We are in a second full-blown authoritarian coup attempt by djt and MAGA elites. This one looks a lot more likely to succeed than his first coup attempt on 1/6/21. The evidence is overwhelming. I’ll just keep chronicling the fall of the greatest human experiment in democracy as long as MAGA allows me to operate.
There is just so much to talk about, almost all of it bad to very bad, it is sort of overwhelming. Of course, that is what MAGA wants. I can’t keep up and need to chose what to chronicle. But at least I won’t be overwhelmed. FY MAGA thugs.
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Federal courts are defenseless: In recent days, USSC chief justice John Roberts mildly and indirectly responded to djt’s attacks on federal courts. The attacks include calls for the impeachment of judges who ruled against the MAGA authoritarian agenda, particularly regarding immigration. Roberts commented “That innovation doesn’t work if the judiciary is not independent,” referring to the Constitution’s creation of three co-equal branches of government. He reiterated that impeachment of judges is not a legitimate response to judicial decisions.
Most legal experts and journalists believe Roberts was being principled and measured in his “defense” of federal courts and the rule of law. But most also believe Roberts’ indirect criticisms, “Roberts makes no reference to this particular threat to judicial independence. As for the four threats he does identify, Roberts speaks as if they lack a shared origin, despite substantial evidence indicating otherwise... Roberts fails to address this specific peril to judicial independence,” have been weak and ineffective in the face of the intense threat that federal courts have been under under since January (and this).
For years, I strongly suspected that despite Roberts’ neutral demeanor and quiet style, he staunchly supports both kleptocracy and all three forms of authoritarianism now vying to replace our democracy and rule of law, i.e., dictatorship, plutocracy and Christian nationalist theocracy. In my firm opinion, Roberts’ track record of decisions since he was put on the court on 2005 make his pro-corruption and authoritarian sympathies quite clear. But I asked Pxy about it as a self reality-check.
Q: Given Robert's anti-democracy track record , e.g., Citizens United, voting rights restrictions, presidential immunity, gutting of the Insurrection and Establishment Clauses, etc., can one see Robert's as quietly complicit. He is arguably politely asking Trump to bring his grievances and demands for much more power to the USSC where he will be given great deference. Roberts is signaling that Trump can get what he wants through the courts. Roberts strikes me as subtly supportive of authoritarianism and kleptocracy, the two key goals of MAGA politics.A: .... long analysis ....
Conclusion: A Court Aligned with Autocracy
Chief Justice Roberts’ record reveals a jurist whose doctrinal innovations, which are cloaked in procedural neutrality, systematically empower authoritarian and oligarchic forces. By legalizing unlimited dark money, disenfranchising marginalized voters, immunizing lawless executives, and privileging Christian nationalism, the Roberts Court has become a critical enabler of MAGA’s antidemocratic project. Whether this complicity is intentional or born of ideological blindness, the effect remains the same: a democracy increasingly subordinated to the interests of the powerful. As Justice Sotomayor lamented in her Trump v. United States dissent, “The Court today endorses an imperial vision of the Presidency… It makes a mockery of the principle that no man is above the law” (emphases added)
Q: Do you believe that Roberts, a very intelligent person, is intentionally complicit with MAGA politics, or is he just ideologically blind to what he has done and continues to do?
(I vote for intentionally complicit)
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The NYT reports (not paywalled) about another MAGA attack on DEI. What is interesting here is that some of the NYT’s timidity about being blunt but honest about MAGA’s horrific policies and motives has fallen away, at least in this article: “Trump Seeks to Strip Away Legal Tool Key to Civil Rights Enforcement -- President Trump has ordered federal agencies to halt their use of “disparate-impact liability,” which has been used to assess whether policies discriminate against different groups. In an expansive executive order, Mr. Trump directed the federal government to curtail the use of “disparate-impact liability,” a core tenet used for decades to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by determining whether policies disproportionately disadvantage certain groups. .... The directive underscores how Mr. Trump’s crusade to stamp out DEI — a catchall term increasingly used to describe policies that benefit anyone who is not white and male — is now focused not just on targeting programs and policies that may assist historically marginalized groups, but also on the very law created to protect them.” (emphasis added)
Here, MAGA elites argue that that protections from the civil rights era have led to reverse racism against nonminority groups. MAGA’s April 23, 2025 executive order means that no new court cases will rely on the disparate-impact liability theory in civil rights enforcement by our MAGA DoJ. And, existing lawsuits will be dropped. Elite MAGA policies are often both racist and chauvinist, among some other very bad things. This is more evidence of that morally rotted mindset.
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MAGA is moving fast to build an American variant of China’s aggressive digital deep-surveillance dictatorship. Once Putin saw how effective China’s dictatorship is in disinforming and controlling the thinking and behaviors of a whole nation, he moved quickly to build an equivalent in Russia.
One citizen protection that digital dictatorship obliterates is their right to privacy. What is left of citizen privacy in the US federal government is now being obliterated and our private information is being turned into an authoritarian and kleptocratic weapon to be used against us.
TNR writes: “Trump’s Sneaky Plot to Steal Your Data—and Weaponize It Against You -- Under the guise of immigration enforcement, the administration is building a new, expanded surveillance state. One of the less-noticed attacks on our democracy has been the siloing and use-case restrictions on government-collected data. .... It’d be useful for us to start referring to this more as Trump’s effort to collect a government dossier on nearly every person, nonprofit, and business in the country. .... At this point, DOGE has either forced or tried to force access to IRS data systems, Social Security data, Selective Service records, Medicare data, Health and Human Services data, Securities and Exchange Commission data, National Labor Relations Board data, and Education Department student data, among other things, with the ultimate goal to make all these disparate information sources interoperable, either in one centralized system or in some other way that they can be compiled and searched together.”
The TNR article points out that MAGA’s effort to weaponize our private information against us is hidden behind claims of immigration enforcement and “national security”, which seems to include more federal policy areas than it excludes. As TNR puts it, that is “the tip of the spear for an expansion of government powers and the surveillance state.”
Our privacy, another protection for us and our civil liberties, has been stripped away by MAGA. Our privacy in government is now gone. As usual, when power flows from the people and their rights, it goes somewhere else. In this case, it is flowing to our deeply corrupt, autocratic federal government and the corrupt plutocrats and Christian nationalist theocrats who are in a position to make money off of using our information against us.
TNR also points out that we cannot opt-out of this attack on us. People can at least try protect themselves from pervasive surveillance by private entities like Meta and Alphabet and Amazon. But people cannot do the same with the federal government. With DOGE data, when you opt out, it’s a felony, e.g., when you don’t submit your tax returns. We give our data to the government for specific uses, but not for using it against us and our rights and protections.
We have been royally screwed and betrayed by corrupt, morally rotted djt and his elite morally rotted MAGA thugs.