Hey, thanks for opening this email or clicking on the link. It’s good to have you here. Things are crazy. I know I keep saying that but it’s the truth so just get used to it, I guess. Anyway, if you appreciate this adversarial journalism as we continue to slide into a strange and troubling future of hyper-connected authoritarianism, consider throwing a few bucks my way. Basically, if you like what you see here, please pay for it. - jg
It used to take months or years for the news to grind my brain into a fine, mushy enough pulp to necessitate rereading my own stories to remember what I’d reported. Now, that takes weeks or even days.
What happened last week? Can’t remember. Feels like three months ago. It’s 2025? I keep forgetting. Last year never ended. Maybe it never began.
The firehose of insanity continues to flood the American consciousness — at least for those of us who are still paying attention. To be very clear about why this continues to happen: it is not a distraction, from Epstein or anything else.
This administration and the political machine behind it — a broad coalition of white nationalists, reactionary authoritarians, extremely greedy nihilists, just plain weird rich people, and common white trash — are not intelligent or organized enough to pull off something like a competent public relations campaign to distract the American public from the Epstein scandal, which at this point I think is fair to simply call a cover-up.
No, the chaos of each day is a result of the enraged madness that has permeated the minds of millions of Americans, including nearly the entirety of the Republican party, almost all of its elected officials, and every single member of the Trump administration. All are engaged in a radical remaking of American society based on their desire for vengeance against perceived enemies and desperate need to dominate and oppress anyone who disagrees with them.
As the authoritarian carnage continues, our institutions are just barely holding up. Even Democratic officials are capitulating to Trump’s authoritarian tactics. Orange County (Florida) Mayor Jerry Demings recently caved and signed an agreement for the county’s police to assist ICE in deportation efforts. Demings did so after Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s attorney general threatened to suspend local officials from office for refusing to cooperate with ICE.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military is expanding its work at the southern border; ICE now has the funds to hire 10,000 additional agents; the FBI is now assisting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in locating state Democratic lawmakers who have left in order to prevent a quorum that would allow Republicans to carry out an unprecedented redistricting plan that will give the GOP five additional seats in Congress; immigration agents are lying in court as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to criminalize protest and stifle dissent; Trump is threatening to “federalize” Washington DC over a random carjacking of a 19-year-old DOGE official, even though crime was down there last year, just like it was across the country in 2024.
It’s only $5 a month to support my work. You might as well so we can all have a little fund during the Decline.
That’s on the bullets and blood front. Meanwhile in the information warfare space, Trump is once again leading the charge in the American right’s assault on free and fair elections, including open attempts to rig the 2026 midterms in favor of Republicans.
Trump’s departments of Justice and Homeland Security are asking for access to the personal information of millions of voters, part of the administration’s attempts to identify supposed perpetrators of voter fraud. (This is really just an attempt to locate undocumented immigrants for deportation, as well as probably part of an effort to identify trans Americans for opaque purposes that are nothing if not concerning.) The DOJ voting rights section has essentially become the official government arm of the election denial movement.
The voting rights section is now led by a woman who previously worked for an election denial group called the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF); the DOJ has asked for voter rolls from nine states and been granted the information by two; it has filed a statement of interest on behalf of right-wingers who would like to purge Black voters in Alabama; the department has also filed a statement of interest on behalf of Tina Peters, the Colorado election official who believed in Trump’s lies about election fraud so fervently she granted access to sensitive voter information to an associate of Mike Lindell; Justice has also filed suit in North Carolina, following the lead of frivolous lawsuits filed by the RNC there and elsewhere in the lead-up to the 2024 election, as well as California, where the department is suing to learn the identities of 16 noncitizens who were so honest that they informed local election officials that they were improperly registered to vote.
Meanwhile, the main PAC supporting Trump had a record-breaking eight month stretch of fundraising — all for a president who we’re told is prohibited from running for a third term.
This is just what I got to this week. Next week, we’ll dig into the strange case of a brawl in Cincinnati and an attempted carjacking of a DOGE staffer. Both events are being used as justification for more authoritarian power grabs by Trump, to be carried out by the military or local law enforcement. Whichever comes first, or is easier, I guess.
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