The headline today is taken from the amazing Jay Michaelson. Here is more from him:
Shock and Awe is up to YOU. I am not shocked, I am not in awe.
Just like we should not obey in advance, we should not panic in advance either.
This is not the end of democracy. That is just what the bad guys want you to think.
Get over it and fight.
This is not to minimize how awful Trump and his administration are. They are the worst and the things that they are doing are hurting real people and doing real harm.
I am sharing those words to discourage the catastrophizing and panicking and despair that I am seeing from way too many people.
KNOW THIS: He is weaker than you think. We are stronger than you think.
With hard work, we can get through this. There will be damage. There will be harm. But we can do what we can to minimize much of it and we can get to the other side of this.
In the meantime, find ways to help (more on this at the bottom of this article). Take breaks when you need them. Find community. Keep love and hope in your heart. Don’t let them steal your kindness and your humanity.
Remember who the enemy is — it isn’t people on our side who are more to the left than you. It isn’t people on our side who are more to the right of you. It isn’t the Democratic party. It isn’t people who didn’t do enough in the past or who were tricked to believe that staying home was the right thing to do for the election. Who is the only real enemy? The people trying to dismantle all that is good about our country.
And if you allow yourself to get distracted and spend your precious and beautiful energy fighting ANYONE other than Trump and his crew, then you are actually doing him a favor. You are doing his work.
And good lord, I KNOW that is the last thing that you want to do!
Because when we make calls and march and work to get great people elected and help the vulnerable and protect our planet and support people filing lawsuits, WE WIN. Everyone wins.
Stay kind. Stay focused. Stay outraged. Stay strong.
I love you all.
Want more pep talks? here you go:
from Corey Robin:
For eight years, every time I've posted about the weaknesses and cracks and crevices in the Trump operation, every time I've suggested that the left has far more options and tools at his disposal than analogies to Nazi Germany or fascist Italy would suggest, every time I've suggested that those analogies were more confusing than they were revealing, every time I've pointed out the failures and missteps of Trump, every time I've showed that he's not in command of the American polity, every time I pointed out how Trump failed to get something through Congress and was forced to rely on executive powers that could be undone by the next person, every time that I've doubted that Trump 2.0 is so much more ready for prime time than Trump 1.0, every time I've insisted that overstating Trump's power is doing the work of fear that Trump wants and needs done, I've been accused of being an apologist, a minimizer, an enabler, complicitous, or worse. I've gotten these accusations—and some have been far nastier—from liberals, leftists, centrists, ex-conservative Never Trumpers, and more
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I wonder how people are going to make sense of what seems to be a new line coming together from the discourse, as evidenced by three different kinds of voices of opposition to Trump in the last several weeks, voices that are fairly influential and will shape, I'm sure, how the rest of us talk and think about the next four years.
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Here's JAMELLE BOUIE, whom I'd describe as a strong left liberal, with the sharpest historical analysis of the intersections between racism and capitalism, and a deep awareness of how institutions affect politics:
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1. "It is very telling of these guys’ [Trump and his followers] conception of how power works that they see issuing a flurry of executive orders as evidence of presidential strength and vigor and not a sign that the president is too weak to pursue a serious legislative agenda."
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2. "We have a president with a tenuous grip on small legislative majorities who is out of the gate with a flurry of dramatically unpopular orders and who has just demonstrated his weakness on the international stage. if i were an elected member of his domestic opposition, i might try to draw real blood."
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3. "i think this should be factored into how states, counties, localities and hospitals respond to these executive orders. 'we will investigate you if you teach DEl.' okay, with what agents, specifically? with what state capacity?"
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4. "not to downplay the seriousness of any of this but i think a lot of you are imagining the united states as a country of 30 million people and not a country of 330 million people. 'he'll enforce this with proud boys!' okay, there are > 13,000 public school districts in the US. there are roughly 100,000 primary and secondary schools. trump pardoned 1500 people."
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Here's EZRA KLEIN, whom I'd describe as a mainstream liberal, bordering on the centrist, who often sets the pace of more respectable commentary:
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"Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.
"Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him."
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"There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way....But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak.
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"That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.
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"The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — 'it didn’t go through the proper approval process,' an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing."
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"What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them."
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And here's REBECCA SOLNIT, one of the preeminent voices of The Resistance, whose politics I can't always figure out but whom no one would accuse of downplaying threat of Trump:
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"I found this really insightful and encouraging analysis," she writes, referring to the following statements from Timothy Noah, a solid liberal journalist who keeps a close eye on things related to workers and unions, and Greg Sargent, another solid liberal journalist, statements that she posts on her page.
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1. Noah: "Trump is, I have argued, not a strong president. He is a weak president. He has authoritarian tendencies, but he’s weak. He’s mentally weak. He is subject vulnerable to all sorts of manipulation by his aides. He tries to do all sorts of contradictory things. He is not competent. And on the evidence of this particular example, neither are his enablers....These are all signs of a weak presidency."
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2. Sargent: "I want to get at your point about weakness and failure here. An interesting thing is how this contrasts with Trump/MAGA propaganda right now. That propaganda is relentlessly pushing the idea that Trump and his allies are ruthlessly forging ahead with his agenda. You see it all over Twitter. All of MAGA’s tweeting immense congratulations to Trump, he’s crushing the libs, he’s doing this, he’s doing that. ... The real story here is that they’re actually screwing up already....I don’t want to be too optimistic here. They’re going to do a lot of damage—already are doing a lot of damage. But clearly what we’re seeing now is that they’re not going to be able to roll over the bureaucracy and our institutions, as easily as they thought, as easily as John Harris thinks, as easily as that credulous New York Times piece portrayed, right?"
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Back to me: I'm less interested in crowing or scoring points with my critics (though I'd be less than honest if I didn't say it hurt to be called these things publicly by people who've known me personally and worked with me for a long time, sometimes as far back as graduate school) than in pointing out something I noticed about a month or so ago. During Trump 1.0, people found it useful, for reasons I remain unclear about, to say that we were living under a fascist regime, even though the very fact that they could say that publicly suggested otherwise, and to warn of fascism as a way, I guess, of mobilizing people to vote or act.
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Now that it's become clear that yelling fascism won't make it— whatever "it" is—go away, now that people realize that a constant state of alarm imposes genuine political costs, people are looking for different kinds of analysis that show all the ways in which the familiar tools of politics are the tools we have to fight with, that a lot of the Trump power performance is just that, performance, that a lot of what we consider democracy still exists, and that we're all going to have to look harder at institutions and actions and cracks and crevices—and less to the courts or revelations about Russia and pee (remember that one?) or to the passing street demonstration.
More from the great Jay Michaelson
Hello! I'm posting in response to the many sincerely anguished claims that not enough is being done to stop Trump. This is not reflected in the facts.
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- Represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group and State Democracy Defenders Fund, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed suit on Monday against the Treasury Department “for sharing confidential data with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run by Elon Musk.” Go to Public Citizen's website to learn all about this lawsuit, which is very likely to prevail.
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- On USAID, appearing with other Democratic lawmakers outside USAID offices on Monday, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) shouted, “Elon Musk, you didn't create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people … like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it. And who's going to stop him? We are... This a constitutional crisis that we are in today.” Lawsuits have also been filed in this matter, and are also likely to prevail.
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- Hakeem Jeffries has announced lawsuits have been filed regarding the firings of inspectors general.
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- On Jan 21, Democracy Forward, was filed at 12:01 p.m. ET on Monday and accused Elon Musk's DOGE of being a "shadow operation led by unelected billionaires" that flouts federal transparency rules. That should win.
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- National Security Counselors filed a suit arguing that DOGE meets the requirements to be a federal advisory committee and is therefore legally required to have "fairly balanced" representation, keep regular minutes of meetings and allow public access to meetings. Clearly accurate.
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- Eighteen state attorneys general and a slew of immigrants' rights groups brought swift legal action against Trump after he signed his executive order seeking to ban birthright citizenship for some children born in the U.S., arguing that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Obviously, clearly unconstitutional.
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- "Schedule F" has been challenged in court by the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents employees in 37 agencies and departments.
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- Several immigrant rights groups in the United States, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s ban on asylum claims.
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- GLAD Law and the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) have sued to stop Trump's ban on trans people in the military.
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And there are many more.
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Yes, there are Trump judges in the courts, and if Aileen Cannon types get these cases, Trump may prevail. But most judges are not like her. These actions are clearly illegal and/or unconstitutional, and they WILL be stopped.
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Just like the tariffs were not meant to prevail -- Trump won that round, "forcing" Canada and Mexico to take "action" on fentanyl -- these actions are not meant to prevail. They're meant to flood the zone with shit, confuse and immobilize us. They said they'd do "Shock and Awe" and that's what they've done. Nothing here should be surprising.
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Stop it with the doomsaying and gloomsaying. Want to make a difference? Give thousands of dollars to Public Citizen, the ACLU, and similar groups. Show up at marches. Put your ass on the line and help protect people from ICE. If you're safe, do simple symbolic things (like changing your social media pictures) to support people who are not safe.
and this from Jay Kuo:
Is Somebody Doing Something?!
The most common question I saw across social media and in the comments was understandable: Is somebody doing something about this?
The short and important answer is yes. And we need to understand a few things to help bring things into focus.
First, the timing of all of this was intentional. It all went down on a Friday night, when there would be less ability among affected employees to communicate and resist; decreased national press attention; and closed congressional offices, courthouses and law offices. They wanted us to panic for several days and make us feel like we were rudderless and without clear options.
The front line defenders of our democracy at this moment are the civil servants whose roles and responsibilities are being upended or whose jobs are on the chopping block under the new administration. How they respond matters a great deal for a number of reasons, both moral and practical.
A top ranking FBI official, James Dennehy, who heads up the largest FBI office in the country based in New York, refused to remain silent. He vowed in a defiant email to his staff to “dig in” while praising the interim leadership of the Bureau. Dennehy wrote, “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy.” Dennehy compared the current situation to when he had to dig a small foxhole five feet deep as a Marine in the 1990s and hunker down for safety.
“It sucked,” he wrote. “But it worked.”
What about the democrats?
Before I get into some of the responses of Democratic politicians to the many nightmares that unfolded over the weekend, I’d like to reset some common incorrect assumptions and expectations.
A party that is out of power in a democracy typically doesn’t have the power to do very much. In the Senate, for example, Democrats alone can’t prevent a quorum and can’t stop most legislation from passing. They can’t block nominees without help from less extreme GOP senators. And the number of procedural blocks they can put up are limited. At best these can stall, but ultimately not stop, things like cabinet confirmations.
The job of politicians from the party that is out of power is to make the political argument for why their party should be returned to power. That means highlighting the misdeeds, mistakes and malfeasance of the other party. It means providing clear statements about the rules, norms and processes that were violated so that the press can report on them from experts whose job it is to understand legislation and limits on power.
Some political responses may help lead to other types of responses, but that is not their primary end. The primary goal of a political response is to make the political case. And that’s it.
So it will help us and our cause to stop rolling our eyes when, say, a politician writes a stern letter to a Trump official demanding that the administration cease its illegal activity. That is actually what our senators and representatives are supposed to do. That is how they set the record and inform the press and through them the larger public. As discussed above, politicians don’t bring lawsuits. They usually don’t lead street protests. And the more experienced among them don’t waste political capital on performative stunts that don’t actually fix anything.
That said, those letters and statements, which help establish the public record, are a vital resource. They are cited in lawsuits, often as evidence that the administration was on notice of its illegal actions. They point investigative journalists toward more reporting. And they are an important expenditure of political capital, signaling the priorities of our representatives.
I have a FULL section this week on awesome things Dems are doing. So hold on to your hats!!
But first...
He is weak
Don’t Believe Him
In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.
Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.
Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.
But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.
Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021.
There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.
But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.
That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.
What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.
some more evidence for that
There is a subreddit for federal employees where one of the top posts reads: “This non ‘buyout’ really seems to have backfired. I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible.” As I write this, it’s been upvoted more than 39,000 times and civil servant after civil servant is echoing the initial sentiment.
In Iowa this week, Democrats flipped a State Senate seat in a district that Trump won easily in 2024. The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it.
This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.
Trump may not see his own fork in the road coming. He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.
The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.
Don't Fall for Trump's Strongman Gambit
Over the last two weeks, Trump has been skillfully selling himself as a mighty and domineering president — one who can bring anyone and everything to heel. Everyone from the media to most Congressional Democrats bought this narrative hook, line, and sinker. Trump has faced criticism over his rapid-fire transformation of the federal government; he has radically reshaped much of American life and culture in less than three weeks. Trump’s White House is being characterized as aggressive, strategic, and competent (at least compared to his first term).
But amidst all of the sturm and drang, a different reality emerges. There is much less here than meets the eye. Trump’s actions are more thunder than lightning — loud, often scary, but not particularly impactful.
Don’t get me wrong, Trump is the President of the United States. He has immense power — he can do dangerous things. He can persecute and prosecute his enemies. What he is doing in immigration enforcement is very real. Elon Musk is wreaking havoc throughout the federal bureaucracy. I won’t dismiss the danger, but there is one thing we all need to remember about Trump — his demonstrations of strength are designed to hide his inherent weakness.
If you break with conventional wisdom, and look at the details of Trumps’ first two weeks the picture that emerges is a lame-duck president unable to execute on fairly simple tasks and too weak to get Congress to pass his agenda. Instead, he is relying on a series of legally dubious executive orders that resemble press releases more than policy documents. In his first two weeks, he has made countless errors, backed down from fights he picked, and been rebuked by the courts.
Don’t buy his strongman schtick.
William Safire, the conservative columnist, used to write about how politicians would use “gorilla dust” to distract from their failing — referring to the habit of gorillas to kick up dust to make themselves appear bigger when faced with a threat. So much of Trump’s first two weeks has been gorilla dust — bullying and braggadocio to hide his status as a lame duck with low approval ratings.
They have made a series of massive errors in the first two weeks.
Most notable is the ill-fated and undoubtedly unconstitutional decision to pause all federal spending. This was not some aggressive move from a newly-elected president testing the limits of his power. It was just a fuck up. This mistake was born of arrogance and incompetence, which define every Trump operation.
As a former government employee, I cannot emphasize enough the incompetence required to stop all federal spending without informing the powers that be. It’s one of the most astounding screw ups in governmental history. A judge quickly agreed to an injunction to stop the spending freeze. More notably, Trump bailed on the spending freeze at the first sign of political turbulence.
Similarly, Trump signed an executive order claiming to end birthright citizenship. The federal courts immediately stopped it.
Trump also launched a high-profile trade war with Canada and Mexico by imposing 25% tariffs on imported products. In less than 24 hours, Trump rescinded the tariffs, claiming victory. But that’s not what happened. It was a quick surrender. Mexico and Canada just “gave” Trump a win by letting him announce things they were already doing. Trump gained nothing, but revealed that he will fold at the first sign of turbulence.
Finally, at a Tuesday press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Trump made a bold (i.e. insane) proposal for the U.S. to take ownership of Gaza — potentially secured by the presence of U.S. troops. In the immediate aftermath of the shocking comment, White House officials went to great lengths to frame Trump’s proposal as part of a grand plan (as opposed to an impulsive brain fart). By Wednesday morning, they were walking it back.
His approval rating is poop
For the last two and a half years we were told that President job approval was the coin of the realm, the key to understanding the power of the Presidency and his influence over Congress and the city. Biden’s low approval = bad, weakness, struggle, age. Applying this same construct to Trump what do we see so far? In the leading tracking polls right now Trump’s job approval is the lowest of any President in polling history at this time, and is declining. He is 15-20 points lower than Biden at this point, and 30-50 points lower than other recent Presidents. In the past week he has seen significant decline in two of the most prominent weekly tracking polls among registered voters:
Morning Consult - a week ago 52%-44% (+8) to 49%-47% (+2) now - 6 pt decline
Economist/YouGov - a week ago 50%-46% (+4) to 48%-47% (+1) now - 3 pt decline
These are big drops for a person as well known as Trump in a single week. 538’s G. Elliott Morris published this chart below last week. Trump’s net approval in the 538 average two weeks in is already down to +4 and in the more reliable, serious polls is +1, +2 or even in negative territory. To repeat:
Donald Trump has the highest disapproval rating of a President at this point their Presidency in the history of polling.
He is weak, not strong. A big, blubbery, batshit crazy baby man not a strong man.
Is Elon Musk a Big Political Problem for Trump?
Polling shows that the public doesn't love the idea of a bunch of billionaires running our government
The public is speculating on when the Trump-Musk bromance will blow up. Trump hates sharing the spotlight with anyone — it’s why he keeps picking wet blankets as Vice President. Mike Pence or JD Vance will never outshine him on television. Trump wants all of his cabinet members to look like the cast of a Michael Bay movie, but wants his second-in-command to look like the middle manager at a mid-sized paper company.
recent polling shows that Trump’s relationship with Musk might be his Achilles’ Heel.
Most Americans have positive view of agencies Trump is targeting: poll
The majority of Americans hold favorable views of the federal agencies that the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have begun overhauling, a new Economist/YouGov poll found.
Why it matters: President Trump has moved to swiftly gut critical agencies in order to reshape the federal workforce and cut costs from foundational portions of the federal government.
Driving the news: While the Trump administration has targeted the National Weather Service's (NWS) parent agency, the NWS had the highest approval rating among the agencies respondents were surveyed about (76%).
The Legal System is holding strong!
Y’all, according to Democracy Docket Trump hasn’t won in court even once since taking office!!
Since President Donald Trump returned to office less than three weeks ago, pro-democracy organizations, unions, individuals and Democratic states have mounted at least 24 different legal challenges to his administration’s flurry of brazenly unlawful executive actions, according to Democracy Docket’s tracking.
Over the past four days alone, the pro-democracy coalition brought seven new cases to hold the Trump administration accountable. This week’s legal accountability efforts began Monday when advocacy groups and unions sued the U.S. Department of the Treasury for sharing confidential financial and personal data with the Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
And in the following days, anonymous current and former FBI agents — along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association — filed a duo of lawsuits seeking to stop Trump’s Justice Department from effectuating a directive to expose and purge bureau personnel involved in the Jan. 6 and classified documents criminal investigations into Trump.
Among the many other newly filed actions this week, one from Democracy Forward challenges an Office of Personnel Management email supposedly offering career federal employees the chance to resign from their jobs in return for paid leave until Sept. 30, 2025. Still another contests Trump’s unlawful removal of Gwynne A. Wilcox from her position as a duly confirmed member of the National Labor Relations Board.
It is easy to get overwhelmed by the administration’s deluge of illegal and anti-democratic activity — all of which is wreaking veritable havoc on individual lives and severely undermining the integrity of democratic institutions. But the good news is that courts have already stepped in to immediately halt some of Trump’s most egregious executive orders and will continue to do so.
Indeed, Trump has not prevailed even once in court over the last 18 days since he took office.
That is amazing.
And the lawsuits are just starting
Here come the lawsuits
We already have seen several legal actions against DOGE, with four cases alleging that the entity has violated transparency, conflict of interest and other relevant federal laws. These suits are seeking to kneecap DOGE from even being allowed to operate.
We have also seen lawsuits brought by blue state attorneys general (led by Leticia James of New York) and by nonprofits seeking an injunction against the federal government-wide pause on financing and grants. That entire effort by the Trump White House to freeze funds met with such pushback that the original memo implementing the freeze was rescinded, and a federal judge, who reviewed Press Secretary Karoline’s Leavitt’s misleading post on social media claiming that the freeze was still in effect, expanded the injunction beyond the memo to include the entire administration.
On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the FBI agents affected by the purge and the inquiries into whether they even participated in any investigations of January 6 defendants have retained legal counsel to protect their rights as government employees. Their lawyers sent a letter to Acting Director Bove, warning, “If you proceed with terminations and/or public exposure of terminated employees’ identities, we stand ready to vindicate their rights through all available legal means.”
Musk’s team’s takeover of the OPM, USAID and Treasury has also triggered numerous apparent violations of law including the illegal exposure of personal private information and illegal access to classified documents by persons unauthorized to view them. Employees whose privacy rights were violated would have standing to sue, and it seems highly likely that such cases are coming quite soon. One lawsuit, filed by whistleblowers against Musk’s team for failure to conduct a privacy impact assessment before a new server mass emailed federal workers, already landed in the federal courts last week.
Just look at what we won in the last 48 hours!!!
This one is HUGE and happened first thing this morning:
Judge Halts Access to Treasury Payment Systems by Elon Musk’s Team
The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by 19 attorneys general accusing the president of failing to faithfully execute the nation’s laws when he let DOGE comb through federal computer systems.
A federal judge early Saturday temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying there was a risk of “irreparable harm.”
The Trump administration’s new policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” access to these systems, which contain highly sensitive information such as bank details, heightens the risk of leaks and of the systems becoming more vulnerable than before to hacking, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in an emergency order.
Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who was granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” He also restricted the Trump administration from granting access to these categories of officials.
The defendants — President Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Treasury Department — should show cause on Feb. 14 before Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who is handling the case on a permanent basis, Judge Engelmayer said.
The order came in response to a lawsuit filed on Friday by Letitia James of New York along with 18 other Democratic state attorneys general, charging that when President Trump gave Mr. Musk the run of government computer systems, he had breached protections enshrined in the Constitution and “failed to faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress.”
Judge Delays Federal Worker Resignation Plan
federal judge in Massachusetts suspended a deadline for federal workers to apply for a delayed resignation offer until at least Monday afternoon, when a hearing will be held. The offer, which had been set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, is part of President Trump’s campaign to drastically cut the size of the federal government
Federal Judge Deals Another Blow to Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order
For the second time this week, a federal judge has issued a nationwide preliminary injunction to block President Trump’s effort to end automatic citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants.
The decision, handed down on Thursday morning in Seattle, came a day after a judge in Maryland issued a nationwide injunction against President Trump’s executive order seeking to ban birthright citizenship.
The executive order is facing several legal challenges, and the injunction on Thursday, by Judge John C. Coughenour of the Western District of Washington, came in a case brought by four state attorneys general.
Lawyers for Justice Dept. employees threaten to sue, saying dismissals violate the law.
Lawyers for current and former career employees at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. told a top official on Sunday that the dismissals underway at the department violated the law and warned against making public the names of those who worked on cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
In a letter to Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, the lawyers promised to sue over the removals, which have affected prosecutors who have worked on cases involving President Trump and his supporters and threaten to extend to thousands of F.B.I. agents.
“If you proceed with terminations and/or public exposure of terminated employees’ identities, we stand ready to vindicate their rights through all available legal means,” the letter said.
and this from just two days ago!
Why Musk and Trump Just Got a DOGE of Reality
Has Elon Musk’s DOGE dream taken the wrong fork in the road?
Two key court decisions on Thursday have thrown a harsh spotlight on the buccaneering billionaire and his flippant attitude toward the law.
The decision by a Boston judge to block Musk’s grandstanding buyout plan on Thursday came as another district judge in Washington, D.C., limited DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s payments system.
The two judges standing in the way of DOGE’s whirlwind cost-cutting programs are both appointees of former President Bill Clinton. It seems the resistance will begin not on the streets, but in the courts.
and just last night THIS → Judge temporarily blocks Trump administration from placing 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing 2,200 employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development on paid leave.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, sided with two federal employee associations in agreeing to a pause in plans to put the employees on paid leave as of midnight Friday.
The workers associations argue that President Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.
A Trump appointee, y’all!! LOL
If you are interested, Court Watch has a list of all the lawsuits that are related to the executive orders. It’s an impressive list.
and remember: SO FAR WE HAVE WON EVERY ONE THAT HAS GONE TO A JUDGE ALREADY
Democrats are doing great things
Yes, it was a slow start, but with our pressure, a lot is happening in our party. Remember, the party out of power cannot bring legislation to the floor. And cabinet votes are majority votes.
But that doesn’t mean Dems aren’t doing things.
We pushed them:
Democrats' phones bombarded with calls to "fight harder"
Congressional Democrats' offices are being inundated by phone calls from angry constituents who feel the party should be doing more to combat President Trump and his administration.
Why it matters: Some lawmakers feel their grassroots base is setting expectations too high for what Democrats can actually accomplish as the minority party in both chambers of Congress.
- Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told Axios: "What I think we need to do more is: Put the onus on Republicans, so that the calls that we're getting are directed toward Republicans."
- "There has definitely been some tension the last few days where people felt like: you are calling the wrong people. You are literally calling the wrong people," said one House Democrat.
What we're hearing: More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers and aides said in interviews with Axios that their offices have received historically high call volumes in recent days.
- Some staffers said they hadn't seen this many calls since seminal events like the Oct. 7 attack, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings or even the Trump impeachment proceedings.
- Aaron Fritschner, a spokesperson for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), said his office's phones have been "ringing off the hook without pause since we opened yesterday morning."
- On social media sites such as X and Bluesky, another aide said, "Every Dem is getting lit up by the neo-resistance folks being like 'do more.'"
What they're saying: "We had the most calls we've ever had in one day on Monday in 12 years," said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.).
- Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who has served in Congress since 1997, told Axios: "I can't recall ever receiving this many calls. People disgusted with what's going on, and they want us to fight back."
- Former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said his office has received "hundreds, maybe thousands" of calls.
State of play: After a week of being caught flat-footed by President Trump's and Elon Musk's stunning moves to upend the federal bureaucracy, Democrats have spent the last few days flooding the zone with acts of resistance.
- They've rallied outside of multiple federal agencies that Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has targeted, trying unsuccessfully to gain entry to the buildings and interview staffers.
- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has vowed to use a March 14 federal funding deadline as leverage to try to "choke off" any efforts to defund programs like Medicaid.
- Democratic committee leaders have also sent Trump and his administration a flurry of letters demanding information on DOGE's shock and awe tactics.
and it is working!!!
I’m Glad They’re Here
I know a lot of folks have been wondering where the Congressional opposition to Trump has been. Yesterday, Democrats finally showed a stronger, and more united response to the tyranny unfolding in front of our eyes.
After being denied entry to the USAID building, Dems held a press conference to speak out against Trump’s attempted closure of the agency. Standing alongside USAID workers and contractors, they made it clear that this abuse of power would not go unanswered.
Sens. Schatz and Van Hollen pledged they would stall all State Dept. nominees, until Trump stops trying to close down USAID. Van Hollen went on to slam Elon Musk, saying he “may get to play dictator of Tesla…but he doesn't get to shut down USAID,” calling it a “corrupt abuse of power,” that’s “plain illegal.”
Sen. Chris Murphy firmly stated “this is a constitutional crisis,” and that “Elon Musk does not get to decide” how we defend the US. While Rep. Jamie Raskin said, “we don't have a fourth branch of government called 'Elon Musk’.”
Rep. Omar got it right: "Privileged billionaires who don't give a damn about America should not be making decisions that put Americans at harm."
In addition to the presser, House Dem Leader Hakeem Jeffries rolled out the initial steps of his plan to take on Trump and Musk. He says Dems are introducing legislation to prevent unlawful access to the Dept. of Treasury, and that at least 20 lawsuits have already been filed challenging at least 11 executive orders.
Jeffries also said that any attempt to defund Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or “programs important to everyday Americans…must be choked off” in the upcoming funding bill.
and this!
You guys, is Brian Schatz my new crush?!
Senate Democrats Hold the Floor in Overnight Protest of Trump Nominee
There was no nursery rhyme reciting nor phone book reading. No cots wheeled out for senators to catch naps in between speechifying.
But one by one on Wednesday night and into Thursday, Senate Democrats flocked to the floor for an all-night talkathon to protest the confirmation of Russell T. Vought, President Trump’s nominee to lead the White House budget office and an architect of his ultraconservative Project 2025 policy agenda.
Several senators swigged caffeinated beverages. One arrived straight from a black-tie banquet. The eyes were bleary but the outrage was fierce as Democrats took turns railing against Mr. Vought, who has orchestrated many of Trump’s moves to go around Congress to dismantle and defund the federal government.
“We’re going to be speaking all night,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said as his colleagues prepared to burn through the clock. “We want Americans, every hour, whether it’s 8 p.m. or 3 a.m., to hear how bad Russell Vought is and the danger he poses to them in their daily lives.”
Senate Democrats delay Kash Patel committee vote
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s consideration of Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI was pushed until next week as Democrats delayed it due to panel rules.
Voting on Patel’s nomination was on the agenda for Judiciary members, but Democrats requested it be held over one week. It is the prerogative of a member to request such a move one time.
FEC Commissioner Fired by Trump Says She Won’t Go Without a Fight
Federal Election Commission Commissioner Ellen Weintraub declared Thursday evening that a lay-off notice she received from President Donald Trump will not be enough to remove her from her position.
“Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner & Chair of @FEC,” Weintraub wrote on X Thursday. “There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners—this isn’t it. I’ve been lucky to serve the American people & stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing anytime soon.”
Maybe Jasmine Crockett is my new crush. Did you watch that video? Love her!
We are fighting hard!!
All the talk of people sitting this out and ignoring trump this time is washing away. We are fired up and ready for action. And making a difference TOGETHER!
Protests Erupted Against Trump In All 50 States Yesterday
What began on social media as a meme and a hashtag, morphed into a national day of peaceful protest against Trump on Wednesday.
We researched events held across the country yesterday, and can confirm that there were gatherings in all 50 states—even in some of the most conservative ones—Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
There were also thousands protesting in DC, with speeches from Sens. Booker, Kaine, and others.
Americans are angry, and rightfully so. There is an unhinged, tyrannical madman in the White House, who isn’t fit to run a vending machine. His maga cult is trying to destroy our country with this ongoing coup.
Coined the “50501 Movement,” the mission was: “50 states, 50 protests, in 1 day." The effort was entirely grassroots in nature, with some guidance from Political Revolution, and folks on Reddit.
I’ve been told by some event organizers that they plan on holding protests weekly, from here on out. We’ve also heard that some progressive orgs will be stepping up to amplify the cause, help organize, and bring in various speakers.
Between the massive protests this weekend, the thousands rallying at the Treasury Building this week, and the 50 state demonstration on Wednesday, I’d say this is a good start. And it’s only the beginning.
Protests Against Trump Build Momentum
Over the last week, protests against Trump have been held all across the country. And to this point they’ve received scant news coverage.
We were able to find demonstrations in dozens of states, with many of them forcing authorities to close intersections and highways. In Los Angeles, thousands gathered, before swelling in numbers and marching right onto the 101 Freeway.
We saw similar marches in Atlanta and Phoenix, while people rallied outside of City Hall in Dallas. These protests force local leaders and news outlets to confront the issues, and they have a long history of success in our country.
From the frigid temperatures of Missoula, Montana, all the way out to sunny West Palm Beach, Florida—people are starting to stand up to Trump’s inhumane deportations, and his cruel treatment of immigrants.
This is just one of the ways folks are starting to fight back.
Student protest overwhelms anti-immigrant event at ASU
On the same day that a white supremacy aligned university club encouraged students to report their classmates to ICE, hundreds of Arizona State University Sun Devils responded by marching in support of their undocumented classmates.
Crowds of students waving Mexican flags and posters with supportive messages, including “Education not deportation” and “Stand with ASU Dreamers,” surrounded a small gathering of College Republicans United at Hayden Library as they held up their own signs with information on how to tip off immigration officials about classmates suspected of being in the country illegally.
Loud shouts of “Down with deportation!”” and “No hate, no fear, everyone is welcome here!” resounded throughout the campus.
A good start!
The resistance to Trump's slow-rolling coup is achieving lift-off. On Wednesday, protestors gathered at state capitols across the nation and in D.C. to raise their voices against the illegal, unconstitutional actions by Trump, Musk, and their techno-vandals.
The protests reached the critical mass necessary for the NYTimes to write an “above the fold” story on the growing resistance to the coup. See NYTimes, Thousands Protest Trump Policies Across the U.S. (Accessible to all.)
Dozens of readers of this newsletter attended rallies and sent “reports from the field” with photos and videos. Here is a sampling of their comments:
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The march in Sacramento was freaking awesome. Happy to be part of it. Thanks!
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Robert, the march in Raleigh, NC, was totally legit. Probably 1500 people of all ages walked peacefully around our Capitol and around our legislative building today for hours! I was so proud of so many patriots who came out to protest what Trump and Musk are doing to our country . . . The MAGA Congress is missing in action. They should not be paid during this time. That will save Musk some money!!!!
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I do want to report that I attended one today at the state capitol in Hartford, CT. It was so energizing, powerful, inspiring and I was so grateful to be there, with a large crowd of people of all ages, with creative and impassioned signs. What I came to understand and appreciate is the spontaneity of the organizing and turnout for this event. There wasn’t one particular organization that issued a call.
'People are feeling galvanized': Anti-Trump protesters rally in cities across US
Groups opposed to actions by the Trump administration in recent weeks converged on cities Wednesday across the U.S. to loudly register their discontent, days after widespread rallies and street marches against President Donald Trump's immigration policies.
In Washington, two protests near the U.S. Capitol drew hundreds bearing signs and thunderous voices. The protesters marched from streets around the Capitol to the Department of Labor building on Constitution Avenue − where Elon Musk’s DOGE officials were visiting for the day. Musk, a staunch Trump ally, has been executing Trump's cost-cutting initiative to reduce the size of the U.S. government.
Cars passing by the marchers honked in a show of support.
and it is WORKING!!!
Left wing media seeing a spike
A spokesperson for the Guardian told Semafor it saw a 250% increase in fundraising last week garnering $4 million in pledges compared to $1.6 million in the same period last year. The Guardian’s largest fundraising day was Jan 21st, the day after Trump’s inauguration, as stories about Trump’s executive orders and Elon Musk drove a major uptick in traffic. Substack told Semafor that its mobile app had repeatedly set daily active user records over the past several days, and the week of Jan. 13 was its biggest week ever in new paid subscriptions.
Former Washington Post opinion writer Jen Rubin’s new Substack, The Contrarian, garnered 10,000 paid sign-ups in its first 12 hours, according to figures shared with Semafor. Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark, did not disclose the publication’s growth numbers but told Semafor that it had experienced “robust growth since the election in paid subscribers and YouTube subscribers,” both of which accelerated rapidly last week. A spokesperson for The Atlantic similarly did not offer specifics, but said the recent “dramatic growth” in subscribers had continued since the election, particularly tied to democracy-related and accountability journalism.
Images from Protests this week
I didn’t make it to the protests, but I found it so inspiring to see so many people out there! So many of us love this country!
What can you do to save democracy?
if you have not already done so you MUST sign up for Chop wood, carry water. She’ll send you emails a few times a week that are inspirational, honest, and give you super easy action items so you can be involved without letting it ruin your life.
Go here → chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com
Also, continue to find joy in your life! Don’t let that fuckface live rent free in your mind! This is your life!!!!!
There are many ways to get involved. Everyone can find something that works for them.
Here are some ideas.
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If you can, I strongly recommend going to an in person meeting in your area. One way to find a local group is through indivisible: indivisibleproject.formstack.com/…
- Join the truth brigade! Grassroots-powered lie-stopping. Person by person; mind by opened mind
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Election Response Center is a project hosted by Working Families Party, MoveOn Civic Action, Indivisible, and Public Citizen. They are organizing lots of events to get people fighting. Join one at this link
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The ACLU plays a key role in filing lawsuits that often stop voter suppression. Get involved with them at this link.
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Get involved with the Democratic party. We aren’t perfect, but they are fucking evil.
- Get involved with the States Project They are working on turning state legislatures blue
- Get involved with Swing Left. They are working on races right now!
- People For the American Way is a national progressive advocacy organization that inspires and mobilizes Americans to defend freedom, justice, and democracy from those who threaten to take them away. Get involved with them here
- Center for American Progress Action Fund is an independent, nonpartisan policy institute and advocacy organization that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action. Get involved with them here
Looking for something more specific?
Want to focus on the ENVIRONMENT:
Want to focus on CIVIL RIGHTS:
HUMAN RIGHTS - GENERALLY:
LGBTQ+:
WOMEN:
Huge thanks to DKos used dabug for help with this list.
Don’t let the options overwhelm you! Try to pick one thing and see if it calls to you. If it doesn’t find something else.
There are so many ways to get involved and help!
Some inspiration before I say goodbye
“Whatever happens, stay alive.
Don't die before you're dead.
Don't lose yourself, don't lose hope, don't lose direction.
Stay alive, with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fiber of your skin.
Stay alive, learn, study, think, read, build, invent, create, speak, write, dream, design.
Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also outside, fill yourself with colors of the world, fill yourself with peace, fill yourself with hope.
Stay alive with joy.
There is only one thing you should not waste in life,
and that's life itself..."
I am so proud and so lucky to be in this with all of you. ✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿 💙❤️💛💚✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿