This administration is gunning for so many groups of people in so many different ways that it’s hard to keep track. Every response we make to each threat and violation stands up for the right that no one is expendable. Yet yesterday marked a sharp escalation of Trump’s weaponization of government that calls for a strong and united response. Mahmoud Khalil is a fierce critic of US Middle East foreign policy and a student at Colombia University. According to reports, ICE arrived at Colombia without a warrant. They attempted to arrest Khalil saying his student visa had been revoked. When… Read full email…

Over a year ago when I started worrying about a possible Trump victory, a few of us began interviewing activists in authoritarian regimes. We talked strategy and politics, tactics and reading the landscape. (Some of those interviews are over at Waging Nonviolence.) Something every single person fighting authoritarians told us: Protect your psychology. Let your heart stay soft. Their aim is to wear you down. Everyone talked about the overwhelming, all-consuming nature of living under an authoritarian regime — how an authoritarian attempts to occupy all spaces and times. In response, some of us feel we have to to react… Read full email…

  Cracks are showing.  And while the news reports on Musk’s cruelty and incompetence, they miss a lot of the resistance that’s making the cracks. And with it, a chance to understand how power works. Over the weekend, unelected Elon Musk and his rogue crew sent out messages to federal workers asking: “What did you do last week?” in 5 bullet points (even from folks on vacation!). On social media, Musk wrote, “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” We can pause here to reflect how strange and awful this is right now. Musk, according to the Trump… Read full email…

This is a really bizarre time. The public is being brazenly lied to: No, we’re not sending condoms to Gaza. No, the largest line item of government “fraud” Musk “found” wasn’t fraudulent, wasn’t illegal, and wasn’t $8 billion (it was under $8 million). Yes, in their bungling overambitious power grabs they did just fire 300+ National Nuclear Safety Administration workers only to realize they maintain nuclear weapons (!) and now decided they were needed but didn’t have a way to contact them and are scrambling to unfire them (it’s happened to folks who run the Pacific Northwest electric grid, too).… Read full email…

It’s a good sign that Musk and Trump feel they have to defend their work with a hasty press conference. They sense the tide against them and need to spin their administrative coup attempts. (And yes, it is a coup — the coup-o-meter has officially moved.) Thus far, a key check on this administration has been courts. While the administration is publicly saying they are complying, they are egregiously skirting around court orders. For the moment, we agree with Vox that “slipperiness like this — rather than explicit, unambiguous defiance of court authority — may be the way the Trump… Read full email…

The basic truth: They’re going to get away with as much as they can, until the people stop them. So that’s our job: Get in the gears, slow it down, build pressure to stop them. It can feel daunting. They have started in high gear and are plowing through policy and people. It’s painful to watch Trump’s reckless assault hurting so many people and things we care about. There is phenomenal lurking danger as Musk gains untold access to the government’s backends. (For those who find details helpful, Heather Cox does a very informative substack with the latest twists and… Read full email…

Trump’s flood the zone strategy is exhausting. It’s easy to lose track of important storylines and to feel psychologically overwhelmed. That’s the goal. (It is also an indication of something very important: his policies are not popular!) Trump wants you — all of us — staying frenetic and ungrounded. As folks are gearing into motion (more on that below), we want to help all of us steady ourselves for the times ahead. Whether you’ve been in rapid motion or completely frozen — join with us on Wednesdays at 12:53pm for a one-minute moment of silence. We call it: a Minute… Read full email…