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Whatever happens in Washington DC this weekend — and something will happen, because that’s the point in the swinging pendulum of American conflict at which we’ve arrived — it will probably be good for Donald Trump.

He both desperately needs the media to be chasing fires and also probably doesn’t care. The reason he doesn’t care is because he doesn’t have to: his extremely powerful army of right-wing media and propagandists have followed their marching orders perfectly, spending the last 36 hours talking about in-depth crime numbers in Washington DC.

Funny how none of them were talking about DC crime two weeks ago, when Trump was somewhat reeling from the fallout over Epstein. Funny how Republicans weren’t talking about the need to engage in racial gerrymandering in Texas and elsewhere until the last few weeks, after Republicans there were shown to have been out to lunch while hundreds of children died in flooding there.

If there are large-scale protests in DC this weekend, they stand a good chance of being met with force. Scenes of conflict between National Guard members or local police and protesters will play on a loop across right-wing media, playing right into Trump’s hands. (Still, I hope DC protests en masse.)

The level of authoritarian onslaught any given day really is overwhelming. I’ve been trying to find time to dig into the Justice Department’s work on behalf of the election denial movement, but the news just keeps breaking like waves on a beach that I can’t get out from under.

Here are some alarming items from the last few days that you might have missed:

* The Washington Post has obtained Pentagon plans to stand up a quick response force for deployment to domestic unrest zones. The force will be made up of a few hundred members of the National Guard to be stationed in two locations within the interior of the nation in order to respond to civil unrest within hours, the Post reports. Unprecedented doesn’t begin to cover it.

* Not only does the Trump administration want secret police, but secret courts as well. Justice Department attorneys asked a judge to shield proceedings in a lawsuit between the state of California and Trump’s government from the public because it could expose immigration agents. The judge ceded somewhat and made access to the hearing audio-only.

* Authoritarian crackdowns continue in Los Angeles, where local police continue to help Trump’s masked immigration agents violently confront protesters — and beat journalists.

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Episodio 339 - Los ángeles en el Apocalipsis