The Skinny: Courting a Fascist Dictatorship
Courting a Fascist Dictatorship: March 15th – 22nd
Breaking the Law to Torture Trans Women
I realize that it’s hard to keep up with all the ways the Trump regime is running roughshod over the rule of law, but somehow I expected Downmarket Mussolini’s Justice Department pursing a policy that not only amounts to just torturing and exposing trans women to sexual carceral violence, but also directly disobeys a court order, to be bigger news. In a story that’s probably not making many waves in the US media because transphobia, transmisogyny, and hating incarcerated people are all bipartisan establishment positions, the Trump administration is actively transferring incarcerated trans women to men’s prisons; despite the fact that it’s both illegal, and multiple judges have issued restraining orders to prevent the regime from doing so.
Trans women transferred to men’s prisons despite rulings against Trump’s order
“Transgender women incarcerated in the US prison system have been transferred to men’s facilities under Donald Trump’s executive order, despite multiple court rulings blocking the president’s policy, according to civil rights lawyers and accounts from behind bars.
Trump’s day-one “gender ideology” order, one of several sweeping attacks on trans rights, said the attorney general “shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers” and that no federal funds go to gender-affirming treatment or procedures for people in custody.
The executive order was quickly challenged in court. In three lawsuits filed on behalf of trans women housed in women’s prisons, federal judges have ruled that the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) cannot withhold their medical treatment and was barred from moving them to men’s facilities. One judge said the plaintiffs had “straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow.”
Lawyers fighting Trump’s directive say the court rulings prevented the transfers of 17 trans women who are plaintiffs in the cases, but others not included in the litigation are now facing placements in men’s facilities.”
In case you’re missing the shell game going on here, the Trump administration is pretending that only the 17 specific trans women mentioned in the cases to block this cruel fuckery are covered by court rulings preventing their transfer to men’s prison facilities, while simply going ahead to target other trans women who are not specifically mentioned in the court orders. Not only is this an abnormal, malicious, and cruel violation of the spirit of the judge’s orders, but it’s also literally straight up illegal.
“Prisons are required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (Prea), a longstanding federal law, to screen incarcerated people for sexual assault risk and consider LGBTQ+ status when making housing decisions. Legal experts say Trump’s blanket policy of housing trans women in men’s facilities clearly violates Prea.”
This is a hard story to read because it demonstrates a pattern of pointless, wonton cruelty towards trans women by Trump’s Bureau of Prisons; in addition to moving trans women to men only facilities that put them in very real danger, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has also issued orders for guards to deadname prisoners and use incorrect pronouns, change their gender markers on official forms, deny requests for gender appropriate clothing, and to allow male guards to pat down trans women prisoners. Furthermore because this administration (and some would say, American society) hates trans women more than they like ice cream, nobody is making any effort here to prevent abuses that would seemingly go even beyond Trump’s fascist executive order. There are already reports of male guards “groping” trans women prisoners, prison officials seizing the bras and underwear of trans women prisoners like they were contraband, threats to force detransition incarcerated trans women by denying their hormone therapy, and even one report of a woman who had gender-affirming surgeries before her incarceration, being moved to a men’s prison. As one lawyer noted, this “is essentially sanctioning sexual assault in some instances.”
Of course given that trans people represent a microscopic minority inside the U.S. population, and 17 trans women are already being protected by temporary restraining orders, only a small number of trans women are subject to what I’d describe as a form of psychological torture and the constant threat of violence. Perhaps in the end that’s why the US political and media establishment in the “opposition” doesn’t care; as opposed to their well-established indifference towards trans lives, if not outright transphobia. I would however argue that the fact that the Trump administration is plowing ahead to target such a small number of trans women demonstrates that this isn’t about safety or the rule of law; the cruelty is indeed the point, and a Trump regime that cares little about malnourished children, seniors living check to check on social security, or American workers, is clearly prepared to move heaven and earth to make existence so intolerable for trans women that they simply stop existing.
Trump, Vengeance, and the Justice Department
When this story originally broke, I decided to skip covering Trump’s shocking Department of Justice “revenge” speech because I only have so much time to write each day, and applying a power dynamic analysis to the news at the time lead me to believe focusing on Trump’s anti-trans policies, attacks on protest rights, and direct violation of judge’s orders designed to protect marginalized targets of the white nationalist US regime from state oppression, was more important than raising awareness about Downmarket Mussolini’s so-called “airing of grievances” towards government lawyers who prosecuted him for very real crimes he absolutely committed. If nothing else I assumed the media would swiftly jump to the defense of Justice Department lawyers Trump was denigrating and threatening, but they’d be less inclined to do so for incarcerated people, deported migrants, student protestors, and trans Americans.
Unfortunately in the time since, corporate media coverage of Trump’s threats during this alarming speech has become extremely squishy, actively working to minimize the gravity of what Trump said; and simultaneously Dowmarket Mussolini has revealed that said speech was simply an early salvo in what is almost certainly going to be an ongoing quest to root out and punish anyone who dared to bring court cases (criminal or civil) against him. Given that this is not going away, we’re going to have to back up a few days here and talk about Trump’s authoritarian speech at the Department of Juistice, and why its implications are far more serious than the “airing of grievances” many larger media outlets reported it as.
Trump Pledges To ‘Expel Rogue Actors’ In Political Speech At Justice Department
“Though other presidents have spoken from the Justice Department’s ceremonial Great Hall, Trump’s address amounted to an extraordinary display of partisan politics and personal grievance inside an institution that is meant to be blind to both. Casting himself as the country’s “chief law enforcement officer,” a title ordinarily reserved for the attorney general, he promised to target his perceived enemies even as he claimed to be ending what he called the weaponization of the department.
The speech marked the latest manifestation of Trump’s unparalleled takeover of the department and came amid a brazen campaign of retribution already undertaken under his watch, including the firing of prosecutors who investigated him during the Biden administration and the scrutiny of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the president’s supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice. But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back and never coming back,” Trump said to cheers from a crowd that included local law enforcement officials, political allies and FBI Director Kash Patel. “So now, as the chief law enforcement officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.”
There’s a lot to unpack here; including Trump’s effective termination of the official independence of the Department of Justice, his direct identification of individuals in the department he intends to target for reprisals, and the transformation of Justice into his de facto private legal team by way of placing people who acted in his legal defense in positions of power throughout the department. While the author of this article still doesn’t seem to grasp the full scope of Trump’s fascist intentions here, I recommend reading the piece in its entirety anyway because it does a good job of not minimizing what he said and demonstrating a pattern of persecution in how Trump uses the law and the Justice Department to target his enemies.
Additionally however, I think it’s important to acknowledge how this story now fits into a larger identifiable pattern in how Trump rules and how he’s prosecuting his fascist agenda; particularlly in light of Der Leader’s recent attempts to declare Joe Biden’s outgoing pardons invalid based on a longstanding right wing conspiracy about autopens and what “signing” a presidential order actually means. Whether we’re talking about annexing Canada, mass deportations, kidnapping student protestors, or illegally handing over the power of the purse to Elon Musk, Trump appears to always preview his fascist activities by bringing them up, often casually, in his rambling public appearances first. This then establishes his personal antipathies as state antipathies, and his personal definition of reality as officially recognized reality. Once that is accomplished the fascist administration will increasingly operate as if Trump’s public utterances have always been known reality, and prosecute the regime’s agenda based on that assumption; “Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia” indeed. As such, it’s no longer reasonable to question which of Trump’s fascist ravings are “serious,” but rather we must question when they will become “reality” and what fascist onjectives they will ultimately support.
The Swine Emperor Wants to Criminalize Unflattering Media
As it turns out, Justice Department officials weren’t the only people Downmarket Mussolini threatened in his alarming speech at the department. Given Trump’s move to undo pardons granted by outgoing US President Joe Biden so he can target Department of Justice officials who prosecuted him for real crimes he actually committed, and our previously discussed pattern of Trump’s aggrieved fascist ranting transmuting into official state-recognized reality, while serving to justify oppressive action by the regime, what are we to make of Trump declaring that media outlets that report on him critically, including named organizations MSNBC and CNN, are “illegal” during that same speech at the US Department of Justice? Well, I think for starters it’s safe to assume that none of this means anything good.
Donald Trump Claims MSNBC And CNN Are ‘Illegal’ In DOJ Speech
“The president gave a speech Friday at the Justice Department railing against news outlets he says have unfairly targeted him.
Trump singled out CNN and MSNBC, which he called “MSNDC,” claiming those outlets “literally write 97.6% bad about me” and are “political arms of the Democrat Party.”
He added, “In my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal, what they do is illegal.”
Trump then argued that media organizations that report negative things about him “are really no different than a highly paid political operative,” insisting, “it has to stop, it has to be illegal” because “it’s influencing judges and it’s really, eh, changing law, and it just cannot be legal.”
He additionally claimed that news outlets cover him negatively “in total coordination with each other.”
Whether they’re playing it cool on purpose or not, this story is once again mostly being reported in corporate media as an extension of Trump’s longstanding grievances with anything he perceives as critical media coverage and the outlets that produce it; although boutique “progressive” websites and nonprofit media have been a little quicker to realize why this isn’t just “Trump being Trump” anymore and how dangerous it is to assume our new American Mussolini lacks purpose in his actions here. I’m not sure if corporate media outlets like CNN and MSNBC think they’re “too big to jail” but it sure doesn’t sound like Trump thinks so.
Frankly, I don’t think it’s an accident that in the very same speech Trump previewed loyalty investigations into Justice Department officials, and attempted to usurp the power of his Attorney General by declaring himself the country’s “chief law enforcement officer,” he declared liberal establishment media an active political arm of the opposition party, then accused them of both actively conspiring against him and engaging in criminal activity. What does it mean when the “chief law enforcement officer” declares media critical of him “corrupt” and “illegal?” And how much more ominous is that meaning when its set against the backdrop of a US president celebrating his election as a victory against (what is now) his own Justice Department, while promising what sure sounds like legal investigations into US government lawyers and officials that dared to bring charges against him?
The obviously implication here is that Trump thinks the Department of Justice should target and prosecute media outlets that are critical of him, he has the right to order the department to do so because he’s running the “chief law enforcement officer,” and anyone who opposes that activity is likely to find themselves purged from the department at a minimum, and quite possibly prosecuted themselves. What many of the corporate media outlets likely to be targeted by Trump’s assault on free speech rights and critical media coverage have passed off as a vengeful old man “playing the hits” is actually a fully formed operation to seize control of the American legal apparatus or at least the prosecution portion of it, redefine what is a crime, manufacture consent to target his enemies with the US Department of Justice, and threaten to punish or dispose of anyone who dares to get in his way over a silly little thing like “the law.” Trump may have delivered it like a drunk racist grandpa, but his speech is clearly a calculated attempt by the president to drastically expand his own powers, and prosecute his fascist agenda; whether he’s doing it for revenge or not (he is), is ultimately the least important factor here.
This then dovetails into the methods by which Trump is actually attempting to accomplish this fascist, anti-free speech bullshit; specifically the larger narrative of unreality the Trump regime is constructing day by day. Trump is working to equate critical media with his political opposition, his political opposition with protestors, and protestors with terrorists; while his larger regime takes actions against that opposition as if what Trump is suggesting here were already indisputable truth. I hate to keep bringing up literally Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the German Enabling Act of 1933, but students of history will gladly tell you that Hitler’s playbook for transforming Germany into an autocratic one-party dictatorship looks an awful lot like exactly what Trump is doing here.
Trump Takes Possession of the Gaza Genocide
To the surprise of precisely no one who isn’t a credulous rube high on imperialism, settler colonialism, and weapons contractor bribes, Israel has started bombing children and houses again in Gaza. Naturally of course a Trump regime that wants to pave over Gaza and build luxury hotels and casinos for an obscenely wealthy, globetrotting ruling class if it can just find a way to get rid of all those pesky Palestinians, stands fully in support of resuming the US armed, funded, and politically protected genocide.
Backed by Trump, Israel Shreds Cease-Fire Deal and Kills Over 400 Across Gaza
“A barrage of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday killed more than 400 people and left a fragile cease-fire agreement in tatters just over two months after it was reached, with Israel’s prime minister pledging “increasing military strength” in an enclave already decimated by more than a year of bombing.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the Netanyahu government consulted with the Trump administration ahead of the latest Gaza bombardment. Leavitt expressed the White House’s total support for Israel’s attacks.
While Israel had been carrying out more limited deadly attacks on Gaza despite the cease-fire deal—including strikes over the weekend that killed at least nine—Tuesday’s bombings were described as the “heaviest assault on the territory since the cease-fire took effect in January.”
Speaking frankly, there are more detailed articles featuring a lot more atrocity porn available online, but I chose to highlight this short piece because the headline writer understood the importance of centering the Trump regime’s full support for this monstrous, objectively illegal bullshit. The US government is supplying the bombs, funding the Netanyahu government, and actively praising Israel for resuming crimes against humanity; that makes the atrocities in Gaza Trump’s genocide, the same as it made them Biden’s genocide before him. None of this is lost on most media observers outside of the United States, but an American corporate media complex that has always supported the mass murder of Palestinians remains reluctant to center that knowledge, even if it hurts the fascist assclown currently calling their work “illegal” and threatening to come after them with the full force of the U.S. government.
Of course everyone in the media, American or international, is claiming to be “shocked” that Israel has willfully imploded the ceasefire, and telling you that you should be shocked too. Naturally however, that position too is a grotesque farce that ignores available evidence and reality itself. This may be the first large-scale bombing since Netanyahu agreed to pretend he cared about a ceasefire for a while, but Israel already resumed the genocide when it tightened the blockade of, and cut electricity to Gaza; a region that is more or less constantly in a state of humanitarian crisis because Israel has been conducting a war of extermination there and purposely starving the population inside for seventeen months and counting. Furthermore, all of this is pretty consistent with statements made by various high ranking officials in the Netanyahu government, who have openly flouted their intentions to break the cease fire and ethnically cleanse (by whatever means are necessary) the Palestinian people in Gaza. The fact that American corporate media rarely reports on these stated intentions, and is foundationally committed to credulously taking Netanyahu’s word for it when he claims to be seeking peace while bombing hospitals and murdering babies, does not mean the larger US establishment is unware of these facts – just that they’re hoping you are.
The fact is Trump, his administration, and American arms manufacturers should be on trial for crimes against humanity as we speak; and the reality that he is not alone in that because committing genocide in Gaza is a largely bipartisan position in the American establishment, does absolutely nothing to alter the situation.
Courts Stacked By Trump Won’t Stop Him
Well folks, apparently the losses just keep on coming for all those folks shouting “the courts will save us from fascism,” don’t they? Why would courts stacked full of fascists, save anyone from the Trump regime’s fascist agenda? To understand what I’m talking about, take a look at this recent analysis by a respected advocacy group which notes that Trump could issue lifetime appointments for hundreds more hyper-reactionary judges over the next four years.
Trump could reshape judiciary with 300 judge appointments, analysis shows
“Demand Justice warns that Trump’s wave of judicial nominees would cement an extreme agenda through lifetime appointments of judges whose qualifications centre on their willingness to gut Medicaid, privatise social security, shred environmental protections, eliminate veterans’ benefits and demonstrate loyalty to the president.
Last week, for example, Trump lavished praise on Aileen Cannon, a judge in Florida who repeatedly ruled in his favour during a case in which he was accused of mishandling classified documents. “Actually, she was brilliant, she moved quickly,” he said in a highly unorthodox speech at the justice department. “She was the absolute model of what a judge should be, and she was strong and tough.”
I really don’t have a lot to add here that isn’t covered in the article, but I would like to assure you that I’m not mocking folks who’ve been waiting for the courts to ride in and save the day maliciously. If you’re reading this, there’s a pretty good chance we both already know Trump is a fascist, the MAGA or “America First” agenda is fascism, and these maggots have managed to stack a boatload of fascist judges throughout the judiciary branch; even the news that Trump stands poised to appoint more judges that will support his again, fascist agenda probably doesn’t come as a complete surprise to you. What I’m bitterly teasing you for is knowing all that, and still assuming a regime packed to the gills with literal nazis is going to give a flying fuck about what the referee says if those rulings go against them, and continuing to wait around hoping that at some point the nazis will start playing by the rules.
The reality is that these fascist maggots don’t care about your petitions, your angry phone calls, or even the authority of the American judiciary. The media isn’t going to stop them, the opposition party isn’t going to stop them, and the courts aren’t going to stop them either. Shouting “have you no decency” at nazis who literally do not have any decency or even a real capacity for shame, has not historically stopped fascism; so I think we can safely assume that’s not going to work here and now either.
If we want this fascist nightmare to end we’re going to have to literally shut this shit down, and that doesn’t happen when you’re playing by the rules and expecting fascists to follow suit. Letters to the editor, polite marches, and refusing to buy a Tesla isn’t going to be enough; we’re going to have to use our physical bodies to grind the gears of state and the larger fuck barrel to a halt, or none of this is going to stop and everything will get significantly worse. We need to make it impossible both to conduct fascist policy, and for the rich bastards behind all this to turn a profit while doing so. If you want a model for what that looks like, just study the anti-genocide protests on American college campuses, or the nationwide protests against racialized police violence after the execution of George Floyd; we need to do that except bigger, more disruptive, and with a clearer eye towards not stopping until the society that gave these nazis the power to try this fascist bullshit works for the people, and not just rich nazis who’ll gladly unleash Mussolini 2.0 on us all, before they share power with those they consider mere commodities to be exploited. In other words, people like you and I.
Criticism of the Regime is Not a Threat
As I wrote several times during the first Trump presidency, the obscene amount of power the US system of government affords the president (whomever he or she may be) over immigration, border policing, and counter-terrorism activities, has always meant that Donald Trump doesn’t have to build a Gestapo; he already has a ready made cavalcade of security forces more or less directly under his control and ideologically aligned with vast portions of his xenophobic, nativist, and ultimately fascist agenda – including the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and the CBP. This direct control and ideological alignment in turn, goes a long way towards explaining why the Trump regime is targeting migrants, foreign visitors legally inside the United States, and folks crossing the border, as a test laboratory for fascist ideological policing policies; policies that you can bet your ass Trump intends to roll out against the rest of America, if nobody stops him from doing so by whatever methods are necessary.
Take for example this recent story in The Guardian about a French researcher who was denied entry to the US, threatened with federal charges, and then expelled from the country. Why? Because he had messages on his phone to friends and colleagues in which he was critical of the Trump administration’s drastic cuts to science research funding.
French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found
“France’s research minister said a French scientist was denied entry to the US this month after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration.
“I learned with concern that a French researcher” on assignment for the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) “who was traveling to a conference near Houston was denied entry to the United States before being expelled”, Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, said in a statement on Monday to Agence France-Presse published by Le Monde. “This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy,” the minister added.”
Naturally, you’re probably thinking “criticizing Trump’s shortsighted budget policies and Elon Musk’s hard on for destroying any scientific research capabilities he and his tech fascist buddies don’t own isn’t a crime, and doesn’t represent a danger to American security” and you’re absolutely right. Unfortunately due to America’s twin historical freak outs about “communist spies” and “terrorists” the fact is that American border authorities have already been conducting ideological screening at the borders and turning away folks who share benign opinions with millions of Americans under the guise of “keeping us safe,” for decades. What’s new here under the Trump regime, is the argument that thinking Der Führer and Elon Musk are idiots, is now being treated as prima facie evidence that someone, even a scientist here for a scientific conference, is a danger to the national security of the United States. In other words, what Trump’s border Gestapo is doing here is probably legal, but it’s still fascist; which is part of why I keep reminding you that America has been embracing fascist ideology and building a fascist police state for far longer than Donald Trump has been involved in politics.
Even more disturbing however, is the news that the FBI was called in to investigate the researcher and charges were considered; again, for criticizing Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s quest to gut scientific research funding.
“Another AFP source said that US authorities accused the French researcher of “hateful and conspiratorial messages”. He was reportedly also informed of an FBI investigation, but told that “charges were dropped” before being expelled.”
As I noted above: the researcher was told that the “charges were dropped,” but it says a lot about the FBI under the Trump regime that the US government was actively looking for a way to turn private conversations critical of Trump into a criminal offense in the first place. Right now there are probably more than a hundred million Americans expressing critical opinions of Trump, Musk, and the Pork Reich regime; which is a rather ominous thought when you remember that the Trump administration is already manufacturing consent to apply this kind of ideological policing domestically under the guise of opposing “terrorism” and protecting public safety.
Vandalizing a Car is Not Violent Terrorism
Like many folks who study how fascist governments operate, I’ve been quick to warn people that given the blatantly illegal methods by which the Trump regime has targeted migrants, foreign visitors to the United States, and student anti-genocide protestors legally in the country, it was only a matter of time before Downmarket Mussolini tried to expand those tactics to target dissidents born in the United States. Now, after watching the US Attorney General call Tesla vandalism “domestic terrorism” yesterday, and reading Trump’s unhinged social media rants about shipping folks caught vandalizing Tesla cars or dealerships to El Salvador, I think it’s safe to say we’ve already arrived at that ominous moment.
‘Delusional’ Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prison for 20 Years… in El Salvador
“People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders,” Trump stated overnight, adding in all caps: “WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!”
Several hours later, Trump took up the issue again on his TruthSocial platform, saying: “I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”
Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill said the threat, which follows on Trump’s highly controversial deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador last week, should not be taken lightly.
“Remember that this is where his discussions with El Salvador began,” said Ifill in response to Trump’s rantings on Friday. “The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this.”
Well folks, smoke ’em if you got ’em because I’m pretty sure this bloviating nazi windbag is serious. Given the pattern we’ve been observing by which Trump’s musing are treated as “objective” reality by his fascist minions, and how the regime then transforms that (un)reality into enforcement action regardless of the law, I don’t think it’s a good idea to wave this off as ‘Trump being Trump.” Just yesterday regime Attorney General Pam Bondi was publicly making the argument that what is, legally speaking, mere vandalism, is actually a “wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties,” and that line was then parroted by a variety of regime-loyal mouthpieces in the larger discourse. This process of laying the ground work to transform fascist unreality into a presumed mandate to act is precisely the tactic we saw the Trump regime employ to justify kidnapping student anti-genocide protest leaders residing legally in the United States, render over 200 prisoners to a slave labor dungeon in El Salvador without due process, attempting to either seize control of, or destroy Columbia University, manufacture consent to annex Canada, and even attempt to shutter the US Department of Education. Furthermore, given the regime’s continued insistence that invoking the word “terrorism” is a magic spell that allows them to ignore US law and our constitutionally-protected rights, you’d have to be some kind of rube to assume Bondi’s media performance yesterday, and Trump’s late night social media rant, aren’t a coordinated effort to manufacture consent to escalate the regime’s war on resistance to include American protestors and dissidents opposing the administration’s fascist fuckery.
Of course it almost goes without saying that what Trump is proposing here, namely the rendition of American citizens to a slave labor prison in El Salvador for the high crime of vandalizing some cars, is highly illegal and a blatant violation of our legally-enshrined civil rights; but that hasn’t really stopped the Trump administration from plowing ahead with its war on protest and resistance so far. Furthermore, decades and decades of bipartisan demonization of “criminals” and protestors, particularly those engaging in direct action, likely ensures that many Americans aren’t going to notice this fascist repression, or care very much if they do. Naturally the Trump regime is relying on that attitude prevailing in the larger public consciousness, which is why they’re employing a boiling frog strategy of going after people they say are “gang members,” “terrorists,” “illegals,” “antisemites,” “troublemakers,” and “criminals,” first.
As I’ve noted in the past, whether or not the Trump administration is *successfully* able to get away with blatant violations of the law while enacting his fascist war on our civil rights is unknowable in the present, but the pre-existing pattern of regime behavior in the Trump 2.0 era makes it pretty clear that if Trump says it, he at least means to *try* and do it; which makes all of this an ominous warning for everyone.
The Vichy American Establishment Won’t Save Us
In news from the quivering bowels of Vichy America, a major liberal law firm has agreed to work for fascists and stop hiring so many women, brown people, or members of the LGBTQ community to placate an aggrieved, would-be dictator and keep raking in those sweet government contracts. After being threatened by Downmarket Mussolini, top DC firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison surrendered without even firing a shot.
Trump-Targeted Law Firm Caves, Vows $40M in Legal Support to Right-Wing Causes
“President Donald Trump withdrew an executive order targeting a major Democratic-leaning law firm after the firm agreed to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services in support of his administration’s far right initiatives.
“This is unbelievably shameful from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP,” Molly Coleman, executive director at People’s Parity Project, said on LinkedIn. “I’m embarrassed to have any association with this firm that failed to find the courage the moment requires.”
Recently, the White House has escalated attacks on law firms whose attorneys have been involved in legal efforts opposing Trump. Just last week, Trump signed an executive order attempting to revoke security clearances from Paul, Weiss attorneys, restrict the firm’s access to federal buildings, and terminate any of its government contracts. The order reportedly prompted at least one client to sever ties with the firm.
However, following a meeting between Trump and Brad Karp, the chair of Paul, Weiss, the administration abruptly rescinded the order. “We look forward to an engaged and constructive relationship with the President and his Administration,” Karp said in a statement.”
So, let’s make sure we all understand what’s going on here. Trump is brazenly and almost certainly illegally, shaking down a powerful law firm that has literally worked on cases opposing him in the past, and is known for their commitment to diverse hiring practices, and instead of fighting back, or even just taking the loss of government money on the chin, they’ve decided to *check notes* concede that a former partner who worked on cases against Trump was engaged in “wrongdoing,” work pro-bono for the fascist regime, and capitulate to the fascist “war on DEI” – an idea whose ever-expanding meaning appears to be “restore mandated white supremacy in America.”
Are you kidding me? Does the larger liberal establishment in the United States have anything resembling a spine to share between them? More importantly, if Americans trapped inside the increasingly ominous, fascist nightmare that is the Trump 2.0 era can’t count on a high profile law firm in the business of protecting civil rights and taking on the government, to even stand up for the firm’s own rights, how can they have faith that anyone in position to defend their rights in a legal capacity, is going to step up to the plate for them? The answer of course is that they can’t.
Folks, you’ll get no argument from me if you say that the greater evil in this story is a fascist president who would be king, using the authority of his office to gain revenge on law firms that helped charge him for real crimes that he absolutely committed. As the extorted settlement proves, this too is part of Trump’s plot to take complete control of America as a dictator. This isn’t legal, and as a federal judge’s restraining order in a similar case involving the Trump-targeted firm Perkins Coie demonstrates, complete surrender was not the only option Paul Weiss and its chair Brad Karp had here. By that same measure you can’t win if you don’t fight, and when losing means capitulating to fascism a law firm full of civil rights lawyers has a goddamn responsibility to resist.
“It is a sad day for the legal industry. Paul, Weiss, didn’t just bend a knee, it set a new standard for shameful capitulation. This is a stain on the firm, every one of its partners, and the entire legal profession,” Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, said on Bluesky.”
My friends, I’ve been talking about and writing about the rise of fascism for over a decade now. And I’m not bragging about that, because I wish I had been wrong about the signs I was reading around me, but I have largely been right when I insisted we were all heading for a moment like this. Furthermore, I have repeatedly warned that a liberal establishment (no, not you; your leaders, your media, your “liberal” capitalist employers) which would always have the option of simply collaborating with the fascist order, wasn’t going to save us from fascist predation. There is no cavalry; the opposition party, the courts, and the lawyers aren’t going to stop this. At the rate things are going, I have no idea how long I’ll still be able to tell you that we are the cavalry, and the only way this nightmare ends is if we use our bodies en masse to shut down the fascist order and the profits that motivate the guys paying for all this; but it’s the truth. If you can do it to Tesla, you can do it to any of them.
– Nina Illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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