Founder and Executive Director @protectdemocracy.org. Former Associate White House Counsel. Tweets my own.
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“The real power of Trump’s absurd autocratic brand lies in the cover it provides for the movement behind him. The unending preposterousness provides his allies… with plausible deniability for autocracy to take root.” @amandacarpenter.bsky.social www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/hes-just-j...
Want to give a lot of appreciation and praise to @nadler.house.gov. Jerry Nadler has always been an excellent representative, and his decision to pass the torch shows the same dignity, judgment, and public-mindedness that he always brought to public service. A class act and model for others.
Illinois Gov. Pritzker ahead of Trump National Guard deployment: "To Chicagoans... Look out for your communities and your neighbours. Know your rights. Film things that you see happening... Authoritarians thrive on your silence. Be loud for America."
BREAKING: 5th circuit panel rejects Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to expel Venezuelan nationals, saying there has been no "invasion" or "predatory incursion." Majority Southwich (George W. Bush) Ramirez (Biden) Dissent Oldham (Trump) s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
BREAKING: A federal appeals court just denied the Trump administration’s emergency motion to block Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter’s reinstatement to the FTC. This is a win for accountability, transparency, and the rule of law, but the fight isn’t over. Follow the case: https://protdem.org/4mKJ9zy
I love looking at this graph, showing it to my students, and sharing it on social media, even though it unerringly brings out the trolls. This is the efficacy curve of Pfizer's mRNA COVID vaccine. This, people, is what ended the emergency phase of the COVID pandemic. Despite what RFK Jr says.
You guys see where this is going? Right?
“We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
wow
Trump did this
ABC News is still calling RFK Jr. a “vaccine skeptic.” The dude was one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists for decades. There’s video of him in 2023 saying that there’s no vaccine which is safe and effective. You can call him an anti-vaccine activist!
Just for the record, Trump can’t do this. The constitution is very clear that the times, places, and manners of elections for federal office are up to each state, but can be altered by Congress. The president has no role here, except to sign into law or veto a bill that congress passes to do this.
@marcelias.bsky.social and his team provide consistently strong coverage of the details in the battle for our democracy and are independent of any capitulating corporate bosses. Support them and sign up.
This Labor Day weekend, if you’re feeling unsure about the path forward against the authoritarian assault we’re under, we offer four key lessons from the history of labor movements. Highly recommend this read from @raders.bsky.social www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/to-fight-a...
Vegetarian chili? “It ain’t meat, babe. No, no, no, it ain’t meat babe.”
John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, John Bolton, I could go on and on and on. He has always done this and always will because in the end dictators only trust themselves and maybe their family.
so, bill cassidy, mcconnell, murkowsky, and collins could force Trump to get rid of RFK by refusing to advance any other agenda item if he doesn't. they could also demand real hearings. 1
"But it’s not just the individual threats that weigh on us. It’s the sheer volume. The autocrat’s playbook isn’t just about single acts of repression; it’s about creating a dozen crises at once. This is not incompetence; it is a strategy," explains tonight's guest @ianbassin.bsky.social
Is this your preferred Third Amendment org or are there better ones? Trying to find a good place to donate. theonion.com/third-amendm...
Here's the resignation from the Social Security Admin's Chief Data Officer warning of potentially illegal Trump Admin practices that could compromise Americans' sensitive data. Before it was the CDC. When will Republicans wake up to this not being a policy disagreement but sabotage of the US.
It’s no coincidence that Trump tried to fire Lisa Cook the same week he openly mused about being a dictator. "The stakes could not be higher, for the Federal Reserve and for our system of separation of powers, and also for the American economy,” Special Counsel Amit Agarwal told @nytimes.com
The Military Times weighs in on how Pete Segseth’s commitment to making our fighting forces focus on “lethality” and nothing else involves … .. gardening DC’s flower beds. www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/mil...
Cassidy’s full statement The ACIP meeting next month is part of a process expected to lead to new, narrower CDC recommendations on who should have access to covid vaccines
Breaking: BILL CASSIDY is calling for CDC's vaccine advisers meeting to be postponed. "If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership."
Massive walkout underway at CDC. RFK jr. must resign so that we can be safe.
There is no question we are being tested but moments of seeming hopelessness can be the prelude to a breakthrough. @ianbassin.bsky.social offers a framework for how to situate ourselves and endure in defense of our democracy. www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/the-hard-w...
I know that “this should be the top story” discourse is tired but “Trump Says Americans Want a Dictator, Not Democracy” really should be the top story.
A former CDC staffer adds: “This is the work of a death cult.”
And this makes it much worse. The CDC is losing a swath of outstanding, senior public servants. These are really terrific people who have served the public health with distinction across administrations. An enormous loss. open.substack.com/pub/insideme...
It’s outrageous that Sec. Kennedy is trying to fire the CDC Director — after only a few weeks on the job — for her commitment to public health & vaccines. The Sen. HELP Committee must hold a hearing with Kennedy & the CDC Director as soon as possible. Vaccines save lives. Period.
“I think we should all be scared about the nation’s health security.” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/h...
Trump is weaponizing the govt against anyone he doesn't like, whether Lisa Cook, John Bolton or George/Alex Soros. It is behavior completely incompatible with a free society and an affront to the Constitution. If he can do it to them, he can do it to you. Call Congress and demand they intervene.
In a functional government, this would be a five alarm fire where Congress calls in Kennedy and asks him what the fuck is going on
This is a dark moment for our democracy, but it is far from the first. I've been reflecting on how we need not only strategies for this moment, but mindsets. I offer four ideas for those here, and hopefully some inspiration from those who came before. www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/the-hard-w...
re-upping this old scalia clip: “if i were king, I would not allow people to go about burning the american flag. however, we have a first amendment…”
This imagery is the kind of thing you see in video games to let you know you’re in a totalitarian city or country.
Almost every day there’s a Trump scandal that skates by that in any other moment of presidential history would launch endless follow-up stories, congressional investigations, and sink an administration. I zeroed in on just two of them from this week: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/a-watergat...
I'm one of the 37 targeted below by DNI Tulsi Gabbard. I haven't had a clearance nor worked in government since 2013. This is political theater & a dangerous example of government abusing its powers to punish private citizens for openly exercising their 1st Amendment rights. My full statement:
"Trump wants a compliant Fed and a compliant military. The firings are less about the individuals getting the axe than about the chance to replace them with people loyal to him. Trump doesn’t want anyone in senior positions who might not be subservient to him." www.thebulwark.com/p/dictator-f...
Dear journalists: The President has not fired Lisa Cook. The President is *trying* to illegally fire her. Your words shape people’s reality. Please be accurate in your reporting.
Excited to read this and sadly could not be more timely from @kschake.bsky.social
I just received my first copy of the book!
Trump: "The line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime. So a lot of people say, 'You know, if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator.'"
Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.
2️⃣ If you have information about how the essay questions are being used in the hiring process, please let us know that too by filling out this survey. protdem.org/47RYcT8
Politically-coded essay questions are showing up on applications for federal jobs and we need your help to understand more about them! Follow below ⬇️ for 2 actions: 1️⃣ If you’re interested in applying but have concerns about the questions, let us know by filling out this survey: protdem.org/3HryASE
How do recent changes to hiring and retention policies for federal employees erode our merit-based civil service? Read our newest Dear Civil Servant briefing to find out. https://www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/the-call-is-coming-from-inside-the
Last term - just a year ago! - a lot of my Republican colleagues were making a lot of noise about the pernicious influence of foreign "state owned enterprises". And here we are now.
Trump: "A lot of people are saying maybe we'd like a dictator."
Every dystopian novel that warns about the horrors of autocracy or totalitarianism —from 1984 to Fahrenheit 451 to Handmaid’s Tale— has some uncomfortable echoes in reality these days. But Trump’s treatment of Abrego Garcia as Kafka’s The Trial is the most on point. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/u...
If a president wanted to become effectively a dictator, he’d likely: 1. Purge govt of non loyalists 2. Weaponize law against opponents 3. Use military to police opposition strongholds 4. Threaten media, schools, businesses w penalties to get them to heel 5. Change election rules in his favor.
From "highly CONFLICTED" to "Highly Respected" in just weeks — and all it took was for him to give away 10% of his company
Where is the freak out from those worried about a mayoral candidate proposing govt owned corner bodegas because **Socialism!!!** when the President of the United States is essentially demanding the biggest companies in the country hand over shares or, in the case of US Steel, control to the govt?!?
They just decided to torment this man in one way after another for no apparent reason — pure Kafka.
There are still good, kind, decent people in the world You just need to know where to look www.newsweek.com/florida-loca...
Trump made clear that, if returned to power, he would turn the federal govt into a tool of revenge against his opponents. He has done precisely that. Americans who care about freedom and the rule of law should be outraged and insist Congress and the Courts stop this unamerican behavior.
Removing the memorial to the 49 innocent people killed in the 2016 terrorist attack on the Pulse nightclub, because a rainbow is too political. Restoring Confederate monuments and renaming military bases after Confederates because, um, honoring armed treason in defense of slavery isn’t political?
2/ "This is...changing the entire context of the way that the average citizens in these cities are going to start viewing both our National Guardsmen, our military...we should not have military on our streets, in our American cities. It is absolutely the way that dictatorships run, not democracies."
2/2 That start to the judge's legal analysis is especially profound. Chief Judge Matthew Brann came to the bench via the Federalist Society, a member of the NRA, and previously active Republican pol.
1/ Judge in Habba ruling "Manipulation of official appointments had long been one of the American revolutionary generation’s greatest grievances against executive power, because the power of appointment to offices was deemed 'the most insidious and powerful weapon of eighteenth century despotism'"
AND, as I note in my report: If you have information about the Justice Department’s investigation into gender-affirming medical care for those under 19 — or providers’ responses — please reach out to me via email or on Signal at crg.32 from a non-work phone.
"We need to fashion a broad countermovement to replace the old right/left divide with a new liberal/illiberal one. That means opposing bigotry and uniting around core liberal values: tolerance, pluralism, equal protection under the law, and accountable rulers" www.theunpopulist.net/p/liberals-n...
There’s no longer any pretense this has anything to do with crime (there are cities or parts of cities in SC and Ohio that have higher crime rates than DC — send the troops there!). This is about establishing a precedent for Trump seizing control of the nation’s capital when he wants to.
Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee spent four years and hundreds of thousands of lives trying to occupy Washington, DC. MAGA accomplished it without firing a shot. South Carolina was the first state to secede. If South Carolina troops are the first in DC, let that symbolism not be lost on anyone.
Declaring a fake emergency as an excuse to deploy the military to police civilians is one of the most canonical examples of authoritarian takeovers. Overseas, people see clearly what Trump is doing. Here in America most people — especially those with power or influence — are in denial.
“After I win the presidency, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. … I will have that settlement done within 24 hours.” www.cnn.com/2025/04/25/p...
Fox News Reporter Jacqui Heinrich: The way that it felt in the room was not good. It did not seem like things went well. And it seemed like Putin came in and steam rolled, got right into what he wanted to say and got his photo next to the president and then left
A crucial win for all of our freedoms: “It should alarm all Americans when the government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate.” Thank @mmfa.bsky.social and support them. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/t...
In today’s briefing, we break down why an increasingly hostile landscape for nonprofits is a threat to our democracy and what we can all do to support them. Read and share: https://www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/why-protecting-democracy-means-protecting
This goes further back to when we @protectdemocracy.org represented @julibriskman.bsky.social, the bicyclist who was fired by a private company for flipping Trump the bird bc the company was afraid of losing govt contracts. Autocratic capture since day one. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/im-...
Here was @anneapplebaum.bsky.social writing about Trump starting to engage in autocratic capture during his first term back in 2019 as a preview of what we're seeing now on steroids: The idea that private business must show loyalty to the leader to compete. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how...
Even I didn't think autocratic capture would be so systematized and public with ratings like this. www.axios.com/2025/08/15/w...
It's small comfort or help to have predicted all this so accurately, but here we were naming "autocratic capture" several years ago and now the WH is assigning companies "loyalty ratings." (that story in the reply) protectdemocracy.org/work/desanti...
The D.C. attorney general told the city's police chief tonight that Pam Bondi's order naming DEA head Terry Cole as the city's "emergency police commissioner" is "unlawful and ... you are not legally obligated to follow it."
How can media report what the Labor Dept claims the job numbers are when the President has demonstrated he will fire anyone who reports numbers he doesn't like? Im serious. Isn't the media obliged to note that in any coverage of fed data?
Out of the blue, Trump called the Norwegian finance minister to ask when he would get the Nobel prize suggesting he would impose tariffs if he did not www.dn.no/politikk/fre...
“There is a real out-of-control crime situation in Washington, but it is not the one referred to in the president’s executive order. It is the one he is leading.” @benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...
Officer Daniel Hodges: "The federal government actually has the power to help us out. The first thing they could do is allow us to spend our own money...But Mike Johnson iss not doing anything about it — he dismissed the House early so he could protect Trump from Epstein."
Officer Daniel Hodges: "Jan. 6 was an actual emergency that they could have activated the National Guard for...But Trump sat in his little chair and watched us get beaten on Fox. I had someone try to gouge out my eyes, someone beat me with my baton. But apparently that wasn't a national emergency."
Everyone in DC should just start carrying giant sandwiches around the streets of the city, holding them aloft like torches for liberty.
our press team asked if I wanted to be included in a media advisory about trump's national guard dictator behavior. No clue if they'll actually dare to use what I sent them, but I'm just going to say how it is
And here's Yale School of Management's @jeffsonnenfeld.bsky.social making a more extended point on this in @fortune.com fortune.com/2025/08/12/m...
VICTORY: On Saturday, a DC Circuit appeals panel *unanimously* denied OMB’s request for a stay in our case to bring apportionment information back online and gave OMB until Friday to get ready to resume posting apportionments. This visibility is critical. Our statement: protdem.org/4mCURM2
This is either a massive new tax or, like the U.S. Steel arrangement, socialism. Why are elite capitalists more worried about a NY mayoral candidate’s corner grocery proposal than this?!?!? U.S. Government to Take Cut of Nvidia and AMD A.I. Chip Sales to China www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/t...
NEW: A federal appeals court ruled Saturday that the Trump administration's bid to shut off public access to crucial government spending data was an affront to Congress' power of the purse — and a law requiring disclosure. w/ @joshgerstein www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
200 days into Trump's term, where are we? In the race between Trump's authoritarianism and efforts to resist it, authoritarianism is ahead. And while there are hopeful signs from the public, the chance of effective resistance is, for now, being fatally undermined by the capitulation of the elites.
Any FBI agent asked to spend any time at all on the Texas quorum break had better be able to articulate the specific statute enumerating the specific federal crime they’re investigating. And any reporter giving any credibility to alleged FBI efforts had better be asking the same.
In Jacobson Lawyers Group's second huge win in two days, the DC Circuit just denied OMB's request to stay the injunction secured by @protectdemocracy.org requiring OMB to publicly post its apportionments. Unanimous decision, with a lengthy concurrence from Judge Henderson. Link coming soon.
Karen Henderson is the longest-serving Republican appointee on the D.C. Circuit. She’s deeply conservative but not Trumpy. In ordering the Trump administration to restore a congressionally mandated database of federal spending, she strongly suggests the president is engaging in king-like behavior.
A government-sanctioned "truth arbiter" will soon arrive at CBS. Their role will be to ensure that journalists do not criticize this Administration or express views that conflict with its agenda. This is a betrayal—not just of journalistic independence, but of the public trust. 🧵
This is just cruelty for no reason other than to be cruel. It’s inexcusable and the core of everything wrong with this hateful regime. Air Force Denies Early Retirement for Transgender Men and Women www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/u...
Anne Applebaum: "If American media can’t convey how dangerous this behavior is—for our prosperity, for our health, for our democracy—then American media will eventually cease to exist." More from our convo in @status.news: www.status.news/p/anne-apple...
A group of former lawyers from the U.S. Justice Department and major law firms launched a new nonprofit on Monday to take on cases for free opposing actions by the Trump administration @davidjthomas.bsky.social reut.rs/4lgJTLc
“if the behavior that this administration has exhibited in just its first six months continues and is amplified for its full four years, the America you know will be gone. And I don’t know how we will get it back.” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...
Reposting Adeel Manji’s open letter to Pres. Biden warning about the unwarranted, bigoted, smear campaign that derailed his confirmation to a seat on the 3rd Cir Court of Appeals. Emil Bove was confirmed tonight to the seat left open by Manji’s aborted confirmation. static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics...
You dont need a scholar of authoritarianism and the military like me to tell you this does not produce good outcomes
Thinking of career DOJ attorneys I know who had the integrity to resign rather than participate in the dirty Eric Adams deal. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/u...
Multiple credible claims that Bove urged DOJ employees to break the law and ignore the judiciary. And the GOP Senate decided this is not disqualifying because nothing is disqualifying.
This is why the Bove seat was vacant, and there’s a real throughline from the forces that defeated the previous Democratic nominee to where we are today. www.newyorker.com/news/the-pol...