Cvandijk

It’s frustrating to see the 24hr news media obsessed with the manhunt for the killer of one of the worst bigots since Father Charles Coughlin while at the same time a school shooting was committed by one of the very people he and his organization radicalized.

The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk Martyrs are used by messianic movements to sanctify violence. To show any mercy or understanding toward the enemy is to betray the martyr and the cause the martyr died defending.

"Kirk insisted the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He founded Professor Watchlist and School Board Watchlist to purge professors and teachers with what he called “radical leftist” agendas.

The idea that he championed free speech and liberty is absurd. He was an enemy of both."

Concentration Camp Labor Cannot Become Normal

open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

In my worst dreams I didn’t think so many people just wouldn’t fucking care

Opinion | A new era of government censorship has dawned Donald Trump fancies himself a champion of free speech. Oh, really?

A new era of government censorship has begun.
It started with the silencing of scientific speech, when the admin blocked release of research on bird flu. But MAGA has also cracked down on other wrongthink—on race, geography (!), and of course Trump himself
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | A Road Map of Trump’s Lawless Presidency (Gift Article) A diverse group of legal scholars flashes red warning lights about the future of America.

So that all can read, I am gifting today’s NYT piece on the lawless presidency of the 45th President of the United States.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...

“Competitive Authoritarianism”

Truth

Infuriating.

Called it.

“Under the current policy, the Trump administration only needs to accuse someone of being a member of Tren de Aragua to make the case for their immediate removal, no need to prove that the accusation is true.”

When scholars of authoritarianism and fascism leave U.S. universities because of the deteriorating political situation here, we should really worry.

It's critical for everyone to remember what an Executive Order is. It is the President communicating orders to members of the executive branch. Policies to pursue, actions to take, etc. They are not laws. They are not close to being laws. They are formalized memos to employees. That's all.

Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. Totali- tarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.u

This seems like a good time to remind folks of what Hannah Arendt once wrote:

Part 1 on neighbors being disappeared by the US government.

Trump administration freezes $175 million in federal funding to Penn According to a White House tweet, Wednesday's decision is a result of Penn's

“The official said that the decision to cut funding was made because Penn ‘infamously permitted a male to compete on its women’s swimming team.’”

Talked with @andersoncooper360.bsky.social about what is, and what IS NOT, DEI. And what Trump & his confederates are trying to accomplish with erasing the accomplishments of non-white people, women and LGBTQ people.

Folks are gonna dunk on the Trump voter and I get that but don’t sleep on the more disturbing part of the story:

ICE tortured a German green card holder living in New Hampshire to get him to give up his green card. He had no active issues in court. This is not the first person from a democracy to have disappeared. @ec.europa.eu, you need to issue a travel warning, and you need to do it now.

Trump’s FBI Moves to Criminally Charge Major Climate Groups The Trump administration is targeting climate organizations that received a Biden-era grant.

The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration.

FBI ordered Citibank to freeze the group bank's accounts.

newrepublic.com/post/192660/...

The Disappearances Have Begun Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and every day.

"Over the weekend, agents of the government entered a legal resident’s home without a warrant and arrested him, and then flew him a thousand miles away without notifying his family or lawyers about his whereabouts for a day. If you read about it in any other country, you would know what to call it."

What are we doing?

This is how you do it.

As Hannah Arendt wrote, “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism."

“would-be authoritarians-from Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini in interwar Europe to Marcos, Castro, and Pinochet during the Cold War to Putin, Chávez, and Erdogan most recently-have justified their consolidation of power by labeling their opponents as an existential threat.” -How Democracies Die

‘Time for It to Die’: The Chaotic Killing Off of the Government Don’t count on the courts to stop it.

"Half the government could be gone, and the half that’s left could be unrecognizable, before most people know it and anyone can do anything about it." A little help over here? New from @jilldlawrence.bsky.social: www.thebulwark.com/p/time-for-i...

At the airport…