https://www.wired.com/story/cisa-election-security-freeze-memo/

Again: an interesting move for the party that claims to be all about election security.

I hope states continue to use paper ballots, and retain those paper ballots for recounts throughout elections, rather than be all electronic or scan paper ballots to images and then discard the paper.

Or revert to doing so, in case they’ve already chosen the all-electronic route.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/14/ap-white-house-trump-gulf-america/

Headline is “This is a perfectly fine hill for the AP to die on”. Except I don’t think the AP is going to die. White House press briefings will be garbage for the next four years, essentially prouncements by state media. No news to be gained there, really. AP can and will continue to do good reporting.

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/they-are-a-minority

Yes. Cheer up, buckle down.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-doge-posts-classified-data_n_67ae646de4b0513a8d767112

Lock ’em up.

The old days are behind us. The days of Stalin disappearing people overnight, leaving only a shoe on the street. The days of the Gestapo knocking on people’s doors early in the morning and hauling them out on the street in humiliation, to be thrown onto a truck. The days of the Red Guard hauling out imperialists and counter-revolutionaries to be shot in the street.

We don’t do that any more. Now, in Russia, there’s a softer form of authoritarianism. You just don’t get on the ballot. You get arrested politely (with overwhelming force present but not used) at the airport and charged with minor violations. There is no public humiliation, you just go away.

China has “social capital”. You don’t get loans, you can’t buy bus tickets. If you disappear, it’s very quiet and non-violent and you might resurface later admitting what a mistake you made. No violence, no public humiliation.

In Hungary, Orbàn deliberately misses one checkbox out of 7 that qualifies him as “dictator”, “fascist”, “authoritarian”, “undemocratic”, so he can’t be called any of those things (at least, not on a forum where dozens of tankies will emerge and say “but this missing checkbox”).

And, in the US, we have a soft coup. There are no black helicopters and there may never be. There are no special forces on the ground, at least not yet, and there may never be. Instead, people will lose funding. Door badges will cease to function. Arrests will be made by sheriff’s deputies in most cases.

If we’re lucky and persistent, this soft coup will go down in history as a soft *attempted* coup, maybe a soft putsch. But: softly, softly. Hark! The times have changed.

Ok, afterthought: Failure to act is action. Failure to vote is voting. Which means, by failing to act, by failing to call votes, the Congress which was voted democratically into office is, in fact, carrying out the will of the people, who did, in fact, vote for gerrymandering and a Republican majority. (I didn’t. And you, dear reader, probably didn’t either, but, in fact, all those people who don’t read but prefer to watch video (and they are legion) *did*.

One can argue they didn’t know what they were voting for, and, whether or not they knew, they certainly have the right to change their minds and vote differently (assuming they have viable options in two years), but they voted.

And that democratically-elected Congress has, over the years, along with the democratically-elected President, stacked the Supreme Court with Justices inclined to give Republicans and the Executive Branch more and more power.

«Take, for example, the budget resolution released yesterday by House Republicans, which would extend the 2017 Big Fat Tax Cuts For Rich Fuckwads and then cut taxes — for them — some more, to the tune of $4.5 trillion.»

https://www.wonkette.com/p/republicans-release-budget-plan-its

Here’s the $4 trillion AOC recently discussed in her 90-minute Insta live (or whatever it was) thing.

I only called about one thing today, our constitutional crisis.

That sounds so melodramatic (and I always feel so ineffective), but when an executive ignores the courts and arrogates to itself the ability to control spending (which is Congress’s prerogative), what is that? There are supposed to be three co-equal branches of government, but they are trying to cut out two of them.

In 1933, legislators in Germany *voted* to give Adolf Hitler supreme power. How does history regard them now? How will history regard our own representatives in the future?

One would think that politics requires courage.

https://5calls.org/issue/constitutional-crisis-trump-musk/

(Also, I just emailed my Representative about town halls, but that wasn’t a phone call.)

When something horrible happens in a novel I’m reading, at least I can detach myself and say, essentially, “It’s only a dream.”

Wish that worked in real life.

«So, Orbán has this English-language think tank. It’s called the Danube Institute. You can google it and see what it’s up to. And the Danube Institute had entered into a formal agreement with the Heritage Foundation to actually provide consulting on how the Trump people were going to copy what Orbán had done. In the meantime, you know, when Orbán gives his Hungarian-language speeches, one of the things he keeps saying is, you know, “We are deep into the Trump administration and involved in its central planning.” So, you put all this together, and it’s actually not just that the Trump people are aping Orbán from a distance, it’s that Orbán has actually been involved in the design of Project 2025.»

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/12/kim_scheppele_autocracy_trump_musk

Oh, great.

«I think what Trump has learned, and what Orbán also, I think, taught him is that, you know, think of government as an aquarium. If you just stick a blender in it and make fish soup, you’re not going to be able to restore the aquarium even when courts tell you, “No, you shouldn’t have done it like that.”

…

I think it’s good for people who are in office to say, “I’m not leaving until you force me,” and just create friction in the system. Slow it down is actually the best defense in circumstances like this.»