Tomgram

Created
Fri, 14/03/2025 - 00:29

Not even two months since Inauguration Day and it’s already been quite a trip. Ping-ponging between vindictive pettiness and unconstitutional overreach while using everything in his power (and much that isn’t), Donald Trump has served up a goulash of dubious orders with a slathering of venom on top. He’s been abetted in the upheaval he promised on the campaign trail by the richest man on Earth, a cabal of lickspittles, and a cabinet filled with people who appear to have answered job ads stipulating, “Only the unqualified may apply.” As it became clearer what the battles to come would be, a friend wrote me: “I feel now like we’re watching it all happen. It being that thing that can’t happen... Read more

Source: How to Resist This Fresh Hell appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Wed, 12/03/2025 - 00:34

“Flights to Guantánamo Bay have begun. The worst of the worst have no place in our homeland.” With those words the U.S. government announced the fate awaiting “criminal aliens” in its custody. On a military base in El Paso, Texas, masked men in combat fatigues paraded a group of young Venezuelan immigrants, their hands cuffed and their ankles shackled, in front of the cameras, before loading them onto a waiting Air Force C-17, which was to deliver its human cargo to Naval Station Guantánamo Bay overnight. Once there, they were to be incarcerated in the infamous Camp 6, held incommunicado in the same cells where al-Qaeda suspects were once held in indefinite detention, and guarded by the 1st Battalion, 6th... Read more

Source: An All-American Nightmare appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Mon, 10/03/2025 - 09:06

“It is pretty wild how you can make someone mad by just holding a sign,” my 18-year-old Ro told me, as an irate driver peeled out of the intersection, shaking both his middle fingers at us but managing not to hit us. Phew!  Ro was right. It didn’t take much to turn a perpetually busy intersection in New London, Connecticut, into a discussion forum on presidential overreach, cruelty, and immigration politics — with all the excesses, including those fingers, of the Age of Trump. In fact, all it took was four of us, four signs, and a little midday coordination. Oh, and some noise makers! Our signs said: “New London cares about our neighbors” and “ICE Not Welcome” and two... Read more

Source: Courage Is Contagious appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 01:32

The opening weeks of the second Trump administration have produced daily headlines that read — no, this is not hyperbole! — like science fiction. The spectacle of a South African tech billionaire and his cronies staging a twenty-first-century cybercoup with the acquiescence of an aging lunatic of a president beggars belief. Elon Musk has given vast powers to young, even teenaged plenipotentiaries like Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, 19, who had earlier been employed by Musk’s brain-chip project Neuralink and has now been made a special adviser to the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology and the Department of Homeland Security. The Trumpian lists of forbidden words and concepts have reminded some observers of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. High Technology... Read more

Source: Cyberpunk Nation appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Wed, 05/03/2025 - 01:26

In the weeks leading up to the recent presidential inauguration in Washington, this country and an anxious world expected many different things from what might be called, to borrow the title of a famed William Butler Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming” of Donald J. Trump. But nobody expected this. Nobody at all. “We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley where it should be and where it belongs,” President Trump announced to a burst of applause during his inaugural address on January 20th. Continuing his celebration of a decidedly mediocre president, best known for taking this country on an ill-advised turn towards colonial conquest, Trump added: “President McKinley made our country very rich through... Read more

Source: Slouching Towards Mount McKinley appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Mon, 03/03/2025 - 09:03

“There has almost always been an outright hostility that is shown towards people of the Christian faith,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on a podcast recently. He was talking with Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana lawmaker and president of the Family Research Council, about freedom of religion and the actions of the second Trump administration. I have to admit that such a statement from this country’s third-most-powerful politician and an avowed Christian nationalist almost takes my breath away. Of all the people facing hostility, discrimination, and violence now and throughout history, Christians like Mike Johnson rank low on the list. Still, his comment is consistent with a disturbing religious trend in the country right now. As an early act of... Read more

Created
Fri, 28/02/2025 - 01:21

Donald Trump’s power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war. The runaway militarism of the last quarter-century was a crucial factor in making President Trump possible, even if it goes virtually unmentioned in mainstream media and political discourse. That silence is particularly notable among Democratic leaders, who have routinely joined in bipartisan messaging to boost the warfare state that fueled the rise of Trumpism. Trump first ran for president nearly a decade and a half after the “Global War on Terror” began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The crusade’s allure had worn off. The national mood was markedly different than in the era when President George W. Bush insisted that “our responsibility” was to “rid... Read more

Created
Wed, 26/02/2025 - 01:39

Today, racism remains a poisonous force in America. Fascism and authoritarianism are on the rise and President Donald Trump is giving voice to such hate, making it state policy and central to his presidential agenda. Recently, he tried to ban birthright citizenship by executive order to limit the number of babies of color born in the United States, though such an act is clearly unconstitutional. Currently, at least two federal judges have blocked Trump’s executive orders to redefine birthright citizenship. He has also issued executive orders seeking to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion. He clearly does not want Black, Brown, and Asian people to be on an equal footing with Whites. All his most recent efforts are consistent with... Read more

Source: Surviving Hard Times appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Mon, 24/02/2025 - 09:52

Count on one thing: in some almost unimaginable future, no American president (if we even have them anymore) is going to rename a mountain for Donald Trump as he’s recently tried to do with North America’s tallest peak. He wants Alaska’s Mount Denali (to hell with Native American names!) to be called Mount McKinley in honor of President William McKinley, the man who, in the 1890s, launched this country as an imperial power of the first order. Of course, it’s just possible that someday someone running (or do I mean: walking, hobbling, limping?) this country might rename the Bertha Rogers Borehole, the deepest hole (now plugged and abandoned) in North America, for President Trump. After all, it should be clear... Read more

Source: D Is for Donald (and Decline) appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Fri, 21/02/2025 - 01:32

President Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for immigrants, particularly the non-white variety from south of our border. His statements that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country,” coupled with Fox News reports on Hispanic-appearing migrants who commit crimes, leave little doubt about what he and his allies think of (non-white) immigrants and their contributions to this country. So it didn’t surprise me that he recently began to follow through on his own and his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership’s earlier intentions (as far back as 2018) to detain immigrants — including unaccompanied children — at military posts. Earlier this month, the first deportation flight carried a few men from the American mainland to our... Read more