s attempts to play dumb about what the judge’s injunction actually blocks in terms of Trump’s anti-diversity executive orders, but the key takeaway isn’t that complex. Trump has knowingly and directly ordered his administration to ignore the injunction and continue enforcing his anti-diversity orders both inside the government and towards outside contractors and partners. This is not speculative: several sources inside the Trump administration have confirmed that the regime knows what the injunction means, and government employees are being ordered to simply ignore the ruling. Borrowing a page from noted genocidal racist U.S. president Andrew Jackson, Trump has effectively declared “Adam Abelson has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
Should this come as a surprise to anyone in the American establishment “opposition?” Well probably not, because as the article notes Trump and his minions have more or less been actively broadcasting their intentions to ignore court orders designed to block their fascist agenda:
“The episode is part of a broader pattern in which the second Trump administration has operated under the impression that judges’ orders and rulings don’t much matter. Vice President J.D. Vance has publicly argued that Trump can ignore judges’ orders, asserting: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Trump, for his part, has threatened to “look at” judges who rule against Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Over Presidents Day weekend, Trump admitted he thinks he can break any law he wants to — so long as he can loosely define doing so as part of his mission to “save” the country.”
Folks, I hate to be the bearer of bad news and I’m sorry if you’ve heard it before, but it’s time to accept the cavalry ain’t coming. If a GOP-controlled government won’t impeach him, and the regime won’t obey court orders, nothing short of an uprising is stopping these nazis anytime soon; no matter how much that scares an American “opposition” establishment that hates people power.
Why Isn’t the Liberal Establishment Calling to Remove Trump?
Obviously I support pressuring the U.S. government to impeach Trump; both for the laws he’s breaking and to stop the very real and very violent fascist agenda he’s conducting. Ultimately however I don’t think you can count on a Republican Party that has fully embraced Trump and the fascist American First movement and is currently surrendering its own powers over things like tariffs to the President, to help anyone do that. They like most of the fascist shit he’s doing and they’ve seen what the MAGA base does to GOP officials who speak out against Downmarket Mussolini, at least in terms of their career prospects; none of these GOP nazis are looking to get Liz Cheney’d. Despite this I think it’s vitally important to acknowledge that Trump’s strategy of ignoring the courts and daring someone to stop him should be producing a much more vigorous response in the establishment discourse than hoping court injunctions will stop him from executing his worst fascist ideas; at a minimum the media and opposition party should be calling from the rooftops for his removal.
Trump Ignoring Court Orders Is New Grounds for Impeachment, Says Pro-Democracy Group
“As Free Speech for People detailed in a Wednesday statement, the new administration’s recent “oversteps of the judiciary branch include: refusing to release $2 billion in foreign aid in defiance of multiple court orders; refusing to adhere to court orders that prohibit the Office of Management and Budget from implementing a freeze on all federal assistance; and refusing to adhere to a court order requiring U.S. Office of Personnel Management [acting Director] Charles Ezell to testify in person on March 13, 2025, in a lawsuit challenging Ezell and OPM’s termination of thousands of employees.”
Courtney Hostetler, legal director of the nonprofit, said that “the checks and balances of our three-branch government is a cornerstone of our democracy, created by our country’s founders because they were rightfully afraid of how quickly, in the absence of a balanced system, our democracy might become a tyranny.”
“Trump has usurped the powers of the legislature and now tramples on the authority of the judiciary,” Hostetler continued. “In just one month, he has repeatedly ignored court rulings that have and must restrain his unlawful abuses of power. He, like all presidents, must abide by the rule of law—and because he has not, Congress must adhere to its own obligations to carry out an impeachment investigation.”
I write a lot about what the shit Trump says actually means or what he’s *going* to do next because as a student of Pig Empire history, political economy, and the rise of fascist movements, I know a lot of things about how Trump is operating that for-profit corporate media seems reluctant to share with you; and I’ve been right far more often than wrong on this hellride so far. On this subject however, we’re no longer talking about likely scenarios. We can acknowledge that Trump absolutely means to ignore any court orders designed to block his fascist agenda and considers himself above the law, because he is doing precisely that already, he’s openly saying he can break the law if he wants to as President, and as recently as this past summer a 6-3 fascist high Supreme Court agreed with him.
This is it folks: a really-existing overt fascist dictatorship is here under Downmarket Mussolini and you are watching this nazi bastard assemble his own version of the Nazi Enabling Act, piecemeal and in real time. The vaunted American system of “checks and balances” in government isn’t going to stop him, the courts aren’t going to stop him, and I would bet you my whole ass the Republican Party isn’t going to stop him either. If we don’t want to suddenly wake up five years from now surrounded piles of corpses so high they block out the sun it’s time to start deploying people power, fighting fascism in the streets, and shutting this shit down; or you’ll soon be asking yourself why you didn’t do anything about fascism before the mass graves were dug.
- Nina Illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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