Secrecy & opacity: Regarding authoritarian MAGA's 180-Day Playbook & public trust

The secret plan

The fourth pillar of Project 2025 is our 180-day Transition Playbook and includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency. Only through the implementation of specific action plans at each agency will the next conservative presidential Administration be successful.

Pillar IV will provide the next President a roadmap for doing just that. To learn more about Project 2025’s vision for a conservative administration, please read our recently published book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

This plan has not been made public. It is not conservative. It is kleptocratic and authoritarian. The reason for secrecy is to hide the authoritarian and kleptocratic intent of America's corrupt, authoritarian radical right elites. From what I can tell, essentially no one in the MSM or the public generally seems to care that massive government changes are kept secret from the American people. Reporting about it has been minimal, with little or no mention of how morally rotten and anti-democratic it is to keep the American people in the dark about massive changes in their federal government. 

I guess the MSM and public trust DJT and MAGA elites to do the right thing. Well, as Zuckerberg would say: 

Masha Gessen's opinion

 Gessen sees what I see. It deserves a stand-alone post. Masha Gessen opines in the NYT (not paywalled): 

In 1978, my parents went to Poland, the first foreign trip in each of their lives. When they returned to our home in Moscow, my mother couldn’t stop talking about what they’d seen — not a place but a movie, Bob Fosse’s “Cabaret.” One scene in particular stayed with her. Three friends are returning from a weekend trip. Sleep-deprived, hung over and preoccupied with their sexual and romantic entanglements, they pull over at a roadside cafe. There, a teenager wearing a Hitler Youth uniform starts singing. He is both earnest and, in his brown pants tucked into white knee-high socks, puerile. But after a minute, other young people in uniform join in, and soon all but one customer are standing and singing. The protagonists duck out. They have been pushing Nazism out of their minds, but at this moment they realize that they are in the minority, that life as they’ve been living it is over. The song everyone around them is singing is “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

I was 11 when my mother couldn’t stop talking about “Cabaret,” and I was confused. I thought my parents had gone to an actual cabaret and somehow gained an insight into the nature of the Soviet regime. A few years later, after I’d seen the movie myself, I realized my mother was right: That scene is the single most vivid portrayal of what it feels like to live in a society that is falling in line before a totalitarian leader. I experienced this in real life as an adult, when Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia and my world suddenly felt like a chessboard from which an invisible hand was picking off pieces faster than I had thought was possible.

Now, in Donald Trump’s America, I am living through something similar, and it is moving at a faster rate still. For me, it began before the election, when the owners of The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post decided to pull their papers’ endorsements of Kamala Harris for president.*** It continued with Mark Zuckerberg remaking Meta to reflect what he called the “cultural tipping point” that was the presidential election; with ABC News handing over millions of dollars in response to one of Trump’s frivolous lawsuits and CBS considering doing the same; and most recently, with the great erasure: of records of trans care for minors provided by hospitals and of diversity-and-inclusion policies at many universities and corporations. Now some universities are quietly retooling their programming in hopes of conforming with expectations that have not yet been clearly laid out. 

*** For me, it began in August or Sept. of 2016 if I recall right. Gessen also saw it early and said so publicly in the New York Review on Nov. 10, 2016. So, what she really means is that we're once more living through the rise of a corrupt, cruel, bigoted dictatorship and other forms of corrupt authoritarianism. I never saw an end of the rotting process since 2016. Biden was a flicker of hope for a while, but it was clear to me early on that he was probably going to fail.

I am talking not about deletions of pages from government websites, such as those of the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, presumably mandated by newly installed officials; I am talking about actions that individual people or private institutions took pre-emptively, with some measure of free will.

The Yale historian Timothy Snyder has called this “anticipatory obedience.” In his 2017 book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” lesson No. 1 was “Do not obey in advance.” Those who anticipate the demands of a repressive government and submit to these demands before they are made, Snyder wrote, are “teaching power what it can do.”  

.... 

....

Next comes the pragmatic argument. Rational people do not stand on principle for the sake of principle. They pick their battles. Or so this argument goes. Perhaps this was the logic that led the country’s largest private funder of biomedical research to halt a $60 million diversity program, Target to scrap its D.E.I. goals or ABC News to settle Trump’s libel suit. As cynical as this argument sounds, it too is rooted in values and obligations to others — shareholders, business partners, clients.  

Last, we have the zeitgeist argument. “We are in a new era now,” Zuckerberg observed when he announced that Meta would end its fact-checking program. Companies should have more “masculine energy” and have “a culture that celebrates the aggression” more, he added a few days later, speaking on the Joe Rogan podcast. This kind of argument is the very definition of rational. Societies define sanity as conforming to dominant beliefs and culture. In totalitarian societies, cultural and intellectual rebels are often confined to psychiatric institutions. In the Soviet Union, dissidents were often diagnosed as insane — and by the standards of that society, they were.

Gessen goes on at length. Having had first hand experience and a reasonably rational mind, she really understands cruel, corrupt, vindictive tyrants.

Constitutional Crises…

We hear pundits talk about potential “Constitutional Crises.” Some say, “If [x] happens, we will be in a Constitutional Crisis.”  There’s a lot of that kind of talk these days, especially with Trump, et al. again in charge.  It’s basically coming from the politically-left-leaners.

I decided to see what exactly a “constitutional crisis” means. There are several different takes, but here’s one I found, when researching it:

Link.

FiveThirtyEight says that there are 4 types of constitutional crises:

1. The Constitution doesn’t say what to do.

2. The Constitution’s meaning is in question.

3. The Constitution tells us what to do, but it’s not politically feasible.

4. Institutions themselves fail.

You can read about the details of each of these 4 if you go into the link above.

• Q1: What are your thoughts about us, the U.S., already experiencing a Constitutional Crisis under this second Trump term?  Are we? If so, which type(s) above applies?

• Q2: Who decides if we are in one?  

• How is that determined?  

• What can be done about it?

(by PrimalSoup)

MAGA updates: Lies, revenge, dictatorship, bigotry

NYT: Falsehoods Fuel the Right-Wing Crusade Against U.S.A.I.D. -- As the Trump administration works to dismantle the aid agency, right-wing influencers have flooded the internet with falsehoods about its work. The video falsely claiming that the United States Agency for International Development paid Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie and other actors millions of dollars to travel to Ukraine appeared to be a clip from E!News, though it never appeared on the entertainment channel. In fact, the video first surfaced on X in a post from an account that researchers have said spreads Russian disinformation. Within hours it drew the attention of Elon Musk, who reposted it. So did President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.

Unfortunately and frighteningly, this is normal for American MAGA politics. 

Times of India: Russia welcomes USAID cuts, calls body 'machine for interfering' in global affairs  

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NYT: In revoking Biden’s security clearance, Trump makes clear his motivation is payback -- President Trump said he was revoking Biden’s security clearances on Friday as retribution for Mr. Biden having rescinded his four years ago in response to what Mr. Biden called Mr. Trump’s “erratic behavior” around the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. DJT made no effort to disguise his reasoning. He did not accuse Mr. Biden of any security breaches. Instead, he wrote on social media that there was “no need” for Mr. Biden to continue having access to classified information, exactly parroting the justification Mr. Biden offered in 2021 for denying briefings to Mr. Trump. “Joe, you’re fired. Make America Great Again!” Mr. Trump wrote in his signature all-caps style.

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Masha Gessen opines (not paywalled): 

In 1978, my parents went to Poland, the first foreign trip in each of their lives. When they returned to our home in Moscow, my mother couldn’t stop talking about what they’d seen — not a place but a movie, Bob Fosse’s “Cabaret.” One scene in particular stayed with her. Three friends are returning from a weekend trip. Sleep-deprived, hung over and preoccupied with their sexual and romantic entanglements, they pull over at a roadside cafe. There, a teenager wearing a Hitler Youth uniform starts singing. He is both earnest and, in his brown pants tucked into white knee-high socks, puerile. But after a minute, other young people in uniform join in, and soon all but one customer are standing and singing. The protagonists duck out. They have been pushing Nazism out of their minds, but at this moment they realize that they are in the minority, that life as they’ve been living it is over. The song everyone around them is singing is “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

I was 11 when my mother couldn’t stop talking about “Cabaret,” and I was confused. I thought my parents had gone to an actual cabaret and somehow gained an insight into the nature of the Soviet regime. A few years later, after I’d seen the movie myself, I realized my mother was right: That scene is the single most vivid portrayal of what it feels like to live in a society that is falling in line before a totalitarian leader. I experienced this in real life as an adult, when Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia and my world suddenly felt like a chessboard from which an invisible hand was picking off pieces faster than I had thought was possible.

Now, in Donald Trump’s America, I am living through something similar, and it is moving at a faster rate still. For me, it began before the election, when the owners of The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post decided to pull their papers’ endorsements of Kamala Harris for president.*** It continued with Mark Zuckerberg remaking Meta to reflect what he called the “cultural tipping point” that was the presidential election; with ABC News handing over millions of dollars in response to one of Trump’s frivolous lawsuits and CBS considering doing the same; and most recently, with the great erasure: of records of trans care for minors provided by hospitals and of diversity-and-inclusion policies at many universities and corporations. Now some universities are quietly retooling their programming in hopes of conforming with expectations that have not yet been clearly laid out. 

*** For me, it began in August or Sept. of 2016 if I recall right. Gessen also saw it early and said so publicly in the New York Review on Nov. 10, 2016. So, what she really means is that we're once more living through the rise of a corrupt, cruel, bigoted dictatorship and other forms of corrupt authoritarianism. I never saw an end of the rotting process since 2016. Biden was a flicker of hope for a while, but it was clear to me early on that he was probably going to fail.

I am talking not about deletions of pages from government websites, such as those of the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, presumably mandated by newly installed officials; I am talking about actions that individual people or private institutions took pre-emptively, with some measure of free will.

The Yale historian Timothy Snyder has called this “anticipatory obedience.” In his 2017 book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” lesson No. 1 was “Do not obey in advance.” Those who anticipate the demands of a repressive government and submit to these demands before they are made, Snyder wrote, are “teaching power what it can do.”  

.... 

....

Next comes the pragmatic argument. Rational people do not stand on principle for the sake of principle. They pick their battles. Or so this argument goes. Perhaps this was the logic that led the country’s largest private funder of biomedical research to halt a $60 million diversity program, Target to scrap its D.E.I. goals or ABC News to settle Trump’s libel suit. As cynical as this argument sounds, it too is rooted in values and obligations to others — shareholders, business partners, clients.  

Last, we have the zeitgeist argument. “We are in a new era now,” Zuckerberg observed when he announced that Meta would end its fact-checking program. Companies should have more “masculine energy” and have “a culture that celebrates the aggression” more, he added a few days later, speaking on the Joe Rogan podcast. This kind of argument is the very definition of rational. Societies define sanity as conforming to dominant beliefs and culture. In totalitarian societies, cultural and intellectual rebels are often confined to psychiatric institutions. In the Soviet Union, dissidents were often diagnosed as insane — and by the standards of that society, they were.

Gessen goes on at length. Having had first hand experience and a reasonably rational mind, she really understands corrupt tyrants.

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NYT: Trump’s New Line of Attack Against the Media Gains Momentum -- First Amendment experts say Mr. Trump’s lawsuits, based on an unproven legal theory, lack merit. Media lawyers scoffed last year when President Trump sued two news organizations for producing journalism that, he claimed, violated laws meant to protect consumers from things like deceptive advertising. They’re not laughing anymore. First Amendment experts still believe that Mr. Trump’s cases, against CBS News and The Des Moines Register, lack legal merit. But they now also realize that the lawsuits are proving effective at harassing the press — and that more of them are probably on the way.

It amazes me that many people far for intelligent and informed than me are so astoundingly slow to see what is obvious right in front of them. That includes most professional journalists and commentators. It's not stupidity. It's the human condition needing to see comforting reality to avoid an overload of cognitive dissonance. To this day, the most of MSM still usually refers to DJT, MAGA elites and Project 2025 as conservative and conservatism, not as bigoted, kleptocratic authoritarian. Un-fracking-believable! 

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NYT: Trump Joins a Global War on ‘Gender Ideology’ -- He’s allying with a movement that stretches to Hungary and Poland — one that looks with skepticism not just on trans rights but on feminism itself. Rhetorical and institutional brawls over “gender ideology” are, at this point, an international phenomenon, a feature of current and former anti-liberal regimes across the world from Moscow to Budapest to Warsaw to Rome — and now in Washington, D.C. The phrase “gender ideology” is often a shorthand for transgender and nonbinary people but also serves as a kind of catchall for anything associated with the idea that gender is a social construct and therefore malleable.

Bigotry, eh?

Wikipedia, Israel and Palestine: Collapsing rationality and civility

CONTEXT

Slate writes about a topic that's been on my mind at least since 2006 or thereabouts. That was the time when old-fashioned conservative politics websites converted to aggressive, insulting slash and burn rhetoric, while inconvenient fact, true truth and sound reasoning faded away. That was the time I see the GOP as rapidly degenerating from old-fashioned conservative, pro-democracy politics to modern MAGA authoritarianism and kleptocracy. The issue is this: Polarized people on clashing sides of a political issue can rarely maintain rational, civil discourse. In the end, nothing but disagreement, bad feelings, broken democracy and a lot of false beliefs are left. 

By Jan. 2009, MAGA elites began their final push to displace the old GOP establishment and replace it with MAGA extremism. Investigative journalist Jane Mayer wrote about the Jan. 2009 meeting of clashing elites in her 2017 book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. It was in that meeting that MAGA declared compromise with Democrats and Obama to be surrender. Compromise had to be replaced with "massive resistance and obstruction."

Slate writes:

Project 2025’s Creators Want to Dox Wikipedia Editors. 

The Tool They’re Using Is Horrifying.

The Heritage Foundation plans to “identify and target” Wikipedia editors it accuses of antisemitism

Last month, the Jewish-American news site Forward reported a shocking scoop: The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, is planning to “identify and target” Wikipedia editors. Through analyzing text patterns, usernames, and technical data and employing social-engineering tactics, Heritage aimed to reveal the identities of anonymous Wikipedia editors it believes are “abusing their position” on the platform.

In the culture of Wikipedia editing, it is common for individuals to use pseudonyms to protect their privacy and avoid personal threats. Revealing an editor’s personal information without their consent, a practice known as doxing, is a form of harassment that can result in a user’s being permanently banned from the site. Although this behavior is strictly prohibited by Wikipedia’s rules, Heritage has endorsed these scorched-earth tactics in response to what it perceives as antisemitism among certain editors covering the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on Wikipedia.

Let’s be clear: Wikipedia’s handling of this topic area is incredibly contentious. Many Wikipedians deliberately avoid pages like “Gaza War,” “Zionism,” and even the meta-entry on Wikipedia’s own coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. These pages are under extended confirmed protection, meaning that only experienced editors—those who have been on Wikipedia for at least 30 days and have made at least 500 edits—can make changes to them.

But even with these restrictions in place, tensions continue to run high. One side accuses the Tech for Palestine coalition of trying to hijack Wikipedia with Palestinian propaganda, while the other points out that Israel’s government seems to be mobilizing its own citizens to write about the conflict from their perspective. Although founder Jimmy Wales insists the Wikipedia community aims for neutrality, the editors don’t always succeed.

The Heritage Foundation’s threats recall the methods used by pro–Chinese Communist Party editors in 2021, when a group called Wikimedians of Mainland China specifically targeted Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists. These Chinese nationalist editors were displeased with the way the Hong Kong editors were documenting the protests against Beijing’s rule. Rather than continuing the discussion on Wikipedia’s talk pages (places for editors to chat with one another and debate proposed changes), the pro-CCP editors resorted to doxing and reporting their opponents’ real-life identities to the state police, leading some Hong Kong editors to be physically harmed. It seems that both the CCP and Heritage believe that if you can’t win an argument in the digital space of Wikipedia, it’s fair game to destroy that person’s life offline.

In the documents obtained by Forward, Heritage employees announced plans to use advanced data sources and tools from companies like Moody’s and Thomson Reuters to unmask Wikipedia editors. These powerful applications provide a virtual fire hose of real-time information, including location and address history, cross-referencing usernames, and fingerprinting a user based on writing style.

Regardless of its effectiveness, Wikipedia’s latest decision aligns with its quasi-democratic principles. It reflects a commitment to online debate rather than the authoritarian tactics proposed by Heritage. But if the think tank succeeds in its effort to identify and target editors, the consequences could be profound. Faced with the risk of harassment or real-world retaliation, many volunteer editors—especially those covering politically sensitive topics—may simply stop contributing. Those who remain are likely to be the most ideologically driven voices, further eroding Wikipedia’s stated goal of neutrality.

The free encyclopedia will become too toxic to sustain.

Presumably, this kind of war can and will be engaged in with other disputed important topics. 

MAGA updates: Authoritarian and kleptocratic intent is crystal clear

The Hill reports: Trump announces task force to ‘eradicate anti-Christian bias’ -- DJT announced plans Thursday to establish a task force and a presidential commission to protect Christians from religious discrimination. “While I’m in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals and in our public squares,” he said. “And we will bring our country back together as one nation under God.” The president also said he would sign an executive order to make Attorney General Pam Bondi the head of a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.” The task force will aim to stop “all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government,” Trump said. He also said he would create a White House Faith Office, led by the Rev. Paula White, who has served as a religious adviser to Trump for several years.

In my firm opinion, that is undeniably Christian nationalist (CN) theocracy in action. Christians in America are seriously not discriminated against, much less persecuted. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits religious discrimination in employment, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 further protects religious practices from government interference. Tax law provides tens of billions/year in tax breaks. On top of all of that, Christians overwhelmingly dominate local, state and federal governments, law enforcement, state and federal courts, state legislatures, congress, governorships, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and damn-near everything else of significance in American government, society, religion, commerce and public education. Where the hell is all of this alleged discrimination coming from, the Navajo Indian tribe? Lost puppies? A lady bug? 

Yes, yes, we all know that some Christians claim being marginalized or face career limits due to their views on sexual ethics or gender identity. But that does not constitute discrimination or persecution. Instead those are disagreements over differing moral or social values. To say there is serious or even moderate discrimination against Christians in the US is a deeply insulting lie. One can rationally see this move as the another major step toward the rise of Christian Taliban Sharia in American law.

And make no mistake, theocratically-minded CNs are hell bent on discriminating and oppressing individuals and groups that CN elites say God wants to discriminate against and oppress under the rule of law. That includes the LGBQT community, women generally, unacceptable ethnicities and races, and atheists (and this). Reports from organizations like Open Doors International report that over 380 million Christians outside the US face high levels of persecution, with many facing violence, imprisonment, or death for their faith. That is real discrimination and persecution. By comparison to real persecution, America's coddled, legally protected and heavily tax subsidized American Christian nationalist snowflakes face mere dust bunnies of inconvenience and falsely perceived discrimination. 

The cynicism and dishonesty in this theocratic Christian Taliban move is jaw dropping and terrifying. In this regard, the US moves toward some form of a new Dark Ages.

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The Hill reports: Trump: ’60 Minutes’ should be ‘immediately terminated’ after Harris transcript release -- DJT on Thursday suggested CBS News’s “60 Minutes” be taken off the air after the program released a transcript of an interview it aired last fall with former Vice President Harris amid a federal investigation into the broadcast. “CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website. “They 100% removed Kamala’s horrible election changing answers to questions, and replaced them with completely different, and far better, answers, taken from another part of the interview.”

DJT is a shameless, insulting pathological liar and hypocrite. His allegations here are false. But this is a predictable authoritarian (dictator) 101 tactic. Tyrants attack and try to kill the professional press whenever they can. Putin did it. So did the Chinese tyrants. They all at least try to do it.

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404 Media reports: DOGE Employees Ordered to Stop Using Slack While Agency Transitions to a Records System Not Subject to FOIA -- Employees working for the agency now known as DOGE have been ordered to stop using Slack while government lawyers attempt to transition the agency to one that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, 404 Media has learned. “Good morning, everyone! As a reminder, please refrain from using Slack at the moment while our various general counsels figure out the best way to handle the records migration to our new EOP [Executive Office of the President] component,” a message seen by 404 Media reads. “Will update as soon as we have more information!”

This too is a predictable authoritarian 101 tactic. Authoritarians almost always try to work in as much unwarranted secrecy and opacity as possible. Here, MAGA elites like Musk are openly looking for ways to circumvent the FOIA law to hide from the public what is going on in the federal government. Based on MAGA's public record so far, one can rest assured that two of the things will be going on are authoritarianism and kleptocracy. The three kinds of authoritarianism that will very likely dominate (~95% chance?) are dictatorship, Christian theocracy and capitalist plutocracy.

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Newsweek reports:

According to USAID documents, Ivanka Trump used over $11,000 from the department in 2019 to buy video recording and reproducing equipment for a White House event.

The documents show $11,539 was to used by Trump in November 2019 to purchase software, CDs, tapes and records.

The purchase was approved by Jenifer Healy, who was serving as USAID deputy chief of staff at the time, and the Administrator's Office. It is not clear which White House event the equipment was used for. 

It comes at a time when the Trump administration is making plans to dismantle the agency. The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that nearly all USAID workers would be withdrawn from the field amid the efforts.

So this is a second reason that MAGA elites are furious with USAID. Musk is enrgaed because USAID was looking into shenanigans with how Musk's Starlink technology was being misused in the Ukraine.** Now, we see that Ivanka misappropriated funds for unknown reasons. 

This is kleptocracy in action.

** Some reports suggested that Musk's aggressive actions against USAID were motivated by the agency's investigation into Starlink's contracts in Ukraine. This investigation was looking into the oversight of Starlink Satellite provided to the Ukrainian government and USAID's initiatives to safeguard against sexual exploitation and abuse in Ukraine.

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Slate reports: Pam Bondi Instructs Trump DOJ to Criminally Investigate Companies That Do DEI -- On Wednesday evening, newly installed Attorney General Pam Bondi sent staff in several divisions of the Department of Justice more than a dozen memos within a 15-minute span, laying out the agency’s new policies on issues ranging from reviving the death penalty, to targeting sanctuary cities, to enforcing a strict return-to-office policy. One astonishing memo, seen by Slate, puts the DOJ at the center of DJT’s widespread efforts to destroy any traces of initiatives that would create inclusive and diverse workspaces, otherwise known as DEIA. The new memo claims that it will target private-sector diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives for potential “criminal investigation.” It’s hard to overstate both the constitutional wreckage this crusade will leave in its wake and the havoc it could wreak on the American workforce. In the name of protecting constitutional rights, Bondi’s Justice Department is teeing up an all-out assault on fundamental First Amendment rights to speak, organize, and associate.

The astonishing memo, 2 pages:

This too is a predictable authoritarian 101 tactic. Authoritarianism targets groups and policies that undermine authoritarianism or defend democracy. DJT promised to attack and obliterate DEI, which is inherently pro-democracy and anti-MAGA. Proponents of DEI  and DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility) argue that these initiatives are essential for promoting fairness, justice, and equal participation, which are foundational to democratic values. MAGA reverses that reasoning, claiming that DEI and DEIA are authoritarian because they impose a particular ideological framework on organizations, potentially stifling free speech and academic freedom. 

Most of the backlash against DEI has been fueled by misinformation, disinformation and MAGA dark free speech (DFS) generally. Attacks on DEI are almost always based on the sophisticated DFS tactic of pointing to isolated incidents. Those incidents are then falsely claimed to be representative of the entire situation. That is called the hasty generalization fallacy. In its attacks, MAGA does not rely on comprehensive data or understanding of DEI's broader goals. One analysis commented: "In a rebuke to a congressional hearing attacking DEI efforts on university campuses, 12 scholars debunk the politicized misinformation with evidence-based responses. The two-hour hearing overflowed with misinformation, misunderstandings, and reckless mischaracterizations."